Most of us have only heard Pikachu, the lovable mascot of the all-ages multimedia franchise Pokémon, say his name when he speaks through the anime. Although, there was that time he spoke real human words to his trainer Ash Ketchum in the Pokémon: I Choose You movie, and when Ryan Reynolds gave him a new, English-speaking voice in Detective Pikachu. But most of the time, all he ever says is variations on his name. Well, today, he got to say “motherfucking,” in an officially published TikTok from the Japanese branch of The Pokémon Company. You heard it here, folks: Pikachu is a potty mouth like the rest of us.
The video, which has since been deleted from the Japanese Pokémon TikTok account, was set to an audio by user Andy Arthur Smith in which he sings an embellished version of “If You’re Happy And You Know It”. The new lyrics to the children’s song, as performed by Smith, go a little something like, “If you’re fucking happy and you motherfucking know it clap your motherfucking hands.” As a Japanese brand account, it stands to reason the people running it might not be native English speakers and didn’t know the explicit nature of the song until it was pointed out to them, and that once it was, the video was promptly removed from the account.
However, no delete button can stop the internet, which never forgets, so Pikachu singing “if you’re fucking happy and you motherfucking know it, clap your motherfucking hands” in official marketing material is still floating around social media.
All jokes aside, this isn’t the first time Pikachu has cussed in an official capacity. In the Detective Pikachu movie, the electric mouse said “hell” and “damn” in the voice of Ryan Reynolds. Sure, on a list ranking the severity of different profanity, those are much lower on the list, but perhaps when we heard Pikachu saying his name, he has always been swearing at people.
Some developers on the space horror blockbuster Callisto Protocol say they were omitted from the end credits sequence despite extensive work on the game and key contributions to the finished product. The claims come amid a renewed push throughout the video game industry to fix a broken crediting system that often punishes lower-ranking employees and those who leave prior to the final release date.
In a new report by GamesIndustry.biz, former employees at Striking Distance Studios say they believe around 20 developers were left off Callisto Protocol’s long end-of-game credits roll. Many were surprised by the omission, and say the studio never formally communicated a policy of leaving developers off the credits if they left before the game shipped. A few regard it as punishment for taking a job somewhere else.
“[The credits omission] felt like an obvious F-U to those who were left out,” one source tells GamesIndustry.biz. “Somebody wanted to send a message, and the message was, ‘Next time have a bit more loyalty to us.’”
Striking Distance was formed by former Dead Space director Glen Schofield in 2019 after leaving Call of Duty studio Sledgehammer Games. Late last year as its debut game was finishing development, Schofield was criticized for a tweet that endorsed crunch culture, celebrating sacrifice and long overtime hours.
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While he later deleted the tweet and apologized, Bloomberg subsequently confirmed that at least some developers at the studio had crunched during production. Schofield told Bloomberg that some staff were “working hard for a few weeks” but that no overtime was mandatory.
Some former developers now tell GamesIndustry.biz that studio management would make promises to address crunch culture in the very same meetings where it would praise the long hours people had put in. “My issue is those of us who took part in that culture, who put in that time, and worked intensely to help craft this product, were punished with a credit omission for not going the extra mile…to stay until it shipped.”
The International Game Developers Association announced a plan last August to try and standardize how developers are credited for their work, and foster the spread of tools that can make it easier to update end credits scrolls when they are missing someone or contain other inaccuracies. “Game credits are hard, particularly in AAA,” former Naughty Dog communications manager, Scott Lowe, tweeted in reaction to today’s GamesIndustry.biz report. “But the answer is easy: credit everyone. Gating by time and subjective assessments of value/impact is messy and cruel.”
Striking Distance Studios did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
I hollered while I was watching the Genshin Impact update stream. Aside from giving players free stuff (arguably the least exciting part of being a Genshin enjoyer) during China’s biggest holiday, the developers teased something that I suspected all along: The hyper-secretive Alhaitham could be the most interesting character of the current Sumeru storyline. To everyone who believed the lore that said Alhaitham was just some dude: Did you also believe that the immortal Zhongli was just some dude? Come on, now.
First, a bit of context. Within the current storyline, Genshin players have occasionally encountered Alhaitham, an unassuming scribe who presents himself as an ordinary, boring government employee. Here’s how the update stream amusingly blew the lid off of that idea: One of Genshin’s writers was introducing Alhaitham as a secretary who had helped players save an imperiled goddess from his own government. HoYoverse’s CEO Da Wei asked: “This is the ‘feeble scholar’ Alhaitham?” playfully referencing the way the bureaucrat had described himself in front of the protagonist. The writer started laughing on the spot.
A significant portion of the Genshin fandom believed that Alhaitham was truly just some guy trying to live his life, hence the origin of the feeble scholar joke. Psych. Although he rejected the highest government position in the country, his own peers will force him to become their leader in the near future. So we’ll be seeing a lot more of this feeble scholar trying to pull his country together during the next major story patch.
Some fans are devastated at the possibility that Alhaitham might be important. It’s okay. You’ll get through this somehow. Personally, I think HoYoverse already gave us plenty of hints. When he talked about the plight of scholars who were “disappeared” for developing mental illnesses, he was clearly hiding exactly how much he knew about their plight. I’m starting to suspect that he’s keeping a low profile because of something that happened in his past.
My Alhaitham thirst aside, here are the other highlights from the stream:
A new desert area
The Desert of Hadramaveth will continue the lore-heavy storyline of the mercenary Jeht and her mechanical companion. The academics of Sumeru believed that the ancient king of the Eremites (a marginalized racial group) was an awful tyrant. This narrative has been used as justification to marginalize the Eremites. Previous quests have suggested that the truth is more complicated, and players will be able to find out more in the near future. Since Genshin has a tendency to lock areas behind certain quests, you should finish “Golden Slumber” and the new “The Dirge of Bilqis” before trying to explore Hadramaveth.
The Lantern Rite festival
Genshin has a Chinese New Year-inspired event every year, and it’s coming in the next patch, bringing with it new minigames that you can play. Completing them will award you premium currency and other useful items. If you finish enough minigames, you’ll also be able to redeem one free 4-star character. Last year, I wrote up a useful guide on which character to pick. The new healer Yaoyao is included in 2023’s lineup.
The wind god Venti will be visiting the China-inspired region for the festival, which has sent shippers into a frenzy about their favorites meeting onscreen for the first time. Congratulations, Xiaoven shippers. Your time has finally come after almost three years of waiting.
New characters
MY BOY ALHAITHAM IS FINALLY HERE. I know that there’s a high chance that you’ve seen the leaks. But HoYoverse still has a couple of weeks to tweak his kit, so remember that he might not be as powerful or weak as leaks may suggest. That’s not accounting for the possibility of mistranslations (Raiden Shogun) or changes (Zhongli, Yae Miko). YouTubers are already panicking over leaks about an alleged Alhaitham nerf that would hurt his damage potential.
But those are invisible damage multipliers. It’s much harder for the developers to change things that they’ve already revealed in the livestream. So far, it seems like Alhaitham is intended to be either a DPS or a sub-DPS character. His ability allows him to gain Dendro application, and Dendro is a reaction element. So his kit facilitates keeping him on-field while being supported by off-field characters such as Raiden Shogun or Kokomi.
Yaoyao is a support character who should be easier to obtain due to her lower gacha rarity. She will be our first ever Dendro healer, which gives her a niche that no other character has at present. But before you dump all your primogems into her banner, I’d suggest you wait. You can get a free copy of her by playing the Lantern Rite event. So if you want her, I suggest grinding for her instead of going all-in on the gacha.
Alhaitham and Yaoyao will be available during the first half of the patch. Xiao will also have his rerun during this period. You’ll be able to pull for Hu Tao and Yelan during the second half. So be sure to plan carefully, or you might find yourself spending more than you intended.
Ayaka and Lisa are getting new skins
Okay, don’t get too excited. Though I think it’s interesting that they’ve used a European design for Ayaka’s skin, I don’t feel like it’s an improvement over her default outfit. Her original clothes balanced her light-colored design with deep blue hues. This spring-hued dress seems blinding in comparison.
Lisa’s outfit is based on her academy days, and it’s… fine, I guess? Lisa is one of the most underwhelming characters in the game, and I gave up on raising her levels long ago. This plain school uniform doesn’t compel me to use her any more often. I feel like this one was a miss. Stop trying to make Lisa happen, HoYoverse. She’s not going to happen without a significant buff.
Genshin Impact’s update will be available starting from January 18.
Health experts have raised the alarm about the fast-spreading coronavirus variant XBB1.5, which could drive a new surge of cases. The Onion tells you everything you need to know about covid XBB1.5.
Q: How does XBB1.5 differ from earlier variants? A: It has a mutation allowing it to make deeper, longer-lasting connections with human cells.
Q: Where is XBB1.5 spreading? A: Through your body, currently.
Q: Are scientists worried about it? A: Yes, except for astronomers, who view life in a grander sense and don’t concern themselves with the mere trifles of man.
Q: Why should I be concerned about the spread of XBB1.5? A: It might negatively impact the final box office of Avatar: The Way Of Water.
Q: Is this variant more harmful than previous ones? A: It can be dangerous to vulnerable people, but thankfully many of them are already dead.
Q: Which country should our patriots hold responsible? A: This one started in the United States, so probably China.
Q: What effects will XBB1.5 have when combined with the flu and the surge of RSV? A: Experts are predicting a golden age of elderly deaths.
Q: How can I protect myself? A: Whatever you’re already doing should work or not work just fine.
Image: Nintendo / Retro Studios / DidYouKnowGaming / Kotaku
Early in December 2022, Nintendo had a journalistic documentary about a failed 2004 pitch for a Zelda Tactics game nuked from YouTube. Last week, however, Google’s video sharing platform restored the project after seemingly failing to find any copyright infringement. It’s the rare example of a content creator standing firm and getting a copyright takedown notice reversed.
“We won,” YouTube channel DidYouKnowGaming tweeted on December 28. “The Heroes of Hyrule video is back up.” It added that YouTube confirmed the original copyright takedown notice was indeed from Nintendo and not an imposter, and that the video has received over 20,000 views in its first day back.
The video was originally posted back in October and featured material from a failed Retro Studios pitch to make a Legend of Zelda tactics spin-off for the Nintendo DS called The Heroes of Hyrule. The video poured over the design goals and delved into why the studio best known for Metroid Prime was interested in making it in the first place, all based on an interview with the former developer behind the pitch.
When Nintendo issued a copyright takedown notice against the video months later in December, DidYouKnowGaming accused the beloved gaming company of censoring journalism and hurting efforts at preserving historical records. It told Kotaku it planned to defend the video on fair use grounds, and that campaign now appears to have prevailed.
“When you counter a DMCA on YouTube, the company who DMCA’d you has 10 working days to show that they’ve taken legal action against you, or the video is restored,” tweeted Shane Gill, the owner of DidYouKnowGaming. “So I spent the past two weeks checking my email to see if Nintendo was suing [sic] me.”
Nintendo was not suing, at least not yet. While that option still remains, the Mario maker would now have to take the channel to court to get the video removed again, rather than simply relying on flexing YouTube’s automatic copyright protection policies. “Their intent was to scrub this piece of journalistic work from the internet because they didn’t like what it uncovered,” Gill tweeted.
Nintendo, YouTube, and DidYouKnowGaming didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment.
Bizarrely, after a biophage mutant, limbs falling off it as easily as scooping into a pudding, puts its hands into my mouth and rips my jaw from my face for the fifth time, it comes to me: Oh, this is a transportation game.
The Callisto Protocol takes place on a moon run by tentacled enemies with loose limbs, but Dead Space game designer Glen Schofield’s so-called spiritual successor would rather lead you by the hand through its squishy, wet, visually impressive labyrinth than let you revel in killing those enemies. Killing is never really the point, getting to the next location so that you can escape is. It’s more Death Stranding than Dead Space.
As cargo ship pilot Jacob—who I thought really looked like soap opera star Josh Duhamel before realizing it was soap opera star Josh Duhamel replicated in sweaty, heroic detail—you need all the help you can get in order to escape the Black Iron Prison on Jupiter’s moon, Callisto. You don’t know why you were thrown into one of its inhospitable cells to begin with, why something called a CORE device has been jammed into your neck, syncing to your thoughts and health, why there are monsters everywhere, or if you should trust inmates Elias (Zeke Alton) or Dani (Karen Fukuhara), the latter of whom crashed your ship and got you into this shit.
Screenshot: Striking Distance Studios / Kotaku
But when they tell you to meet them at the tram, or take an intimidatingly tall ladder underground, or activate this or that control panel, you listen, and you start running. What else are you going to do? You’re trapped, there’s blood everywhere, do you have a better idea?
No, not really. You do what Elias and Dani tell you, their voices crackling through your DualSense controller (or your CORE device) while the prison creaks and falls apart. The sound design is impressively meticulous—Black Iron is filled with an ambient whine, pieces of metal crashing and clanging, while your zombified enemies, or biophages, take on the low notes, the scuttling, screaming, and gurgling all around you.
I don’t think Callisto is a particularly scary horror game—watching Jacob’s neck get twisted around and cracked like a knuckle is entertaining the first time, then an inconvenience once I realize this death scene repeats and is unskippable—but its multilayered audio keeps me at a giddy low-level anxiety. Like waiting for a text, or looking at the sun and realizing you can’t see, for a moment, after you look away.
More hit or miss but still often admirable is the getting there, which the game is most interested in—fighting a biophage is a temporary distraction. Your plan to escape Black Iron sends you flying down sewer drains, trudging through a snowstorm, and through dim hallways glossed in organic matter, fleshy pods, sinuous tendrils, and slime. It sends you everywhere, in front of gorgeous lunar vistas and lit-up desktop screens and hurtling through space. Pristine white walls. Sticky floors. Air vents smeared with blood and loaves of glistening pink flesh. It makes you want to see more. And on the PS5, Callisto is able to deliver every high-shine, nitty-gritty detail with zero issues. Or, close to zero—sometimes my gun would mysteriously vanish before reappearing.
The CallistoProtocol also plays with the pace of this journey, often forcing Jacob to crawl quietly through tight cave walls or around blind biophages or thud his large, spacesuited body into a heavy sprint. Confronting so many different textures at so many different speeds feels great with haptic feedback—even grabbing an ammunition box or in-game currency, Callisto Credits, triggers a satisfying, unique thwack. Callisto is like tangible cinema in this way, slow and steady, which might require readjusting some expectations if you were hoping for on-your-toes horror.
But as varied and masterful as the getting there often looks and physically feels, I eventually tire of hearing my companions tell me I’m getting close only to fall through a collapsed walkway, or finally reach Callisto’s cold surface just to be immediately instructed back inside by the Herculean zombies. At these points, the game feels aimless, and I have no sense of the progress I’ve made. My frustration only heightens when I’m stuck in a room full of unrelenting zombies.
Nothing a little concealer can’t help.Screenshot: Striking Distance Studios / Kotaku
The zombies might be the least enjoyable part of Callisto’s journey, which is not ideal, considering they’re Jacob’s motivation for getting out, and presumably your motivation to be curious and find out where they came from. As I learn by dying so, so, so many times—so many times, that around halfway through the game, I turn on the easiest setting, which still inexplicably lets some enemies kill you in two lazy hits—the zombies are coming from everywhere.
I love Dark Souls, the famous benchmark for difficult games, but unlike a FromSoftware boss fight, you can’t “learn” how to progress past Callisto Protocol’s vitriolic biophage hordes because they seem to spawn randomly and out of nowhere. “Are they invisible now?!” I scream at my PS5, either before or after I screamed, “I hate this fucking game!!!”
Biophages will pop out suddenly from rattling vents or from an otherwise empty room. They will look like they’re frozen, encased in ice, and then suddenly be very alive, warm, and murderous. They come in many different shapes: standard decaying, decaying with armor on, decaying and projectile vomiting, wriggling at you with with snowball-sized, erupting pustules on their backs, coming at you looking like evil mutant axolotl and then turning invisible (?!).
You are given an arsenal to deal with them, primarily a sizzling stun baton for close combat, a hand cannon pistol and brain-blasting riot gun, and a gravity restraint projector (GRP) sleeve that bends gravity to hold enemies captive in the air until you throw them into a spiked wall, or spinning fan blade, or off a ledge.
In the game’s early stages, only the baton and its characteristic whack feel like they’re actually doing anything useful—enemies soak up your shrimpy default bullets like you’re flicking marbles into a funeral pyre, which also makes it impossible to efficiently manage hordes. But as you progress, you can find the blueprints for additional weapons like an assault rifle and skunk gun, and use Callisto Credits to buy upgrades from Reforge locations throughout the game which, much to my amusement, doesn’t let you buy more than one thing at a time. Before every boss fight, I’d spend five minutes individually buying ten ammo boxes.
Callisto wastes your time in small, unnecessary ways like that. Audio logs you collect from corpses throughout the game should help you unravel the story’s secrets, but they don’t play automatically—you have to enter your menu manually, select them, and stay in the menu. If you exit, they’ll stop playing.
But the most irritating waste of time that made me consider, at my lowest moments, throwing my PS5 controller into the sludgy depths of the Gowanus Canal, is Callisto’s sometimes faulty dodge mechanic.
When you confront any enemy, you are expected to dodge their attacks by holding your left stick in the opposite direction of their swing, or down if you’re blocking it. The game tells you that there is no timing window, just get it done, but I dodge so many times and get yet another long, unskippable death animation—Jacob’s skull getting stamped on and turned into an ocean spray of blood, Jacob’s eyes getting gouged by fat zombie thumbs, Jacob’s nose turning concave from all the fat zombie hits to the face—to know that can’t be true.
Callisto’s two-headed bosses are the worst at fumbling your dodge mechanic. So much as thinking about hitting them with your stun baton instead of staying far away and shooting them will lead to an immediate skewer through the chest. Make sure you spend five minutes collecting bullets or health top-ups from the Reforge, too. Found resources are limited, and manually saving the game starts you from your last checkpoint, so if you start a fight with low health and an unloaded gun, consider your fate sealed.
But for all these momentary irritations, I finish the game on a high. “There’s always a price to pay,” a villain repeats throughout The Callisto Protocol, reminding Jacob that making fallible, flabby humans great necessitates sacrifice. And in pursuit of video game greatness, I loved what I saw, so much so that I was willing to pay the price in faulty dodge mechanics. But as far as actual price goes, I don’t think anyone should buy a $60 game, full stop, but especially not one that currently seems to be running abysmally on PC and won’t get PlayStation’s New Game Plus until a free update lands on February 7, 2023. But.
I consider The Callisto Protocol one of the most ambitious games I played this year, maybe even the most next to Elden Ring (though I think Elden Ring is in a league of its own—I don’t know if anything will be able to approach its depth and sophistication for a long time). Its thoughtful attention to environment, sound, and touch is what, I think, next-gen gaming should be like: an experiment with the senses and with story. The game has its issues, too, which can’t be ignored. But at least it feels human.
Unlike previous games in the Pokémon mainline series, Scarlet and Violet have made fan-favorite Eevee pretty tricky to catch. Only popping up in a scant few tiny areas, and with very low spawn rates, trying to evolve the octet of Eeveelutions has never been harder. But this weekend, the games’ first Tera Raid Battle Event should make catching the blighter a lot easier.
At any other time, if you want an Eevee you’ll need to head to Area 3 of the West Province, Area 2 of the South Province, or the path on the way to the Pokémon league. But this post-Thanksgiving weekend, it’s been announced that the Tera Raid Battle Event will feature an Eevee Spotlight.
Taking place from today, Friday 25th from 11 a.m. through Monday 28th at 10.59 a.m., Eevee will be much more likely to show up in Tera Raid Battles—those ones triggered by approaching the large glowing crystals that shoot vast beams of light up into the sky. Which means not only will Eevee be easier to find, but you’ll have the chance to collect a bunch of them with various Tera Types—meaning they’ll shift from Normal-type to any of 19 others.
There’s one tiny caveat, but not a significant one. In order for the Raid Battle Event to trigger in your game, you’ll need to have your Switch be connected to the internet long enough to download the latest “Poké Portal News,” which should download automagically if you’re already online. And no, that has nothing to do with the paid online Switch subscription, so don’t worry about that. All free.
With a clutch of Eevee under your belt, you’ll likely want to start thinking about evolving them into their eight different forms. (All my hopes of a ninth Paldean Eevee appear to have been dashed.) Here are some handy hints for getting all eight eeveelutions:
Flareon: Give your Eevee a Fire Stone.
Glaceon: Give your Eevee an Ice Stone.
Jolteon: Give your Eevee a Thunder Stone.
Leafeon: Give your Eevee a Leaf Stone.
Vaporeon: Give your Eevee a Water Stone.
Espeon: You need your Eevee at a high friendship level, make sure it doesn’t know any Fairy moves, and then have it evolve during the day.
Umbreon: High friendship again, don’t let it learn any Fairy moves, and then have it evolve at night.
Sylveon: Once more, a high friendship level, but this time make sure it does know a Fairy move, then evolve it day or night.
Combined with Tera Types from the Tera Battles, this is going to get incredibly complicated! Good luck!
This left arm of mine? Yeah, it’s indestructible.Screenshot: Blizzard
Overwatch 2 continues to incur issue after issue, with the latest problem leaving the icy damage dealer Mei totally unplayable due to a “critical issue” with her Ice Wall ability. Well, Blizzard may also want to investigate the hero shooter’s newest support character, Kiriko, as it appears she can block headshot damage by simply [checks notes] staring up at the sky.
Kiriko is a kunai-wielding ninja healer who leaked at the beginning of September. Previously locked behind Overwatch 2‘s battle pass, Blizzard has since opted to give the kunoichi away for free following some rather uproarious criticism of the developer’s initial decision. Though she’s a pretty squishy hero, with only 200 health points, she can deal some solid damage and has a kit perfectly suited to buffing her teammates. In other words, she isn’t as passive a healer as, say, Baptiste or Mercy, but you probably don’t want her charging the enemy frontline like Brigitte or Zenyatta either. However, that might change considering an exploit discovered by Twitch streamer Flats.
A partner of the Overwatch League’s Florida Mayhem, Flats tweeted a video on November 15 of Kiriko blocking headshot damage with her arm by looking up at the sun. Flats shot at an opposing Kiriko a few times with Widowmaker, only for the bullets to merely graze the ninja’s seemingly indestructible arm, allowing her to immediately heal back up. Flats eventually murked Kiriko with a single headshot, but only after positioning himself at just the right angle, saying you “have to get behind” Kiriko to “shoot the back of her head.” Who knew that staring up at the sky could save you from death?
What’s appears to be happening here is that, when she looks up, Kiriko’s arm gets in the way of her dome’s hitbox, impacting the damage she takes from headshots. In response to Flat’s tweet, one Twitter user noted that Mercy was able to do the same thing, but only when casting her Resurrect ultimate ability, which sees her raise her arm in the air to revive a dead teammate.
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Kotaku has reached out to Blizzard and Flats for comment.
Sadly, it appears Nintendo is now just utterly helpless to leaks. So many first-party games from the last couple of years has found its way online—either being streamed, or even ripped and playable on PC—a week or more ahead of its release. Joining them, Pokémon Scarlet and Violet has already seen a huge number of leaks in the last few days, but right now as I write, the entire game is being livestreamed to an audience of over a thousand.
Nintendo has been dashing about trying to put out fires all week, as more and more information about Scarlet and Violet has appeared online, including spoilers for how the trio of new starters will evolve. Thanks to the need to ship physical copies to stores (both online and brick-n-mortar) ahead of release, ne’er-do-wells within are getting hold of the game in advance, then grabbing for a moment of internet fame with spoilers. But now things have gotten a whole lot worse, with an hours-long stream of someone playing the entire game.
Look, it’s up to you, and you can obviously go watch it on Trovo (Tencent’s eerily familiar version of Twitch), but I really wouldn’t. I’ve had it on to verify this story, and already seen a starter’s later evolution that I really didn’t want to know, and seen a whole swathe of new (but officially unrevealed) Pokémon. Those are all surprises I’ll no longer get when my copy arrives on the 18th.
Honestly, seeing how Quaxly—or Sergeant Duck to give him his proper name—evolves, I’ve been put off the starter I’d planned to play with. That sucks. And yeah, I can confirm those previous leaks based on some tiny Pokédex pixel images are accurate.
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Almost 12 hours into this stream, whoever the deeply unpleasantly named “reeeetardkun” might be must surely be beginning to tire. But not before pretty much every secret from the game has found its way out there. I’m not reporting them here, although god knows it’s going to be hard for all of us to avoid all manner of secrets over the next seven days.
It’s worth noting I also saw the game completely bugging out on the stream, where every location became just a white screen but for pop-up information. Quitting and reloading fixed it, but yeah, that doesn’t bode enormously well. However, Nintendo has made it known the game is getting a 1GB day one patch, so maybe such issues will be removed by launch?
Presumably Trovo is being used for this, because Nintendo would have contacts at Twitch to get this shut down hours ago. With 11 hours of the game out there now, managing to stamp this one out will be pretty futile. And, you know, perspective, it’s a video game: It’s very bad for Nintendo, but we just need to look away. And as much as I’d love to get an idea of lots of new Pokémon, I’d rather have some surprises in a week’s time.
Gotham Knights came out a week ago and I’ve found it exceedingly difficult to find anything to love about the open-world loot brawler. Red Hood’s snickerdoodle recipe, maybe? The latest Batman game borrows from a ton of other, mostly better rivals, and struggles to craft a clear identity in the process. Kotaku’s Levi Winslow also spent the last week trying to save Gotham city from feuding gangs and supervillains, and the two of us sat down to try and hash out what the game does well, what it does poorly, and all the ways it left us confused.
Levi Winslow: Ok. So, like, I feel Gotham Knights is a bifurcated game, something that has two separate identities living within itself. First, there’s the narrative action-adventure stuff where you’re solving crimes, meeting the villains, beating up goons before getting a cutscene taking you back to The Belfry. That is a solid gameplay loop. Then you hit the open world. I don’t dislike it, There’s some enjoyment in grapple-hook-jumping from one rooftop to another, but the RNG RPG-ness of it, the Diablo-like nature to the unnecessary loot grind, makes for some of the most tedious parts of the whole game. What do you think? How do you feel about the linear narrative juxtaposed with the open-world grind?
Ethan Gach: I’m incredibly underwhelmed by both so far. Everything just fits together so awkwardly, and I mean everything. The individual scripted cutscenes? Great. Love ’em. Completely fine. But everything else, going room-to-room in a story mission, crime-to-crime in the open world, and even enemy-to-enemy during the big brawls, all just feels rough and uneven and not good. Like you could describe the back-of-the-box bullet points of this game, and I’d go, sure, that sounds fine. It’s not the new Arkham I want, but I love the Batman comics, I love the universe, lets go jump off some rooftops and solve some mysteries. And yet almost nothing in this game feels actually good to do in my opinion.
Screenshot: Warner Bros. Games / Kotaku
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Levi: Can’t argue with you there. The gameplay is especially clunky and imprecise. I don’t mind the combat. It isn’t as smooth as Marvel’s Spider-Man or as impactful as the Arkham games, but it definitely carries more weight and feels way better than Marvel’s Avengers, which is the closest comparison I could give. Like you said, something about it all just feels off and awkward. I really can’t stand the stealth and how sticky and slippery the characters are. You wanna open this chest after busting some skulls, but you gotta stand in this exact spot to trigger the contextual button input. Deviate from it just a little bit, like barely even a centimeter, and the prompt will disappear. Or you’re perched on this ledge to scope the area, looking for some stealth takedowns but, whoops, you accidentally flicked the left stick forward and now your vigilante has just jumped off and lands in front of the enemies you were trying to stealth. It’s frustrating.
Ethan: Yeah I basically haven’t even bothered with stealth for that reason, especially because the rest of the incentives feel like they are pushing me toward just complete chaos. Who have you been playing as? I’ve rotated every mission, but so far I think Red Hood is my favorite, mostly because he feels the most substantial and least slippery. Batgirl is a close second.
Levi: Lol, I’m just a perfectionist who wants to complete all the challenges. So when it’s like “Perfect whatever number stealth takedowns,” I’m like, “Bet.” But yeah I started with Nightwing, then switched to Batgirl, who’s been my main ever since. She’s just so OP, it’s insane. I’ve heard Red Hood is pretty good so I’m gonna have to give him a try. What do you think of Robin? Considering how frustrating stealth is, I couldn’t imagine playing him because of how stealth-focused he is. His bo staff’s looks cool.
Screenshot: Warner Bros. Games / Kotaku
Ethan: There are too many big enemies and dudes that will come at you from off-screen, to the point that I just didn’t want to bother with Robin after the first time I tried him. I also really don’t like Gotham Knights’ version of the character. I’m a huge fan of The Animated Series’ take on Tim Drake, and this feels more like a weird cross between Spider-Man’s Peter Parker and Star Wars Jedi: Fallen Order’s Cal Kestis, if that makes any sense.
I also don’t really feel any compulsion to grind, which is weird, but I think mostly stems from just how diffuse everything is. There are not nearly enough villains in this world to beat up to sustain an entire upgrade and crafting loop.
Levi: Very that, both on Robin’s timidity and the unsatisfying number of villains in the open world. Gotham here truly feels lifeless. Sure, there are citizens wandering the streets and GCPD patrolling their headquarters (or getting bullied by some dudes), but there’s no energy to the city. I know I compared Gotham Knights to Marvel’s Avengers—which I admittedly did like for a hot minute—but I can’t help but wanna play Marvel’s Spider-Man every time I’m protecting Gotham. There’s something about the bland color palette and the sameness of the districts that strips Gotham of its character.
Ethan: I think the city itself looks cool, and I like the way they tried to play off the four heroes’ iconic color palettes with the neon lights and how steam and fog hang on the skyline. But I also kept thinking of Spider-Man, mostly because I was always frustrated I couldn’t chain the grappling hook together like I was web slinging.
Screenshot: Warner Bros. Games / Kotaku
I think a large part of that is how much space you have to cover because of how scattered the actual things for you to do are. I would have preferred a much smaller but denser section of the city than having to hopscotch around all the dead space. Usually, open-world games thrive on constantly finding things on the way to your objective that distract, intrigue, and send you down an entirely separate rabbit hole. Here it really does feel like moonlighting as an Uber driver in the worst-paved metropolis in the world.
Levi: Yeah, like, there really isn’t a whole lot to do in this world. And what’s available to do is incredibly repetitive: Go here, beat up some guys, check out a clue, escape before GCPD shows up, rinse and repeat. Don’t get me wrong, I’m having fun dominating dudes as Batgirl. But the fun isn’t as satisfying as in other, better superhero action games that have come out recently.
Ethan: I also feel like the game is in a very weird place tonally. Batman’s family is left to figure out what their relationships are without him to orient them, but they are all pretty unfazed by the actual fact that he’s dead. And despite the dramatic premise, things get off to a very slow start. I will say I prefer aspects of Gotham Knights’ gameplay to Marvel’s Avengers’—whose combat felt indistinct and very much in the licensed game bucket—but the way the latter was shot felt like a much better approximation of the feel of the MCU than Gotham Knights is for the DCU.
Screenshot: Warner Bros. Games / Kotaku
As a Destiny guy who loves a mindless gameloop I can sink into at the end of the day, I thought I was primed to see the glass half full in Gotham Knights, but that’s just not what’s happened.
Levi: Same. I really wanted a mindless loop that offered solid gameplay with an intriguing story, and Gotham Knights misses the landing. There are good elements here, don’t get it twisted. The combat is fine, serviceable actually. And the sometimes tender, sometimes tense moments between characters during cutscenes is captivating. But the actual meat and potatoes of the game, the core gameplay loop, just isn’t as satisfying as I was hoping. I’ll finish it, though. I’ve completed Nightwing’s Knighthood challenges to get his Mechanical Glider, so I gotta do the same for Batgirl. And I wanna play some co-op to see just how untethered the experience is, but I can’t imagine thinking too much about Gotham once I finished the story. It isn’t sticking in the same way Marvel’s Spider-Man did.
Maybe that’s an unfair comparison, but truly, in my head canon, Gotham Knights is somewhere between Marvel’s Spider-Man and Marvel’s Avengers. It’s fine, but I don’t know if that’s necessarily a good spot to be in.
Screenshot: Warner Bros. Games / Kotaku
Ethan: I’m still only about halfway through the game, but feeling much less generous. It’s an indecisive mix of a bunch of games without any one solid thing to hold onto. The co-op that I’ve tried so far is very decent overall, and I think certainly sets a kind of standard for games like Far Cry—which have traditionally struggled with multiplayer that feels consistent and rewarding—to aim for.
But man, every aspect of the Batman mythos recreated here feels like it’s done better elsewhere. Maybe when the four-player mode comes out it’ll be closer to the 3D brawler it should have been. At this point I almost wish it were a live-service game. At least then there might be a shot at a better 2.0 version a year from now.
Levi: Right? Gotham Knights certainly feels like it could’ve been a live-service game. I’m hoping that four-play co-op mode Hero Assault extends to the open-world stuff too. There are four heroes. This game should be chaotic as hell, kinda like that underground Harley Quinn mission with that punk rendition of “Livin’ La Vida Loca.” That, so far, has been the most memorable part of the whole game.
