Play it on: PlayStation 4, PlayStation 5, Xbox Series X/S, Xbox One, Nintendo Switch, PC Current goal: Get some gaming spooks in for the season
This year, Halloween fell on a Thursday, and I was so busy with work and other things that I didn’t manage to make much time for spooky gaming in the days leading up to it. I still have a hankering for some interactive scares, however, so this weekend, I hope to play one of the landmark games in the history of survival horror, officially translated into English and released in the States for the first time: Clock Tower. The new version, Clock Tower: Rewind, comes to us courtesy of WayForward and represents my first real chance to play the 1995 SNES horror classic.
I actually don’t know much about the original Clock Tower, and I’ve kept it that way on purpose, as I want to go in knowing as little as possible and figure it out for myself. It’s scarier that way. But in short, it’s a 2D, survival horror point-and-click game that tells the story of Jennifer, a teenage orphan who’s adopted by a family with a big, spooky manor, and finds herself stalked by a horrifying entity known as Scissorman. WayForward’s release lets you play an enhanced version of the game “which features numerous gameplay additions and quality-of-life refinements,” and I may check that out as well, but for starters, I’ll be playing in Original mode, and experiencing the game just like it was when it scared the socks off of so many Japanese players way back in 1995. Sure, it may be November now, but I’m gonna linger in late October for just a little bit longer if it’s all the same to you. — Carolyn Petit
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Kenneth Shepard, Moises Taveras, Carolyn Petit, Ethan Gach, and John Walker
Photo: Roblox Corp / Kotaku, Image: Black Tabby Games, Bungie, CSA Images / Sony / Kotaku, Treyarch / Activision
This week saw the arrival of Call of Duty: Black Ops 6 and with it, the return of a classic Zombies experience. It’s terrific, and took our writer right back to the nights he spent happily playing the mode with friends back in the days of Black Ops 3. Meanwhile, the arrival of Destiny 2‘s latest content update, and the terrible drop rate for god rolls on its hottest weapon, has some fans certain that there’s a statistical disadvantage for that drop to occur. The result is a compelling conspiracy theory about how loot drops actually work in Destiny 2, and given that the community has the statistics to back it up, Bungie is now conducting its own investigation. Find these stories and more in the pages ahead.
Play it on: PC, Switch, PlayStation, Xbox Current goal: Make my stronghold a little nicer
If I’m honest, most of my gaming time this weekend will probably go, once again, toward the incredible UFO 50. (I now have my first two cherry carts!) However, it’s probably time I start mentioning other games on occasion here in the Weekend Guide, so instead I’ll talk about something else I’ve been playing lately, Pillars of Eternity, the 2015 fantasy CRPG from Obsidian Entertainment which follows in the footsteps of genre-defining classics like Baldur’s Gate and Icewind Dale. It’s absolutely epic in scope, immediately thrusting you into a world with its own rich, captivating history and lore—a world we’ll soon get to revisit in Avowed—but it’s also intimate and personal, with exceptionally well-written characters navigating life in a world filled with conflict and strife.
Early on, your character is awakened to their skills as a Watcher, someone who can see and interact with the souls of others. This not only allows for some great fantasy RPG plot hooks, but also brings the history of the game’s world to life in a way it otherwise wouldn’t be. You might, for instance, encounter someone who, in a past life, was part of the marauding hordes driving others out of their homes, and see how their soul was marred by the trauma of participating in something so monstrous, or you might be pulled into the experience of someone who was persecuted by those hordes. William Faulkner famously wrote, “The past is never dead. It’s not even past.” It’s true of our world, I think, and in Pillars of Eternity’s Eora, you really feel the way that the past lingers, shaping and haunting the present.
Of course, all the great pleasures of CRPGs are here—gorgeous lands to explore, engaging tactical combat, epic quests—and all of that is crucial to what makes Pillars of Eternity so exceptional. But for now, I’m particularly smitten by the writing, so smart and so rich, and characterized by a tremendous respect for the player, trusting us to come to grips with the world and its history upon being thrown in head-first, and trusting us to appreciate its profound thematic depth without needing to spell things out for us or lampshade what it’s doing. It’s so great to encounter genuinely mature writing in a game, especially when it’s married to gameplay as rich and captivating as what’s on offer here. — Carolyn Petit
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Kenneth Shepard, Carolyn Petit, Zack Zwiezen, Ethan Gach, and John Walker
Image: Firewalk Studios, Sony / Firewalk Studios / Kotaku, Blizzard, Boss Key / PlayStation / Epic / Kotaku, Nintendo / Kotaku, Sony / Kotaku, Capcom / Kotaku, Screenshot: Nintendo / Kotaku, Microsoft, Photo: Michael Tullberg (Getty Images)
FThe biggest story of the week was probably the announcement that Sony was shutting down Concord, its big, expensive, long-in-development hero shooter, just two weeks after its disappointing launch. We’ve got the details on the original announcement, as well as reactions from across the internet.
In other news, rumors about Nintendo’s successor to the Switch are swirling, Sony sorta confirms leaked design images for a PS5 Pro, and disgraced streamer Dr Disrespect touts his return. All these stories and more are yours for the reading.
It’s the middle of May 2024 and that means we’re nearly halfway through the year. What has this year been like in video game news? Tons of layoffs (sad), lots of new games (glad), and some weird outliers, as usual. This week, we saw set photos and official shots from The Last of Us season two, dove back into the GameStop stock market, and asked the dude who nuked Phil Spencer in Fallout 76 about his motivations. Click through for all of this week’s best breaking news.
First introduced in 2022’s Modern Warfare II, Call of Duty currently features a nonlinear battle pass themed like a geographic map. While this allows players to choose what they want to unlock from the pass instead of going through a scripted path, it can be a little confusing to newcomers used to more traditional, linear sets of unlockables. What’s more, the “token” system that CoD uses to unlock stuff from the battle pass can be a little confusing as well, especially if you’re not sure whether you should just let the pass automatically unlock itself by spending tokens for you. – Claire Jackson Read More
Clockwise from bottom left: Tom Hiddleston in Loki (Photo: Marvel Studios), Aramis Knight and Iman Vellani in Ms. Marvel (Photo: Disney+), Tatiana Maslany in She-Hulk: Attorney At Law (Photo: Disney+), Elizabeth Olsen and Paul Bettany in WandaVision (Photo: Disney+/Marvel Studios), Samuel L. Jackson in Secret Invasion (Photo: Gareth Gatrell/Marvel), Oscar Isaac in Moon Knight (Photo: Marvel Studios), Alaqua Cox in Echo (Photo: Chuck Zlotnick/Marvel Studios) Graphic: Jimmy Hasse
Updated 1/12: The MCU shows no signs of getting any smaller, does it? And now that Echois here, it’s time to see where it sits in our ranking, from worst to best, of the whopping 26 Marvel shows that have premiered since 2013. Prepare for some ambitious Netflix fare, sturdy star vehicles, head trips like Legion, and—hang on, Helstrom, we’re getting to you—those not-so-hot titles, too. Dig in and let the non-superpowered fighting commence. – Sam Barsanti Read More
Screenshot: Square Enix, James Lambert, Bethesda / Xbox, Naughty Dog / Kotaku, Image: Disney / Lucasfilm
After a couple sleepy weeks, the gaming hype train of 2024 is finally moving at full steam. We saw the first major showcase of the year with Xbox’s Developer Direct, dug into The Last of Us Part II Remastered, and oogled MachineGames flamin’ hot digital dupe of ‘80s Harrison Ford. These are the week’s most important previews, reviews, and takes.
In a new press release from audio electronics company Altec Lansing, it was revealed that GameShark is returning, sort of via an artificial intelligence-powered successor called “AI Shark” You don’t care about that. Instead, the big news out of this press release is that it might have leaked the release date for the Nintendo Switch 2. – Zack Zwiezen Read More
Play it on:Windows Current goal: Dive into the second chapter
Having written up a bunch of fantastic boomer shooters for the site, I was reminded that the team behind the as-yet-unfinished Project Warlock II had added an awful lot of content to its Early Access build since I’d last played. In fact, previously it had only been a single, fantastic level. It’s now two full chapters, each made up of a pile of enormous, sprawling, open levels to tear around.
I’m so glad I’ve gone back to it. This is a screamingly fast FPS game, where you move like an ice cube skidding across a kitchen floor, facing down dozens of enemies at a time. What makes it feel different from the many other retro-FPS games is the sheer scale of the levels, which are far more open than the genre normally offers. Think of those times you got to go outside in the original Unreal, but far more densely packed with enemies, secrets, and loot.
Those secrets are a blast to find, and worth pursuing too, since they offer tokens for upgrades in the betwixt level zone. There are three different areas you can upgrade, with each weapon possible to adjust in two different ways (one shutting down access to the other), and then this upgrade boosted. Then there are affinities to improve, such as whether you want to improve your melee talent, firepower, or indeed your power with fire—you gain spells that let you do things like blast torrents of fire from your palms. And finally you can then specialize even further with—er—VHS tapes you can buy when you’ve increased your ability in a specific attack style, that enhance them in specific ways.
This is all then taken back to the next level, where enemies that were previously boss-like can now appear in gangs and be quickly taken care of. In this, it reminds me of the excellent enemy handling in the original Serious Sam. My plan this weekend is to get stuck into the second chapter, that has a whole other player character, with their own set of skills, perks, spells and weapons. — John Walker
Try out Project Warlock 2’s free demo on Steam
Neo-retro vibes of the “boomer shooter” variety got your interest? Good news: You can download a free demo of Project Warlock 2 to get shootin’ like it’s the mid ‘90s all over again
Think the first week of January is a slow one for news? Think again. A 13-year-old Tetris phenom has boldly gone where no one has gone before, beating the NES version of the classic puzzler by reaching a “kill screen” on level 157. Steam announced the occasionally baffling results of its annual players’ choice awards, and The Elder Scrolls II: Daggerfall got a free-to-play, fan-made remaster.
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Before Starfield, before Skyrim, before Fallout 3 and Oblivion, before your parents even knew how to make you, there was The Elder Scrolls II: Daggerfall. It was, and remains, Bethesda’s biggest-ever game, and now a fan-made rebuilding of the entire vast world in Unity has reached its 1.0 release. Oh, and it’s entirely free, and won’t be destroyed by lawyers! This new Daggerfall is an almighty achievement, and exactly the excuse you needed to return to Tamriel. – John Walker Read More
The results of 2023’s Steam Awards are in. Each year, Steam turns to the community to vote on the year’s best games across a wide variety of categories. This year saw Larian Studios’ RPG Baldur’s Gate 3 grab game of the year, while Lethal Company, a first-person cooperative horror game,got the “Better With Friends Award” for its co-op gameplay. The Last of Us Part I snagged Best Soundtrack, which seems odd because it came out in 2013, but it technically wasn’t added to Steam until 2023. – Claire Jackson Read More
Just two months after the third-person action-horror game Stray Souls came out, developer Jukai Studio abruptly shuttered its doors, citing myriad issues including poor game sales and multiple cyberattacks from an unknown perpetrator.The developer took to X/Twitter on December 22 to announce the sudden closure. Part of the problem, Jukai Studio said, was Stray Souls’ abysmal reception and sales, which made the team “completely unable to sustain the company.” – Levi Winslow Read More
Classic puzzle game Tetris has been around for over three decades, and in that time, plenty of people have reached its various endings, usually by clearing four rows of bricks at once like a digital demolitioner. That’s a challenge in and of itself, but now, someone has taken the concept of “beating Tetris” to the extreme by playing the NES game so hard it straight-up crashed, a phenomenon also known as the “kill screen.” – Levi Winslow Read More
Forever-in-development space sim Star Citizenmight not be finished after over a decade of dev work and announcements, but it does already contain a lot of expensive ships you can buy and fly around in. And if you want all of those ships in one big DLC pack, Star Citizen has an option for you. Just be prepared to spend over $48,000. – Zack Zwiezen Read More
Here’s something unironically wonderful. Via a post by Larian Studios writer Rachel Quirke, we’ve just learned of a deeply moving tribute to a player’s father that appears in the studios’ award-winning RPG Baldur’s Gate 3. In October 2020, a member of the Larian forums posted to thank the developer for releasing the first act of the game in Early Access, because it allowed them to enjoy one last adventure with their father, who had recently been diagnosed with Alzheimer’s. – John Walker Read More
Screenshot: Ubisoft Massive Entertainment / Kotaku
Star Wars Outlaws, Ubisoft’s upcoming action-adventure game that follows scoundrel Kay Vess between The Empire Strikes Back and Return of the Jedi, previously had no release date beyond a very broad “2024” window. Today, however, a Disney Parks blog post quietly announced that it would launch in “late 2024.” This didn’t last long, as Ubisoft promptly swooped in to correct the record and re-assert the general 2024 timeframe. – Levi Winslow Read More
City of Heroes was a beloved MMORPG that launched in April 2004 and lasted just over eight years. In that time it won a dedicated community of players who, even after the game died, kept playing the MMO via private servers that existed in a weird legal gray area. But now, the developers behind City of Heroes have given one private server the official thumbs-up to keep on keeping on. – Zack Zwiezen Read More
Super Mario Bros. Wonder, the highly anticipated 2D platformer, is finally out on Nintendo Switch. But before you get too ahead of yourself turning Mario and company into giant elephants and whatnot, you should mess around with some gameplay settings first—especially the one that controls the Talking Flowers.
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Earlier this week, in another edition of Nintendo’s ongoing web series, Ask the Developer, we learned that Wonder was originally going to have a live commentary feature like what you’d find in a sports game. It was scrapped, but found new life through the game’s Talking Flowers characters who shout at Mario and crew whenever they walk by. Although the Talking Flowers are a cute addition to the game and make solo playthroughs a little less lonely, your mileage with them may vary. Some people think the Talking Flowers, who talk all the time, are pretty annoying, if you can believe that. Here’s how you can turn the Talking Flowers voices off.
First, go to settings and scroll down to “Talking Flower Dialogue.” There you can switch it to “Voice off / Text on.” Super simple. There’s also a fun third option where you can change the language of the Talking Flowers if you want a different flavor of Flower Power commentary. Kotaku’s John Walker is partial to their Dutch language setting.
Folks online are pretty delighted that Nintendo gave them the option to let them speak in a separate language from their Switch’s system language but to mute the Talking Flowers entirely.
“Fantastic news. As soon as I saw that they talk to you automatically when you run by them, I was a little worried,”u/klaxhax replied in a thread about the setting option on the r/Nintendo Switch subreddit. “It gave me flashbacks to the GBA Mario re-releases with all those dreadful voice clips…”
“And with that one change, this game is a contender for GOTY,” u/Red_Speed replied in the same thread.
The novelty of the Talking Flowers’ motor mouths has a high likelihood of wearing thin, so knowing how to turn them off or switch up their language may prove useful for Wonder players—whether it’s for their first, second, or third playthrough.
Try to imagine something cozier than wearing a big snuggly Christmas jumper, there’s a fire roaring, and you’re calmly and methodically placing in pieces of a lovely 1,000 piece jigsaw. It’s the holiday idyll, you can practically see the first few flakes of snow falling out the frosted windows, as a kindly aunt bustles in with a lovely mug of hot chocolate for you. And while all that might sound ridiculously unlikely this year, you can get awfully close to recreating it with Jigsaw Puzzle Dreams.
This is unlike any other jigsaw puzzle game you might have seen released on Steam. First of all, it’s all set in a 3D home that you can decorate as you wish. Secondly, it embraces physics, where every other jigsaw sim saps the concept of all its tangible life. So whether at a table, on the upstairs landing, or just sprawled out on the living room floor, you can take on any of the game’s dozens of jigsaw designs, or import any picture of your own, then click it all together. You can pick how many pieces, up to ludicrous numbers in the high thousands, and then meticulously sort the edges from the insides, pile them up or spread them out however you wish, and get to work.
It’s such an authentic recreation, but with limitless numbers of puzzles, no clutter, and no losing pieces in the couch. (Although you genuinely can have them fall off the table, given the accuracy of the physics.)—John Walker
If you, like me John Walker, are still fathoming your way through the lower echelons of Marvel Snap, there’s a good chance there are cards you’re clinging on to because they were working so well for you. However, you’re now starting to lose more often, wondering what went wrong. The answer is: Kill your darlings.
With the help of my colleague Zack Zwiezen—who has been playing the game for some time now—we’ve come up with a list of cards that you might want to cut from your decks.
Now, let’s be clear: Neither of us is saying these cards are totally useless, or that keeping them in your deck is always a bad idea. It’s just, they’re the ones that felt so good early on that you might not have been able to bring yourself to acknowledge their weaknesses, and are holding you back from experimenting with more interesting combinations. Be bold, be brave, and let these babies go.
And remember you can always add them back later if you experiment too much and end up with a stinker deck! Anyway, let’s start cutting some cards!
Quicksilver
Image: Marvel / Second Dinner / Kotaku
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As Kotaku has previously broken down, Quicksilver was developer Second Dinner’s brilliant solution to entirely removing the concept of mulligans from their deckbuilding card game. Guaranteeing a 1-cost card in your hand at the start of every game ensures you can always play in the first round, every time, and add 2 power to the board right away. Which, at first, felt vital. Except, the more you play, the more you realize that being able to play in the first round isn’t actually all that important.
Chances are, you’re not going to be placing down anything game-changing that first turn. And indeed by not playing in round one, you fend off other 1-cost cards like Elektra. You can even obnoxiously opt out of playing a 1-cost you might have in your hand in Round 1, just so you can play two of them more tactically in Round 2. Again, for example, Elektra!
And, as we’ll get to below, decks that opt for as many 1-cost cards as possible will get increasingly weak as you climb the ranks, meaning Quicksilver’s lack of any further abilities quickly makes him more of a burden than a boon.
Uatu
Image: Marvel / Second Dinner / Kotaku
When you first stumble upon Uatu, he feels like a secret hack, a card offering you special insight unavailable to anyone yet to find him. His ability to show you the properties of unrevealed locations feels like something that lets you plan ahead and make psychic moves your opponent can’t predict. And, to some extent, on some level, he sort of does.
Except, that won’t happen nearly often enough to justify Uatu taking up a valuable slot in your 12-card deck. The issue lies in the number of conditions that need to be right for him to actually prove helpful. Rather obviously, you need the luck of drawing him early enough to work. Unless you get him in the first or second round, Uatu’s ability is pretty useless. Secondly, you need to be playing a game with locations where prior knowledge is actually of use.
So many locations have properties where foreknowledge is of very little value. Finding out that when it reveals you’ll get a random card added to your hand, a random card taken from it, or a 12-power card added to both sides…it’s very rare that this will be vital information to you. Yes, there are absolutely circumstances where it’s great, where knowing each card will get 5+ power when played there means you can load up and dominate where your opponent might not know to. But does that happen frequently enough for Uatu to remain a vital card? Really, no.
Hulk
Image: Marvel / Second Dinner / Kotaku
This one is hard. But listen: There are better and more interesting ways for a big finish. Hulk’s there from the start to give you that satisfaction of playing a ridiculous 12-power card on those Pool 1 bots. But he’s baby food, and you’re ready for solids.
Sure, you’ve nothing else in your deck that offers that much power. It’s simple logic. But Hulk’s simplicity is the issue. Using up all your energy in Round 6 on one card that does nothing other than add a bunch of power means you’re missing out on much more fun big finishes. Never mind that Shang-Chi, available from Collection Level 222, can obliterate him with his “Destroy all enemy cards at this location that have 9 or more Power.”
But there are so many cards that do more interesting things in the final round. Like Odin, who adds 8 power, but also refires all the On Reveal abilities of the other cards at the location. That means you can see White Tiger putting out another 7-power card onto another location, bringing her total contribution to 15, while at the same time retriggering Gamora’s additional +5 power if the opponent plays a card there. That puts Gamora up to a total of 17, even without taking into account a possible third card at the location, just playing Odin has increased our power by 20. Take that, Hulk.
America Chavez
Image: Marvel / Second Dinner / Kotaku
When you first get this card you might be excited. America is a 6-cost/9-power card that always shows up on turn six, which is usually the last turn of most Marvel Snap games. And yeah, it’s nice knowing a powerful 9-power card is definitely going to show up at the end of your match. But this also means she’s not hanging around in your hand, meaning she can’t get buffed or randomly tossed into the field early on.
And while adding 9-power at the end of a match can be useful, you’ll quickly encounter games as you rank up where 9-power just isn’t enough to win back a zone or lock something down. Worse, America has no special abilities beyond showing up on turn 6. So, like Quicksilver, she shows up and doesn’t really do anything. And unlike the Hulk who is very strong, America is only sort of strong. In a specific deck built around buffing, she can work, but there are better 6 and even 5-cost cards to swap in instead.
Domino
Image: Marvel / Second Dinner / Kotaku
Let’s just toss this on here too, while we are talking about America Chavez and Quicksilver. Like those cards, Domino has a unique ability that means she is guaranteed to end up in your hand on turn two. And as a 2-cost/3-power, she seems useful as a follow-up to Quicksilver on turn one. And early on, you can definitely win with Domino. But eventually, you’ll need to get over these cards.
It’s hard, I know, but while giving them up means you give up the consistency of always knowing what’s coming on turns one, two, and six, you are also giving up three slots in your small 12-card deck to characters with no other purpose. They don’t buff, boost, move, kill, destroy, or do anything useful like that. Again, in certain decks, these cards can be useful. But there are just so many better cards that you could use instead of Domino, Quicksilver, and America. Say goodbye to consistency and hello to chaos. It’s the Marvel Snap way.
Mantis
Image: Marvel / Second Dinner / Kotaku
Mantis, like the other Guardians of the Galaxy-related characters, has a reveal ability that pops when your opponent plays a card in that location on the same turn it’s played. But unlike Gamora, Star-Lord, or Rocket, Mantis doesn’t get a power boost, instead drawing a card from the opposing player’s deck. This is fun and chaotic, which we support! Snap is more fun when things are hard to predict and wild. But this becomes far less useful in most situations pretty quickly.
The number of times people play Mantis, get a card, and then never use that card because it doesn’t sync up with their deck’s synergy is high. And that’s if your opponent plays a card that turn and you guess the location right. If you don’t do that, then Mantis is a crappy 1-cost/2-power paperweight just begging to be killed by Elektra or worse, left there with no way for you to remove it, taking up valuable real estate. So, yeah, ditch Mantis. And if you are screaming “Well, she is a part of my Zoo Deck!” right now, here’s more bad news…
Zoo Decks
Image: Marvel / Second Dinner / Kotaku
The “Zoo Deck” was certainly one of the most popular meta decks of Snap’s early days, but in the face of the more common addition of Killmonger to players’ decks, it’s now proving a liability.
A Zoo Deck is a community-given name for decks that put together a lot of low-cost cards, especially 1-cost cards, which often have animal art on them. (Not often enough to justify the name, but that’s the name they’ve gotten anyway.) Advocates celebrate that they allow you to play multiple cards in later rounds, surprising players who rely on hefty 5 and 6-cost cards, like some sort of cheeky rascal scampering between the angry giant’s legs. Except, because of Killmonger, they’re pretty much useless.
Killmonger does appear to be an incredible OP card, although he can only be picked up by players who’ve reached Collection Level 462. At just 3-cost, with 3 power, it’s a card that can be played from round 3 onward, and devastatingly takes out every single 1-cost card from the board. Yours and theirs. And people in Pool 2 are reporting seeing it showing up a lot. The effects are brutal. Oh, and Zoo Decks can also get beat badly by a Scorpion, which lowers the attack power of all the cards in your hand by one, which can easily cost you a close match when most 1-cost cards are low in power. So yeah, Zoo Decks are fun…but not worth it later on.
