Today’s Wordle answer is evading nearly 30 percent of players, The New York Times—which has been publishing Josh Wardle’s beloved word puzzle since buying it in 2022—said on Twitter.
Blade’s Book Club Is The Best Thing About Marvel’s Midnight Suns
The guessing game, a more streamlined, bloodless hangman, requires a bit of luck to solve, so it’s reasonable that some players will fail to find an answer within six possible turns. Some words use uncommon X’s and Z’s, others are crammed with double letters players don’t want to risk a guess on, and so players will lose and cede their unusual Wordle answers to the fickle English language gods. But today’s Wordle answer seems so…normal for such a challenge.
The five-letter word begins with one of the least common English letters, though its following four letters are perfectly ordinary. It’s a word you see often, too, as part of movie titles, or video game character names, used as an insult, or during a magic trick. Nevertheless, even as an avid Wordle player, I wasn’t able to solve it.
I want to believe I was psyched out by the messaging around it. I know, I know, “we tell ourselves stories in order to live,” but I feel like immediately attempting to do something after learning 30 percent of people failed to do it—which I did—is sipping from a poisoned well. My regrettable performance indicates as much.
Great for work or play This laptop boasts a 15.6-inch touchscreen, an Intel Core i3 processor, 8GB of RAM, a 256GB SSD, a webcam, and more. It also has a variety of ports for connectivity’s sake, making it versatile for use as a display or even a desktop replacement.
According to WordleBot, the Times’ Wordle analysis tool, my puzzle-solving “skill” level was a sad 60 out of 99, about 30 points lower than my typical score; although, it was on par with today’s NYT average skill score, which was 63. WordleBot also indicated that it took the average Wordle player 5.4 turns to solve today’s game, and, in the section where WordleBot demonstrates how it would have chosen to complete the puzzle, even the robot needed six tries.
So what was the devious Wordle that stumped seasoned players and robots alike? Fittingly, it was “JOKER.” “JOAQUIN PHOENIX” wouldn’t have fit.
Gif: Nintendo / Studio Trigger / Odyssey Interactive / Kotaku
There are just so many games these days it’s hard to stand out from the crowd and get the world’s attention. So, here’s one good way: Get world-renowned anime house Studio Trigger to make the trailer for your upcoming Nintendo Switch sports-action game.
The Week In Games: Galactic Refugees And Stone-Age Life Sims
Omega Strikers, developed by Odyssey Interactive, is a free-to-play online 3v3 soccer (football for readers across the pond) game in which anime-looking athletes compete in cross-platform online matches. Some of the dapper athletes are so anime AF in their designs that they’re not even human. By my count, there’s at least one slime girl, a gun-wielding lizard man, and a swole gerbil-looking bear dude. The soccer ball here is on fire half the time, so these characters being anime AF fits the bill.
Odyssey enlisted the help of animation powerhouse Studio Trigger (the studio behind Kill La Killand Cyberpunk: Edgerunners) to sell the hectic energy of its roster of footballers, what with their penchant to bend the rules of conventional soccer via unsanctioned weapons, with a cool opening cinematic music video. You can check it out below.
Nintendo / Studio Trigger / Odyssey Interactive
Studio Trigger anime tend to have themes of defiance against some sort of authoritative organization. For example, Kill La Kill and Brand New Animal saw its colorful casts openly defy the notion of socially acceptable clothing and racial prejudice against beast people, respectively. More recently, Trigger’s Netflix anime adaptation Cyberpunk: Edgerunners focused on a Latino boy named David Martinez’s journey to becoming a legend in a town that would turn a blind eye to his untimely demise.
Great for work or play This laptop boasts a 15.6-inch touchscreen, an Intel Core i3 processor, 8GB of RAM, a 256GB SSD, a webcam, and more. It also has a variety of ports for connectivity’s sake, making it versatile for use as a display or even a desktop replacement.
All that being said, Trigger animating an opening cinematic about a group of outcasts united by their passion to decimate their opponents just makes sense. I guess Omega Strikers players are defying conventional soccer regulations. Who are we to deny a pompadoured rockabilly his fun? Time will tell whether Omega Strikers will have an arena that lets its madcap group of soccer weirdos duke it out in space, as Trigger is wont to do. In the meantime, props for having such a stylish trailer.
Omega Strikers is slated to release on April 27 and is available for pre-order on the Nintendo Switch, Steam, the App Store, and Google Play.
If you thought that gamers could be normal about two queers sharing a passionate kiss in 2023, then you would be very wrong. Horizon Forbidden West’s new story DLC, Burning Shores, contains a scene in which Aloy can choose to kiss a woman named Seyka, and it seems some PlayStation fans were not happy. Indeed, some players were so offended at being given this choice that they mass review-bombed the DLC on Metacritic. While the Metascore, which is based on critic’s reviews, currently sits at an 82, the user score is at just 3.2.
The Week In Games: Galactic Refugees And Stone-Age Life Sims
Burning Shores is a DLC that, for technical reasons, is only available on PlayStation 5s. It brings significant quality of life improvements such as easier looting, though it’s apparently details like the better-looking clouds that rendered it a PS5 exclusive. The update also provides players with the opportunity to have Aloy pursue a romantic relationship with someone nice, which has been a fan request for years. And I’m happy for her. Seyka seems like a nice lady, and Aloy deserves to open up to someone after running around and saving the world for two consecutive games. The main people who are mad right now are the homophobes, who seemingly can’t stand the thought of any gay content in the Horizon series at all—even if whether or not Aloy acts on her feelings is fully optional.
The bar is on the floor, y’all. But it doesn’t stop bigots from running face-first into it. Recent players complained on Metacritic that “homosexuals” were putting forward a “dirty agenda” that “sabotaged” what could have been a beautiful story. Nearly all of the reviews with a “0” score complained that they shouldn’t be forced to see gay women exist in the world of Horizon. One player called the game “woke propaganda” for allowing Aloy to fall in love with someone she just met—as if that isn’t how human romantic attraction so often works. “[Guerilla Games] retconned the main character for LGBTQ nonsense,” bemoaned another so-called fan who seems to have completely missed that there were sparks between Aloy and Petra in Horizon Zero Dawn. “Aloy never showed signs of being a lesbian,” complained one player who seems to have played a completely different game.
This is not the first time that a PlayStation first-party franchise was attacked for featuring openly queer characters. This February, homophobes review bombed The Last of Us on HBO because they were forced to endure the unbearable sight of queer tenderness on television. Hopefully with enough repeated exposure, gamers will come to realize that queer video game characters are here to stay. Because culture is moving on, either with or without them.
This New Series Completes Studio MAPPA’s Dark Trilogy
For much of Twitter’s existence, certain users could be “verified” by confirming their identity with the site. This was an essential tool for celebrities, athletes, businesses and the media, people who may or may not have been famous, but who were all at risk of having their accounts impersonated in the name of disinformation and scams.
And for almost as long, certain weirdos had a thing about this, seeing a system designed solely to prove a user were who they said they were—a necessity on a social media platform—as a symptom of, I dunno, some kind of leftist media woke conspiracy.
Anyway, things got especially absurd when over the weekend it emerged that almost none of the formerly verified accounts were going to pay the $8. Not even millionaire celebrities. In fact many even publicly mocked Musk and the decision. In return, Musk himself ordered that certain high profile users be given a verified badge anyway, at Twitter’s expense, leading to incredible scenes like Lebron James turning down the offer and video game deals man Wario64—who has over 1 million followers, making him one of the site’s more popular users— having a “blue checkmark” forcibly hoisted on his account, then later removed again.
Amidst all the chaos, one notable (and wild) set of responses to events in the video game space came from Tim Sweeney, the CEO of Epic Games. I’m pasting his entire Twitter thread in full here, mostly so you can see the number of times he is so wrong he has to be officially corrected:
(Note: the #BlockTheBlue hashtag came from people figuring out very quickly that the kind of person who would pay Musk $8 a month for Twitter is also the kind of person you would want to block on sight)
Screenshot: Twitter
Screenshot: Twitter
Screenshot: Twitter
This man complaining about high school cliques and supposed “elites” is 52 years old and is worth almost $5 billion.
I don’t collect Pokémon cards much myself. I have a select few cards I’ve kept over the years, mostly ones of my favorite monsters or sporting characters I like such as the Professor’s Research card featuring my husband Professor Turo. But I am always captivated by the art The Pokémon Company slaps on a piece of cardstock and throws into a pack with other pieces of cardstock for kids and also Logan Paul to spend untold amounts of money on. That captivation continues because The Pokémon Company is collaborating with Japanese artist Yu Nagaba on a new line of Eeveelution cards, and they’re really cool.
If you’re unfamiliar with Nagaba’s work, he’s known for his minimalistic style that kinda feels evocative of newspaper comics. He’s collaborated with Pokémon before on things like a 2021 Pikachu card and Ed Sheeran’s “Celestial” music video. This new collaboration is a box set featuring art of Eevee and all its evolutions. It will launch in Japan on May 24 and run 4800 yen (roughly $36 USD) . It includes a rubber playmat, sleeves for cards, and a deck box. Right now, the set is part of a lottery on the Japanese Pokémon Center site. On top of the box set, Nagaba’s art also appears on a portfolio and card display frame, which will run 1980 yen (about $15 USD) and 1490 yen (around $11 USD), respectively.
Once May 24 comes around, the Pokémon Center will include a promo card of the Eeveelutions for every 1000 yen spent on a TCG-related purchase. This announcement precedes another announcement that will take place on May 5, revealing more information about a collaboration between Nagaba, Pokémon, and the clothing brand BEAMS. Thanks to PokéBeach for the translations.
Now that I’m looking at all these Eeveelution pieces, I just want to see all my favorites in Nagaba’s style. This is prime minimalist tattoo fodder. Give me Raichu, Nagaba, I’ll get him inked into my arm forever.
Let’s take a look at all the cards and merch Nagaba drew up for the collection.
The long-awaited, blood-soaked Dead Island 2 released today, and after almost a decade of waiting, I’m sure you have some questions. The game shares a peacefully embarrassing sense of humor with the first game, 2011’s Dead Island, repeatedly referring to your threatening surroundings as “Hell-A” while being gory enough to actually justify the zombified dad joke, but it’s also changed in important ways. Skill cards make their first appearance, and playing on modern consoles comes with its own idiosyncrasies.
This New Series Completes Studio MAPPA’s Dark Trilogy
The unknown is scary. But I’ll guide you through it, and tell you everything I wish someone told me before I started playing Dead Island 2.
How to unlock co-op
Dead Island 2, like the original, employs co-op, so that players can wield an array of unique playable characters—six, in this case—against a neverending onslaught of zombies with dislocated jaws.
To activate co-op in a new game, play through the first three missions of the main story. Co-op unlocks in the fourth, appropriately named “Call the Cavalry,” and you’ll be able to add, at most, two players to your game by choosing either “online options” or “social” when prompted.
Once co-op is enabled, as long as they’re at the same point in the game or earlier, you can accept a friend’s request to join their game, or you can select “Join” from the main menu for a random multiplayer pairing. Quest progress saves in co-op, so you’ll be able to play the entire game while alternating between single and multiplayer at your leisure.
Note that there’s no crossplay, though.
Even the apocalypse is better with friends.Image: Deep Silver Dambuster Studios
I know it’s annoying, but you should spam the “pick up” button
Like Amazon continues to turn our planet into a desolate Funko Pop landfill, Dead Island 2 environments are stuffed with stuff. You’ll find upgrade materials like adhesives, aerosols, and blades on top of tables, inside shut drawers, and raining down from felled like you burst a grisly piñata.
Forget your hand-wringing about storage management—in the zombie apocalypse, everyone’s a scavenger. Pick the stuff up. All of it. As long as you’re regularly upgrading weapons using the materials you’ve found, you’ll find that your Dead Island 2 inventory is impressively bottomless.
Keeping upgrade materials on hand saves you time when you’re at sporadic upgrade workbenches. Though these benches allow you to “track” materials you’re missing, they’re most helpful when you have your materials ready to go, and can repair broken weapons or make them even stronger immediately before your next fight.
To make space, scrap worthless weapons like wooden planks and sell real weapons to traders for lots of money. Upgrade materials let you create weapon mods, upgrades, and repairs, but money is necessary to actually buy them.
You’ll need to make trade offs between special mods and attack power
You’ll unlock and find motley weapon blueprints (often placed, conveniently, right on top of an undiscovered workbench) as you progress further into the game, allowing for wild mods that turn your weapon into two-punch electro-cutioners and cremators, as well as upgrades that bolster your weapon’s damage output.
While the constant influx of shiny toys is understandably tempting, you should be aware that extreme weapon modifications and upgrades aren’t always compatible. While some upgrades’ descriptions plainly indicate that they need certain mods to be equipped, general upgrades like Damaging, which increases a weapon’s damage dealt, will lose their overall potency when paired with a mod. Try to have a plan for the type of weapon you want to ultimately end up with before you irrevocably alter it at a workbench.
“Slaughter” is a perfect weapon upgrade
The game’s huge range of weapon customization options leaves a lot to consider, but I think you should especially prioritize the Slaughter upgrade.
It lets you hack limbs off with more efficiency, making it most compatible with gliding bladed weapons like katanas and hunting knives, but also lifts weapon durability.
Dead Island 2 weapons can break obnoxiously quickly, leaving you suddenly barefisted in the middle of an encounter.
Though you can keep track of weapon breakage by looking at the depleting meter in the bottom right corner of the screen, it’s best to avoid it by adding Slaughter. Don’t forget to repair your favorite weapons whenever you’re near a workbench, too.
You can’t bulldoze through combat—learn to dodge
Despite Dead Island 2’s quickly forming reputation as a brainless, mass bloodletting event, trying to aimlessly plow your way through fields of snarling zombies will get you killed quickly, and destroy your weapon stash even faster.
To protect both yourself and your arsenal, practice dodging, or tapping L1 in the split seconds before a zombie attacks—and I really do mean split seconds.
It took me a while to master the timing. I’d recommend you practice by singling out rogue zombies you come across while exploring environments, and not necessarily in the middle of a stressful main mission. When you nail a dodge (or, alternatively, block an incoming attack), you stun a zombie, opening them up for a health-melting counter attack.
Here come the fireworks.Image: Deep Silver Dambuster Studios
When a zombie mob is descending, use their own powers against them
Just as each playable slayer has their own innate advantages, every zombie you encounter will have its own violent quirk.
Most of them are thematic and obvious. Like, a frizzy zombie surrounded by blue sparks will eventually release a giant explosion of electricity, or a crispy zombie completely immersed in flames will, if it touches you, set you on fire.
Notice these quirks and use them to your advantage when you’re confronted by swarms of zombies that, at first glance, seem unmanageable. Throw a fuel can at a fire zombie to trigger a remote AoE eruption that will murder nearby zombies. Using an electric modded weapon to burst a hole into the water canisters some zombies carry on their backs, and turn the resulting puddle into a livewire trap.
And, once it becomes accessible to you in the game, don’t forget to use Fury Mode, which builds up as you slay zombies and imbues you with their destructive powers, for a brief period of time.
Make sure to level up, but it’s not necessarily as crucial as you might think
Once you hit a main story boss battle or reach a wild enemy with a skull over its head, meaning it’s higher level than you, you’ll feel the power disparity immediately.
To avoid getting overwhelmed by too-strong enemies, take a look at main story and side quests’ recommended levels and make sure your natural leveling up matches them before attempting them.
Though, you don’t have to be at a chapter or enemy’s recommended level to try it. Most of the time, especially in the rogue combat you’ll spend most of your time engaging with, leveling up makes a barely discernible difference in terms of damage output or defense. Most standard wild enemies also conform to your level, too, reflected by the number that appears next to the name over their heads.
If you get stuck on the main story, pivot to a side quest you can benefit from
In the case that you are not at the appropriate level to finish a main level chapter (without great difficulty, at least), don’t worry; you have 33 side quests to choose from.
You’ll unlock these without really trying—by exploring new environments, answering radio calls, or chatting with friendly NPCs.
But before you commit to a side quest, open up the Quests tab, glance at the rewards listed, and consider what your main story goals are. Do you want to level up ASAP? Pick a side quest with abundant XP gains. Do your weapons all suck, and you need something more excruciating? Take the side quest that gifts you a special weapon. Have fun while being practical. Slay responsibly.
Some NPCs are friendly. Others sort of look like Josh Groban.Image: Deep Silver Dambuster Studios
Don’t shy away from customizing your low-stakes skill deck
As you blaze through levels, the main story, and side quests, slots on your skill card deck will unlock. You acquire skill cards without truly trying, either grabbing them after you’ve spammed your “pick up” button, or by killing for them.
You can rearrange or cull your deck at any time, so try any skill card that intrigues you. Most skill benefits are nebulous enough—specializing the type of kick you do, or how you regenerate health—that choosing them never feels make-or-break. It’s more like deciding whether or not you want pickles on your burger.
Did you know there’s voice control?
Dead Island 2 has a unique voice-control system, which beguiled me at first as someone who knows how to use the computer, but just barely.
It lets you speak scripted commands to swap weapons, taunt zombies, and engage extra-powerful Fury Mode, among other things, by using a microphone and your Amazon account.
To activate it, plug your Amazon account information into the “Alexa Game Control” section of the Options menu, make sure Voice Commands is set to “enabled,” and select your preferred input audio device. Read through the available commands in the Voice Controls, found in the Tutorials section, and wonder, like me, if Jeff Bezos can hear you scream.
When it’s not stealing or plagiarizing, generative AI is improving quickly. Images that used to look uncanny now appear more natural and humanly imperfect. But it still struggles with plenty of things. Apparently video game controllers are one of them. Someone asked Midjourney for simple pictures of a person having fun playing video games, and got back some beautiful abominations.
This New Series Completes Studio MAPPA’s Dark Trilogy
A generative AI enthusiast asked the Midjourney community for help this week when a simple prompt returned some nightmares. “Mj has a real tough time with ‘playing video games’ apparently,” they posted on the project’s subreddit. “Any ideas how I could improve this? Prompt: female influencer relaxing playing PlayStation 5 having a blast”
While Midjourney managed to render a human with the right number of fingers, the controllers in her hands and how she was holding them looked like something out of a Cronenberg movie. The gamepads are overflowing with random buttons, triggers, and sticks, and not in a cool way. Microsoft’s adaptiver controller looks sleek. Midjourney’s version hurts just looking at it.
As many commenters suggested, one reason could be the overly broad prompt. While “playing” is intuitive to the average person, it’s vague when compared to what a search for it might reveal. The bigger culprit, though, is probably that there just aren’t many images of the backs of controllers compared to all the front-facing promotional shots companies release to sell them.
In that regard, the failed experiment potentially reinforces one of generative AI’s biggest weaknesses: It’s great at giving you variations on what already exists, but struggles to bridge the gaps in what’s missing. Or it borrows from existing sources in the wrong ways. Some of you might remember the infamous grip meme, and it certainly looks like that’s what Midjourney is recreating in the fourth image. Turns out the fake AI gamer girl is actually an extremely hardcore Armored Core fan.
Recently, Spotify’s “fake artist” problem, first spotted as far back as 2017, has been a topic of conversation yet again, with a playlist of 49 virtually identical songs from different artists making the rounds on the internet. And no, this isn’t a snarky jab about how all pop music is built on the same general concepts; these songs appear to be similar versions of the same piece of poorly produced music, each differentiated by random changes in pitch.
This New Series Completes Studio MAPPA’s Dark Trilogy
Between its gargantuan size and anemic royalty payouts, Spotify has rarely been without controversy. As a veritable kingmaker operating, allegedly, by the invisible hand of the music marketplace, attempts to mine the service for money are nothing new. Sometimes large corporations are suspected of such behavior, including Spotify itself (which it staunchly denies). Clever artists have also deployed tongue-in-cheek stunts to try and game the system, which is widely seen as being brutally unfair to indie musicians. Recently, songs from no-name artists have been found to bear striking similarities to one another. They’re clearly the same piece of music, starting the same way and using the same melodic motifs, though the album art, artist name, and base pitch of each version varies.
On Twitter, media producer Adam Faze shared a strange discovery, collating 49 seemingly identical songs into a public Spotify playlist titled “these are all the same song.”
One quick listen and, yeah, there are shades of difference, mostly in terms of pitch. But these are undeniably all the same song.
As many pointed out in Faze’s replies, it all sounds like the product of low-effort generative music techniques or even AI productions—and, no, not the more respectable, exploratory kind that composers, electronic musicians, and visual artists have experimented with for years.
It would also seem that this phenomenon is not exclusive to Spotify. As musician Zoë Keating discovered, Apple Music also seems to have pitch-shifted renditions of classical music attributed to faux artists.
Kotaku has reached out to Spotify and Apple for comment.
While just about anyone can upload music to streaming services with something like a Distrokid account, Universal Media Group has recently called on Spotify to take a stance against AI-generated music that lifts the likeness of established artists to create new music. As with AI-generated visual art, however, these problems aren’t likely to fade away.
Some guy is currently suing Tolkien and Amazon to the tune of $250 million. That alone takes serious bravery. But what’s notable about this lawsuit is the reason he’s suing: Copyright infringement over his Lord of the Rings fanfic. Specifically, he’s arguing that Amazon lifted elements of his fan-fiction for its own Tolkien adaptation TV series, The Rings of Power.
This New Series Completes Studio MAPPA’s Dark Trilogy
Demetrious Polychron wrote a book, a work of fan-fiction set in J.R.R. Tolkien’s Middle-earth, called The Fellowship of the King, which he copyrighted in 2017 and which later were published and made available for sale, including on Amazon. According to PC Gamer, Polychron sent a letter to the Tolkien Estate asking for a manuscript review. That’s right: This man asked J.R.R. Tolkien’s grandson Simon to sign off on his fanfic. Unsurprisingly, he did not get a response.
In September of 2022, the month that Polychron published The Fellowship of the King, Amazon also began airing its extremely expensive Lord of the Rings spin-off series, The Rings of Power. hundreds of millions of dollars on developing an adaptation called Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power. Now, Polychron is arguing that the Amazon TV show lifts elements from his novel.
According to RadarOnline, which has seen documents pertaining to the suit, Polychron alleges that characters and storylines he created for his book “compose as much as one-half of the 8-episode series,” and that in some cases the show “copied exact language” from his book. However, the claims seem spurious. For instance, the lawsuit purportedly points to the fact that both his book and the show feature a hobbit named Elanor, with the Elanor in his book being the daughter of Samwise Gamgee, while the Elanor featured in The Rings of Power is a Harfoot. Images purporting to be the lawsuit circulating online include a host of other circumstantial connections or similarities to back up Polychron’s argument that the writers of Rings of Power lifted ideas from his fanfic for their own story.
Polychron’s lawsuit for copyright infringement, filed on April 14, names Amazon and the Tolkien Estate as defendants in the U.S. District Court For The Central District of California. Polychron claims that his novel was “inspired” by LOTR, but is an “original” work. Nobody is convinced, not even the reviewers who had kind things to say about it. “While unabashedly derivative, The Fellowship of the King offers LOTR fans a fun, appropriately epic return to Middle-earth,” wrote Edward Sung for IndieReader. Ouch. It doesn’t sound like the book scores any points for originality, even if it’s a fun enough read.
At the time of writing, it appears that Polychron’s book has been delisted from Amazon. Kotaku reached out to Amazon to ask when it was removed, but did not receive a response by the time of publication.
While no one believes that Polychron will win against the Tolkien Estate, there are concerns that the lawsuit might negatively impact the legality of fanworks in general. Hopefully, fanfic writers will be fine as long as they’re not trying to extort Tolkien’s grandson.
As a series dating back to the 1980s, you normally expect a new Street Fighter game to play it safe. Sure, every generation or two there might be a visual shift, but Street Fighter is Street Fighter, it began as a 1v1 fighting tournament and shall forever be one. Until, that is, Street Fighter 6 came along.
Why Mario Strikers: Battle League Could Be Nintendo’s Next Multiplayer Hit
I’ll note before we go any further that I’m nor a serious fan of this series. I played the shit out of the second, I admired the third’s graphics from afar and have had little to do with it since, since I’m both terrible at fighting games and not really that interested in them.
But I am very interested in Street Fighter 6, because it’s fancy new ‘World Tour’ mode looks like everything you could ever dream of when a developer decides its time to shake things up. While we’ve known the vague outline of what this new game mode would entail for a while, a new showcase released today goes into huge detail about what we can expect.
It’s basically an open world RPG mode. For, you know, Street Fighter. Don’t believe me? Look at this screenshot, which is for an upcoming game in the Street Fighter series:
Indacloud’s Biggest Sale Ever Celebrate 420 and replenish your stash by taking 42% off everything sitewide at Indacloud.
Incredible. You can also customise your appearance, which I think we already knew, but what I love about it here is that it’s not just cosmetic; because this is an RPG mode your choice of sneakers or boots will have an impact on your, uh, kick strength and, um, vitality:
Image: Capcom
Also incredible is the fact you get to fight a fridge, which I know I spoiled in the headline and top image, but I’m going to post the same gif here again because I like it so much:
I cannot stress how good this all is. I love this as much as I loved Yakuza’s pivot to turn-based combat, which while not proving a universal success, was at least a brave and fascinating attempt to breathe new life into a long-running series. Developers in charge of historic game franchises, please take note: it is greatly appreciated every time you try something new.
Maul is one of the best and most famous cosplayers on the planet, a man whose work we’ve featured here for everything from God of War to Assassin’s Creed to, repeatedly, The Witcher. His latest shoot, however, might well be his best yet.
The Year’s Funniest Anime Is Lycoris Recoil Crossed With Yakuza
To commemorate the anniversary of Superman’s comics debut back in 1938, Maul took to the skies above Cologne/Köln (home of GamesCom!) to pay tribute to a character who “is my absolute hero”. With a crane, some cables, harnesses and no small amount of bravery, Maul and Emilija Wellrock—playing Lois Lane—were hoisted above the city to hold up a van, a helicopter and each other.
Photo: Maul Cosplay | Jun Kim | eosAndy
To pull it off of course required a whole team of folks working behind the scenes. Firstly, it should be noted, Maul—who has stuntman training—didn’t just wake up one day and bankroll this whole thing from his billionaire cosplay holdings; the shoot was sponsored by Pringles, as many big-budget cosplay features are these days.
All that organisation and work was more than worth it, though, when you see the results. Maul and Wellrock ended up getting hoisted 70 metres (230 feet) into the air above the city for most of the shots:
Photo: Maul Cosplay | Jun Kim | eosAndy
With the exception being this one taken on the ground, with Maul (and a crane) holding up a van:
Photo: Maul Cosplay | Jun Kim | eosAndy
And yes, OK, there had to be a little bit of editing required to get rid of the wires, but that doesn’t count.
You can see the full gallery of shots at Maul’s Facebook page, and below is the first of two short videos showing some of the preparation work that went into it all:
And here’s a clip uploaded by Wellrock showing the pair taking off:
The International Committee of the Red Cross has partnered up with a bunch of Twitch streamers to encourage gamers to not commit war crimes in popular shooters like Call of Duty. The ICRC hopes that its event, “Play by the Rules,” will educate players on the statutes of actual war. The organization has even created its own Fortnite mode to help communicate what those rules are.
The Witcher 3 Meets Tense Roguelike PvE Card-Battling In Rogue Mage
“Every day, people play games set in conflict zones right from their couch. But right now, armed conflicts are more prevalent than ever,” the ICRC website said. “And to the people suffering from their effects, this conflict is not a game. It destroys lives and leaves communities devastated. Therefore, we’re challenging you to play FPS by the real Rules of War, to show everyone that even wars have rules—rules which protect humanity on battlefields IRL.”
As part of the event, on the ICRC’s official Twitch channel streamers have played a number of games while adhering (or attempting to adhere) to the Laws of Conflict, including PUBG Battlegrounds, Fortnite, Call of Duty: Warzone, Rainbow 6 Siege, and Escape From Tarkov. In addition to the Play by the Rules event, the ICRC created its own Fortnite mode that’s designed to convey the rules of war in the context of competitive play.
For those curious, the official rules of war for the ICRC’s Play by the Rules event (which have been streamlined to account for video game mechanics) are:
No thirsting (don’t shoot downed/unresponsive enemies)
No targeting non-violent NPCs
No targeting civilian buildings
Use med kits on everyone
ICRC
This isn’t the first time the ICRC has urged players to critically think about the rules of war. Back in 2017, the ICRC hosted a similar event in an Arma III DLC called Law of War. In Law of War, gamers put down their weapons and took on the role of humanitarian workers as they respond to people in crisis, deactivate mines, and speak with an investigative journalist. According to a blog post from Arma III developer Bohemia Interactive, the DLC raised a total of $176,667, which it donated to the ICRC.
As The Verge report, anyone who enables this option will find that the game’s underwater sections—there’s part of the Bay Area that’s explorable under the waves, for example—will be a lot less taxing on the nerves. Developers Guerrilla describe it as:
This feature aims to ease thalassophobia symptoms by improving underwater ambient visibility and allowing you to breathe indefinitely, regardless of story progression.
If that sounds stupid to you, that’s fine, don’t enable it! But as I’ve blogged repeatedly on this website the ocean is a deep, dark and terrifying place, and video games do a good job—perhaps too good—of playing up to the most fundamental aspects of that fear, namely the way they restrict visibility and then put loads of dangerous (and more importantly unseen) things in your vicinity.
Throw in a super common underwater stage trope—a limited supply of oxygen—and you’ve got everything you need for an experience that goes beyond challenging and into the realms of truly stressful. Like, voluntarily skip entire sections of a game levels of stressful.
Pick your processor, RAM, GPU, and more Whether you are in the market for a new laptop or desktop or if you a specifically looking to build something to game on, you can do so here and you’ll save up to 52% off.
So this is a toggle that, for me at least, is something 30 years in the making. Thank you, Guerrilla, I appreciate it, and especially the fact that it’s an optional thing, because as fucked up as I get playing 3D underwater levels I also realise most people have no such problems, so it’s nice to have the choice.
If this sounds vaguely familiar, that’s because a few years back Obsidian promised something similar, only in their case for anyone afraid of spiders. Which, again, as an Australian, I have nothing but understanding for.
Last week Capcom pushed an update out to the Steam versions of the remakes for Resident Evil 2 & 3. It was supposed to be a generic little update, but whatever Capcom did under the hood ended up breaking a couple of the game’s nicer features.
A Foe From The Next Team Ninja Game Is Giving Me Sekiro PTSD
Not long after the updates went live PC users began noticing that the option to enable ray-tracing within both game’s menu had disappeared. Also gone was the option to turn on 3D audio support. While some fans on Reddit initially believed this to have been intentional, Capcom later issued a statement confirming that the modes had been affected by the update, and that they “apologize for any inconvenience”.
To all Resident Evil 2 / Resident Evil 3 users on Steam
We’re aware of an ongoing issue with the raytracing option not appearing in the graphics menu and presets. We’ll have this addressed in a future update and apologize for any inconvenience!
Pick your processor, RAM, GPU, and more Whether you are in the market for a new laptop or desktop or if you a specifically looking to build something to game on, you can do so here and you’ll save up to 52% off.
Sucks that it’ll take another update to fix stuff that had already been in the game, but that’s game development and support, baby.
Weirdly, this isn’t the first time those two specific options have been the focus of botched updates. Back in 2022 the Resident Evil 2 remake, Resident Evil 3 remake and Resident Evil 7 were all forcibly updated on PC to include ray-tracing and 3D audio, a move which massively upset users who were (rightly) concerned that this would blow the required specs for the games—which they had already bought and played—out of the window.
After the updates did exactly that, and fans protested, Capcom quickly reverted:
“Due to overwhelming community response, we’ve reactivated the previous version that does not include ray tracing and enhanced 3D audio,” Capcom’s Resident Evil team wrote on Steam. “Both enhanced and previous versions will be made available going forward.”
First too many people had ray-tracing, now nobody has ray-tracing.
I feel like for the past 12 months I have done nothing but play city-builders. They’re everywhere on Steam right now, but to its credit Fabledom isn’t really a city-builder. It’s more of a big town.
Dungeon & Dragons’ Justice Smith Dishes On Movie Cast’s Playful Chaos
A game set in a fantasy medieval countryside, Fabledom is looking very closely over the shoulder of Ubisoft’s classic (and sadly long-neglected) Settlers series, basing itself around the idea of building a small town, luring peasants to its verdant fields then putting them to work generating an economy (or, occasionally, dying in battle).
Where it’s trying something else out, though, is in a layer of fantasy/character stuff spread thinly over the top. Fabledom has your kingdom existing as one of many in a randomly-generated landscape, and you’re able to develop relationships—through the completion of specific missions—with these competing rulers, from being mates right up to becoming romantically entwined.
FABLEDOM – Early Access Launch trailer
The whole thing is sickeningly cute. The fairytale landscape is cute, the little peasants are cute, their little farms are cute; the longer I stared at the screen the more my teeth hurt from just how sweet everything was. Never mind that some of these poor souls are spending their entire lives shovelling coal or breaking their backs picking vegetables, they all look like they’re having fun while doing it, and that’s enough for me to feel good about it as well.
I also really dig the customisation aspects of the game, which let you not just place buildings, but their yards and surrounding countryside as well. When building a house, for example, you’re placing the building and its fences, dragging them out to determine the size of the yard, and can then choose from smaller structures like clotheslines and beehives to sit inside that boundary. It adds a wonderful little Sims-like element to the game that makes building your town a more customisable and personal experience.
While I haven’t been able to try out all the strategic-level stuff available in the game, either because I haven’t got that far or because a feature is locked (as in, it hasn’t been developed yet), it seems very much an “icing on the cake” kind of situation. The bulk of the experience here is the town-building and management, and of all the games like this I’ve played over the last few months, this is already one of the best.
What You Should Know About Mario Strikers’ Big Free Update
Thanks to a combination of time already served and good behaviour while in prison, however, Bowser is about to be released and sent home to Canada. On the eve of his departure—he’s currently awaiting transport to Toronto with a new passport—Bowser sat down for an interview with NickMoses 05 (thanks TorrentFreak) to discuss the events surrounding his imprisonment and impending freedom.
Bowser says Nintendo can take 25-30% of his “monthly gross income” for the rest of his working life. They began the process while he was still in prison; like many American inmates, Bowser was able to work jobs (for what’s essentially spare change) while behind bars, and over the course of his time at the SeaTac Federal Detention Center in Washington he was able to pay back $25 a month. Adding up to a total of…$175.
Bowser was one of two men arrested in connection with Team Xecuter. While commonly referred to as a “hacker” in media reports he actually confessed to being the company’s “salesman”, and reportedly made $320,000 over seven years of work. The other, French citizen Max Louarn, allegedly the leader of the operation (a role he denies), has managed so far to avoid deportation to the US to face charges, though it’s believed he helped the company make millions over the course of its operation.
Welcome to Exp. Share, Kotaku’s weekly Pokémon column in which we dive deep to explore notable characters, urban legends, communities, and just plain weird quirks from throughout the Pokémon franchise. This week, we’re looking at how Spinda, an unassuming critter from Generation III, went from a novelty to an apparent nuisance for The Pokémon Company to work with because of its multiple forms.
Grand Theft Auto 6 Comments: A Dramatic Reading
27 years after Pokémon Red and Green, alternate forms and designs in Pokémon have become a mainstay in the series. From Shiny Pokémon to event ‘mons like the spiky-eared Pichu, most Pokémon can look a little bit different from their original versions. However, there is one Pokémon that has more forms than any other one else in the series, and that’s Spinda. Because of how its designed is determined, it can have somewhere around four billion different forms.
Spinda is a normal-type Pokémon introduced in Ruby and Sapphire for the Game Boy Advance. While the swirly-eyed little bear seems mostly unremarkable on the surface, it has a gimmick in its appearance that’s resulted in its own a cult following within the Pokémon community. The character has a spot pattern on its coat that, similar to shiny odds, is entirely determined by background math that can give it up to four billion possible variations. It’s a mainstay of its Pokédex entries across the games, with several saying that no two Spinda have the same spot patterns.
How does Spinda have so many forms?
Spinda’s appearance is determined by its individual personality value, or encryption constant in more recent entries, which is a 32-bit integer ranging from zero to 4,294,967,295. This number is assigned the first time you meet a Pokémon in a save file, and where it lands determines the placement of its spots, as well as other things like gender and nature. On top of this, each of these variations could be Shiny, doubling its variations. This is a neat idea that has helped Spinda stand out among its third-generation contemporaries and has made it a centerpiece in its own Pokémon community.
Because Spinda’s possible forms are so vast, communities such as the Spinda’s Cafe subreddit are dedicated to documenting every variation of its spot pattern. There’s even an in-browser app called Spinda Painter that lets you test different personality values and shiny possibilities to see the resulting spot patterns. While it’s a strictly cosmetic change, it’s the closest Pokémon has ever gotten to replicating how different real-world animal fur patterns can look from one another.
Image: The Pokémon Company / Kotaku
How has this affected Spinda in recent games?
But that variation is why Spinda has been an issue for Game Freak and The Pokémon Company in terms of transferring the character and all its variants to future games. Pokémon Home, the app players use to transfer and store Pokémon between games, can’t transfer Spinda to and from Pokémon Go or Brilliant Diamond and Shining Pearl remakes because they’re inconsistent with how other games determine the character’s spot pattern. Pokémon Go only has nine predetermined patterns rather than the several billion found in most games, and the Diamond and Pearl remakes have a glitch associated with how it reads the numbers that determine Spinda’s forms. This means that the value these games assign to Spinda could result in a completely different spot pattern being assigned to the same Pokémon. As a result, Spinda is the only Pokémon obtainable in Brilliant Diamond and Shining Pearl that can’t be transferred to and from these games.
While it’s unclear if these billions of possible designs are responsible, Spinda has notably not been obtainable in a new game since Game Freak retired the National Dex that allows players to transfer any and all old Pokémon to new games. Spinda was conspicuously absent from Sword and Shield and Scarlet and Violet. Given that The Pokémon Company is running into compatibility issues with Spinda on several fronts, it will be interesting to see if Spinda appears in a mainline Pokémon game ever again. But even if the dizzy bear doesn’t show up in a new Pokémon game any time soon, at least there are corners of the Pokémon fandom that are taking steps to ensure what makes it special isn’t forgotten.
Star Wars Jedi Knight II: Jedi Outcast was first released in 2002. It was, and remains to this day, one of the best Star Wars games ever made, a near-perfect blend of the original Dark Forces’ FPS combat with third-person lightsaber combat that even modern games could take notes from.
Suddenly, Everyone Wants To Remake Dead Space
If you went and played the game as nature intended in 2023, it would be great! But this standalone port/version, provided you’ve got the hardware, looks like a huge—and decidedly more modern—improvement. It takes the original Jedi Outcast and gives the player full VR support, along with the ability to wield your lightsaber via motion controls and use force powers via hand gestures.
I need to be clear when saying the original was a very good video game in every respect. But people’s lingering memories of it, especially in the wake of Fallen Order’s all-ages combat, was the way you could absolutely go to town on Stormtroopers with your lightsaber, something this trailer is very aware of:
JK-XR: Outcast – Jedi Knight II VR – Release Trailer
It’s called JK-XR, and was created by fans as a “standalone VR port” of the original, which means this is a complete reworking of Jedi Outcast’s engine with an all-new download (though you’ll still need a copy of the original for everything else). That explains why the team have been able to cater this so specifically to VR, down to the new weapon and force power menus.
Diablo IV is still a couple of months away, but Blizzard is already stomping down some of the game’s most popular classes ahead of its June 6 release date. The studio posted a new blog on its website reflecting on the game’s recent beta, and shared what’s basically a full set of patch notes it will implement ahead of Diablo IV’s launch. While there aren’t a lot of hard numbers to go off of, you can at least get a sense of where some of the game’s character classes will be by the time fans get to play them again.
8 Minutes Of Diablo IV’s Character Creator
What is Blizzard doing to my precious baby angel Necromancer?
At the end of March, Blizzard said Necromancers and Sorcerers were the most popular classes among beta players. This was especially significant for Necromancer, as the class was only available during one of the game’s two test periods, while the Sorcerer was available for both. Kotaku’s own Levi Winslow used Necromancer most, and said the class was “truly busted” thanks to its ability to revive dead skeletons to fight alongside them. While Blizzard’s new blog says these dead minions will die more often, there are no specific numbers or any mention of a smaller skeletal headcount being forced upon players. The developer notes the dead’s increased vulnerability will make raising them “a more active component” in playing the Necromancer, rather than something you can just set and forget.
The Sorcerer’s debuffs seem less all-encompassing, with Chain Lightning dealing less damage and specifically reduced effectiveness against boss characters. But beyond that, the class is getting some buffs with abilities like Charged Bolt and an increased Lucky Hit chance for Meteor Skill’s Enchantment bonus.
While players will be getting some changes in the final game, some enemies will, as well. The Butcher, an enemy who gave some players a tough time during the beta, may be getting some kind of rework before the game launches. The blog states that the team has “re-evaluated” the enemy for difficulty, and it will “present a greater challenge in World Tiers III and IV.” So it sounds like it might become easier on lower difficulties, but even harder on higher ones.
What’s happening in the Diablo IV pre-release patch notes?
Beyond balance changes, Blizzard is also tweaking Diablo IV’s dungeon layouts to avoid backtracking, which it says was a common complaint during the betas. Here is the full list of patch notes for those curious:
Dungeon Layouts
One of the most common pieces of feedback Blizzard received is that players felt they were doing a lot of backtracking within certain dungeons. The team has optimized multiple dungeons across all zones to minimize the need for backtracking. Here is a list of dungeons specifically in the Fractured Peaks zone which received layout updates:
Caldera Gate
Defiled Catacombs
Derelict Lodge
Forbidden City
Hoarfrost Demise
Immortal Emanation
Kor Dragan Barracks
Maulwood
Rimescar Caverns
Developer’s Note: Our primary goal with the Layout changes was to reduce certain kinds of backtracking which detract from a player’s experience. An example of this change is that players previously needed to enter side rooms to interact with Structure Objectives, causing them to retread the same path. Now, many of our Structure Objectives have been repositioned along main dungeon pathways, making them easier for players to reach and allowing them to readily explore the dungeon after defeating the Structure.
Dungeon Events
The chance for an Event to spawn inside of a dungeon has increased from 10% to 60%.
Dungeon Gameplay
To reduce the need to backtrack, small numbers of straggling monsters will seek out the player to help complete the Kill All Monsters objective.
When Animus is gathered, the player and nearby allies will:
Gain 10 Resource.
Reduce all active Cooldowns by 1 second.
Depositing Animus channel time was reduced from 3 to 0 seconds.
The time to Rescue was reduced from 3 to 1.5 seconds.
All Rescue objectives now drop a Health Potion upon completion.
While carrying the Ancient’s Statue, Bloodstone, Mechanical Box, or Stone Carving, you will receive a Momentum bonus granting a 25% move speed increase to you and nearby allies.
Pedestals have had their channel time reduced from 2 to 0 seconds.
Returning a Portable Object to its Pedestal now fully restores Health, Resource, Potions, and resets cooldowns for all nearby players.
All doors will now generate a minimap ping when they are opened.
All Structure Objectives in dungeons now have additional combat mechanics players must overcome.
Developer’s Note: While our dungeons offer a variety of Objectives to complete, player feedback stated that the action of completing each Objective felt tedious. We hope that providing bonuses, such as the increase to mobility while carrying certain Objective items, will streamline and vary the experience of completing Objectives. This adjustment is merely a starting point, and we intend to extend this philosophy to keys in a future update.
General
Effects like Stun and Freeze can be applied to Elite Monsters twice as long before they become Unstoppable.
Reviewed class skills to confirm that all classes have access to sufficient skills that remove control impairing effects.
Many Legendary Powers have had updates to their effectiveness.
Barbarian
A flat 10% passive damage reduction has been added for the Barbarian Class. Some Skill Tree passives had their damage reduction effects reduced to compensate.
The Whirlwind Skill now deals more damage and consumes more Fury.
The Double Swing Skill Enhancement refunds its full Fury cost when used on Stunned or Knocked Down enemies.
Druid
Companion Skills will now deal heavily increased damage.
All Ultimate Skills have had their cooldowns reduced.
Usability improvements have been made to Maul and Pulverize.
Using a non-Shapeshifting Skill will transform a Druid back into their human form.
Necromancer
Summoned Minions will die more often, requiring players to utilize Corpses more often.
Many bonuses in the Book of the Dead have had their stats increased.
The damage dealt by the Corpse Explosion skill has been reduced.
The brightness of the Skeletal Warriors and Mages has been reduced.
Rogue
Upgrades for Subterfuge Skills have had their bonuses increased.
Multiple passive Skills have had their bonuses increased.
All Imbuement Skills have had their cooldowns increased.
Sorcerer
Charged Bolt’s damage was increased and the Mana cost to cast has decreased.
Decreased the damage of Chain Lightning and reduced its effectiveness against Bosses.
Decreased the cooldown for the Incinerate Skill’s Enchantment bonus.
Firewalls will now spawn underneath enemies more frequently when using its Enchantment bonus.
Increased the Lucky Hit chance for the Meteor Skill’s Enchantment bonus.
Developer’s Note: Whenever we introduce changes to our Classes, it is with the goal of making both them and their Skills feel impactful and powerful—your feedback has helped us uphold this ideal. Some players have adeptly noticed that certain Skills were too powerful. One of our goals for Skills is to have them be interesting to wield and interactive in terms of itemization and combat feel. We’ve made some changes to help in this regard, with one example being the Necromancer’s Minions. We’ve made a change that makes them more vulnerable in combat, which will make raising the dead a more active component of the Necromancer’s gameplay. Launch is just the first step of our Class balance journey, and you can expect further updates that iterate on this pillar of Diablo IV.
UI
Fixed an issue where the built-in Screen Reader was not reading key prompts, game options details, and other UI text.
Fixed an issue where actions could not be bound to the mouse wheel.
Fixed an issue where Evade couldn’t be bound to the right Analog Stick on controller.
Chat will now display on the left side of the screen when using the centered action bar configuration.
A character’s stats will be displayed by default when players click the Materials & Stats button within their Inventory.
The Move and Interact inputs can now be mapped to one button while the Primary Attack input is mapped to a secondary button.
The sans serif font used in-game has been replaced with a new serif font.
Encounters
Fixed multiple issues that allowed bosses, like the Butcher, to become unresponsive.
The Butcher has been re-evaluated for difficulty and will present a greater challenge in World Tiers III and IV.
Bosses such as T’chort, Malnok, Vhenard, and others were reevaluated for melee character difficulty, resulting in changes to attacks and fight mechanics.
Fixed an issue where Vampire Brutes using the Shadow Enchant affix would chain-cast Impale.
Cellars
Increased the chance for a dungeon Event to occur in Cellars.
Cellars will now consistently reward a chest upon completion.
Fixed an issue where Cellars would prematurely be marked as complete.
Fixed an issue where the guaranteed elite monster would be absent from a Cellar.
General quality of life
Fixed an issue where players could increase attack speed by move-cancelling attacks early.
Fixed an issue where characters weren’t immune and untargetable after loading into an area.
The Reset Dungeon button has been disabled.
Fixed an issue that caused Gale Valley and Serac Rapture to have less monsters than intended until the campaign quests in those territories were completed.
