The player known as Let Me Solo Her has become an icon in the Elden Ring community in the year since FromSoftware’s action RPG launched. It started when he used the game’s online co-op features to help a player fight Malenia, one of the game’s hardest boss battles, wearing nothing but some underwear and a pot on his head. Now, it looks like he’s attempting to play a version of Elden Ring where every enemy is replaced by Malenia, and he’s streaming it starting on, March 17, for your enjoyment.Players modding Elden Ring to replace enemies with Malenia isn’t necessarily new, as mods of that kind were circulating throughout 2022. However, given that Let Me Solo Her’s vendetta against Malenia is an Elden Ring legend, at this point, it’s just the natural next step in this saga. Will Bandai Namco send him more swords commemorating all these kills he’s racking up in nothing but some white underwear and a helmet?
Let me solo her
The stream is ongoing on Let Me Solo Her’s YouTube channel, and the mod already makes early segments of the game terrifying to watch. Where once low-level enemies wandered in the base game, Elden Ring is now entirely populated by one of the most powerful bosses in FromSoftware’s game, who just happens to be able to heal herself.
Screenshot: FromSoftware / Kotaku
So far, he’s mostly running past Malenias that appear in the open world, and only has to face them head on when he reaches a boss fight. Hey, we’ve all done it. But that doesn’t stop each of them from making swings with their giant swords as he sprints past, and it’s easy to imagine a situation where many Malenia make it hard to simply flee. If you, like me, are too scared to take on this challenge yourself, sit back and watch Let Me Solo Her do it, instead. Personally, I’d rather try the mod that turns enemies into Pokémon. That seems less terrifying.
While seeing cool remixes of the original game is fun, most Elden Ring fans are looking for new content for the game, which Bandai Namco and FromSoftware finally announced back in February. Not much is known about the upcoming expansion, but fans are already speculating about what characters might be in it based on what little information and art we have at this point.
There was a lot of hype going into Lightfall, Destiny 2‘s big cyberpunk expansion. The reality has been much more muted, full of ups and downs, fun discoveries and tedious chores. Live-service games are unwieldy creatures to try and examine under a microscope, and Destiny remains one of the toughest of them all.
Free-to-play sandbox changes are launching alongside the paid campaign, and separate seasonal story missions will be dropping week to week as hotfixes continue rolling out. Below fellow Kotaku writer and Destiny 2 glutton Zack Zwiezen and I discuss the highs and lows of Lightfall’s initial kick-off.
Zack Zwiezen: Eyes up, Guardians. We will be talking about Destiny.
Ethan Gach: Okay, let’s start with the Lightfall campaign. What were your most and least favorite parts? The high point for me was obviously the opening cinematic that shows The Traveler confronting The Witness and everything going sideways. The low point was crawling through air ducts while Osiris barked at me to quit wasting time and become one with the green space magic (Strand).
Zack: My favorite part was also the opening bit and the ending. It felt like stuff was happening and actually seeing the Traveler do something was amazing. Finally, the orb is helping us. My least-favorite part was how much the rest of the main campaign feels like season three of Lost, just spinning its wheels until the big finale.
It’s ironic that Osiris is so angry about us wasting time when this whole campaign feels like a waste of time.
Ethan: I felt extremely torn throughout most of it between the gravity of the story Bungie is telling at this moment and the lightheartedness of the ‘80s tropes littered throughout the campaign.
Neomuna feels like a cross between a Saturday morning cartoon and an afternoon at a futuristic space mall. The training montage with Strand was cute but also felt like a complete waste of time. Nimbus has grown on me over time, but I think they suffer from being the loan representative of an entire new civilization.
Zack: I kept wondering, as I played through the campaign, what the point of this expansion was. And the weird mix, as you mention, of ‘80s tropes and serious storytelling, didn’t help. With Witch Queen, I really liked how the narrative developed the idea that the Light isn’t some inherently good thing. That it can instead be used by anyone and how that really shook up Zavala and others. This time around the Strand was just a fun Darkness power we got via a Rocky-like montage, beat Calus (again) and I was left going “Okay…cool?”
I really enjoy exploring Neomuna and Nimbus has also grown on me. And I do like how the post-campaign quests seem to be expanding more on the lore of the planet and its people. But compared to last year and Witch Queen, I mostly felt disappointed by Lightfall.
Even the Vanguard have no idea what the hell is going on.Image: Bungie
Ethan: Yes, Witch Queen felt like a very tightly calibrated story with a beginning, middle, and end that built out the lore and stakes of the larger story while still focusing mostly on expanding on Savathûn’s backstory and motivations. No characters really provided that in Lightfall.
The end-game quests are much stronger than many of the campaign missions, I think, and probably would have provided a nice middle point to help the expansion breathe a bit more. I think backloading finally getting Strand, learning about Neomuna’s history, and also what Rohan was up to prior to our arrival, only served to make the campaign feel even more rushed and underexplained.
Zack: Yup. And I’ll also admit now that I still don’t fully understand why The Witness couldn’t just pop down to Neomuna and get his fancy Veil thing and do what he needed to do. And I also found it weird that Bungie—which is usually good about seeding stuff long before it becomes a big part of the story—just invented this whole Veil thing outta nowhere.
It just added to the feeling that this was rushed or not planned out as well as past expansions and seasons. Ethan, where did The Witness go? And will we find out before the next expansion via the upcoming seasons?
Ethan: I’m sure there will be hints of it throughout the upcoming seasons. But as tends to be the case with the expansion/season divide, my guess is the plot won’t move forward until The Final Shape. Which is fine, honestly. I get why some people felt like Lightfall needed to deliver more than a couple cutscenes, but I would have been completely satisfied if it felt like Neomuna had been properly fleshed out and had more tension.
I do think it’s been much more successful as a patrol space and launching pad for new exotic missions, however. What have you been thinking of the post-game and the broader content changes and additions in Lightfall?
Terminal Overload is a great public activity, if you can find enough players to help out. Image: Bungie
Zack: I like the quality-of-life stuff! The loadout manager is cool and actually works. The way red frame weapons work now, where you just get the plan right away, is nice. But it’s not all great. I hate the new guardian rank system. And the commendation stuff, which could have been cool, just sucks.
Commendations seem so generic and everyone is giving them out all the time, regardless of how I played, and it all feels pointless at the moment.
Ethan: Yea it feels very caught between wanting to incentivize good behavior and also not lead to negativity. Also since matchmaking is reserved for the easiest activities, I’m also rarely ever paying attention to who I’m playing with.
By the end of a Defiant Battleground or Nightfall I rarely remember who was the person that went out of their way to revive me or kept us from wiping. I do see who is the best dressed, and yet there’s no style commendation. It also feels moot when you can assign one to both people, and a chore considering the number of button presses. How do you feel about the overhauled mods?
Zack: All of the mod changes are solid and much needed, I feel. The mod manager helps a lot too. I really like how much easier it is to play how I want without having to worry about costs or energy types as much. I also like that the artifact mods are now active perks. Overall I now enjoy messing with mods and my build more than before. And I was someone who barely cared about that stuff before because it was such a chore.
Ethan: It definitely feels like the builds have less personality around them. Warmind mods had a very specific flavor, and I miss elemental wells a ton. Overall I think the changes are good to great on average, though I think the way mod benefits are communicated is still a little obtuse, especially for newcomers.
It’s clearly part of the design philosophy at Bungie to slap “+10% kinetic damage” on something, which I admire, but the current system requires learning a lot of keywords to break down what are, at the end of the day, numerical trade-offs. Speaking of which, man it’s rough out there for legendary primaries.
Calus is the Sol System’s favorite lush, but his character arc is more than played out. Image: Bungie
Zack: I’m still mostly using stuff from the last two seasons, which is often a bad sign. I’ve not liked most of the new Neomuna-themed legendary weapons. Which feels like a change from past seasons, where I would often end up swapping out most of my stuff for the new toys and having a good time!
Ethan: The Neomuna weapons haven’t been super exciting, and it’s a pain that the Terminal Overload ones aren’t craftable. I’d almost rather have it be reversed, with Nimbus’ engram weapons being RNG rolls only, since Terminal Overload is a much more targeted farm.
If the Queensguard weapons didn’t also roll out alongside it, I think there would be a lot more talk of Lightfall lacking loot on par with some of the criticisms of Beyond Light, though the exotics are head and shoulders above other expansions (with the exception of Witch Queen’s Osteo Striga, which remains undefeated).
One complaint I have is that I’m over 30 hours into the new content and still don’t have a new crafted weapon yet, with the exception of the Vexcalibur exotic. As with Strand, the campaign would have been a great time to level one of the new guns up and grow attached to it. Now, I almost don’t care anymore. Crafting in general, while less painful, still feels under-developed. It was the key feature of last year’s expansion, and it feels like a footnote now.
Zack: *Looks off into the distance, dreaming of Osteo Striga. What a gun…*
But yeah without the Queensguard weapons I’d be pretty damn bummed about the loot this time around. And about crafted weapons, I too lack any still. And I often forget about the whole system now that I just hit a button to get the plans. It really feels like a misfire, and keeping it around in this current half-baked form feels bad. Rip it out and just let us have generic plans that can be used to craft stuff, or something.
I do think it’s maybe telling that we’ve talked so much about the new expansion and neither of us seems excited about Strand. I don’t hate Strand or anything like that. I enjoy using it. But it’s not as exciting to me as the other subclasses after the big 3.0 overhauls.
New Exotics are the highlight of Lightfall. Image: Bungie
Ethan: It’s definitely very powerful, and I like that it can be utilized very effectively in both offensive and defensive ways, sometimes even in the same build. The grappling hook, like every moment-to-moment action in Destiny 2, feels great. Sorry though, not trading away my grenade for it. I mostly find myself using it now when I want to speed through lower-level grinds. I also don’t find it quite as visually and auditorily satisfying as Stasis, which, as evidenced by the stellar Verglas Curve exotic bow, remains so satisfying every time. But the damage output on Strand is wild. Players bemoaned the boring-sounding Titan Strand subclass, but I think it turned out to be the most fun version of it.
Zack: Oh the grappling hook feels soooooo good. But yeah, giving up a grenade for it and the long cooldown compared to the campaign makes it far less enticing to use regularly.
I think your comment about it not being as visually or auditorily satisfying is accurate and it leads me to the other problem with it: It just doesn’t seem as unique. The other subclasses being mostly elemental worked well to make them stand out. Strand is the first new subclass that seems less obvious to explain to someone. It’s like green space strings…I guess?
Are you excited about the rest of the year? Or has Lightfall dampened your Destiny 2 excitement for 2023? I’ll admit that I came into this new expansion and year very excited and pumped after Witch Queen and the last two seasons. And this has definitely made me a bit less excited for the rest of the year.
Neomuna is full of beauty that never gets its due. Image: Bungie
Ethan: I was extremely burnt out after last fall, and didn’t play a ton of last season. So far, I’ve actually been playing more of Lightfall than Witch Queen, which I loved it, but which I ended up dropping off pretty hard. We haven’t mentioned the Root of Nightmares raid yet, but I think while not as spectacle-driven as some past ones, it will get a lot more play because of how much shorter and more straightforward it is to grind. That’s especially surprising considering how the more general ramp-up in difficulty this season has completely turned me off of doing Lost Sectors and Nightfalls, which just feel like more trouble than they’re worth right now.
Zack: Yeah it’s interesting to see the raid be so much simpler than past raids. I wonder if Bungie wants more people playing raids or is just trying to shake things up and not always do some complicated beast for each new raid. Yet, meanwhile, other parts of the game are harder than ever. I imagine Bungie has data to back up these choices, but then again, as I write this, I see the hotfix patch notes for the game mention increasing rewards on solo Lost Sector runs. So maybe this is more evidence that this expansion and update didn’t get as much time in the oven as it needed
Ethan: As we look forward to the rest of the year—and to be clear, a Destiny expansion really is a year-long $100 commitment at this point (both for Bungie and the player)—there are definitely some things coming that I wish could have arrived alongside Lightfall. An in-game looking-for-group tool is one of the big ones, but the biggest of all is an end to the Power grind. It’s tedious. It gates content. And it’s just not fun.
RPG leveling has always been an uncomfortable fit for Destiny, which is a shooter at heart and fundamentally about chasing guns. Without skill trees or stats to pour points into, there’s really no reason, besides padding. to have to hit an arbitrary number before being able to participate in new content. It’s always been a fundamental tension in Destiny, but I don’t think any of the solutions have ever fixed it. And on a more optimistic note, I’m more confident than ever that the fundamentals of the game are strong enough to survive without it.
Pick an Engram, any Engram.Image: Bungie
Zack: More so than ever, this expansion and season I feel the Power grind and I’m excited to hear Bungie isn’t going to raise it again next season. It feels like the beginning of fully removing it completely. The game can live on without it.
Reading back through this chat, I worry I sound super down on Destiny 2. But I’m still ready for the rest of the year and I’m excited to play more. I think, for me, this expansion just reminded me of how damn good Witch Queen was. It was always going to be hard to compete with that.
Ethan:Lightfall is definitely a slow burn. I can’t recommend it to people who aren’t already invested in the game in some way, unlike The Witch Queen,which was arguably the best shooter campaign of 2022.
But I think, or at least I’m hopeful, that it will bear more fruit over the long run. Season of Defiance is already off to a really strong start compared to other expansion-adjacent seasons, quality of life is improving, a lot of the currencies and grinding is getting streamlined, and there’s room to tie up a lot of interesting loose ends before The Final Shape.
Zack: Agreed. The future is still bright for Destiny 2. We just have to get there.
While Japanese games of varying genres are enjoying success these days, the 2000s and 2010s weren’t as kind, especially in Western markets. Since then, there’s been a lot of speculation as to why Japanese games struggled during these years, often from westerners themselves, with some pointing to key game design trends. But recent comments from Final Fantasy’s creator Hironobu Sakaguchi suggest that the decline of unique console hardware, exclusives, and cultural differences is the likely cause.
By the late 1990s, Japanese games like Final Fantasy VII, Chrono Trigger, or Castlevania had become must-play experiences for their inspired stories, excellent technical presentation, and engaging gameplay. But the following two decades were a different story. Anticipated entries like Final Fantasy XIII failed to reach sales expectations with the rise of Western RPGs such as TK (and many felt that train came off the rails starting with 2001’s Final Fantasy X). Newer attempts at franchises like Sakaguchi’s Blue Dragon on Xbox 360 in 2006 were met with lukewarm reception at best. Meanwhile, Western-made games like Mass Effect had become the new gaming sensations. While some may point to declining interests in traditional, linear forms of storytelling in games as a likely reason, Hironobu Sakaguchi suspects that dramatic changes in the hardware used to play games presented a tough road for Japanese devs to follow.
Sakaguchi: ‘Consoles like the NES and PlayStation were very specific hardware’
Speaking to IGN along with Castlevania senior producer Koji Igarashi, Sakaguchi discussed why he feels Japanese games were of “higher quality” for systems with ‘“specific hardware”’ like the NES or PSX. The answer, as many students of video game history might suspect, has to do with those very consoles. With specific hardware configurations produced by Japanese manufacturers, devs at the time had to become experts in how to best utilize these devices, and there was no language barrier to gaining these skill sets. Sakaguchi said:
“[Specific, Japanese-made consoles] made it easier for Japanese developers to master the hardware, as we could ask Nintendo or Sony directly in Japanese. This is why—I realize it might be impolite to say this—Japanese games were of a higher quality at the time. As a result, Japanese games were regarded as more fun, but when the hardware became easier to develop for, things quickly changed.”
Castlevania producer Koji Igarashi added that the “long history of PC culture” in the West was better adapted to the hardware trends that would follow in the 2000s, a trend which continues to this day. The PS5 and Xbox Series consoles more closely match PC hardware than dedicated gaming boxes perhaps ever have. That change wasn’t easy.
Igarashi describes the journey as a tough growing pain. “Japanese developers could no longer rely on their speciality as console developers,” he said, “and had to master PC development.”
While some may be quick to point out, perhaps, that the PS3’s unique and troublesomeCell Broadband Engine certainly fits the criteria of “specific hardware,” it was maybe too specific. Though Sony made incredible promises for its performance (and odd commercials), its unique architecture was a chore for developers around the world, leading Sony to pivot away from it for the PS4. But the 2000s and 2010s were also a time where Japanese games, particularly Final Fantasy, made the switch to multi-platform releases. Devil May Cry 4 was another notable series that made the jump to other platforms. This shattered the trend of focusing on a specific set of hardware constraints. And at the time it didn’t really go over too well. It seems natural now to expect a Final Fantasy to appear on multiple consoles, but the announcement of XIII coming to Xbox 360 was quite the surprise in the 2000s.
Sakaguchi believes that where we play our games also makes a difference
Sakaguchi also said that the “cultural differences” between Japan and the West make meaningful differences in what kinds of games are made. “In the West,” Sakaguchi said, “children often get their own room from a very young age, whilst in Japan the whole family sleeps together in the same room.” He continued, “such small cultural differences can be felt through the games we make today […] I believe that cherishing my Japanese cultural background is what attracts people towards my games in the first place.”
While I for one can say that my private bedroom probably enhanced my experience of Final Fantasy VII, Sakaguchi’s comments concerning focused mastery of specific hardware likely explained why such epic experiences often felt so unique to the platforms I was playing them on. Or maybe that’s just the nostalgia talking.
Dead Island 2, the open-world zombie RPG that passed through so many hands someone done forgot it in the development oven for over a decade, is finally coming out on April 21. This is a week earlier than originally anticipated, which we love to see. What’s funny, though, is that developer Dambuster Studios is out here saying the game’s development hell gave the studio “quite a lot of goodwill in the end.”
In case you forgot, Dead Island 2 was announced at E3 2014, with work reportedly starting sometime in 2012. Dying Light studio Techland was originally set to spearhead the project, but pivoted to Dying Light 2 instead. This led publisher Deep Silver to shop around for a developer to helm Dead Island 2 until Spec Ops: The Line creators Yager Development stepped up to the plate. Yager toiled away on Dead Island 2 for a few years, with the game making a couple appearances at conventions after being announced in 2014. Unfortunately, Yager didn’t stick. Deep Silver dropped the studio in July 2015, leaving Dead Island 2 lifeless until Hood: Outlaws & Legends studio Sumo Digital took over development in March 2016. Again, like Yager, Sumo didn’t stay long. Deep Silver shifted development hands one more time, this time putting the game in the lap of Homefront: The Revolution creator Dambuster Studios. If you lost track, this means Dead Island 2 has been worked on by at least four different studios throughout its over a decade of development.
Now, Dambuster Studios is asserting a VGC interview that after all this reshuffling and restarting, Dead Island 2‘s development hell actually wasn’t all that bad.
“It definitely concerned us at the start,” technical director Dan Evans-Lawes said. “I remember when we took the project on, I was thinking ‘Is this a poisoned chalice,’ you know what I mean? I think, though, that once we announced the game, people were interested because they knew it had been in ‘development hell’ for however long, and I think people were expecting it to be terrible, and so we were pleasantly surprised when it wasn’t. And I kind of feel like it’s actually given us quite a lot of goodwill in the end. But that’s obviously reliant on people liking the game. But as long as they do, which I think they will, then I don’t think it’s a bad thing at all.”
Dead Island 2 was a total restart for Dambuster
With going through so many hands, you’d be correct to assume that Dead Island 2 was restarted once Dambuster Studios got a hold of it. It was, though not everything was scrapped. Some stuff, such as the Los Angeles location, stayed intact. Most of everything else, however, was rebuilt from the ground up.
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“It was basically a complete restart,” Evans-Lawes said. “Obviously there were some things that had been communicated out already, the [Los Angeles] setting and things like that, and when we looked at it the setting was something that we definitely did want to keep. We felt that it as an opportunity to have a really crazy, diverse cast of characters, and also it’s a very iconic location, so obviously we wanted to keep that. Other than that, it was totally from scratch.”
In a way, Dead Island 2 could be considered a normally developed game under typical circumstances. I mean, Dambuster Studios apparently started working on the game in August 2019, not long before the global pandemic impacted development on a plethora of games. Despite the challenges that come with development, especially under the effects of a widespread health crisis, Dead Island 2, under Dambuster Studios, has only been in the oven for almost four years. That’s not a bad timeline. It’s just wild for Dambuster Studios to insinuate that development hell has, in a roundabout sort of way, helped them. You know, if the game ends up being any good.
Today Capcom streamed a new “Capcom Spotlight” event on Twitch and YouTube. While the cat was already out of the bag on its biggest news—a Resident Evil 4 demo, out today—there was plenty more to see, too.
If you’d like to watch it yourself, you can find the stream archived here. That said, here’s everything we saw in today’s Capcom Spotlight stream.
Mega Man Battle Network Legacy Collection
Capcom
Capcom kicked off by showing off Mega Man Battle Network Legacy Collection again, which includes all 10 mainline entries in the Game Boy Advance’s fun strategy-tinged, chip-collecting RPG series. Director Masakazu Eguchi, presenting himself in the guise of “Mr. Famous,” explained the new Buster “MAX” mode and how the collection will include digital versions of the 499 previously physical “Patch” cards that interact with the later games in the series. The online play sounds robust, too.
This Legacy Collection, split into two volumes, is hitting Switch, PS4, and Windows on April 14.
Street Fighter 6
Capcom
Street Fighter 6 made its customary appearance and revealed its fourth and final in-match commentator, Japanese actress Hikaru Takahashi. With her addition we now have two Japanese and two English announcers. (We also saw muscled helmet enthusiast Marisa beating the crap out of my main grappler, Zangief. She seems cool.) Street Fighter 6 is due June 2.
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Capcom Town and Capcom ID
Capcom
Apparently Capcom is working on a “digital theme park,” called Capcom Town. Let’s let the video explain. It also announced a new “Capcom ID,” a login that will be required for online play in some future games. Hooray.
Exoprimal
Capcom
The team-based dino-battling online shooter Exoprimal appeared again, this time showing more story scenes. Looks cool. Despite apparently not being a live-service game, the game seems riddled with optional extras, including a season pass, pre-order bonuses, copious character costumes, weapon skins, etc. It’ll be interesting to see if the fatigue for this sort of cruft we’ve just seen with Suicide Squad: Kill the Justice League will surface here too.
Anyway, it’s coming to all the major platforms but Switch on July 14, and will be on Xbox Game Pass day one. A two-day open beta test will start on March 17.
Ghost Trick: Phantom Detective
Capcom
We got another peek at the HD remaster of the Nintendo DS cult hit Ghost Trick: Phantom Detective. I’m sure fans will dig all the little bonuses it’s getting, and it’s coming June 30 for Switch, PC, Xbox One, and Windows.
Monster Hunter Rise: Sunbreak
Capcom
Monster Hunter Rise’s Sunbreak expansion has a release date: April 28, 2023. Love that iconic theme music. Capcom will also be holding another digital event in April to talk about the next major update, ver. 1.5.
Resident Evil: Death Island (CG movie)
Capcom
Finally, Resident Evil time. A brief glimpse of the upcoming CG film Resident Evil: Death Island looked suitably creepy; it turns out I don’t care for undead swimming crawly things. Not ashamed to say it. Hopefully I’ll be prepared come its summer release. Jill’s in it too, by the way.
Resident Evil 4 Chainsaw Demo
Capcom
Ah, the main event. The big news? Resident Evil 4’s demo is out today. Unlike many modern game demos, the Resident Evil 4 Chainsaw Demo will not be time- or launch-limited, so you can go nuts in that iconic starting village scene as much as you like. The demo’s out on PS4, PS5, Xbox One, Xbox Series S/X, and Steam.
So, my take? Nothing mind-blowing, but a pleasant showing for sure. I’m looking forward to some of these, though none on the level of Dragon’s Dogma 2. What did you think?
No, I don’t want the smoke.Image: Team Ninja / Kotaku
After about 40 hours of hellish action and sitting around level 95, I’m stuck on Wo Long: Fallen Dynasty’s last boss. I guess that makes sense. This is the end of the game, after all, so of course the finale would be difficult. But reaching this point was perilous for one specific reason: Despite being one of the most approachable Soulslikes, those dual-sworded assassins in Team Ninja’s latest RPG keep kicking my ass, and I hate it.
Wo Long comes to us from Team Ninja, the developer behind the Nioh games and Stranger of Paradise: Final Fantasy Origin. Starting in 184 AD and taking you through the historic Three Kingdoms period, Team Ninja’s newest action-adventure tasks you with ending a peasant revolt helmed by the Taoist in Black, Yu Ji. As the steroid-like drug Elixir proliferates on the battlefield, you’ll encounter all manner of foes, from ruffians like Zhang Liang to zombie soldiers and everything in between. You’ll face off against plenty of wild foes, but none of them strike fear in my heart as much as those stupid assassins.
In Wo Long’s early levels, most of your clashes will involve hardened grunt soldiers and roided-up demon animals. There are a few tougher warriors sprinkled throughout, intelligent and persistent enemies who know the game’s mechanics as well as you, performing copious dodges, critical blows, and deflects that illustrate their battle prowess. These can prove hard exchanges if you’re impatient or spammy. However, slowing down to understand the game’s controls will prove that even the direst of foes, including the infamous warlord Lu Bu, can go down like chumps. It’s not until the second or third main battlefield that you start seeing my dreaded assassins standing in wait, hiding behind an environmental object or biding their time in a building’s ramparts.
Aw shit, here we go again…Screenshot: Team Ninja / Kotaku
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These dudes are the worst for a variety of reasons. They don’t immediately aggro when you walk past, so they can stab you in the back before you know you’re in a fight. They’re incredibly fast and have long, painful combo strings that are difficult to predict and frustrating to deflect. And despite their light armor, assassins can take a bit of a beating. These dual-sworded jerks are a nuisance to fight even one-on-one, as they dart around the battlefield, sprinting in to slice you up before flipping out to throw darts that afflict you with a status effect like heaviness (which slows your movement) or poison.
Worse still are the moments when you fight multiple assassins at once. Because they’re highly skilled fighters, battling against two or three of them by yourself is an insane challenge that could lead to heated gamer moments.
He’s kinda killing me right now…Screenshot: Team Ninja / Kotaku
I remember one instance late in the game when, after dispatching some wolves, I approached a tree-lined pagoda thinking it was safe to just waltz in. As I walked a stoned-covered pathway toward the red, multi-tiered building, my greatest nightmare—two assassins—descended from the branches. They sent me to my grave shortly after, and did so repeatedly every time I dared approach their prized pagoda. No matter how many times I tried, deflecting this attack and dodging that one, the assassins turned me into minced me for the wolves.
It got so heated that I think I gripped my PS5 controller too hard; now it makes a strange rattling noise whenever I pick it up. Something had to be done about these assassins terrorizing my Wo Long playthrough. So, what did I do? I called in all the reinforcements I could and we went in on them. No one can stop my gang—not even those terrifyingly formidable assassins.
I still have to put an end to the Yellow Turban Rebellion by eviscerating the Taoist in Black, and that one, final boss he’s sicced on me, but at least I can rest easy knowing that my hated assassins are largely dead now. That is, until I double back to grind out a few levels in preparation for the final fight again. Maybe my nightmares aren’t completely over, but with the homies that have sworn to get my back, I’m not so scared to face them. Though I’ll totally admit I’m traumatized; I don’t want to see the glint of those dual swords ever again.
Even then, though, in the depths of the game’s nadir, I could see something in the distance, past all the anger and frustration of the moment. So much of the negativity seemed to be coming not from a place of true revulsion, but disappointment, of people’s expectations of Cyberpunk 2077 being “The Witcher 3, with cars” being fumbled.
That spot on the horizon, as tiny as it was, nevertheless had shape and form. It was hope. Big games simply cannot be allowed to die, so even then, as Cyberpunk was on the receiving end of an unprecedented backlash, I could see where this story was headed. The world loves nothing more than a bad game’s redemption arc—see No Man’s Sky for a similar example of the genre—and as bad as Cyberpunk had been at release, surely CD Projekt Red, after spending all that time and money to make the game, would eventually spend enough time and money to fix it?
Screenshot: Cyberpunk 2077 | Kotaku
As time did its thing and moved ever onwards, that spot on the periphery would get bigger, until one day it would displace the negative vibes around the game entirely. One day, Cyberpunk 2077 would be good. Could be good. Please, Cyberpunk 2077, you could hear being said louder by the day, be good.
This game has been out for a while. The team is well past the debut of their creative baby, but being the good parents they are, these devs continue to nurture and support their creation. This game, to this day, is still getting new content after all these years.
We were now free, two years after the game’s nightmarish release, to convince ourselves that this was no longer the same game it had been at launch. Two years of work had righted the ship, given people what they wanted. Cyberpunk 2077 was good now.
But was it? I, along with most of you, had played it in 2020 and thought it was terrible. How much could really have changed since then? With a bunch of time to kill on a recent vacation, and to address my own simmering curiosity over the shape the game was in, I spent a few weeks working my way through Cyberpunk 2077, front to back.
IS CYBERPUNK 2077 GOOD NOW?
That’s a complicated question! But it’s why we’re here, now, in March 2023. What I found was that yes, over the past two years and change a bunch of technical improvements have been made. And when I say improvements, I say it like a battlefield medic would, in that “sawing a man’s legs off” is an improvement over “dying”. My first encounter with the game in December 2020 had lasted for around 10 hours, and for that entire time, even with a relatively new PC, Cyberpunk 2077 ran like trash. So bad it was distracting me from the game itself.
Now it runs great. With DLSS working its black magic and a bunch of patches under its belt, Cyberpunk 2077 is a game reborn on my PC—the exact same PC I had played it on in 2020—with even my modest rig able to run it in 4K, ray-tracing enabled, without skipping a beat. A smoother framerate also made the game’s sluggish shooting and driving sections slightly more tolerable, and best of all everything looked fantastic. So far, so good.
Cyberpunk’s countless and often mission-breaking bugs also seemed far less frequent. There are some still there, ones I think are just part of the way the game was built, like how cars don’t appear in the world so much as they’re dropped, still rocking on their suspension as your character first spots them. Or how police chases simply do not work. Pedestrians still walk and stand through one another, like they’re re-enacting the end of Watchmen. But there are a lot less of these, and I didn’t run into any of the formerly huge issues—like cars and bikes catapulting off the screen—so again, progress.
If bugs and weird glitches were your primary hangup, then sure, Cyberpunk 2077 is “good now”. This technical triage didn’t really matter to me, though. I’m a Battlefield 2042 veteran, I am used to finding pleasure amidst uncooperative polygons. What their taming did at least allow, though, was the opportunity to stop worrying about them, and focus on the game itself. Not what I had wanted it to be, or expected it to be in a post-Witcher 3 world, not what its calamitous launch had prevented it from seemingly ever being. Just me, a smooth framerate and the entirety of Cyberpunk 2077 ahead of me.
OK, I have SOME THINGS I need to say that will sound review-like. I played through 85 hours of Cyberpunk 2077, much of it over my vacation, I need to talk about this with someone.
I started this whole endeavour thinking I’d be writing about one game, Cyberpunk 2077, but I ended up playing two very different ones over those hours. So different, in fact, that I’ve had to basically write this whole piece twice, since so much of my first draft would eventually end up in the bin.
The first Cyberpunk 2077 I played was how I imagine—actually, how I know after looking at Steam achievement statistics showing how few players had completed important sidequests—most people’s time with the game went. You aren’t led through the main storyline so much as you’re shoved, bombarded from the outset with urgent phonecalls, frantic messages, cutscenes where you’re coughing up blood, directions to travel here, have a shootout there, and before you know it you’re at the endgame wondering why you’ve barely scratched the surface of Cyberpunk’s world, cast or myriad of RPG systems.
Writing about this Cyberpunk as I went, my notes used the word “dogshit” a lot. The main storyline is the very worst of Cyberpunk. It doubles down on the game’s failed attempts to be an explosive FPS, shines its brightest lights on Night City’s dullest characters and moves so fast that Cyberpunk’s elaborate endings mean nothing because you haven’t had the time or space to give a shit about anyone affected.
My conclusion to this piece, as the credits rolled, was that Cyberpunk 2077 was unsalvageable. Its problems were too fundamental, the scathing reviews from 2020 justified in their damnation.
Screenshot: Cyberpunk 2077 | Kotaku
CYBERPUNK 2077, PART II
But then something weird happened. Instead of being dumped back at my lair in some kind of overpowered postgame, I found myself reloaded back to a checkpoint just before the final mission. There was no real endgame here (the storylines as they wrap up rule that out), just a soft reboot, presumably so players could jump straight back into those final hours and make different choices, enough to unlock one of the game’s four other endings.
Here, with the main quests all but resolved and my need to see a final cutscene already satisfied, another Cyberpunk 2077 unfurled in front of me. This Cyberpunk was full of unresolved sidequests, only now I had the time and space to resolve them. The game finally had time to breathe. It took its foot off the gas, stopped harassing me to sort out Keanu Reeves’ problems and began slowly serving me the game’s most memorable quests, most with meaningful consequence, each one taking me on a tour of previously-unseen corners of the game’s lavish world and giving me a newfound appreciation for its scale and detail.
I met all my favourite Night City residents in this second Cyberpunk, and I think it’s easily the best way to meet them. To be able to savour each little adventure at its own pace, instead of having them crammed in between main quests. In this second game, where I was no longer following a Keanu Reeves-led narrative laced with international intrigue but free to just be a guy doing murderous odd jobs around town, Cyberpunk felt so much closer to what I had expected from it back in 2020. A game about exploration, being a handyman, uncovering unforgettable little stories with sticky moral quandaries. The Witcher 3 with cars, basically.
My conclusion after this second Cyberpunk wrapped, after I’d rinsed it of every substantial (and less so) sidequest on the board, is…well, it’s what you’re reading now. My reflections of a game that is still broken in so many ways, and forgettable in many others, but which is also more than that, so much more than most people who (rightfully and understandably!) bounced off the main storyline in 2020 and never looked back will ever know.
It’s almost as though Cyberpunk’s main problem isnt with its various components themselves, so much as the urgency and order they’re thrown at you. Playing Cyberpunk 2077 as CD Projekt Red designed it is like going to a fancy restaurant and having the steak thrown at your face before you’ve even looked at the menu. Then getting your delicious entrée served 90 minutes later. The food is good, sure! But that wasn’t the best way to eat it.
Everyone who has ever said “just try the side missions, they’re better” in the time since Cyberpunk 2077’s launch, and sounded like a copium addict at the height of a trip, turned out to be right on the money. I’m sorry for ever doubting you. Some of these auxiliary quests are good, but many of them are excellent. A mayoral candidate having a little IT problem is a highlight, as is the tragic and unforgettable case of a cop’s missing nephew and a cattle farm. Claire’s tale of loss and revenge is handled with the utmost care. Judy’s evolution from peripheral quest-giver to her beautiful finale was a joy to play through, and Kerry’s mid-life crisis resolves in possibly the most cathartic moment of the whole game. These stories are well-written, deeply interesting and many of the best ones don’t even need you to shoot anything.
I could go on and on here, and kinda want to, but I’ve wasted enough of your time with my thoughts on a game that’s now over two years old, and was written about, at length, maybe more than any other video game in history. Thank you for sticking with me this long.
IT’S STILL CYBERPUNK 2077
Technical fixes aside—and they make a difference!—this is still Cyberpunk 2077. The good stuff was good in 2020, the bad stuff was bad in 2020, and they will forever be that way because you can’t save a game by patching in a new character arc (or any character arc) for Johnny Silverhand, or turn some dials and suddenly make the entire first-person shooting experience feel even remotely exciting.
I feel like I did everything I was supposed to do here, everything the zeitgeist and the blip on the horizon said I should do when it came to this game. I played it in 2020, bounced, then gave it time—time it may not have deserved if it was any other game from any other studio—to clean itself up. I revisited it to play the game this was supposed to be.
It’s not that game, of course. The “Cyberpunk can be saved” narrative is as delusional here as it is for so many other big-budget failures, when success had seemed assured but for whatever reason never arrived (of course Cyberpunk 2077 will always be, if nothing else, a financial success). Bugs and fundamental shortcomings in the game’s structure are two very different things. One can be patched, and mostly has been. The other, we’re stuck with forever.
Screenshot: Cyberpunk 2077 | Kotaku
And that’s OK? I’m OK with it, at least. There was so much anger and frustration tangled up in this game’s launch, all fed as much on people’s expectations as much as the reality of the game that was on offer before us. This was the next game from The Witcher 3 guys, it cost so much money to make, it took so long to make, it released so many incredible (and, turns out, quite fanciful) trailers, blah blah blah.
All this led to a consensus that the game was both busted and a huge disappointment. Now? Now it’s still a little busted and still disappointing in most of the same ways. There are still huge holes in this game, with shortcomings it will never overcome, but decoupled from the Bad Vibes of its 2020 launch I found myself free in 2023 to just fire up Cyberpunk 2077 and play what was in front of me.
What I found was a game that, when given the chance, could be more than just a trainwreck of a launch. It could also, with a bit of work and a bit more patience, be something truly special. And that was enough of a redemption arc for me.
Yesterday, Larian Studios announced Baldur’s Gate III will come to PS5 the same day the PC version leaves Early Access. It sounded like an exclusivity agreement might be keeping it off Xbox, but the devs say that’s not the case. So what’s the hold-up? Getting the co-op RPG’s splitscreen action to work on the weaker Xbox Series S.
Larian revealed the August 31 launch date for the PS5 console port in a new trailer during Sony’s latest State of Play that, among other things, showcased actor J.K. Simmons voicing newly revealed villain General Ketheric Thorm. It’s normal for Sony-promoted teases to leave out competitors’ platforms, but when fans didn’t see an Xbox release date on Larian’s website either, they began to wonder.
Today, the studio clarified what’s going on, stating that an Xbox version will arrive if and when Larian can get splitscreen gameplay working across both Series S and Series X:
We’re seeing a lot of varied interpretations of what that means, so we wanted to clarify further. We’ve had an Xbox version of Baldur’s Gate III in development for some time now. We’ve run into some technical issues in developing the Xbox port that have stopped us feeling 100% confident in announcing it until we’re certain we’ve found the right solutions—specifically, we’ve been unable to get splitscreen co-op to work to the same standard on both Xbox Series X and S, which is a requirement for us to ship.
There’s no platform exclusivity preventing us from releasing BG3 on Xbox day and date, should that be a technical possibility. If and when we do announce further platforms, we want to make sure each version lives up to our standards and expectations.
It’s an especially interesting wrinkle considering players have long speculated about the trade-offs and challenges involved in developing games for the similarly-specced PS5 and Xbox Series X that must also accommodate the less powerful Series S. Splitscreen can be an especially taxing feature, and was notably dropped from Halo Infinite last year as 343 Industries tried to salvage the online shooter’s live-service ambitions.
Baldur’s Gate III’s minimum PC specs already require an Nvidia GTX 970 graphics card at minimum, with a GeForce RTX 2060 recommended. While not likely to push PC players’ hardware the way recent blockbusters such as the Dead Space remake or The Callisto Protocol have, it’s still more than what your average isometric RPG fan probably has on hand. The console port could potentially be a big boon then to those who don’t already have a higher-end gaming PC, or the funds to upgrade. That said, for now it seems like the $250 Series S might be getting in the way.
Best: New Toys: It’s hard to choose one thing that I’d call the best part of Vice City, the GTA game that brought the series to Florida and the 80s, but if I have to (Editor’s note: You do.) then I’d pick the introduction of more vehicles to the sandbox. In Vice City, you could fly in planes and helicopters, drive scooters, golf carts, dirt bikes, various boats, and even pilot remote-controlled helicopters, too. All of this made Vice City a more fun playground to tinker with between missions.
Worst: Crappy Combat: The annoying, crappy combat. While it’s mostly unchanged from GTA III, it stands out in Vice City more because everything else—like the improved visuals, larger map and better cutscenes—is so much better this time around. And Vice City has a ton of combat in it, making it even harder to ignore just how clunky and bad it is.
Microsoft President Brad SmithPhoto: Valeria Mongelli / Bloomberg (Getty Images)
Earlier today, Microsoft President Brad Smith and Xbox boss Phil Spencer talked briefly to the media about its ongoing attempt to consume Activision Blizzard King, continuing once again to act like the larger spat is mostly about Call of Duty. At one point, Smith said he was carrying a contract with him that would keepCall of Duty on PlayStation after the sale goes through, claiming that it all came down to Sony actually signing the thing. Conveniently, he was ignoring that the hold-up on the contract was happening because, y’know, the deal itself–which could potentially have an industry-wide impact that far outstrips Call of Duty.
For those of you just tuning in, Microsoft has spent the last 12 months trying to buy Activision Blizzard for the astoundingly large amount of $69 billion. However, almost since the moment the deal was announced, regulators and governments around the world, as well as rival companies like Sony, have voiced opposition to the deal. These entities don’t want the deal to go through because it could give Xbox too much power over the industry by owning many of the biggest brands in gaming, such as Starfield and Minecraft (among other issues). And Microsoft has spent the last year jumping from courtroom to courtroom and country to country, trying to convince everyone that one massive corporation buying up another massive corporation is totally good for the industry and not horrible at all. It also keeps trying to get Sony to sign a deal on Call of Duty as a part of these efforts.
So today—as part of this ongoing worldwide tour of courtrooms and regulatory councils—Microsoft execs were in Brussels, Belgium as part of a behind-closed-doors hearing with the European Commission, which (like many other groups) has concerns about the Activision deal. After that hearing, Smith and Spencer held a brief media…briefing (heh) and mostly went over the same things they’ve said before about how Sony is already dominating the game industry and how Microsoft needs Activision Blizzard to compete. All of these arguments were trotted out while also pointing out that Nintendo had just signed a 10-year deal with the company to bring Call of Duty to Switch, a deal that’s come across as Microsoft trying to prove it won’t keep some of its biggest franchises to itself should the deal go through. And if it’s willing to put forth a decade-long deal on Call of Duty, the thinking goes, Microsoft is clearly not trying to build a monopoly through this deal.
It was during this part of the briefing, as reported by GameIndustry.biz, that Smith revealed that he was actually carrying the contract for a similar deal that would keep Call of Duty on PlayStation consoles. It was in an envelope in his pocket.
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“We haven’t agreed on a deal with Sony, but I hope we will,” Smith said, “I hope today is a day that will advance our industry and regulation in a responsible way. Sony can spend all its energy trying to block this deal, which will reduce competition and slow the evolution of the market. Or they can sit down with us, and hammer out a deal.”
Of course, bringing the actual contract with you on your trip to Europe is clearly just a way to dramatically remind people that Sony isn’t playing ball and is pushing back against the proposed Activision deal over concerns that it could lose access to Call of Duty, a series Sony in the past has called “essential.” And to be clear: Even after signing that deal, Sony could still lose Call of Duty after the initial decade if Xbox doesn’t offer up another, similar contract in 2033. ( It’s also just weird to bring it with you, beyond using it as a prop, unless Smith thought Sony was going to rush the stage at that moment and sign…) And it’s also another example of Microsoft acting like everyone is concerned about Call of Duty just because Sony seems to be focused mostly on that part of the deal.
In fact, at one point during the briefing, Smith literally said that the “number one concern that people have expressed about this acquisition is that Call of Duty will be less available to people.”
That’s a wild thing to say! And it just ignores all the other valid issues people and governments have with this deal, like how it could make the industry smaller and more susceptible to collapse, how it could position Game Pass as a more powerful force that could begin to hurt studios that don’t make deals with Xbox, or just the basic reality that—historically speaking— corporate mergers are awful for consumers.
In other news involving this seemingly-never ending saga, Microsoft also confirmed it had signed a 10-year deal with NVIDIA to allow GeForce NOW players to stream Xbox PC games and Activision PC games, including the all-important CoD, if the deal is approved and happens. This, along with the Nintendo deal, is clearly being promoted heavily by Microsoft, right before today’s hearing, as evidence that the company is not going to lockdown Call of Duty or other Activision Blizzard games to one platform or service.
Spencer even tweeted about the deal, adding that the company is “committed to bringing more games to more people – however they chose to play.” Well, unless you want to play Bethesda’s next big RPG, Starfield, on a PS5. Then uh…tough luck!
After seeing Honkai: Star Rail for a few minutes during a live media preview, I mostly liked what I saw. HoYoverse’s “space fantasy” RPG doesn’t reinvent turn-based combat, but the performance was smooth. The fighting animations were among some of the best I’ve seen out of anime games in recent years. The combat’s turn tracker, team combos, type matchups, and battle animations were reminiscent of games like Shin Megami Tensei and Persona 5. But HoYoverse absolutely does not want you to think of it as either of those games. Besides the seeming identity confusion, my conversation with the developer left me without much optimism about racial inclusion in Star Rail’s space fantasy.
Here’s how Star Rail works: Although you start off with a protagonist character, most of your roster will come out of rolling for wives and husbands through the gacha system. You use them to explore maps filled with enemy encounters (rather than real-time combat like in HoYoverse’s current mainstay Genshin Impact).
Once you run into an enemy, you’ll start a turn-based battle. Each of your four party members will have two skills. Some will be offensive, while others will be support or healing based. Each attack corresponds with an element, and using elemental type matchups effectively will allow you to break shield bars. Once an enemy is vulnerable, you can use team combination attacks to kick them while they’re down.
Screenshot: HoYoverse / Kotaku
Despite the relatively simple combat, the game will feature an auto-battle mechanic. This should make it easier to grind daily battles for resources, which is an essential feature some modern gacha use to keep the games alive.
Star Rail will have a main story campaign and regular sidequests. While it shares similar characters from Honkai Impact 3rd, Fish Ling, a representative from HoYoverse, assured me that there wouldn’t be any story crossover with their incredibly lore-heavy real time action game.
Driving Honkai: Star Rail’s development was HoYoverse’s desire to diversify its portfolio from the usual action games it’s released, according to Michalel Lin, another representative for the developer. Secondly, HoYoverse felt turn-based combat was conducive to “the story that we want to tell.” Its design philosophy was driven by the desire to make turn-based combat approachable for newcomers.
Things got murkier, however, when I tried to ask who the target audience is. The Star Rail presentation mentioned that the game would feature different cultures. Remembering how badly Genshin Impactflubbed depicting darker skinned people and Southwest Asians in the Sumeru update, I asked how the developers intended to improve representation in Star Rail. What lessons did they learn from the overseas community?
“The game is set in a fictional world,” Lin said. “What we do is dependent on how the IP grows. As a combination of cultures in our world, there’s not a specific culture we target. We will continue listening to fans’ feedback, but how the world will be built, we can’t say for certain.”
Screenshot: HoYoverse
It’s 2023, and Asian RPGs keep dropping the ball on diversity. This immensely disappointing answer reminded me of Final Fantasy XVI producer Naoki Yoshida’s response as to whether or not that game would include people of color. Their answer was that their world was fantasy, so it couldn’t be held to any diversity standards at all. Star Rail includes characters who are culturally Chinese, so it feels really shitty that its launch characters seem to be even more light-skinned than those in Genshin Impact. Once again, we have to start holding Asian RPGs to higher standards.
I got similarly vague answers when I asked where Star Rail took its inspiration from. “We think turn based RPGs are very engaging and have an active audience in the market,” Lin said. It took me a couple of minutes to remember that the Persona series has sold 16.8 million units globally and was probably at least one of the games alluded to. When I pressed about the studio’s creative inspiration, Lin told me Star Rail’s team consists of 500 individual developers. Therefore, it would be impossible to narrow down specific influences.
I can guess why HoYoverse is being so coy about its Persona 5 game set in space. It’s likely because the internet tore into Genshin Impact at launch for its similarities to Breath of the Wild, to the point where the developer had to reassure players that the game was more than a clone. But Star Rail will likely release sometime this year, and people will be able to see the Persona DNA embedded in how the game plays.
So here’s the honest summary of Star Rail: It’s a space fantasy game that you’ll probably enjoy if you’re a fan of the Persona or Shin Megami Tensei series. Be careful of the gacha system, and don’t hold your breath over improved diversity from what we’ve seen so far.
Hogwarts Legacy is an immersive, open-world action RPG set in the world first introduced in the Harry Potter books. Embark on a journey through familiar and new locations as you explore and discover fantastic beasts, customize your character and craft potions, master spell casting, upgrade talents and become the wizard you want to be.
Experience Hogwarts in the 1800s. Your character is a student who holds the key to an ancient secret that threatens to tear the wizarding world apart. Discover the feeling of living at Hogwarts as you make allies, battle Dark wizards, and ultimately decide the fate of the wizarding world. Your legacy is what you make of it. Live the Unwritten.
Easily the most anticipated title on this list, Starfield is notable for two reasons: It’s gaming’s next big sci-fi RPG epic and its the next evolution in Bethesda’s open-world formula. Bethesda is no stranger to science fiction, having a number of Fallout games under its belt. But from everything we know about Starfield right now, it’s aiming for an unprecedented scale, featuring over 1,000 worlds for you to explore.
Though we haven’t seen a whole lot of Starfield gameplay, the reveal last summer showed a bit of what we can expect. Here’s your hype fuel for Starfield before its expected release this year:
“Hard science fiction” setting with 1,000 explorable planets
A mix of “handcrafted content” and procedurally-generated environments
The classic Bethesda mix of first-person combat, exploration, and roleplaying
Bethesda
It’s hard not to get excited about a game like this. While the commonly voiced concern that such a high number of planets may mean we’re in for some serious “quantity over quality” is a fair one, I’d argue that’s always been the case with Bethesda games: Unprecedented scale, unprecedented jank. Despite all of that, Bethesda games of this sort usually cohere to form a unified experience that’s hard to get anywhere else. The question for Starfield will be: Do enough aspects of this epic space sim work well enough to create an intense level of immersion for, oh I dunno, hundreds of hours? I mean, I still don’t feel like I saw everything in Fallout 3 and 4.
Amazon’s Diablo-like RPG, Lost Ark, had over 1.3 million people playing it at launch. It’s cooled off since then, but there are still tens of thousands of people who log on every week to enjoy it. Or they would, if they hadn’t been banned for no reason.
Last week Amazon decided to do some house-keeping and kick off a wave of bans, ostensibly targeting bot accounts. Loads of actual human beings were caught up in the bans too, though, and making things even worse was that for Steam players that counted as a ban on their Steam accounts as well, which is a serious blemish on their overall record.
Amazon were quickly notified of this, and over the weekend were “actively working on reversing them for all affected players regardless of whether a support ticket has been filed”. For Steam players in particular, sweating the consequences of having a ban recorded on their account, Amazon say the reversal will not just “remove your game ban” but also “any marks on your Steam account”.
The company issued this statement over the weekend:
Greetings Heroes of Arkesia,
Following a recent wave of bot bans, we’ve seen an increase in ban appeals from players who have been incorrectly impacted by these bans.
We have determined the error that triggered these false bans, and are actively working on reversing them for all affected players regardless of whether a support ticket has been filed. This will remove your game ban and any marks on your Steam account. We will let players know when this work has been completed. In the meantime, you are still welcome to submit a Ban Appeal ticket to Customer Support so that the team can more quickly assist with restoring your account and removing all penalties.
Thank you for your reports and patience as we work to make this right with affected players.
And followed it up yesterday with a notice saying all bans should now have been reversed. The bans come in the wake of efforts by developers to fix certain areas of the game that were being swamped by bots, particularly the market and auction house.
If you haven’t heard, Google Stadia is shutting down and closing shop next week. But before the never-quite-successful game streaming service dies, it has provided one neat (and free) little gift you can only play for a few days before it all goes offline.
Launched back in 2019, Google Stadia was a costly and massive investment from Google into the world of video games. Powered by the cloud aka a bunch of servers and off-site computers, Stadia’s big promise was instantaneous gaming on the go. No more updates or expensive consoles. And while it sometimes worked, the high cost of games, lack of features, small library, and internet costs ended up dooming the service. Sure, some superfans logged thousands of hours into it, but for most, it just wasn’t what they wanted or needed from a video game platform.
So it wasn’t surprising that in September of last year, Google announced the end of Stadia. In five days, on January 18, the video game streaming service will shut down. With the end so near, it seemed unlikely that Stadia would receive any new game releases. Yet, Google has published one final game. But don’t expect some big open-world RPG or remake. Instead, the final Stadia game is Worm Game, an internally developed title used to test Stadia long before it became a public service.
We probably were never meant to see or play this Snake-like test game as it sports fairly rudimentary graphics and kinda ugly menus. But in the final days of Stadia, it appears the devs working on the project were able to provide its community one final treat. Even better, anyone can play Worm Game as it’s free. (Which makes sense considering the Stadia store stopped working already.)
The game’s store page features this nice and touching description of the game and what it was used for:
Play the game that came to Stadia before Stadia came to the world. “Worm Game” is a humble title we used to test many of Stadia’s features, starting well before our 2019 public launch, right through 2022. It won’t win Game of the Year, but the Stadia team spent a LOT of time playing it, and we thought we’d share it with you. Thanks for playing, and for everything.
Is Worm Game some incredibly important or amazing thing? Not really. However, it’s still really cool to get a peek behind the scenes, and thanks to videos of Worm Game, this little piece of test software will be somewhat preserved for folks to look back at years from now.
This is a nice way to make the controller—which has one of my favorite modern D-pads on it—more useful and easier to hook up to more devices. I doubt the devs who worked on Stadia for years were planning for the controller to be the only thing left of Stadia in 2023, but here we are.
If you’re into Rick and Morty-style humor and enjoy a good first-person shooter with some unique guns, High on Life is a damn good time. While High on Life is a fairly easy game to fire up and jump into—made even easier by the fact that it’s on Game Pass right now—there are a few things to keep in mind while romping around through space, blasting evil alien cartel members to dust.
The latest from studio Squanch Games, High on Life is available now on Xbox One, Xbox X and S, and PC. With the mind and voice of Justin Roiland fully on display, High on Life contains much of what many love (or hate) about shows like Rick and Morty. Despite a few glaring bugs and some jokes that don’t know when to stop, it’s a fun shooter that doesn’t take itself too seriously, which is a great change of pace for the genre.
Pick your poison: This is a good time while under the influence
Yes, yes, I know. It’s the game everyone jokes about getting stoned before playing, but honestly, it’s pretty good advice.
High on Life contains a certain brand of humor that comes across well while you’re in an altered state of consciousness. More than that, it’s a visual and auditory treat only heightened by substances that make colors and sounds pop. High on Life is very vibrant, with many great textures, making it splendid for moments where you just want to melt into a colorful, bouncy, wise-cracking trip.
The humor may not be for everyone, but if you love getting blasted and having a fun time with a video game, there are few games that hit this spot right now while quite High on Life.
It’s a camera. For your car. The Ring Car Cam’s dual-facing HD cameras capture activity in and around your car in HD detail.
Turn the music up!
This soundtrack kicks ass. There’s some twisted, fucked up synth shit that is just a damn joy to listen to. Electronic musician Tobacco produced the music for High on Life, and it fits the mood and feel of the game so damn well.
The default music volume setting, however, is way too low. I cranked it up all the way during my playthrough and it was a delight for the ears the whole way through, though you might find you’ll want to flip the subtitles on if you do. If you’re not into the humor or find the gameplay to be too generic, do yourself a favor and check out the soundtrack at least. It really is great.
The game needs a content warning
It’s 2023, and it’s about time we expect more from devs when it comes to giving us a heads up about the content in their games. High on Life got a ton of laughs out of me, while other jokes felt rather tasteless. I wish the game would’ve given a bit of a heads up about certain topics.
High on Life contains a good chunk of drug and substance abuse references. It also makes some jokes about self-harm. The very absurd and fictional plot also talks liberally about the enslavement of various alien species.
Many who are familiar with Rick and Morty likely knew what to expect going into High on Life, but with an informative content warning (which, hey, wouldn’t that be a cool standard for Game Pass games or something?), it could help set the table so you could be in the mood for weapons that beg you to turn them on yourself.
Gif: Squanch Games / Kotaku
Keep an eye out for Knifey’s zipline and grapple prompt
I’m not sure how a game that makes as many video game jokes as High on Life delivered a 16-hour campaign where you zip around on rails without making a single BioShock Infinite joke (and if it did, I certainly missed it). There are an awful amount of opportunities for you to zip around the map like you’re out to save some weird girl haunted by her strange pet bird thing.
That said, it can be a little tricky to spot when and where you can do this. The HUD is helpful in indicating where a rail or climbable spot is, but it can be deceptive. While a circular icon will hover over a usable zip line, you can’t actually grab on until you see the actual button prompt (E on keyboard, LB on controller) in the circle.
Learning to spot this indicator will help you zoom around maps even faster.
Always be swappin’Gif: Squanch Games / Kotaku
Screw reloading, cycle your weapons
Once I had all four main Gatlians, High on Life began to feel a lot like the Resistance shooters on PS3. If you liked those games, at least in concept, then you know the value of juggling weapons constantly. As I mentioned in my guide for beating Nipulon, cycling your weapons when they’re out of ammo is a better use of your time than reloading them, especially since all the Gatlians reload themselves while you have another one equipped.
I like to start each round of combat by aiming a Gatlian’s trickhole shot (this also gives you a quick window of bullet time to line up your aim), firing it off, and then emptying its magazine into enemies before swapping to the next gun and repeating the same process. Master this and you’ll almost never stop outputting damage. It’s a lot of fun.
If you’re stoned out of your mind, consider Story Mode. But Normal and Hunter aren’t too much of a challenge
As I said above, High on Life is just a good game to tune in and zone out too. The story is silly and not really that serious beyond a handful of delicate topics; and the gameplay has more depth than you’d assume. But the best part is that it prioritizes fun in a way that shooters sometimes forget to.
It can be a pretty passive shooter if you want it to be. If you’re just looking for a chill time with some goofy aliens who make you laugh, flip it on story mode.
But for those of us who like a bit of a challenge in a first-person shooter, you probably should just jump to the hardest difficulty. I almost finished my first full playthrough on this, but the Skrendel Bros. proved a difficulty spike I couldn’t get along with—at least in the state my poor brain was in. As a result, I played the remainder of the campaign after that fight in Normal mode.
You can hit Gus’ disc to keep it moving
J.B. Smoove’s character, Gus, is your shotgun and disc launcher. That disc will ricochet around the room, causing a bad time for anyone in its way. But blink and you’ll miss the melee prompt on it when it moves near you.
Keep an eye out for the button prompt to smack the disc with Knifey to get more use out of Gus’ trickhole shot.
Zip around like it’s Halo 5, minus fighting the same boss three damn times.Gif: Squanch Games / Kotaku
At its height, High on Life is like a Ratchet and Clank and Halo 5 space brownie
That last mention may make you close this tab. Don’t! One of the coolest aspects of High on Life is the movement abilities plus the versatile guns. With the ability to jet pack and hover in the air, it reminds me of Halo 5’s advanced but underpraised movement techniques. The versatile weapons, as mentioned, remind me of Insomniac’s Resistance or Ratchet and Clank. Maybe there’s a dash of Bulletstorm somewhere in there, too.
At the higher difficulties, you’re going to want to make the most out of that movement. Prepare to dash liberally; and once you can zoom around and hover with the jet pack, you’ll find it’s essential for staying alive.
Sadly, by the time the whole ensemble comes together, the game starts to wind down its campaign. While it lasts, though, it’s a ton of fun. So if you like experimental shooters, definitely give this one a spin.
Don’t miss the upgrades in the pawn shop
I mean, I can’t imagine why you’d have a hard time spotting tiny details in a game like this, but you should keep an eye out for the Gatlian upgrades and mods you can get at the pawn shop in Blim City.
It took nearly the entire game for me to realize you could buy these…don’t be like me. Screenshot: Squanch Games / Kotaku
Each of the rectangular cardboard boxes behind the shelves have unique upgrades that enhance the abilities of your guns, giving them larger magazines or augmenting their trickhole shots as a few examples.
There are also some upgrades for your bounty hunter suit, including one that lets you zoom around when sliding like you’re playing Vanquish. How can you not use this?
Don’t forget to go back and explore previous areas
High on Life is a bit of a metroidvania kinda jam. Early on, you’ll spot items and locations that you can’t get to quite yet. As you progress through the story, you’ll unlock new movement abilities that’ll let you explore a bit more. Keep an eye out for this stuff and don’t forget to go back!
Learn to follow the waypoints
Given the altered state you may or may not be in while playing High on Life, you might be prone to getting lost. By hitting the ping button, you can highlight a waypoint. If you’re lost in a blur of colors for whatever reason, the waypoint will guide you to where you need to go, but it can be a easy to miss.
High on Life’s waypoints move through different “checkpoints.” Once you follow it to a certain point, you’ll see it turn into a check before moving to highlight an area further along. If you’re lost in any of the game’s trippy environments, just follow those markers until it begins to make more sense.
Listen to all the dialogue and take in all of the comedy
High on Life is a comedy game, one where taking in the ambience of absurdity is as much the point as firing silly, talking guns. Don’t rush through the game, and take opportunities to observe the weird and wacky things around you.
Like an RPG where you should probably talk to every NPC you see, you should take the time to listen to all the humor Squanch Games packed in here. Characters will say some wild things, and you’ll participate in some genuinely funny and uncertain moments that are sometimes as surprising as they are humorous.
Some folks out there are even beginning to discover that the various dialogue options you get in the game do lead to some different outcomes for NPCs. So don’t rush. Immerse yourself in the absurdity of this game.
Who knows? You might even find it a little cathartic given how absurd our world is anyway.
Thirsty Suitors is a cross between Scott Pilgrim’s battles with evil exes, stylish arcade skateboarding, and cooking segments all portrayed through a South Asian cultural lens. Outerloop Games’ RPG stars Jala as she returns to an old town with old flames, and frames their reconciliation through turn-based battles where the simple act of talking to each other is pumped up to ridiculous levels. There’s even a stage in which Jala enters a dream world where her exes appear as powerful, distorted versions of their own self-concept. Think Persona 5 but with fewer criminals. Jala explores her old town on a skateboard (more Jet Set Radio than Tony Hawk), and when she’s home with her family, she cooks with her mother in over-the-top, campy fashion. Thirsty Suitors portrays all of its storylines in this way, but there’s a grounded humanity at its core that will be exciting to see when the game launches on PC, PlayStation 4, PlayStation 5, Xbox One, Xbox Series X/S, and Switch.
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.
I was warned of how heated Kotaku’s GOTY arguments traditionally get when I first started here in November, so I was a little nervous when I was put in charge of organizing and tabulating our list of the best games of the year.
Would everyone vote? Would they get mad at me for ranking Destiny 2: The Witch Queen too high? Would Ethan Gach actually do what he was threatening and “hobgoblin” the voting process by adding negative points to the equation?
Turns out, however, that even though organizing this entire process was a pain in the ass, the team at Kotaku is exactly as opinionated, intelligent, and professional as you might expect, offering great insight and honest takes on the top games of 2022. Though we voted on over 20 titles (including ones that narrowly missed this list like Rollerdrome and Sifu) we narrowed it down to a top 10, and have ranked them in order below.
How does Kotaku’s top 10 games of 2022 stack up with your personal GOTY lists?
10. Xenoblade Chronicles 3
Image: Monolith Soft / Nintendo
Reductively, Xenoblade Chronicles 3’s story is an amalgamation of Japanese RPGs whose emotional climax rests on the age-old theme of “war is bad.” Nevertheless, the fact that the trope has become a well-trodden cliché doesn’t dismiss how well developer Monolith Soft executes its anti-war theme throughout Xenoblade Chronicles 3’s 150 hours of playtime.
In Xenoblade Chronicles 3, you play as a troupe of child soldiers from warring nations locked in an endless battle where their limited lifespans fuel a giant mechanical clock once they meet their untimely demise. The kids are not alright. But despite the painful emotional journey its child soldiers must go on, which is portrayed with the emotional maturity and complexity it deserves, the game is not without some great moments of levity as well, courtesy of some lighthearted and silly sidequests. Meanwhile, Xenoblade’s more serious sidequests drip-feed players with rich character studies that flesh out each member of the party, along with the game’s expansive world and its deep cast of supporting characters.
Although Xenoblade Chronicles 3 was snubbed for the best roleplaying game and best soundtrack at Geoff Keighley’s Game Awards, it did give us an impassioned flutist performance from Pedro “Flute Guy” Eustache. This shows that even if Xenoblade loses at gaming’s glorified popularity contest, it still provides some of the best moments in gaming this year.
Isaiah Colbert, Staff Writer
9. Signalis
Image: rose-engine
Much like how I use Devil May Cry 5 as the measuring stick for how good a hack-and-slash game is, whenever I brave playing a survivor horror game I do so with the hope that its story measures up to Silent Hill 2. Big shoes to fill, I know. Signalis not only manages to fill those shoes, it damn near tore the seams off of them joints with how bloody good it was. I’d even argue that it’s better than Silent Hill 2.
Signalis has all the bells and whistles that make for a good sci-fi survival horror game. It’s got a brutal-but-fair limited inventory system, brain-teasing puzzles, and breadcrumb storytelling conveyed through codex entries scattered about its levels. However, where Signalis sings is with its gripping story about two lesbian androids desperately trying to find each other in a space hellscape.
Throughout the game, you play as an android named Elster who’s stranded on an alien planet rife with horrific monsters and derelict spaceships. Elster’s sole mission is to reunite with Anne, a fellow android unit she both literally and figuratively can’t live without. Signalis sticks its landing with the emotional climax of Elster’s perilous journey, regardless of which of the game’s multiple endings you arrive at. This feat is even more impressive considering Signalis is the first video game made by its two-person development team, rose-engine. Ay yo, 2023, can we get some more of those sapphic survivor horror vidya games, plz?
Isaiah Colbert, Staff Writer
8. Norco
Image: Raw Fury
Norco emerged this year and joined Kentucky Route Zero and a few others on the shortlist of games that speak deeply to the experience of living under late-stage capitalism in America at this precise moment in time. Like Cardboard Computer’s masterpiece, Norco also takes its cues from point-and-click adventures, using stunning pixel art to pull us into its industrialized Louisiana landscapes. And where KR0 lent its midwestern road trip a heaping helping of magical realism, Norco uses near-future sci-fi elements to cast the forces its poor, marginalized characters face in sharper relief.
But don’t let my easy comparison make you think Norco is a pale imitator of another game. It’s very much its own remarkable experience, one with its own visual identity, its own poetic voice, and its own noir-ish mystery. Everything about Norco rings painfully true, from its observant little environmental details like the electrified hum of a street light, to the much larger way that religion, cryptocurrency, and the oil industry all become woven together in the haunting texture of your character’s search for her missing brother. Norco, Louisiana is a real place. The Norco of this game is not quite that place, but it’s nevertheless one that feels very real in its own way, and that will leave you reeling from the piercing gaze it levels at the world we’ve made for ourselves.
Carolyn Petit, Managing Editor
7. Horizon Forbidden West
Image: Sony
Poor Aloy. Twice now, her adventures have been somewhat overshadowed at the time of release by other games that more dramatically captured the world’s attention. Her first outing, Horizon Zero Dawn, launched just a few days before Breath of the Wild. This year, her second quest was followed a week later by Elden Ring.
But despite repeatedly serving as the opening act for games that go on to sweep the GOTYs of a hundred gaming sites, Guerrilla Games and Aloy can be proud of what they’ve accomplished. Arguably the most visually stunning game of the year, Guerrilla’s latest takes Aloy into the ruined American west for more of the thrilling, spectacular battles with hulking metallic beasts that helped make the first game an original in a sea of samey open-world blockbusters. And although the larger narrative may fly a bit off the rails in this outing, Forbidden West wisely stays focused on Aloy’s personal journey as someone who feels the weight of the world on her shoulders and doesn’t know how to let her guard down and allow her friends to carry that burden with her. It complicates her character and trusts us as players not to turn on her the moment she behaves in ways that are arrogant, cruel, or misguided. Oh, and you get a really sweet new travel option near the end of the game, too.
Yes, when all is said and done, Aloy and her escapades can stand tall alongside the Links and the myriad Tarnished of the world.
Carolyn Petit, Managing Editor
6. Neon White
Image: Annapurna Interactive
It was about 3 in the morning. I had plans the next day. I really needed to go to bed. Yet, here I was hunched over my computer focused on shaving just one more second off a level in Neon White so I could beat a friend on my leaderboard. That’s the power of fast-paced, FPS platformer Neon White. It’s the kind of game that feels so good that you just can’t stop playing it. Once you get skilled enough to start finding shortcuts in levels, it’s over–the game has you at that point. You’ll end up going back to old levels you thought you mastered to shave off more time. And if you enjoy anime nonsense, angels, demons, and sick-ass music, too, then Neon White will dig its angelic claws deeply into you and never let go. “One more run…and then I’ll go to bed.” I didn’t get to sleep that night until nearly 4:30 am.
Zack Zwiezen, Staff Writer
5. Citizen Sleeper
Image: Jump Over The Age
The profane and sacred mingle with delicate grace in Jump Over The Age’s minimalist cyberpunk RPG about trying to earn your humanity from a world that can’t pay its debts. Every detail from the writing and art to the branching choices and tabletop-inspired dice rolls connect, overlap, and reinforce each other with precision and care so that no piece is weaker than the rest and no rough edge is left exposed. Few games manage to evoke universal feelings or personal truths, but Citizen Sleeper does both at the same time. The future never felt so hopeless and yet so comforting.
Ethan Gach, Senior Reporter
4. Marvel Snap
Image: Second Dinner / Kotaku
Going into 2022, I don’t know how many people expected a free-to-play Marvel card game designed for phones to end up being one of the best and most popular games of the year, yet, here we are. Second Dinner’s fantastic bite-sized card battler, Marvel Snap, really is one of the best digital card games out there right now thanks to its small decks, fast rounds, and random nature. Matches always feel different and even a loss doesn’t sting too bad because it’s over so fast. Sure, it’s still a free-to-play mobile game, so you can expect stuff like iffy over-priced bundles and having to grind for currency. But luckily Marvel Snap is so fun to play that it’s pretty easy to overlook those bits and enjoy one of 2022’s best games.
Zack Zwiezen, Staff Writer
3. Vampire Survivors
Image: poncle
One more run. A sentence I’ve repeated countless times in 2022 either in my head or quietly aloud to justify playing Vampire Survivors for just a little while longer. The gothic roguelike shoot ‘em up became a surprise smash hit while spawning worthy spiritual siblings like 20 Minutes Till Dawn.
Since Valve started releasing the data in August, Vampire Survivors has been tops in total hours played on Steam Deckmonth in and month out. This is the same Steam Deck that can run frickin’ Elden Ring! But people want to play Vampire Survivors instead!
All those players are onto something, Vampire Survivors has a simple yet satisfying gameplay loop: your character (I’m partial to Peppino) must survive an ever-growing horde of ghoulies while choosing between randomly generated weapons. If you make it to 30 minutes, the reaper will come calling, which lets you spend coins on power-ups for future runs. You can be strategic in choosing weapons that complement each other or you can just try shit out! These elements of discovery, relentless isometric top down action, and Vampire’s lax attitude towards player death (it has zero impact) remind me a lot of Hades, another regular on that Steam Deck most-played list, and another GOTY contender from years past.
Vampire Survivors’ developer Luca Galante/poncle has regularly been updating the game since it left early access, adding modes, quality of life improvements, and settings to tweak for extra replayability. What’s more, the game recently got its first full-fledged DLC the other week with Legacy of the Moonspell. With the base game retailing at five dollars ($4 under the current Steam sale), Vampire Survivors makes for one of the better bang-for-your-buck propositions in gaming. Go ahead and treat yourself to some floor chicken.
Eric Schulkin, Video Lead
2. God of War Ragnarök
Image: Sony
Sony Santa Monica’s God of War Ragnarök is more of everything. More abilities and weapons. More enemies and locations. More characters and plot details. Hell, even more loot. Though you could interpret this as a knock against the game, especially since more isn’t always better, Ragnarök takes the “more” and deftly applies it in tasteful ways while making room for a compelling narrative and gameplay experience that’s enjoyable and immersive. Combat is crunchy, exploration is intriguing, dialogue is captivating, and the themes are deep and engaging. But what stands out as the glisten on the diamond is the character development between daddy Kratos and adolescent Atreus, an element that sees the co-protagonists finding common understanding in the face of the end of the world. Sometimes, it takes things falling apart for empathy to be reached, and God of War Ragnarök is a glowing example of just that. It’s good shit.
Levi Winslow, Staff Writer
1. Elden Ring
Screenshot: FromSoftware / Kotaku
Are you surprised? Elden Ring easily and inevitably took the top spot during our voting process, further proving that 2022 was the year of Elden Ring. Many Kotaku staff members ranked it as their number one game of the year, and for good reason. FromSoftware’s open-world epic feels like a giant leap forward for the Souls-like franchise, offering us a beautifully deformed and dangerous Lands Between to explore, rife with opportunities to discover oddities, collect goodies, and die over and over again.
Elden Ring opened up Hidetaka Miyazaki ’s sick, twisted world for the normies who haven’t enjoyed FromSoft games before it, while also making sure to still cater to the hardened vets looking to prove their worth in incredibly tough battles. It found a perfect balance between that punishing gameplay so many long for in a game from this studio and a newfound sense of agency, of a chance toget gud without having to run into the same noxious swamp over and over again.
Elden Ring is technically impressive, visually stunning, and satisfyingly challenging. It has humor, it has sadness, it has turtle popes. It dashes your hopes up against a jagged rock only to hand you hope back bit-by-bit as you strengthen your character and your resolve. It is everything that we hope for in a video game, and then some.
First released in 2021, indie shooter Nightmare Reaper finally left Early Access this year, and that’s when I finally played it. And boy oh boy, am I happy I stumbled upon this under-the-radar FPS! Nightmare Reaper might look a lot like other, similar retro-inspired shooters—like the previously mentioned Cultic—that have become more common in recent years, but it’s so much more than that. It’s a roguelike with smart level progression, awesome music, and hundreds of powerful and zany weapons like whips and spell books. It’s a weird game, too. But in a good way. For example, to improve your character’s stats you play through different, elaborate Game Boy-like mini-games. It’s weird, it’s sometimes creepy, and it’s only $25 on Steam. Go play Nightmare Reaper! — Zack Zwiezen
