Multiversus, the Warner Bros. crossover platform fighter starring Batman, Shaggy, Arya Stark and more, is out for real this time after going into a year-long hibernation. Now that it’s back and out of beta, the fighting game community is assessing if it could have the longevity of fighting games like Super Smash Bros. And some have already realized that smaller local tournaments, which often keep the game’s scene alive, could have trouble running Multiversus. That’s because, one significant change to the free-to-play model may make it prohibitively expensive to host Multiversus tournaments. – Kenneth Shepard Read More
It can be tough figuring out how to manage everything Persona 3 Reload throws at you. Between school life, social life, and fighting demonic shadows during the Dark Hour, your time in Gekkoukan High School is hectic, to say the least. So whether you’re returning to Persona 3 or playing it for the first time via the brand-new remake, here are some tips for how to get the most out of every day on the game’s calendar. — Kenneth Shepard
This week we’re going back to school,collecting Pals, and being reborn—that’s a lot of stuff to do without some tips. Palworld, the breakout hit from developer PocketPair, got a handful of major bug fixes that will make your creature-collecting a lot easier. And Atlus’ recent Persona 3 Reloadrelease means you’ll want to make sure you’re a Grade A student and a damn good friend—luckily we’re here to help you with all of that. The week also saw the surprise-debut of a Final Fantasy 7 Rebirth demo, and with progress carrying over to the main game, you’ll want to make sure you do everything you can with Sephiroth and company.
That’s why we’ve gathered the biggest, best, and most helpful Kotaku tips of the week, all in one spot. You’re welcome.
Image: Ubisoft, Atlus, Rockstar Games, Mundfish / Shedworks / Nintendo / Claire Jackson / Kotaku, Screenshot: Remedy Games / Kotaku
If you’re stuck on a tricky boss fight or a challenging puzzle, or just want to make the most of your time with a new release, we’ve got you covered. Here are some of the tips we found most helpful this week.
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Massive Entertainment’s upcoming open-world Star Wars game, Outlaws,is coming to PC, PlayStation 5, and Xbox Series X/S sometime in 2024. The game doesn’t follow Jedi and deal with The Force, but instead will give us a look into the seedier side of life in the Star Wars universe as it follows the exploits of a smuggler and scoundrel in an open-world format encompassing multiple planets. Let’s take a look at everything we know about the next trek to a galaxy far, far away. – Kenneth Shepard Read More
Persona 3 Reload, the from-the-ground-up remake of Atlus’ beloved PlayStation 2 role-playing game, is coming out on February 2. But while the 2006 classic is getting a modern retouching very soon, it won’t include everything added to the original in the updated Persona 3 Portable and Persona 3 FES editions, the former of which is on Game Pass right now for Xbox and PC. So if you want to play one of the best additions to the base game, you still have a chance before Persona 3 Portable leaves Game Pass on January 14. – Kenneth Shepard Read More
If you’ve been playing Grand Theft Auto V or GTA Online via Game Pass lately, you might need to pony up and buy a copy to sustain your criminal enterprise. Rockstar’s crime saga is expected to leave Xbox Game Pass in about two weeks. – Claire Jackson Read More
Image: Mundfish / Shedworks / Nintendo / Claire Jackson / Kotaku
Happy new year! This week the Kotaku weekend guide returns with a brisk list of games for your consideration. Maybe some of these you hadn’t considered playing before, or perhaps others have been sitting on your backlog. In that case, consider this your reminder to get working on that stubborn list of yours. – Claire Jackson Read More
If you’ve been eyeing (or playing) Alan Wake II lately but haven’t yet played any of the other titles in Remedy Games’ growing “Remedyverse” of connected stories, then you might want to take a look at the Epic Games Store right now. During its “Developer Spotlight” sale, Alan Wake Remastered, Alan Wake American Nightmare, Control, and both the standard and deluxe versions of Alan Wake II are all available for some pretty generous discounts. – Claire Jackson Read More
Ahead of next month’s Grand Theft Auto VI trailer, three classic GTA games from the PlayStation 2 era are coming to Netflix’s mobile library in December. These might not be the versions fans actually want ported to more platforms, though, even if some visual improvements seem to have been made.
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We first reported on Rockstar’s plans to remaster GTA III, Vice City, and San Andreas for new consoles and mobile devices back in 2021. These remastered ports were finally released as Grand Theft Auto: The Trilogy – The Definitive Edition in November of that year on Xbox, PlayStation, and Switch. While select parts of them looked okay, the games were a mess, with new bugs, broken graphics, and other glitches. The issues were so bad that Rockstar Games did a very un-Rockstar thing and apologized to fans while offering them free copies of the original versions of the games on PC. And while the remastered GTA Trilogy did get some updates to fix its more egregious shortcomings, the games are still not fan favorites. That all being so, I’m not sure many people will be excited about these remasters making the leap to phones.
On November 29, Netflix announced that Grand Theft Auto III, Grand Theft Auto: Vice City, and Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas—all released originally on the PS2 between 2001 and 2004—would be available on mobile phones starting on December 14. As with other Netflix-hosted games, you’ll need to be a Netflix subscriber to play these GTA ports on your iPhone or Android device.
Things look a bit different this time around…
Interestingly, comparing the screenshots of the new Netflix ports to the current console and PC versions of the GTA Trilogy reveals some changes have been made. I noticed this a lot in an early moment in GTA: Vice City. It seems as if the colors have been toned down a smidge and the overall image looks darker and more like the original PS2 version’s.
Screenshot: Rockstar Games / GTA Series Videos / Netflix / Kotaku
If you look carefully, you can still see the remastered Vice City Definitive Edition models and textures, so this is still (presumably) that version of the game.
But it seems someone has gone in and tweaked some visual settings—including the fog, based on other screenshots—to perhaps improve these new Netflix ports.
I’m intrigued by the changes, even if they are minor, as they seem to help the remastered versions of these beloved games look a bit more like Rockstar’s original open-world classics. So I might check these out once they arrive on mobile devices next month. I just have to remember how the hell you play Netflix games on a phone.
Daredevil: The Man Without Fear, a 2003 PlayStation 2 superhero game that was in development by 5,000 Ft. Studios for the PlayStation 2 before getting canceled, has resurfaced after 20 years with a new playable build.
The game preservation group Hidden Palace managed to release a playable version of Daredevil: The Man Without Fear on October 31 via member Casuallynoted, who apparently obtained the build from an anonymous developer of 5,000 Ft. It’s a late prototype with a fair amount of bugs, including possible crashes after the first chapter and getting stuck behind walls. That said, it still features the bones of what 5,000 Ft. Studios and publisher Encore Inc. were working on in collaboration with Sony during the early aughts.
The brainchild of 5,000 Ft. Studios, a Nevada-based developer whose previous credits only included two Army Men ports from 2001, Daredevil: The Man Without Fear started out as a simple project before ballooning in scope. Originally known as Daredevil: The Video Game before adopting the same name as author Frank Miller’s 1993 comic, Daredevil was prototyped as a series of “vignettes” showcasing pivotal moments in the blind crimefighter’s history.
However, as the Lost Media Wiki explains, Marvel’s imminent Daredevil movie project led 5,000 Ft. to rework the concept into an open-world adventure, now also slated for the Xbox and PC. Tensions arose when Sony had very specific requests for new types of gameplay to add to the game, while Marvel wanted it to hew more closely to the upcoming Daredevil movie.
More trouble struck when the developers tried to adapt the then-popular RenderWare engine to the project’s changing needs. After running into serious issues there, they reduced the project’s scope from open-world adventure back to linear brawler. Problems continued as “internal strife” at the studio caused it to miss its February 2003 release. A new date was set for summer, but staff departures and continuing bickering between Sony and Marvel put the final nails in the Daredevil game’s coffin. 5,000 Ft. Studios itself closed in 2012.
Now, though, thanks to an anonymous developer reportedly connected to 5,000 Ft. Studios, a near-final build of the canceled PlayStation 2 game has been released onto the internet via the game preservation group Hidden Palace.
Hidden Palace
Although it wound up getting canceled due to creative differences between Marvel and Sony, based on the video it looks pretty tight. It recalls early-aughts 3D superhero gems such as The Incredible Hulk and Spider-Man,with a bit of Tomb Raider mixed in, too.
The game apparently tells an original story based on the 1999 Elektra Lives Again comic and starring Daredevil’s arch-enemy The Kingpin. It’s a shame, then, that it was canceled just before completion. As The Hidden Palace notes, only the Game Boy Advance ever ended up getting a Daredevil game. The much less ambitious Daredevil: The Man Without Fear for Game Boy Advance arrived just in time for the Mark Steven Johnson-directed live-action film.
As Hidden Palace reports, the newly released build of Daredevil: The Man Without Fear is playable, but with several bugs and game-breaking glitches since it’s unfinished. It’s nice that this finally snuck out 20 years later, though still a bummer the project never got to live up to its potential. With the success of Insomniac Games’ Marvel’s Spider-Man series, and the Wolverine game on the horizon, maybe Daredevil will get another shot at video game redemption.
Metal Gear Solid: Master Collection Vol. 1 gathers some of the best games ever made and puts them all on modern platforms in one convenient package. Unfortunately, a laundry list of weird caveats and shortcomings at launch make the new anthology hard to celebrate. Why is one of the best franchises in gaming history not pulling out all the stops?
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Out October 24 on PlayStation 5, Xbox Series X/S, Switch, and Windows PC, Metal Gear Solid: Master Collection Vol. 1 has been stalked by controversy for months now, with questions about subpar performance on Nintendo Switch and a lack of bells and whistles on “next-gen” platforms like PlayStation 5, Xbox Series X/S, and PC. The anthology features five main games—Metal Gear, Metal Gear 2: Solid Snake, Metal Gear Solid, Metal Gear Solid 2: Sons of Liberty, and Metal Gear Solid 3: Snake Eater—and includes the oddball Snake’s Revenge and the NES and Famicom ports of Metal Gear as bonuses.But now that it’s finally here, it’s hard not to be disappointed by how publisher Konami has gone about assembling it.
First up is the lack of a visual upgrade on new platforms, or parity with the original versions on Switch. As shared prior to release, Metal Gear Solid still only plays at 30fps across all versions (it was never remastered for 2011’s Metal Gear Solid HD Collection by Bluepoint Games). The Switch version of Metal Gear Solid 2 and 3 are also locked at 30fps (MGS2 originally ran at 60fps on PlayStation 2). All three games max out at 1080p as well, with no 4K resolution options for the stronger hardware versions.
Even without any big improvements, Konami notes that the launch versions still suffer from various bugs and performance issues it plans to patch sometime in the future. A full list of the shortcomings was provided to IGN. “Across Metal Gear Solid 1, 2, and 3, bug fixes are also planned, specifically on MGS2,” the site noted. “Konami warned the game may significantly slow down in certain cutscenes, which sounds worrying. A patch to reduce processing load is planned.” Visual options like CRT scanlines and the ability to switch between windowed and full-screen mode in the options menu in the two MSX games are also MIA at the moment.
There’s also the laggy pause button. Konami added the option to pause during cutscenes, a long-requested feature for the story-heavy stealth series. Footage from copies of the game that leaked early, however, showed that it can take up to 10 seconds for the game to register the pause after the button’s pressed, taking some of the shine off the new option. It’s still unclear if that’s intentional or will be patched down the road.
The Metal Gear Solid: Master Collection Vol. 1 is, perhaps less surprisingly, encountering issues on PC as well. Initial Steam reviews are very mixed, with players complaining about unintuitive keybindings, poor UI, and a lack of aspect ratio options. “Take this with a grain of salt, the game literally just launched, but damn the video settings, button mapping, and poor UI/UX for the collection is pretty sour,” wrote one player. “I am sure it will improve over time, but yikes.”
Most galling for me personally are the games altogether missing from the physical Switch version of the collection. In North America at least, only Metal Gear, Metal Gear 2: Solid Snake, and Snake’s Revenge are actually on the game card. The three Metal Gear Solid games, which are the main ones advertised on the front of the box, must be downloaded separately. As someone who treats their Switch like a physical repository for retro remasters and re-issues, it’s frustrating to have to rely on an internet connection and a temporary online storefront to have access to all-time classics. It sounds like the Japanese physical release at least also includes the first Metal Gear Solid on the game card.
Many of the initial reviews for Metal Gear Solid: Master Collection Vol. 1 have noted these shortcomings while still pointing out that at the end of the day these games still play great and remain some of the most profound meditations on geopolitics, war, and the military industrial complex the medium has ever produced. “I think it’s great that such a huge swathe of Metal Gear history is now readily available and easily playable on modern systems,” writes The Verge’s Jon Porter. “But there’s also a part of me that thinks Konami missed an opportunity to give Metal Gear Solid in particular a fresh coat of paint and update it for a modern audience.”
The video game industry is generally so bad at preserving its past I wish it would go all out when it decides to finally take the opportunity to repackage old games and sell them again. If that means charging more so be it. I’d gladly pay $100 for the definitive edition of all of these games. Maybe we’ll eventually get that one day. In the meantime I hope Konami’s planned post-launch updates give the collection some of the additional love it deserves.
“There was a sense that video games were toys. And Sony is not a toy company.” That’s how a new mini-oral history about PlayStation revolutionizing console gaming begins over at IGN. The words belong to former head of Sony Worldwide Studios, Shawn Layden, and they ring true for anyone who grew up with an NES or SNES.…
Yep, Super Turbo takes the Street Fighter crown, at least in our book. Truth be told, this is highly subject to personal opinion, and I think any of the top six or seven games in our rankings could easily be number one for someone else. Perhaps for you…and that’s cool. Since Super Street Fighter II Turbo is our top pick, I’ll try to convey why it rules.
For starters, it ended up being the ultimate evolution of Street Fighter II, the single most important fighting game the genre’s known. Capcom made two more attempts to follow up Super Street Fighter II Turbo, but as you’ve perhaps read by now, they had their own issues. This is the entry that stuck, and the one everyone still enjoys today.
Super Turbo was the logical culmination of the journey Capcom started in 1991, incorporating everything its designers learned from The World Warrior, Champion Edition, Hyper Fighting, and even the underwhelming Super into one final, excellent game. It also brought its own innovations, like meter-fueled super combos, throw softening (“teching”), and even rudimentary air juggling.
Characters, too, gained crucial moves that completed their movesets. Imagine Fei Long without his chicken wing, Ryu without his advancing fierce and overhead, Chun without upkicks, Gief without green glove, Honda without oicho. (You don’t have to, because Super exists.) The character balance wasn’t perfect, but was good enough to create consistently fun match-ups, and it was exciting when someone went on a streak with a low-tier like Cammy or T. Hawk.
(And let’s not forget series mainstay Akuma debuted here, becoming the first tournament-banned character in FGC history.)
All of the above, combined with the return of Hyper Fighting’s blessedly fast action, worked together to create short, intense matches largely devoid of gimmicks, instead focused on the 2D fighting basics of neutral, footsies, and zoning. Super Turbo was both fun as hell, and an excellent teacher of fighting game fundamentals.
When I play Super Turbo with a similarly skilled opponent today it’s like we’re engaged in an alternate form of communication, a hidden language composed of attacks and retreats, reads and feints. Sometimes words aren’t needed, because our hands are saying everything through the screen. I’m always chasing that mental “zone” feeling in video games, and at its best, Super Street Fighter II Turbo gets me there like few others.
While I’ve played and enjoyed most of the Street Fighter games, Super Street Fighter II Turbo is the one I’ll always go back to. I hold it in the same esteem as Doom, Super Mario Bros. 3, R-Type, Dark Souls…masterpieces that always remain relevant, and always have more to offer. — Alexandra Hall
It’s the best-selling home video game console of all time. So yeah, the PlayStation 2 has some good games. But which of them are the best?
We’ve put this list (which is not in any kind of order or ranking) together based on a couple of considerations. Firstly, the list includes our own personal favorites from the time, of course. But also, given the fact we’ve got some perspective on the PS2 now, we wanted to acknowledge some special games that defined the PS2 experience, the kinds of games that we maybe only ever got because of the combination of the console’s place in time and its market dominance.
Before we begin, though, please remember to spare us your sob stories. If your favourite PS2 game isn’t here, chin up. Just because we didn’t dig a game—or didn’t think it was good or weird enough to make a list called THE BEST, or felt it was more deserving of going on another platform’s list (Rez, Resident Evil 4, etc)—doesn’t make your own feelings on it somehow invalid!
What do you mean you don’t know what this is? Isn’t it obvious?Image: Impact Acoustics / Kotaku / LUMIKK555 (Shutterstock)
2022 was the year I decided to get serious about my retrogaming setup. I was tired of having a 104lb CRT dominating half my computer desk and a PlayStation 2, MiSTer, and whatever other consoles I was currently interested in always in peripheral vision. After a bit of thought I concluded that the TV and all the consoles would be better off on a wheeled cart. A retro cart, if you would. It could live in my closet, or be wheeled out to wherever seemed fun. So I started speccing that out.
The best form factor ended up having two lower shelves—for the consoles, a smaller TATE-friendly/PAL-compatible PVM-1354Q CRT a friend had recently sold me, and bookshelf speakers—with the big-ass 29” TV up on the third, top tier. Both CRTs could accept RGB or YPbPr/component video…which to standardize on? Component seemed easier for a couple reasons, so I went with that. Then I just needed a switcher to not only flip between MiSTer, PS2, Dreamcast, Nintendo 64, Wii, and Xbox, but to route any of those sources to either of the two screens.
That’s six in, two out. I wanted optical audio switching, too, for MiSTer, Xbox, and possibly PS2. Combined, those requirements take us far beyond the feature set of any basic switcher you’ll find on Amazon or Ali these days. Thus I turned to the bright, shining past of the mid-aughts, when component video adoption peaked and specialty A/V products catered to the more esoteric YPbPr-wrangling needs of the era’s home theater enthusiasts.
A few promising candidates surfaced. One high-end mid-2000s switcher was very fancy indeed and could actually transcode between analog and optical audio (wow!). But ultimately I was won over by the still-fancy but slightly more modest Impact Acoustics Deluxe Component Video / Digital Audio 6 In / 2 Out Matrix Switch, aka the “40697″. You can see it above. Not only can it route those six inputs to either screen, it can output to both screens simultaneously…the same source, or two different sources. Oh dear, am I blushing?
After a week or two I managed to snag a NOS (new old stock) one on eBay, and it proved just as performant as hoped: Any console on any display is now just a button-push away. The cart project is still in progress as I seek a working Xbox, look into appropriate Wii hax, and transition to a new display up top (kinda wishing I had gone with RGB now, actually!) but I’ve already been enjoying having all my beloved old games in a single, self-contained, no-compromises tower of power. Even got a beanbag! Hell yeah.
Space Quest IV: Carolyn Petit and the Time RippersScreenshot: Sierra Entertainment
It must have been Christmas of 1991 that I found Space Quest IV: Roger Wilco and the Time Rippers under the tree, and got the gift of seeing exciting new possibilities in games.
I was a fan of adventure games, sure, having played a few games in Sierra’s King’s Quest series, not to mention Lucasfilm’s brilliant and bizarre early titles like Maniac Mansion and The Secret of Monkey Island. But this was my first experience with Space Quest, Sierra’s comedic sci-fi series starring Roger Wilco, the hapless space-janitor who finds himself thrust into one cosmic misadventure after another.
To be honest, I don’t remember much about the quality of Space Quest IV’s puzzles. What I do remember is how varied and vibrant its universe seemed, with harsh alien worlds, moody cantinas, and glitzy space-malls. But what really knocked my socks off about the game was how meta it was. After progressing a bit through Space Quest IV: Roger Wilco and the Time Rippers itself, poor Roger finds himself flung into (the non-existent) Space Quest XII: Vohaul’s Revenge II.
Screenshot: Sierra Entertainment
Today, it’s not so uncommon for games to break the fourth wall and wink knowingly at the player about being video games, to play with conventions in ways both tired and inspired. But wow, was this exciting for me in 1991! The game also sees you venturing into Space Quest X: Latex Babes of Estros (an obvious riff on the 1986 Infocom adventure Leather Goddesses of Phobos) and all the way back to the original Space Quest, which already looked humorously primitive and pixelated compared to 1991’s state-of-the-art graphics, making high(er)-definition Roger Wilco all the more conspicuous.
Screenshot: Sierra Entertainment
Space Quest IV may or may not be a great game, I honestly don’t remember well enough to say. I just remember sitting there on my Christmas break, awestruck by the clever meta-ness of it all, and having my mind expanded about the possibilities of what video game storytelling and structure could do.
Silent Hill fans can finally—finally!—rejoice. Konami has confirmed that, after accidentally leaking some details earlier today, the beloved survival horror game Silent Hill 2 will make a return as a timed PlayStation exclusive, alongside a bevy of other Silent Hill projects currently in the works. You can watch the stream via the embed below.
The stream opened with that iconic shot of Silent Hill 2 protagonist James Sunderland staring into the mirror, wondering if his wife Mary is waiting for him. James then walks through the foggy streets of a town before we see a cinematic montage of familiar sights impressively rendered in modern graphics. The trailer was short but confirmed two things: Silent Hill 2 is available to wishlist on PS5 right now, and it will absolutely be locked on PlayStation (and PC) for 12 months after launch.
Konami
Konami also talked a bit more about the other projects in development right now. We saw a glimpse of Silent Hill Towerfall, developed by Observation and Stories Untold creators No Code. Details are scarce on this project, but if you’re familiar with No Code’s work, then you can expect some “deep psychological horror,” according to the studio’s creative director John McKellen.
Another project Konami showed off was Return to Silent Hill, the upcoming film directed by Christophe Gans (the writer-director of 2006’s Silent Hill) which “tells the story of a young man” coming back to the town only to find nightmares.
There was some chat about Silent Hill merch like shirts and statues, before Konami jumped to a third project, an apparent “whole new experience.” Titled Silent Hill Ascension, the project is a “live, real-time interactive series” that sounds akin to Until Dawn. You can change outcomes, be part of the scenes, and shape the Silent Hill canon. But if you fuck up, you fuck up because there is, apparently, no reset button. It’s due in 2023.
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Screencap from the Silent Hill f trailer.Screenshot: Konami / Kotaku
The livestream wrapped with one final announcement of a completely new Silent Hill game, titled Silent Hill f. Serene footage showed a young girl exploring a foggy town; slowly, invasive tendrils make them themselves known, followed by very colorful, all-consuming fungal growths. The brief trailer ends on a shot of the girl’s now-infested corpse, just as its face sloughs off. Silent Hill f is developed by Neobards Entertainment, with story by Ryukishi07, creature and character design by kera, and produced by former Nintendo developer Motoi Okamoto.
This remake of Silent Hill 2 has been rumored for a hot minute now. Back in May 2022, screenshots purporting to be related to the franchise started making the rounds online, with Layers of Fear developer Bloober Team attached to the project. Bloober Team announced a month later a totally separate horror game within the Layers of Fear universe that appears to be a reboot of sorts. However, Bloober Team is now leading development on Silent Hill 2 Remake, with Konami serving as the game’s publisher.
While Silent Hill 2 Remake may be a PlayStation exclusive for 12 months after it launches, the game will also be available on PC. Sorry, Xbox folks.
Silent Hill 2 first came out in 2001 for the PlayStation 2. It put the new console’s horsepower to good use, rendering notoriously thick, rolling fog that cranked the atmosphere to previously unknown heights. The plot had protagonist James Sunderland visiting the doomed town after receiving a letter from his previously deceased wife, Mary. As you can imagine, following the trail leads nowhere good, and we gradually learn that Sunderland is a very, very broken man.
Various sequels followed over the years, each with their own strengths and weaknesses, but Silent Hill 2 went down as a particular fan favorite for its fantastic atmosphere, terrifying situations, and psychological depth. It also served as the first appearance of the now-beloved antagonist Pyramid Head.
After years of very little new or exciting Silent Hill content, it looks like fans finally be feasting like it’s 2001 all over again.
