Think the first week of January is a slow one for news? Think again. A 13-year-old Tetris phenom has boldly gone where no one has gone before, beating the NES version of the classic puzzler by reaching a “kill screen” on level 157. Steam announced the occasionally baffling results of its annual players’ choice awards, and The Elder Scrolls II: Daggerfall got a free-to-play, fan-made remaster.
Three Things We Learned From The Final Fantasy 7 Rebirth Demo
Before Starfield, before Skyrim, before Fallout 3 and Oblivion, before your parents even knew how to make you, there was The Elder Scrolls II: Daggerfall. It was, and remains, Bethesda’s biggest-ever game, and now a fan-made rebuilding of the entire vast world in Unity has reached its 1.0 release. Oh, and it’s entirely free, and won’t be destroyed by lawyers! This new Daggerfall is an almighty achievement, and exactly the excuse you needed to return to Tamriel. – John Walker Read More
The results of 2023’s Steam Awards are in. Each year, Steam turns to the community to vote on the year’s best games across a wide variety of categories. This year saw Larian Studios’ RPG Baldur’s Gate 3 grab game of the year, while Lethal Company, a first-person cooperative horror game,got the “Better With Friends Award” for its co-op gameplay. The Last of Us Part I snagged Best Soundtrack, which seems odd because it came out in 2013, but it technically wasn’t added to Steam until 2023. – Claire Jackson Read More
Just two months after the third-person action-horror game Stray Souls came out, developer Jukai Studio abruptly shuttered its doors, citing myriad issues including poor game sales and multiple cyberattacks from an unknown perpetrator.The developer took to X/Twitter on December 22 to announce the sudden closure. Part of the problem, Jukai Studio said, was Stray Souls’ abysmal reception and sales, which made the team “completely unable to sustain the company.” – Levi Winslow Read More
Classic puzzle game Tetris has been around for over three decades, and in that time, plenty of people have reached its various endings, usually by clearing four rows of bricks at once like a digital demolitioner. That’s a challenge in and of itself, but now, someone has taken the concept of “beating Tetris” to the extreme by playing the NES game so hard it straight-up crashed, a phenomenon also known as the “kill screen.” – Levi Winslow Read More
Forever-in-development space sim Star Citizenmight not be finished after over a decade of dev work and announcements, but it does already contain a lot of expensive ships you can buy and fly around in. And if you want all of those ships in one big DLC pack, Star Citizen has an option for you. Just be prepared to spend over $48,000. – Zack Zwiezen Read More
Here’s something unironically wonderful. Via a post by Larian Studios writer Rachel Quirke, we’ve just learned of a deeply moving tribute to a player’s father that appears in the studios’ award-winning RPG Baldur’s Gate 3. In October 2020, a member of the Larian forums posted to thank the developer for releasing the first act of the game in Early Access, because it allowed them to enjoy one last adventure with their father, who had recently been diagnosed with Alzheimer’s. – John Walker Read More
Screenshot: Ubisoft Massive Entertainment / Kotaku
Star Wars Outlaws, Ubisoft’s upcoming action-adventure game that follows scoundrel Kay Vess between The Empire Strikes Back and Return of the Jedi, previously had no release date beyond a very broad “2024” window. Today, however, a Disney Parks blog post quietly announced that it would launch in “late 2024.” This didn’t last long, as Ubisoft promptly swooped in to correct the record and re-assert the general 2024 timeframe. – Levi Winslow Read More
City of Heroes was a beloved MMORPG that launched in April 2004 and lasted just over eight years. In that time it won a dedicated community of players who, even after the game died, kept playing the MMO via private servers that existed in a weird legal gray area. But now, the developers behind City of Heroes have given one private server the official thumbs-up to keep on keeping on. – Zack Zwiezen Read More
I love the idea of annual top 10 lists until it comes time to actually make one. Then my perpetually indecisive brain freaks out about whether the game I spent 100 hours playing was actually any good, the tension between an interesting game and a fun one, and the cries of all the games I never finished or even got around to starting, still begging for my attention.
Tears Of The Kingdom’s Newspaper Questline And The State Of Hyrulean Journalism
I spent 2023 tracking some of the best new games that came out every month, attempting to at least try as many of them as I could while also measuring how my feelings changed about them as the year went on. And I ended up playing a bunch of them while still not getting around to what no doubt would have been strong personal GOTY contenders.
With a not-so-short short list assembled by early December, the task then becomes figuring out which games I actually thought were the best. I’ve worked hard to convince myself over the years that the process is more art than science. Inevitably I tally up the perceived merits and flaws of a game and then try to compare the vague calculations, an exercise that always ends in a mix of conflicted self-doubt and second-guessing.
Eventually I silence the internal dissent and retreat into a more abstract sense of what feels right. Recently this has meant giving in more to my personal tastes and subjectivity, championing the games I love rather than the ones I feel I ought to like, and praising them for the one or two things they do very well instead of letting all the smaller things they don’t do so well hold them back. This doesn’t impose any more order on the chaos of comparing a roguelite loot shooter to a visual novel adventure, but it does give me fewer pangs of guilt when I eventually settle on rating one above the other.
Here, in alphabetical order, are the top 10 games that moved me the most in 2023.
Armored Core VI: Fires of Rubicon
Screenshot: FromSoftware / Kotaku
I’ve always understood and appreciated the Soulsborne formula and its many flavors on an intellectual level, but Armored Core VI was the game that finally made me feel and love the initial hopelessness and eventual satisfaction that comes from mastering a FromSoftware game. The mech shooter is razor sharp and ultra polished when it comes to zipping around environments and engaging in moment-to-moment combat. You actually feel yourself becoming more in-sync with the custom robot’s strengths and limitations the more you play, each successive boss fight pushing you to come to a deeper understanding of what’s important and what’s just noise. I spent several nights trying to beat Balteus. I don’t regret any of them. And I remain blown away by Armored Core VI’s vibes-based storytelling and branching new game plus mode. Its economical arcade design rewards you for every additional minute you put into it and doesn’t waste time on anything superfluous.
Baldur’s Gate 3
Screenshot: Larian Studios
Sometimes superfluous is good, though. In fact, sometimes it can be transcendent. The promise of a dozen roads not taken in a video game pays off in making the one you did walk feel unique, unlikely, and unmistakably yours. I love that Baldur’s Gate 3 contains entire games’ worth of conversations, interactions, and outcomes I will never experience. It makes the small journey I have been on feel that much more intimate and personal. None of this would matter, of course, if Baldur’s Gate 3 was not well written, painstakingly choreographed, and expertly voice acted. It’s a dense RPG full of gear and skills to manage alongside quests and boss fights to navigate, and all of it, no matter how it plays out, feels like it was meant to happen that way. It’s the new gold standard for role-playing video games.
Chants of Sennaar
Screenshot: Rundisc
I don’t normally like language-based games. (Ironic considering I’m a writer.) I despise crossword puzzles. The inherent fluidity and ambiguousness of language mashed up with the rigid constraints of a game almost always leave me feeling underwhelmed and frustrated. I was shocked, then, to find out just how much I enjoyed Chants of Sennaar, a puzzle adventure about deciphering unknown languages between various factions in a Tower of Babel that oozes highly saturated yellows, blues, and reds. What I appreciated most was how quickly context and intuition helped whittle down possible solutions to problems, making limited communication gratifyingly achievable even when there was no foundation to begin building on. Rather than punish you for the shifty and slippery nature of language, Chants of Sennaar allows those elements to color your overall experience and interpretation of the game without blocking your moment-to-moment progress.
Cocoon
Screenshot: Geometric Interactive
Cocoon feels like it was chiseled from a rock over thousands of years. Everything unessential has been methodically removed. All that’s left is a seamless sequence of puzzles gently nudging you toward new discoveries and brain-twisting realizations. Remnants of conventional game design like screen icons and boss fight deaths have been elegantly eradicated. Evocative musical queues punctuate each new milestone on your journey. And the rules governing its world are supremely simple but always manage to combine into solutions that feel just outside the realm of possibility. Cocoon is probably one of the best puzzle adventures ever made.
Cyberpunk 2077: Phantom Liberty
Image: CD Projekt Red
I finished Cyberpunk 2077 for the first time last year. Despite some fantastic missions and an overwhelmingly intricate open world, it left little impression on me. That seemed a symptom of the underlying structure of the game rather than anything that could be patched out with new abilities or a more impressive sci-fi open world simulation. Night City felt fundamentally alienating to me, and none of the individual characters, story arcs, or RPG progressions managed to pull me out of that feeling of malaise. That is, until Phantom Liberty and the game’s 2.0 update in 2023. The culmination of every new addition, from takedown animations and parrying bullets with katanas to jacked-up car chases and an entire subway system, is an open-world RPG that passes some imaginary threshold from feeling static and paper-thin to one that’s lively and responsive. It helps that Phantom Liberty is a streamlined campaign in a specific part of the map that, dispensing with the MacGuffins of the main plot, can instead weave an interesting and nuanced tale of political intrigue, betrayal, and necessary consequences. Taken together, it’s the game I was hoping Cyberpunk 2077 could be ever since I finished The Witcher 3’s amazing Hearts of Stone and Blood and Wine expansions.
Darkest Dungeon II
Image: Red Hook Studios
It only took one caravan ride in Red Hook Studios sequel to convince me it was something special. Darkest Dungeon II takes everything I loved about the first game and puts it in motion, propelling its brutal emergent storytelling and grim probability-based combat over all of the divots and ditches that occasionally ensnared its predecessor. Playing Darkest Dungeon II late at night with the lights turned off made me feel like I was racing through the gothic fall of humankind to save my soul. While it loses some of the managerial depth of the first game, it more than makes up for it with its more cinematic presentation and economical focus. I wish every game could create such an unmistakable sense of place, atmosphere, and engaging stakes with similar efficiency, and made failure feel so rewarding and profound.
Final Fantasy XVI
Screenshot: Square Enix / Kotaku
This is the problematic fave on this list. Final Fantasy XVI disappointed me in so many ways. From its shallow RPG systems to its dreary and cumbersome second half, the latest game in the Square Enix series felt like it left so much untapped potential on the table. It makes me dream of what the team might accomplish if given the time and resources to mount Cyberpunk 2077’s three-year turn around from Early Access to 2.0 victory lap. Instead of droning on about all the things I disliked about this game, I’ll simply say that it’s highs were higher than almost anything else I played this year and kept me coming back through a new game plus run which has reminded me why I love it, from the incredibly sleek and satisfying action to the magnificent cinematic boss fights. When the writing isn’t falling down flat on its face and the sky isn’t overcast with an impenetrable gloom, there is more than one flicker of the return to form Final Fantasy fans like me have been waiting more than a decade for.
Super Mario Bros. Wonder
Image: Nintendo
I almost left this one off the list. It feels like a cheating. Every stage in Super Mario Bros. Wonder is juiced to the max, carefully engineered to delight, entertain, and continually surprise you, all while maintaining the series’ tightly calibrated platforming feel and bespoke attention to detail. Super Mario Bros. Wonder doesn’t catapult the formula forward or feel as inventive as recent puzzle boxes like Super Mario 3D World and Bowser’s Fury. Its most remarkable moments don’t quite measure up to the peaks in Super Mario Bros. 3 or Super Mario World. But it’s exquisitely crafted, and every level is packed to the brim with new quirks and fun ideas. No game brought me more unburdened joy this year.
The Banished Vault
Screenshot: Lunar Division
Obtuse, slow, and occasionally clumsy, The Banished Vault nevertheless takes spreadsheet navigation and adds an irresistible sense of existential dread to the proceedings. You play religious outcasts scavenging solar systems for resources to survive until the next cryo-sleep-induced hyper-light jump. The greatest terrors I felt in any game this year came from the prospect of miscalculating fuel reserves and how long I have until the next supernova. The Banished Vault can feel straightforward once you unravel its economy, but that process of demystification is complex and enthralling, and richly infused with meaning thanks to the austere presentation and haunting soundtrack. It made contemplating certain doom not just thrilling but spiritually soothing.
The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom
Screenshot: Nintendo / Kotaku
The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom was a slam dunk. It surpassed my wildest expectations, taking what impressed me about Breath of the Wild and finding even more ways to surprise, delight, and gently lead me through its whimsical, dangerous, beautiful world. Game critics love to reward novelty, ambition, and bold experimentation. The nature of playing so many things and being exposed to so much naturally places a premium on the new and unexpected. Tears of the Kingdom has plenty of that, but more than anything it shows masters of their craft assessing, refining, and iterating on a formula they’ve spent decades on, like Chevy working on a new Corvette or Porsche making the latest 911. I’m still stunned that there’s a Zelda game where you can make your own rocket ship and somehow it doesn’t feel like a gimmick but rather like the most obvious and natural thing you could do in an open world fantasy adventure.
Honorable mentions:Season: A Letter to the Future, Humanity, Jusant, Planet of Lana, Saltsea Chronicles, Shadow Gambit: The Cursed Crew.
Needed more time with:Alan Wake 2, Star Wars Jedi: Survivor, Remnant II, Lies of P, Laika: Aged Through Blood, Dredge.
Didn’t get to:Terra Nil, Against the Storm, Fading Afternoon, A Space for the Unbound, Bomb Rush Cyberfunk, The Talos Principle 2, Slay the Princess, Void Stranger, and many more.
Liked but didn’t love:Spider-Man 2, Starfield, Diablo IV, Sea of Stars, Hi-Fi Rush, Moonring, Thirsty Suitors.
Photo: Valve / Kotaku / Roman Samborskyi (Shutterstock)
A Steam user on Christmas Eve had a question: How do you earn just one measly little Steam Point? They were at 68,999 points and wanted to hit 69,000 because, you know, it’s a nice number and all that. However, because of how Steam Points are earned, there seemed no simple way to get that one measly point. But then a Christmas miracle happened. – Zack Zwiezen Read More
A new month is nearly here, as well as a new year, and that means updates to the PlayStation Plus catalog. January kicks off 2024 with three new games available for Premium, Extra, and Essential members to download starting on January 2, as well as some goodies if you happen to be a space ninja.
Is Alan Wake Worth Playing Before Its Sequel? | Total Recall
This month in particular is great if you love third-person games. A Plague Tale offers satisfyingly beautiful stealth action, while Evil West is here to let you blow up some demonic bad guys. Also, don’t forget to snag December’s games (that includes Lego 2K Drive, Powerwash Simulator, and Sable) before the new month kicks off.
PS5 and PS4: Evil West
In our review of Evil West, Kotaku’s Zack Zwiezen praised the third-person shooter as “a simple, honest-to-god, linear and fun, goddamn video game:”
There is no getting around it: Evil West is silly, but in a good way. Its narrative has a lot in common with the best B-movies and pulp stories from the past. Characters act more like people pretending to be people, than real humans. Dialogue is filled with swear words and exposition. All of it is cheesy and silly in the perfect kind of way. Combined with the steampunk gadgets, monsters, and violence, it really does play out like a grindhouse flick you might have caught on TV at like 2 am back in the 90s on TNT.
Howlongtobeat.com estimates you can get through Evil West’s story in about 11 hours, or 19 if you want to take a completionist route.
Get more from Evil West’s developer on PlayStation
Are you a PlayStation Plus Premium or Extra subscriber? You can download Flying Wild Hog’s 2016 FPS Shadow Warrior 2. You can also snag its sequel, Shadow Warrior 3 on sale for just $14 until January 18. And if you’re in the mood for some side-scrolling, samurai hack ‘n slash fun, Trek to Yomi is on sale for $8 until January 18.
PS5: A Plague Tale: Requiem
This rat-infested third-person sequel to 2019’s A Plague Tale: Innocence features some gorgeous visuals and a lovely score. It might be a tad buggy from time-to-time, but if you like sneaking around in the dark and avoiding rats, this one is worth a download. On A Plague Tale: Requiem, former Kotaku writer Ashley Bardhan said:
The environment itself is a spectacle, a black-and-white cookie sometimes lit by the Mediterranean coast’s burnt-orange sun, sometimes spotted with flies as Amicia trudges around the game’s stacks of dead bodies that get dumped and burned and forgotten. Requiem is also heavy on vibration feedback, and crouching through thick braids of grass and the misplaced brightness of lavender always feels good and tense.
Grab the first Plague Tale on sale before January 6, 2023
Don’t like jumping into a sequel without playing the first game? Good news: A Plague Tale: Innocence, which introduces us to Amicia and Hugo, is on sale until January 6 for just $12.
PS5 and PS4: Nobody Saves The World
Nobody Saves The World impressed us back in 2022 with its satisfyingly grindy (yes, grindy like in a good way) progression and fun combat. In our impressions of it, Kotaku’s Ethan Gach said:
If you like filling up meters and testing out new and creative builds for dispatching enemy mobs efficiently, like I do, it’s a recipe for several long nights of fun. Drinkbox has tried to keep tedium to a minimum by making new milestones come quickly and often. Dungeons you might have to grind a handful of times before taking down a larger boss subtly remix themselves each time in a roguelite fashion so they feel more like theme park rides than prisons.
Free Warframe stuff!
Looking to spice up your Tenno’s wardrobe? The Warframe: Syrinx Collection is a great way to add some new cosmetics to your existing collection or a great way to get some variety if you’re just starting out with this free-to-play sci-fi looter shooter. According to Sony’s official blog, you can claim the following items on January 2:
Until very recently, I’d thought that Alan Wake 2 would reside in the #2 slot here, while Tears of the Kingdom would remain my personal game of the year. However, a chance encounter recently with writer Cole Kronman (who wrote this great piece on Xenogears and the games of Tetsuya Takahashi for us) helped me clarify my own feelings. I realized that for me, these two games are in close conversation with each other, strange mirrors of each other’s greatness, and that together, they define the best that 2023’s games had to offer in my mind. I’m not going to spoil plot points for either game, but to engage with why and how this is the case, I need to mention a crucial line of dialogue from the end of Alan Wake 2, one that mirrors the first game’s climactic mic drop of “It’s not a lake, it’s an ocean.” If you haven’t yet finished Alan Wake 2 and want to discover this line for yourself, turn back now.
In the final moments of Alan Wake 2 (and potentially earlier, depending on how thorough you are in exploring and absorbing Remedy’s metaphysical horror odyssey), a character says, “It’s not a loop, it’s a spiral.” Alan Wake 2 explores the difficulty and anguish many artists find in the creative process, the way it can sometimes feel like you’re just banging your head against the wall and not making a damn bit of progress, seeing no way out whatsoever as that blank page continues to taunt you.
And yet, sometimes at least, a way out does eventually reveal itself. Sometimes, after we’ve been spinning our wheels for what feels like forever, something in our subconscious will finally crack, a bit of light will shine through, and we will see, at long last, a path forward, knowing that we had to go through all of that internal turmoil to find our way out. What felt like a pointless, exhausting, excruciating loop was in fact a spiral all along. Before spotlighting this at the end by having a character speak the line, Alan Wake 2 hides this idea in plain sight, repeatedly putting you in environments that feel like loops that you have no choice but to run through again and again. Eventually, your persistence pays off, something suddenly changes, and a way out reveals itself. You thought you were going in circles but you were actually moving forward all along; it just took a lot of energy and grit to see that.
I don’t have any particular insight into what the struggle to get Alan Wake 2 made was like for creative director Sam Lake and the other folks at Remedy, but it’s no secret that this is a game the studio had been hoping to make for a very long time. I have to imagine that at times, the setbacks and struggles were crushing, that they felt like defeat. And yet, it’s undeniable that if Remedy had been able to make a sequel to 2010’s Alan Wake some 10 or six years ago, it would not be the game that it is today. Alan Wake 2 is extraordinary in no small part because it is a game that took 13 years to get made, and because, in its creative energy, you can feel the restless struggle, the accumulation of ideas, the desperate search for a way out. Alan Wake 2 is about many things, but perhaps none of them is more crucial to its identity than being about the struggle to make Alan Wake 2.
You may not have a disembodied, talking head you can consult like Kratos does, but you do have us. This week, we’ll help you make the most out of your Stadia controllers, experience the features Starfield intends to implement in the future, and look back at all the PC gaming you enjoyed in 2023.
Now that we’ve entered the final few days of 2023, the year’s bumper crop of new game releases has slowed to a trickle. With long, lazy days looming ahead, it’s a lovely time to cuddle up with one of the biggest, beefiest games in your backlog. And if you’re looking for beef, RPGs are the way to go. On December 15, Atlus announced that Persona 5 crossed a major sales landmark. The modern fantasy RPG and its spinoffs have now sold more than 10 million copies worldwide. Nowadays, the Persona series seems like a sure bet. But just a few years ago, itwas a niche fascination for a few devoted weebs. If you haven’t checked it out already, now’s your chance.
6 Things To Know Before Starting Persona 5 Tactica
Back in 2017, when Persona 5 first debuted outside Japan, critics and audiences had largely soured on turn-based role-playing games, waving them off as dated and passé. The previous year, Final Fantasy XV ditched menu-driven gameplay for rapid-fire action combat that was flashier and faster than the venerable Square Enix series had ever been. It seemed like turn-based RPGs were a thing of the past—until Persona 5 set the world on fire.
The game takes place in modern-day Tokyo, and follows a group of teen vigilantes known as the Phantom Thieves. By day, they’re just conspicuously attractive high school students. By night, they summon demonic Pokémon known as Personas to fight crime and corruption in supernatural dungeons known as Palaces. P5’s stylish, anime-inflected presentation stood out in the late PlayStation 4 era, which skewed heavily toward realism. Innovative combo mechanics kept enemy encounters feeling snappy and unique. The game drew sky-high review scores and currently sits at an enviable 93 on Metacritic. Not too bad for a genre past its prime, right?
Persona 5 Royal – Take Over Trailer – Nintendo Switch
An expanded and enhanced edition, Persona 5 Royal, was launched worldwide in March 2020. Royal came to Nintendo Switch, PlayStation 5, PC, and Xbox consoles in October 2022. And like any good video game phenomenon, Persona 5 spawned a heap of crossovers and spinoffs. In addition to a dedicated anime series, the cast appeared in a rhythm game (2018’s Persona 5: Dancing in Starlight), a Switch-exclusive action RPG (2021’s Persona 5 Strikers), and this year’s strategy RPG, Persona 5 Tactica. Oh, and protagonist Joker also joined the roster of Super Smash Bros. Ultimate.
Persona 5 isn’t without flaws. Okumura’s palace, which you’ll encounter late in the game, is an absolute chore. And the game’s portrayal of same-sex relationships is about as subtle as a sack of hammers. Oh, and it easily takes more than 100 hours to beat. If you can forgive those shortcomings, it’s an excellent way to wile away the final hours of 2023—whether you play the vanilla version or Royal.
Persona 5 Royal is available on PC, PlayStation, Xbox, and Switch, and is often on sale for $30 or less. (Used copies of vanilla P5 on PlayStation 4 are even cheaper!)
The 1.3 million files leaked as part of the recent ransomware attack on Insomniac Games contain tons of confidential information, including Sony’s projected plans for all of the studio’s upcoming games on PlayStation 5 and beyond. Those alleged roadmaps include a standalone Venom game, a Ratchet and Clank sequel, multiplayer spin-offs, and multiple X-Men games by the year 2030 and beyond.
Spider-Man 2’s New Web Wings Make It Feel Like A Proper Sequel
It sounds like more than fans would have expected, even from Sony’s most prolific first-party studio. Two roadmaps are included in the leak, which was first reported by Australian cybersecurity site CyberDaily and is now widely circulating on social media.
The first one begins in 2023 with Spider-Man 2 and shows a Venom game arriving in 2025, Wolverine launching in 2026, Spider-Man 3 coming in 2028, a new Ratchet and Clank coming in 2029, and the studio’s first X-Men game releasing by 2030. That slate then culminates with a “New IP” planned for 2031-2032.
But video game development is messy and release dates are notoriously fickle and projects are often canceled, especially this early on. Another set of slides viewed by Kotaku, labeled “Insomniac Games Roadmap Extended” includes even more projects with slightly different dates. There, Wolverine is expected in 2025, followed by Spider-Man 3 in 2027, X-Men in 2029, a “New IP” in 2031,” X-Men 3 in 2033, and a second “New IP” in 2035. Multiplayer spin-offs are also sprinkled in there, with Spider-Man 2‘s online mode arriving in 2024, Wolverine’s online mode arriving in 2026, and X-Men’s Online mode arriving in 2028.
That’s a ton of projected games and dates, so here’s a quick summary:
2024: Spider-Man 2 multiplayer
2025: Venom
2025-2026: Wolverine
2026: Wolverine multiplayer
2027: Spider-Man 3
2028: X-Men muliplayer
2029-2030: X-Men
2031-2032: New IP 1
2035: New IP 2
Insomniac’s future seems clear: spawn an entire new Marvel Cinematic Universe on PlayStation. And while we don’t have tons of details for these upcoming projects, one slide does give a pretty clear rundown of what fans can expect from the standalone Venom game. The game will apparently continue the storyline of Spider-Man 2 and setup Spider-Man 3, briding the games the same way Miles Morales did between the first two. Venom and various Spider-Heroes will be swappable as they fight through “Carnage-infected” NYC boroughs. Insomniac is estimating the game will be about 8-10 hours total.
What fans can expect from the future of Insomniac’s Spider-Man series is murkier. Some of the materials reference the possibility of Spider-Man 3 being split into two parts. It seems like the studio will then shift fully over to X-Men by the end of the decade, though these plans are obviously subject to change. It’s possible the multiplayer spin-off will provide a live-service model for Sony to keep rolling out new missions and mini-story beats, though unless assisted by outside studios, that amount of post-launch work probably wouldn’t dovetail too well with Insomniac’s other ambitious plans.
How exactly will Sony be paying for all this? Interestingly, another slide from the leaks shows the apparent terms of the PS5 maker’s licensing deal with Marvel for the X-Men games. The franchise will be all but exclusive to PlayStation until 2035, with over $600 million in “committments.” It’s a huge bet on the comic book mutants. We’ll see how it pays off by the time the PS6 comes out.
On the heels of The Game Awards, this week saw the launch of two expansions for fan-fave games: God of War Ragnarok and Pokémon Scarlet and Violet. We also took a meaty deep dive into Analogue’s latest and greatest new retro console and did a year-three rundown on the state of the PS5.
What’s Coming Out Beyond Pokémon: The Indigo Disk | The Week In Games
From the latest and greatest to cult gems and retro classics, these are the games and consoles we’re loving—and loathing—this week.
Valhalla takes place after the events of Ragnarök, as Kratos seeks out the titular hall of heroes due to a mysterious invitation. Once inside, he finds himself faced with combat arenas built from his memories that repeat as he ascends through Valhalla. Old vistas and enemies are a decent enough framing device, and an effective way to unpack Kratos’ nearly 20 years of baggage. While the 2018 reboot used shame and fatherhood to interrogate the pornographic violence and carnage of the series’ past, Valhalla actualizes that idea without having to be tied to his relationship with his son Atreus. – Kenneth Shepard Read More
Image: Daedalic Entertainment / Flux Games / IguanaBee / Natalie Schorr / Starbreeze Studios / Supasart Meekumrai / Kotaku (Shutterstock)
We made it. After a tumultuous 11 months of really high highs (the games) and really low lows (the layoffs), we’re finally rounding out the last month of 2023. Good riddance. And to really underscore that goodbye, we here at Kotaku thought it’d be fitting to take a look back at what felt like the longest year yet to compile some of the most buggy, broken, and busted games to drop in 2023. – Levi Winslow Read More
Today the company’s launching another retro console recreation, the Analogue Duo. And this time, it’s something of a deeper cut.
Just…god, there’s so much random info you gotta know to understand this thing’s deal. So before we get into it, here’s a tl;dr: Analogue Duo is a very solid PC Engine / TurboGrafx-16 replacement that looks pretty good on modern displays and controls pretty well, too. It’s also not for everyone. It may not even be for me. – Alexandra Hall Read More
The Indigo Disk picks up with new characters Kieran and Carmine returning to their Unova-based school, Blueberry Academy. The school invites you to be an exchange student, and Blueberry Academy is a Pokémon trainer’s dream facility, as it’s built around a terarium that emulates four different biomes. Students capture and study Pokémon in habitats analogous to their natural homes. It’s a decent enough framing for a reasonably sized open-world environment, while also bringing some familiar Pokémon back into the fray. – Kenneth Shepard Read More
A slick new VR headset, a “slim” console refresh, tons of flashy new accessories, and multiple exclusives, including the fastest selling PlayStation game ever, Spider-Man 2. The PlayStation 5 made big moves in 2023. So why does it feel like the console spent most of it resting on its laurels while flailing for a new direction? – Ethan Gach Read More
Does anyone else feel like the PS5 just came out, not that long ago? Well, there’s already an abundance of chatter about a potential mid-gen Pro version of Sony’s strangely designed console. And we’ve also got a Game Awards rundown for you too.
The Week In Games: Dark Knights And Dark Princes
These are the week’s most interesting perspectives on the wild, wonderful, and sometimes weird world of video game news.
I wonder what happens if you cast “canola”?Screenshot: Marvelous Europe
True confession: while I admire and enjoy the heck out of Undertale, the hugely influential 2015 indie RPG that rewards a peaceful approach to conflict, I’ve never actually managed to complete a pacifist run of the game. That’s because I stink at its bullet-hell combat, which demands lightning reflexes and near-perfect memorization throughout its lengthy and brutal boss battles. So you can imagine my delight when I happened upon an adorable RPG that swaps twitchy, rage-quit-inducing challenges for gentle word puzzles. – Jen Glennon Read More
Rumors about a supercharged PS5 (or “PS5 Pro,” if you will) are floating around the internet once more. Whether there’s merit to these rumors, of course, remains to be seen. There’s little use speculating about specs for a rumored, potentially nonexistent console. So, instead, let’s ask if we would even want such a thing in the first place. – Claire Jackson Read More
This time, I know I’m onto a winning strategy. I’ve gathered three parking cones, and set about plopping one atop my head and the others on the ends of my arms, Mega Man buster cannon-style. I ask my friend nearby to punch the start button for me. Squishing my legs together as one, like I’m hopping on a tiny pogo stick, I bounce through the (fake) crosswalk, my silhouette on the large screen most closely resembling an 8-bit cactus. – Jen Glennon Read More
It’s a quiet week for major releases, but a big week for savings and DLC from some of the biggest games in the land, like God of War Ragnarok and Pokémon Scarlet and Violet.
God Of War Ragnarök DLC: Spend 19 Minutes In Valhalla
Here are some of the tips and guides we found most helpful this week.
In case you still needed to do some last-minute Christmas shopping for the gamers in your life (or for yourself), Microsoft has temporarily slashed the price of its most powerful gaming console, knocking the cost down by $100. – Levi Winslow Read More
Pokémon Scarlet and Violet’s Indigo Disk DLC adds a handful of new monsters to catch, one of which is, as fans had theorized, an evolution to Dipplin called Hydrapple. This means one of Applin’s diverging evolutionary lines finally has a third form. But if you’ve had a Dippllin since it was introduced in The Teal Mask DLC, you might be curious why it hasn’t evolved into this new form in the time between the two expansions. That’s because Hydrapple’s evolutionary method hadn’t been added to Scarlet and Violet until now. Here’s how to evolve your candy apple dragon into its final form. – Kenneth Shepard Read More
God of War Ragnarök’s new, free DLC Valhalla is out now, and it’s a pretty great combat showcase that has the added benefit of giving Kratos some much-needed therapy. But if you’re unfamiliar with the punishing, repetitious nature of the roguelike genre or just haven’t booted up Ragnarök lately, it can knock you on your ass. Worry not, because we’re here to give you some general tips to help you face your demons. So grab your axe, blades, and spears, and let’s walk into Valhalla together. – Kenneth Shepard Read More
Alan Wake 2, Remedy’s survival horror sequel, came out in late October, but if you’re already longing for another trip through the spiral, I have good news: “The Final Draft” update has arrived, and with it a new game plus mode and new story content. Not convinced? Then just watch this trailer and try not to lose your mind at the 30-second mark. – Claire Jackson Read More
Oh hey, we’re just burning through December, aren’t we? Well if the 2024 release calendar is lookin’ rather slim to you, might I interest you in some new additions to Sony’s PlayStation Plus service? This month includes quite a few tempting offers. – Claire Jackson Read More
George Carlin famously said “a house is just a pile of stuff with a cover on it.” At its core, Lego Fortnite is the same. Epic’s new collab with Lego has become an absolute phenom since it launched December 7, seeing a daily peak of around 2 million concurrent players. Like all good sandbox survival games, it’s driven by the need to gather, store, and organize piles of stuff. But not all stuff is created equal. Some stuff, like wood and granite, is readily available. Other stuff is harder to find. This guide is concerned with the latter, giving you insight on where to find the hard-to-find materials like knotroot, flexwood, and more. – Mo Mozuch Read More
Curious about Alan Wake 2 but never played the first? Well if you’re a PC gamer, I’ve got some good news: Grab a copy of Alan Wake 2 on the Epic Games Store during its holiday sale and you’ll get a free copy of the 2021 remastered version of the first game. – Claire Jackson Read More
Yeah, so that Call of Duty: Modern Warfare III campaign wasn’t great. The multiplayer though? That’s a different story. And if you’re at all curious about some shooty fun between friends across some classic maps, good news: You can play the game for free from December 14 to 18. – Claire Jackson Read More
Baldur’s Gate 3 shadow-dropped on Xbox after winning Game of the Year at The Game Awards, and Larian Studios is already pushing out updates and hotfixes as the dust settles. If you’re playing the fantasy epic on your Xbox, you may be at risk of losing your saves, and Larian is warning players to update their system to avoid the issue. – Kenneth Shepard Read More
Today, Sony and Insomniac confirmed that the PlayStation-5-exclusive open-world superhero action game, Marvel’s Spider-Man 2, will receive a big, free update in “Early 2024” that will add highly requested features.
Spider-Man 2’s New Web Wings Make It Feel Like A Proper Sequel
Spider-Man 2 on PlayStation 5 is a very good game. One of the best of 2023! It features fantastic web-swinging, an even bigger New York to explore, new characters, and some wonderful side missions, too. But when it launched in October it was missing some features and options that players really wanted, including New Game+. Insomniac did suggest, before the game’s launch, that an update adding all this (and more) would be out before the end of 2023. We now know, though, that those plans have shifted ever so slightly.
On December 13, Insomniac Games announced that Spider-Man 2‘s next big update was being worked on, but it required “more testing” to “ensure the quality is up to [Insomniac’s] standards.” As such, the studio is aiming for an “Early 2024” release for the update, with a full list of what will be included coming closer to release.
Insomniac teased that this update isn’t just adding New Game+, but even more fan-requested features, including the ability to change the time of day in the city, swap tendril colors when using symbiote powers, and replay specific missions. And the studio says this isn’t even all of what it has planned to add to Spider-Man 2 on PS5 next year.
“We can’t wait to share more with you in the future,” Insomniac said. “In the meantime, we appreciate your patience as our team works to finish our next update for Marvel’s Spider-Man 2!”
While some fans might be disappointed that the update has slipped into next year, that’s only a few weeks away at this point, and I’d rather the people working on this game get some time off for the holidays instead of crunching to get an update out. Spider-Man 2 is fantastic already. I can wait a few more weeks to change the time of day.
True confession: while I admire and enjoy the heck out of Undertale, the hugely influential 2015 indie RPG that rewards a peaceful approach to conflict, I’ve never actually managed to complete a pacifist run of the game. That’s because I stink at its bullet-hell combat, which demands lightning reflexes and near-perfect memorization throughout its lengthy and brutal boss battles. So you can imagine my delight when I happened upon an adorable RPG that swaps twitchy, rage-quit-inducing challenges for gentle word puzzles.
6 Things To Know Before Starting Persona 5 Tactica
Leximan, from developer Knights of Borria, immediately caught my eye among the many booths at December 8’s Day of the Devs indie showcase. That was largely due to its monochromatic pixel art style, which is interspersed with trippy splashes of color. You play as a pointy-hatted wizard with a slinky, gliding stride, navigating your way through a variety of colorful dungeons and puzzles.
As is the case in any worthwhile dungeon, you’ll encounter baddies to dispatch, and Leximan puts a unique spin on the genre’s familiar turn-based combat. When you enter battle, you’ll see a swirling cloud of word fragments on the bottom half of the screen, which you can then use to create mystical incantations. There’s a variety of solutions to any given situation, and the most obvious word may not be the correct option—or the most interesting one. You might have a pretty clear idea of what will happen if you cast “Fireball,” but aren’t you the slightest bit curious about what might happen if you chose “Hairball” instead?
Leximan | Announcement Trailer
Once you’ve landed on your approach, the ensuing dialogue will dance and shimmer on the screen, often in vibrant contrast to the game’s mostly black-and-white aesthetic. On occasion, the game’s entire interface will transform or change color—as when I cast “yellow” in response to a foe wielding a green shield. These inventive riffs on the familiar combat system combine to allow each encounter to feel distinct and memorable in its own right. At least during my brief demo, there wasn’t any hint of the kind of spammy, repetitive encounters that often plague retro-styled role-playing games.
With its full-hearted embrace of punny turns of phrase, I wasn’t surprised to discover that the team behind Leximan is based in the UK (Cornwall, to be more precise). There’s a distinct dryness and Python-esque sensibility in the writing here that feels distinct from Undertale—and its many imitators—in a welcome way. If you’re a fan of an offbeat RPG with oodles of personality, this is one to watch.
It was a big week for the scantily clad at Kotaku this week, with both GTA 6 and Like a Dragon: Infinite Wealth giving players plenty of skin. We’re also feeling veryexcited about the new Fallout show, but decidedly less enthusiastic about the minimal focus on the actual awards at this week’s Game Awards.
Grand Theft Auto 6 Comments: A Dramatic Reading
These are the week’s most interesting perspectives on the wild, wonderful, and sometimes weird world of video game news.
Grand Theft Auto 6 looks gorgeous. Unless its debut trailer this week was faked, it might end up being one of the best-looking games of this console generation when it comes out in 2025. By that time, my Xbox Series S will be five years old. I shudder to think of that sleek little white box trying to play Rockstar Games’ latest open-world blockbuster. – Ethan Gach Read More
I’ve played about six hours of Ubisoft’s new Avatar: Frontiers Of Pandoraand my big takeaway is that Avatar sickos will love this game, Far Cry Primal fans will get a kick out of Ubisoft returning to this formula, and everyone else, well… uh…dang, the game sure is pretty, huh? – Zack Zwiezen Read More
An intimate moment in GTA 6.Screenshot: Rockstar / Kotaku
Good news, everyone! Unless you’ve been living in a monastery, you’re likely aware that 2023 is the year that video games got horny again. And no, I don’t mean tastefully Hades frisky, I mean Leisure Suit Larry and Night Traplevels of unhinged lust, the likes of which “mainstream” gaming (whatever that means) hasn’t seen since the 1990s. – Jen Glennon Read More
Historically, TV and film adaptations of video games don’t have the greatest track record. The last few years, however, have started turning that around. Pikachu, Sonic, and Mario have all starred in successful movies, and earlier this year The Last of Us got a proper prestige adaptation that certainly left a mark on fans. – Claire Jackson Read More
And so that’s that. The Game Awards 2023 are over. 32 awards were handed out over three and a half hours. You might think, with that much time to spare, the show took its time and truly celebrated all the creators and games nominated for what the show calls “Gaming’s Biggest Night.” Nope. Instead, more so than before, the show sped through them at a rapid pace, making me wonder why it still pretends to be an award show at all. – Zack Zwiezen Read More
Final Fantasy Tactics is one of the best games Square Enix ever produced, and it’s not available anywhere on modern consoles or PC. A remaster is an obvious way to fix that problem, and it seemed like all signs were pointing to one getting announced any day now. So it’s an especially cruel twist of fate that the original game’s director, Yasumi Matsuno, keeps toying with fans’ emotions about whether a remaster is actually happening or not. – Ethan Gach Read More
Cyberpunk 2077 is in a pretty good spot these days. After a dumpster fire of a launch, the next-gen update, 2.0 patch, and Phantom Liberty expansion have gotten CD Projekt Red’s open-world RPG to a respectable state. The 2.1 patch that launched this week adds a nice little bow to the game as its “last big update.” It has long-requested features like a working subway you can take across Night City, and it also lets V, its mercenary protagonist, spend a little time with their lover in their apartment. The results are an adorable stay-at-home date with your paramour, but for as sweet as it is, these hangouts underline something that felt left out of the Cyberpunk 2077 redemption arc: the romance. – Kenneth Shepard Read More
The first trailer for Rockstar’s next Grand Theft Auto game, likely to be named GTA VI, comes out December 5. What can we expect the trailer to reveal? Well, based on Rockstar’s past GTA trailers, which are fantastic, there’s a pattern that can help us predict what we might see during GTA VI’s official debut. – Zack Zwiezen Read More
Earlier this week, we asked you all to give us your choice for the best video game sequel. Any sequel would count and everyone was free to suggest any game they wanted, no matter how old, obscure, or divisive. And we tallied up all the answers, crunched the numbers, and figured out your top ten sequels. – Zack Zwiezen Read More
Sultry singlets everywhere, oh my!Screenshot: Sega
The secret is out: the Yakuza / Like a Dragon series has great minigames. Whether you enjoy playing retro arcade brawlers like Virtua Fighter, dumping dozens of hours into becoming a real-estate tycoon, or chatting up bodacious babes at the hostess club, Sega’s goofy action series has plenty of pleasant timesinks to wile away the hours. Though it’s still several weeks away, it’s already clear that the upcoming Like a Dragon: Infinite Wealth is no exception to that rule. – Jen Glennon Read More
At the opening of last night’s 2023 edition of The Game Awards, host Geoff Keighley hyped the event as an evening “to recognize outstanding creative work in games in 2023.” But as the night went on, the luminaries who were being awarded for their “outstanding creative work” seemed like they weren’t given much time to actually speak about said work.
The Top 10 Most-Played Games On Steam Deck: October 2023 Edition
The Game Awards is held at the end of every year, ostensibly to celebrate and award the labor that goes into the video games we spend countless hours enjoying. As at most awards shows, it’s customary for winners to give a bit of a speech, thanking those who helped make their game, and thus the award, possible. But this year it felt like time was cut short for most developers. Some have speculated that The Game Awards was worried someone might mentionthe serious labor issuesfacing the industry, or yet scarier, the current conflict in Gaza, thus inviting that most dreaded of phenomena: controversy. Whatever the reason, it was a night that always felt too out of time for the people it was ostensibly supposed to be about.
Throughout the night, orchestral music floated in very soon after most award winners began speaking. That might be a good policy for keeping such a stacked event moving, but when you consider just how much time was devoted to celebrities, muppets, and conversations with high-profile developers like Hideo Kojima (who Aftermath estimates gobbled up as much time as 13.5 of the night’s truncated winner speeches would have), it’s not hard to feel like The Game Awards failed to prioritize its time well. And many awards, probably most, went without anyone coming up on stage at all, getting just quick, cursory-feeling readouts of the winners from Keighley or his cohost before it was time to cut to another ad break, announce a new game, or invite a celebrity onstage.
After a year of constant, highly public layoffsacross the industry, ushering developers offstage while granting celebrities all the time they could ask for feels uniquely out of step. Running large events relying on commercial support is no easy task, but surely there must be a better way to schedule things out so that, in Keighley’s own words, we can actually “recognize outstanding creative work.”
Attendees report a large, ominous teleprompter message reading “Please Wrap It Up,”” which as Javier Cordero pointed out on Twitter (presently known as “X”), was even on display while people from Larian Studios tried to talk about what developing the game meant to them while they accepted the most prestigious award of the night: Game of the Year.
The speech of Larian’s Swen Vincke brought tears to the eyes of his team members in the audience. He talked about what Baldur’s Gate 3 meant to the team, how it was the team’s pandemic project and how they lost Jim Southworth, lead cinematic artist on Baldur’s Gate 3, to cancer just last month. This was easily one of the most human moments in the nearly four-hour onslaught of non-stop commercialism, but hey, Please Wrap It Up, right?
Another odd moment came when CD Projekt Red took home the award for Best Ongoing Game. After being introduced by actor Anthony Mackie, who spent a chunk of time bantering with the audience (to everyone’s confusion) and plugging season two of Twisted Metal on Peacock. But when Gabriel Amatangelo and Paweł Sasko actually got on stage to collect their award, they were given scant time before the music started up.
This morning, Geoff Keighley himself recognized that, “while no one was cut off,” the music indeed felt like it came in too quickly.
But, as Axios’ Stephen Totilo shared, it’s not like the “wrap it up music” was automated. “I can confirm” he wrote on Twitter, “there was manual control of when to start the 30-second countdown to the ‘please wrap it up’ sign, manual control of when to make it flash. Was tweakable.”
Celebrities are entertaining and ads do pay the bills necessary to keep a show running, but hopefully future Game Awards shows will allocate developers as much time as Gonzo the muppet was given to talk about the work they and their teams put in to earn their recognition. Give folks time to enjoy their deserved moment in the spotlight, or else let’s just call The Game Awards what it is: Winter E3.
It’s been 15 years since the last proper game in the Mana series, and that one wasn’t even any good. The Final Fantasy action-RPG spin-off’s legacy has been marked by more downs than ups, but the peaks still burn so brightly in fans’ memories that it’s hard to believe the franchise won’t one day make good on its earlier promise. Visions of Mana is being pitched as exactly that. I hope it doesn’t let us down.
6 Things To Know Before Starting Persona 5 Tactica
Officially revealed during last night’s Game Awards ceremony, I initially mistook Visions of Mana for a Dragon Quest game. The trailer looked very pretty without being overly busy, and showed open environments and real-time combat that found a nice balance between barren PS2-era 3D zones and modern arenas bursting with too much detail. Not quite a big-budget blockbuster or a bold retro HD-2D reimagining, it seems to be charting a humble new beginning for the verdant fantasy franchise.
Mana series illustrator Airi Yoshioka’s designs sported glow-ups befitting the current PlayStation 5 and Xbox Series X/S console generations, while snippets of a score by returning composers Hiroki Kikuta, Tsuyoshi Sekito and Ryo Yamazaki sounded promising. The action, meanwhile, centered on the massive Mana tree and a handful of fights bookended by familiar Rabites and a Mantis Ant boss.
Visions of Mana will come to PS5, PS4, Xbox Series X/S, and PC sometime in 2024, at a time when Square Enix has been dipping into the back catalog more than usual. We recently got Star Ocean: The Divine Force and Valkyrie Elysium, fine games that were nice for longtime fans but didn’t exactly set the world on fire. Will the return of Mana be any different?
The series began as Final Fantasy Adventure on the Game Boy in 1991 before getting its own title and a breakout hit on SNES called Secret of Mana. The top-down action-adventure was like The Legend of Zelda with an RPG twist, including a leveling system, weapon combos, and a varied magic system. Instead of traveling alone you were accompanied by two AI companions, and like Final Fantasy there was an overworld map you could eventually traverse via a flying dragon.
The pixel art was gorgeous. The music was beautiful. To this day it has some of the best scored environments of any RPG. And despite a clumsily localized script, the dungeons, destinations, and pacing made it an unforgettable journey. The series continued with a Japan-only sequel (Trials of Mana), an experimental PS1 game (Legend of Mana), and a fantastic Game Boy Advance remake of the first game (Sword of Mana). Then things quickly unraveled.
Screenshot: Square Enix
The 2006 DS game Children of Mana was a randomly generated dungeon crawler that felt unimaginative and repetitive, and 2007 PS2 game Dawn of Mana took the series into 3D with a clumsy targeting system and character progression that reset after every chapter. A 2007 real-time strategy game for the DS called Heroes of Mana was overly simplistic and bland. The series’ identity fell apart outside of its unique art-style, pretty music, and familiar monster designs.
To rebuild, Square Enix returned to basics by remastering and porting the original games. In recent years fans were blessed with the Adventures of Mana remake, Collections of Mana ports, a Secret of Mana remake, a Trials of Mana remake, and the HD remaster of Legend of Mana. The series’ highlights have been assembled and modernized on every platform. The only thing missing was a new Mana game to rival the ones from 20 years ago.
“The development team have been working hard to ensure that Visions ofMana remains faithful to the series that players know and love while also offering fans and newcomers a fresh new experience with an all-new story, characters, and gameplay mechanics,” Mana series producer Masaru Oyamada said alongside the game’s announcement. It’s a promising start. But Mana fans have been burned plenty of times before. Please don’t let this be one of them.
The long awaited (official) debut of Grand Theft Auto 6 is nearly upon us, Starfield is shedding like a bad wig, and Coral Island has hunks in every direction.
The Top 10 Most-Played Games On Steam Deck: October 2023 Edition
These are the week’s most interesting perspectives on the wild, wonderful, and sometimes weird world of video game news.
In the weeks following the launch of Skyrim developer Bethesda’s highly anticipated RPG Starfield, the game has caught a bit of attention for its plummeting player numbers on Steam. Its ranking from user reviews has also dropped on Valve’s digital storefront, falling from “Positive” into the pale orange of “Mixed.” Why is one of the biggest RPGs of the last few years seemingly falling out of favor with players so soon? Read More
One of my favorite Black Friday traditions is scrolling through GameStop on my phone and getting a bunch of cool games for cheap. Usually it works out just fine. Last weekend it was a nightmare. It’s hard to convey just how terrible navigating the experience of trying to buy something from GameStop has become in 2023, but I’m going to try. Read More
Wish, the 62nd film released by Walt Disney Animation Studios, is a bad movie. The film is meant to celebrate the studio’s 100th anniversary, but instead, its incoherent story and reliance on millennial cliches for cheap jokes come off like it was fed into an AI generator and spat out onto the big screen. And the music, always a staple in Disney films, has some really lovely parts that are sadly weighed down by terrible lyrics. Read More
Coral Island, the new farming and dating sim by Stairway Games, is the latest example of a game in which pursuing a handsome lad is enough to drag me through something I’m otherwise lukewarm on. I’ve spent chunks of my playtime chopping trees trying to make a real farm out of my designated plot of land. But I do not wish to chop trees, I simply wish to climb Coral Island’s residents like trees. Read More
I don’t have a lot of complaints about Baldur’s Gate 3, but the original ending is probably my biggest issue with Larian Studios’ excellent RPG. Though I was content with the ways the story concluded, its rushed execution left me wanting more, which was even more readily apparent when I tried the game’s “evil” ending and it was about as fleshed out as an intrusive thought. Larian has been adding new content to the ending since launch, including a new scene dedicated to Karlach, but in Patch #5, the studio has created an entirely new epilogue that feels like the debrief the original game was missing. Read More
I assume most of you reading this have played at least a few video game sequels in your life and while you might have enjoyed them all, this week at Kotaku we want to know: What do you think is the best video game sequel of all time? Read More
It’s that time of year again. Today, November 29, Spotify users all over are sharing their year-end “Wrapped” recaps, which try to sum up your past year of musical taste by giving stats and rankings on your most-listened-to artists and songs, alongside a sleek graphic to share on all your socials. I look forward to it every year. But as Spotify Wrapped has practically become an internet holiday, I can’t help but notice that it’s gamified how we listen to music throughout the year. Read More
At long last, the GTA VI rumor mill can slow down. Rockstar Games officially announced the sequel in February 2022, but the studio just confirmed that a trailer for the long-awaited crime sim sequel will arrive on December 5. As we gear up for GTA VI‘s reveal, we at Kotaku have just one question: What do y’all want to see from the game? Read More
Amouranth bought an orchard for a cool $17 mill, Bethesda’s attempting to win the hearts and minds of disaffected Starfield players on Steam, and Dan Houser is back! In podcast form!
Diablo IV – Bear Bender Build
Here’s your cheat sheet for the week’s most important stories in gaming.
In a newly released preview of Amazon Prime’s upcoming Fallout TV show, we learned a lot of new details about the world, characters, and story of the highly anticipated live-action adaptation of Bethesda’s popular post-apocalyptic RPG franchise. For example, the show is considered canon with the games. And Walter Goggins still looks good, even as an undead ghoul. Read More
An intense debate ignited November 13, when The Game Awards host Geoff Keighley announced the nominees for this year’s trophy ceremony. While some folks were surprised Pikachu face byStarfield’s absence, most people were shook by one particular title offered up for the “Best Independent Game” category. Now, after a couple weeks of silence, Keighley has tossed his two cents into the discourse. Read More
Reader, if you don’t mind a quick look into my personal neurosis, let me tell you that when I’m really looking forward to something, I get a great deal of anxiety about possibly dying before I get to experience it. I’ve felt this about video games, movies, albums, concerts, and pretty much anything else worth being excited about. Right now, the third live-action Sonic the Hedgehog movie is near the top of my list of Things I Must Survive Long Enough To Experience. This isn’t because I think the movie will be great, or even good, it’s because Shadow the Hedgehog, the best character in the franchise, is set to appear as a main character. All those feelings of excitement and existential dread have been roused today, as Paramount has released a picture of the angsty, broody, gun-toting king on set…well, his feet, at least. Read More
The meta-narrative around Starfield just took a very weird turn. Steam reviews for the sprawling sci-fi RPG recently fell to “mixed” on Valve’s storefront, and now Bethesda employees are arguing with players in the comments about why the game isn’t as boring and soulless as some of them claim. Read More
The hardest thing about Destiny 2 is getting any of your friends to play it. Fans of Bungie’s ambitious and imaginative sci-fi shooter have long hoped for a simple on-ramp that would make it easier to get lapsed players and newcomers back into its universe. Destiny 2’s new “Starter Pack” might sound like exactly that. Instead, it’s a pricey bundle of random items that fans can’t stop dunking on. Read More
When Overwatch 2 shifted the hero shooter’s economy away from loot boxes and into a seasonal battle pass, the customizable Mythic Skins unlocked at the end of that pass were framed as the light at the end of the grindy tunnel. Unlike any other Overwatch skin, these would be somewhat customizable, offering a few style and color options for players to make them their own. In the game’s first year, seven of its iconic heroes have gotten one of these Mythic skins, which mostly been well-received. But after Blizzard revealed season eight’s skin for tank character Orisa, players are noticing a downward trend in Mythic Skin quality. Read More
Photo: Absurd Ventures / Kotaku / Patrick McMullan (Getty Images)
Dan Houser, who co-founded Rockstar Games and was the lead writer on multiple Grand Theft Autoand Red Dead Redemption games, has finally revealed what his new studio is working on. If you were expecting a video game…well, you’ll have to keep waiting. Read More
Dragon’s Dogma 2 looks awesome, right? The much anticipated action role-playing game about dragons and pawns came out swinging with a hefty new gameplay showcase on November 28, showing off the impressive character creator and some spectacular combat and officially revealing a March 24, 2024 release date. One thing that isn’t so awesome, however, is the game’s relatively high price tag of $70, which marks the first game from Capcom at this price. Read More
The November 10 launch of Call of Duty: Modern Warfare III reignited the seemingly endless debate about multiplayer matchmaking, with players demanding Activision and Infinity Ward provide details, or even abolish it entirely. This conversation has perpetuated across multiple Call of Duty releases, but the team behind the popular first-person shooter has yet to properly acknowledge it—until now. On November 30, an official statement was shared by popular CoD website CharlieIntel on X (formerly Twitter). Read More
Indie multiplayer superhit Among Usis bringing together a whole host of other popular indie games—including Undertale, Untitled Goose Game, and Celeste—into one giant cosmetic bundle available to buy in-game until February 2024.
This Stylish Noir-Punk Side-Scroller Is Like Celeste With Guns
Among Us, a 2D cartoonish multiplayer-focused game where players have to figure out who can be trusted and who is a murderous imposter, got huge in 2020 thanks to Twitch. However, the game—developed by small studio Innersloth—actually launched in 2018 to little fanfare. Once Among Us exploded online, the devs dealt with burnout and pressure as they updated and ported it to more platforms. Now, it’s playable basically everywhere and has a large audience that eats up each update—including its latest, which turns it into a greatest-hits collection of indie gems.
On November 28, developer Innersloth announced the “Indie Cosmicube” a new cosmetic pack for Among Us that contains outfits inspired by seven different indie games: Untitled Goose Game, Undertale, Crypt of the NecroDancer, Celeste, Castle Crashers, Alien Hominid, and A Hat in Time. Players will need 7,000 beans—a freely earned in-game currency—to get this pack of cosmetics. Once purchased, they must equip it and play matches to unlock all the outfits and items inside the pack.
“Our team was so excited to bring the stylings of [these games] to life in Among Us,” Innersloth said. “They’re indie. We’re indie. It’s like that Spider-Man meme, but instead of pointing, we’re crying because we love each others’ work so much.”
In total, this new cosmetic pack contains 25 hats, 18 skins, 12 nameplates, 9 visors, and 6 pets. If you do the math, assuming you include the option of not wearing some things, this one cosmetic pack offers up to 8,091,720 possible visual combinations.
Among Us’ new set of cosmetics won’t be around forever, though. Players only have until February 2024 to earn 7,000 beans and purchase the pack before it leaves the in-game store.
