Left Alive, the fascinating but super janky mech-intrigue game, is getting an easier difficulty mode. A new “Casual Mode” will hopefully make the experience more tolerable and give me an excuse to go back and enjoy some Front Mission mech battles.

Track: Love Will Tear Us Apart, 1995 Remastered Version | Artist: Joy Division | Album: Closer Kotaku Soundtrack is a selection of the stuff we’re listening to at the moment.

Brilliant Skies. Osaka, Japan. By Pedro Szekely | Flickr JPGs is a photo peek into wherever gamers might find interesting. If you’re a photographer and have images you want to share, drop us a line! 

Heaven’s Vault: The Kotaku Review

“Stories don’t have tidy beginnings,” says the main character of Heaven’s Vault, outer space archaeologist Aliya Elasra, at the beginning of the game. “The past is always present.” I was immediately enthralled. I often see people hyper-simplifying history in bad faith and weaponizing it as propaganda, so I was excited to play a game that…

Microsoft plans to sell a combo deal of Xbox Live Gold and Xbox Gamepass for $14.99 a month, the company announced today in their Inside Xbox game stream. While both services already exist, Microsoft isn’t offering the bundled sub until “later this year.” No word if they’ll offer a better deal for an annual subscription…

This year’s Gamescom may be more of an event to watch Friend of the site Geoff Keighley is creating “Gamescom: Opening Night Live” which he describes to Kotaku as “sort of like an all-in-one press conference” full of game announcements and news. It will stream from Cologne, Germany at 2pm ET on Monday, August 19,…

The Friends of Ringo Ishikawa for the Nintendo Switch combines a River City Ransom-like brawling Japanese school punk action RPG with the tone of existential cinematic artistry. It rules. I am playing it on our Twitch channel right the heck now