The Weekend In Esports: Gears Of War Pro Circuit And DreamHack Winter

December is off to a nice start with plenty of major tournaments throughout esports, including Dota 2, Rocket League, and Gears of War 4 In addition to the MLG Dallas Open and ELEAGUE Cup, DreamHack Winter 2017 is underway in Sweden with tournaments ranging from Smash Bros. Melee to H1Z1. Below you’ll find where and…

I’m taking over Kotaku’s Twitch channel today along with some rag-tag friends to marathon my favorite local multiplayer games! Tune in from 12:15 to 6:00 for Super Smash Bros 4, Crawl, Starwhal, Mario Kart 8, Nidhogg 2 and more.

Smash Pro Narrowly Wins After Missed Ledge Grab

Two masters of their own character met last night in the 2GG Championship, as the clash between the best Sonic and best Link came down to the last second and a single hit’s worth of damage. Kengo “Ken” Suzuki and Isami “T” Ikeda are two of Japan’s biggest representatives in these Super Smash Bros. For…

This Week In The Business: EA Tries To Explain

QUOTE | “As we kept reviewing the game, it continued to look like a style of gaming, a much more linear game, that people don’t like as much today as they did five years ago or 10 years ago.” – EA CFO Blake Jorgensen, explaining why the publisher canceled Visceral Games’ Star Wars project and…

PS2 Theme Takes Your PS4 Back To 2001

On December 6, a new theme will be made available for the PS4 that will have your modern console’s dashboard looking like something from a couple of generations back. Built by Truant Pixel, with help from PlayStation US, Japan and even Naughty Dog, it combines “multiple disparate elements into a single piece of theme software…

DayZ’s developers say that the massively influential survival game is finally leaving early access “next year.” That’ll also mean a console version sometime next year, if all goes according to plan. Personally, I’m expecting it to add a battle royale mode shortly after, which, in DayZ time, means the year 2020.

Animal Crossing: Pocket Camp: The Kotaku Review

Animal Crossing: Pocket Camp, the new sequel of Nintendo’s cute neighborhood series for cellphones, is Animal Crossing but a bit more stressful. I love it and hate it at the same time. Pocket Camp takes elements from a few different Animal Crossing games and shoves them into a mobile app that’s surprisingly robust. It has…

I Love It When Games Let Me Collect Souvenirs

It was back when I was playing World of Warcraft in high school that I first realized I had a problem. My bags were always full, laden with old gear and miscellaneous baubles I just couldn’t bear to part with, even if that just meant putting them in storage for a bit. A random stone…

The latest Battlefront II update tweaked the post-game stats screen to now show players with top score, rather than granting specific honors. The change aims tofix the problem where a single player would sweep all the awards. You can read the full list of changes here.

What Are You Playing This Weekend?

The weekend is for regretting the fact that you made oatmeal raisin cookies the other night and instead making the superior cookie, chocolate chip. Also, video games. I am, at long last, back on my bullshit with The Witcher 3. I meant to power through the plot over the holiday, but one thing led to…

Dragon Heart Dumplings And Other Real Recipes From Battle Chef Brigade

When Victoria Rosenthal started replicating dishes from eat-what-you-kill game Battle Chef Brigade, she had a little difficulty finding dragon meat at the grocery store. To cook up the game’s BBQ Dragon Shank, she had to get creative. “[Dragon meat’s] art includes pieces of meat that appear to have a thick layer of fat followed by…

Dear Video Games: Please Stop Immediately Telling Me What To Do

The original Super Mario Bros., which was a pretty well-liked video game, didn’t tell players the button commands for climbing up vines. It certainly didn’t pause to tell them how to jump on the turtles or remind them that they could enter a big green pipe if they’d like to. I’ve been playing some of…

Final Fantasy XV’s Multiplayer Is Great Fun In Small Doses

To some, Final Fantasy XV’s multiplayer expansion pack is an entertaining (if mildly frustrating) way to experience Square Enix’s epic RPG with friends. For others, it’s a hell of a lot of work to find a decent dress shirt. I’m somewhere in between. Since the events that unfold in the Comrades expansion take place after…

The Superheroes Who Saved My Life

Superheroes saved my life. No, Batman didn’t swoop in on a cable, nor did Deadpool kneecap a crook on my behalf, but a few special women have nonetheless given me a second shot at living on my own terms. Without their wisdom, filtered through page and screen to a wide-eyed black girl in the Midwest,…

Ask Dr. NerdLove: How Do I Hit On Women Without Being A Jerk?

Hello all you leakey Twitternet pheromone squids, and welcome to Ask Dr. NerdLove, the only dating advice column that’s descended from Sir Francis Bacon. This week is all about the trials of modern dating. How do you approach someone you’re interested in without being the latest guy to join the douchebag conga line? And when…

Communication Is Hard

Say you’re in charge of a 750-person company that develops and manages a massive, complicated video game. Every day you’re making hundreds of decisions both big and small. How do you decide which ones to share with the rest of the team? How do you make sure you’re up to date on everyone else’s decisions?…

YouTube Show Anime Crimes Division Is Naruto Meets CSI

Tracking down a play-for-keeps underground Yu-Gi-Oh ring; rescuing a shipping container of helpless anime body pillows; mediating a gang war between the Subs and the Dubs—these are the anime crimes that Detective Joe Furaya (Vine star SungWon Cho) solves in Anime Crimes Division, the best anime YouTube series I’ve seen yet. The three-episode series debuted…

Bloodborne Fans Find Gnarly Unused Beasts and Bosses In The Game’s Files

Bloodborne’s Lovecraftian setting is full of creative enemies, from multi-eyed brain beasts to half flayed wolf demons. It’s exciting to think about what creatures may still be lurking in the game years later or lost on the cutting room floor. The game’s files recently ended up in the hands of dataminers, one of which decided…