Heroes Of The Storm’s New Butcher Character Seems Overpowered [UPDATE]

Iconic Diablo villain The Butcher has been terrorizing people in Heroes of the Storm since he arrived in the game last week, and not always for the right reasons. Despite being a very cool and well-designed hero, many HOTS players feel that he’s ridiculously overpowered at the moment. If you take a look on Twitter,…

Why Some People Are Calling Fire Emblem Fates ‘Homophobic’

Last month, Nintendo announced that gay marriage would be included in the strategy game Fire Emblem Fates, a first for a series that has long included straight romantic relationships. This month, many are calling the game “homophobic” and criticizing it for allegedly featuring “gay conversion therapy,” all based on a Tumblr translation of the game,…

The Akira Trailer Remade With Simpsons Characters

This is probably how Springfield will look like in a few decades. Until then here’s an impressive remake of Akira’s classic trailer, made by the folks over at the Bartkira project, turning everything Akira into everything Simpsons. They’re redrawing pages from the manga also with Simpsons characters for a while now (and it’s really good!),…

Star Wars Episode I: Racer was one of the better things that came out of 1999’s The Phantom Menace, and Mon Gazza Speedway was one of its best tracks. While there’s no new podracing game on the horizon, Victor Lammert’s cool tribute is a really close match to a shot from an imagined modern version.…

These One Piece Characters Are Too Damn Big

Not all the One Piece characters are tall. But the ones that are are freakin’ huge. In the image below, which has circulated online in Japan for a while and recently popped up again, we can see a handful of One Piece characters compared to a sumo wrestler, an elephant, a giraffe, and even pole…

Live-Action Pokémon Done Right

I know if, for some crazy reason, there is ever a live-action Pokémon movie, the Pocket Monsters will probably all be CG. However, that might not be the best choice. In this spot for the latest Pokémon Mystery Dungeon game, a handful of Pocket Monsters come to life thanks to people in Pokémon suits. I…

The Future Of Video Game Hair: A Hilarious Shampoo Commercial

NVIDIA HairWorks is a cool and interesting piece of tech that already exists in games, but you probably never use it, because it absolutely kills performance (hi, Witcher 3). Still, development and progress continues, and here’s what you can do with HairWorks’ version 1.1 when you don’t have to worry about things like in-game framerates.…

Take Me Back To Vice City, Please

Espen Sætervik is a concept artist who has worked for companies like Massive Black. You can see more of Espen’s work at hisArtStation page To see the larger pics in all their glory (or, if they’re big enough, so you can save them as wallpaper), click on the “expand” button in the top-left corner. Fine…

Kotaku ‘Shop Contest: Everybody’s Robin: The Winners!

Last week’s ‘Shop Contesttasked our readers with assembling a task force of Batman sidekicks to rival that of the recently-launched We Are Robin comic book. Turns out only one additional character was needed. This week’s accolades go to reader OPT1CS, who found a character worthy of the red, yellow and “R” rather quickly. Pretty perfect,…

Photographer Captures Cosplayers Both In And Out Of Costume

In 2008, photographer Corey Hayes went to New York Comic-Con, and instantly became hooked on cosplay. Not on the outfits, per se, but on the people inside them. He went on to launch a photography project called AlterEgo, where he takes photos of cosplayers before and after they’ve got their costumes on. (Top image is…

The Werewolf-Fighting Executive Is So Crazy It Works

My latest iPad purchase seemed pretty dubious—$2.99 based on a couple of strange screenshots and an app icon featuring a business shirt covered in bloody pawprints. As it turns out, my investment in The Executive was smart money. The tale of a business executive who must defend his business and eventually entire city from a…

Every Physics Demo Should Star Mario

If you’re going to put together a tech demo for Nvidia’s Flex physics simulation in Unreal Engine 4 you might as well make it fun, and what’s more fun than Mario? YouTuber CryZENx (via Taltigolt) has injected Nintendo’s number one plumber into a quick and dirty physics demo that sees Mario wading through and pelted…