Co-op shooter Deep Rock Galactic was first released on the PC back in 2018. It has a dedicated following online, and tons of loyal fans, but this is not a review of the video game. This is a review of the board game with, confusingly, the exact same name.
You and up to three other players take control of space dwarves who are headed into a dark cave to drill for gems. So far, so video game. You then find those caves full of alien bugs that you have to mow down. Again, just like the video game. Then you have to grab those gems and get the hell out of there. You can see where this is going.
Image: MOOD
The difference here, of course, is that in the video game this plays out in a Left 4 Dead-like frenzy, as players rush around in real-time playing a frantic shooter. The board game is much more relaxing, as it shifts to a system where players are able to take turns, and their time, working through the caves.
Deep Rock Galactic looks, and plays, like so many other modern dungeon-crawling games, from Descent to Imperial Assault. Everybody gets action points they can use to move around and interact with stuff (“interacting” includes “shooting insects in the face”), everybody gets unique weapons and powers they can use and, as expected in 2023 for a licensed game, everything—from the dwarves to the bugs even down to the stalagmites—is represented by a set of incredibly detailed, immensely satisfying miniatures.
(NOTE: The game ships in two editions. The standard only has plastic minis for the dwarves, while the pricier deluxe edition, which I played, has minis for everything).
Where this tries to do its own thing, and match the video game’s feel (if not pace) at the same time, is the way enemy actions are triggered. Rather than basing enemy moves off initiative, or having them move after all players have done so, in Deep Rock Galactic every time a dwarf concludes their move they draw an event card, and these almost always trigger an enemy spawn and/or move.
The build quality on this game is impressive. Each player card is full of recessed slots for your ammo and tokens, always a welcome (and premium) move by publishers.Photo: Luke Plunkett
Having them appear on the board so often, and moving before all players have had a chance to react, may sound unfair but it does a fantastic job of feeling just like the video game, in that you’re being constantly swarmed by stuff crawling out of the walls. And it’s rarely unfair anyway, because each dwarf is loaded with very cool (and powerful) weapons that satisfying blow huge chunks in any insect hordes making it close enough to you.
The key consideration of the board game, again like the video game, is to balance your need to mine a certain quantity of resources versus your need to keep blasting enemies to stay alive. Lean too far towards one of those approaches and you’ll fail the mission, either because you didn’t mine the goods in time (each level has a time limit) or because…you’re all dead.
I like the video game and I like dungeon crawlers, and so for the most part I really loved playing Deep Rock Galactic. The tension between the game’s two imperatives is constant and perfectly-balanced throughout, and its combat—a combination of your powerful weapons and hordes of huge plastic miniatures you get to move around and throw off the board when dead—is some of the most fun I’ve had in ages with a game of this type.
Plus, and I know people (myself included!) are getting tired of every game shipping with a ton of minis, in this instance they’re very welcome, not just because they’re so detailed and solid but because the game also includes a MULE that you drop your little gems into, a tactile experience so wonderful it was maybe the highlight of the entire game for me.
Nothing is more enjoyable in this game than dropping gems into your MULE and popping the lid closed. Photo: Luke Plunkett
One thing to note though is that, despite its pricepoint and genre, Deep Rock isn’t the kind of long-term tabletop experience you might be expecting. While the idea of a miniatures-heavy dungeon crawler may conjure expectations of a days-long campaign, Deep Rock Galactic is actually just a collection of standalone missions that can be tackled in an hour or so depending on how many players are taking part (another cool feature of the “bad guys go at the end of every player’s turn” system is that it scales perfectly to the number of humans at the table).
While there is technically a campaign—just a brief to do all the missions in order without dying—and it’s not a game built around narrative, it’s still a bit weird pulling out such a huge box and setting it up for what’s essentially a mid-length session game.
That’s not a problem, just something to note ahead of time if you were thinking of picking this up or playing it. You should also know that, despite being a very literal adaptation of a video game license, this requires absolutely no familiarity with the digital version of Deep Rock Galactic whatsoever. So long as you know you’re a space dwarf drilling and gems while also shooting bugs, you’re good to go.
About my only real criticism of the game is that it’s documentation is some of the most frustrating I’ve encountered in a while, lacking in a proper quick start guide and splitting its important information between separate rules and mission books, which made our first mission a very slow slog. Indeed it took us forever to find out how the enemy system even worked (pretty important info!), so if you’re playing this and have the time I’d 100% recommend watching an online rules explainer beforehand.
Here is a very strange warning: these are the sharpest minis I have ever encountered. Photo: Luke Plunkett
There’s nothing revolutionary about Deep Rock Galactic. As I’ve alluded to above it’s another dungeon crawler, another licensed adaptation and another game that (version depending) has a ton of minis. But fans of the video game will find a tabletop conversion that faithfully converts the co-op experience into one more conducive to drinking beer and being in the room at the same time, while everyone else will just find a solid night’s gaming blowing up space bugs and looting some treasure.
As Google prepares to kill off its Stadia streaming service for good, there have been a few parting gifts to emerge from its demise. Users got a final game, along with the ability to unlock the Bluetooth capabilities of their controllers (even if that was something they should have been able to do from day one), but one of the last surprises can be enjoyed by all of us. Especially those of us who never paid for Stadia in the first place.
Back in 2020 Necrosoft (finally) released Gunsport, a sci-fi take on 2D volleyball, as a Stadia exclusive. It was pretty cool! It was also, as a Stadia exclusive, a game that most of us never got to enjoy. In June 2022 it was followed by a sequel, Hyper Gunsport, which was much more widely available, since it came out on PC, Switch, Xbox and PlayStation.
Gunsport Stadia Teaser
While two completely separate games, they’ve now been brought a lot closer, with Necrosoft saying in a tweet earlier today “Since we care about game preservation we’ve made an offline version of Gunsport available in the Steam version of Hyper Gunsport, through the beta channel.”
You can see a video of this game-smuggling move (done by Necrosoft’s Lotte May) in action below:
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If you’ve never had to use a Steam game’s beta channel system before, the video above will give you a quick rundown on how to activate the original game, then be able to easily switch between playing it and the sequel.
This is a very cool move! Not just because people are getting essentially a free video game, but because this is a super interesting way to implement a form of game preservation, one that thinks way outside the box but which, thanks to the way Steam is structured, also seems to work pretty damn well!
Grand Theft Auto: Vice City – 2002 Screenshot: Rockstar Games
Last year, footage of the next Grand Theft Auto—assumed to be GTA 6—leaked online. While Rockstar quickly tried to erase the videos from the internet and plug the holes in the ship, it was impossible to completely contain such a massive, unprecedented leak. So fans around the world got a very good look at the future of Grand Theft Auto. And now myself and others find it hard to go back to the aging GTA Online.
Late on September 19, 2022, 90 short videos of early gameplay of what would later be confirmed by Rockstar as the next GTA entry leaked online via a hacker. The footage revealed a lot about the next game in the massively popular open-world franchise, including that the series would be returning to Vice City, Florida, a fan-favorite location last seen in GTA: Vice City Stories, the prequel to the beloved PS2 classic, GTA: Vice City. It also gave us a good look at the new protagonists of this next criminal adventure and some of the missions we might experience when GTA 6 is eventually released. Fans even began mapping out the game’s virtual world using the leaks.
Rockstar undoubtedly hates the leak and likely wishes it could rewind time and prevent it from ever happening at all, but it did end up revitalizing the playerbase. For the first time in a long time, there was excitement and energy in the GTA community, which after years of GTA Online updates and poorly received remasters was in a pretty bad place prior to the leak. Even an early, unfinished or unpolished leak of GTA 6 was better than radio silence and glitchy remasters. People were pumped and hyped about the future of Grand Theft Auto in a way I hadn’t seen in years.
But then, once the leaks were scrubbed from the web and it became clear Rockstar wasn’t going to release any official teaser or trailer to capitalize on the moment, all I and other GTA fans could do was go back to GTA Online. And that’s harder to do now that I’ve seen the future.
Rockstar Games
The latest big and free expansion to GTA Online,Los SantosDrug Wars, was released late last year at a really bad time for me to play and cover it for the site. So I just…didn’t play it. For the first time ever in the history of GTA Online, I skipped a new update completely. I’ve still not played it. At first, I blamed my skipping of the latest update on bad timing and a busy schedule due to holidays and end-of-the-year content. But now, weeks removed from all that, with more free time to play stuff, I’ve still not fired up the new update. And I think it’s time to admit to myself that my growing burnout around GTA Online was increased greatly by that small taste of what’s to come. That look at the future of GTA in Florida ruined me.
I could go back and drive around the same highways and streets of Los Santos I’ve been cruising around since 2013. I could fire up the game and check out the newest business and missions connected to it. I could, sure. The thing is, I don’t know if I want to. I mean, eventually, I will play more GTA Online. I sort of have to as it’s part of my job here at Kotaku. Yet, if it wasn’t part of my career there’s a real chance that I might just never play GTA Online again.
To be clear: It’s not because GTA Online is worse today than it was a decade ago—it’s actually much better to play in 2023 than in 2013—but because getting a glimpse of a fresh new world has killed my desire to boot up the same old Los Santos after a decade of GTA Online and GTA V. I mean, just having new songs on the radio will be amazing. I love Queen’s “Radio Ga-Ga” but you can only hear it so many times in 10 years before you’re ready for new tunes, too.
At this point, I’m hoping the wait for Grand Theft Auto 6 and its sunny beaches, palm trees, and new characters isn’t too much longer, because I’m ready to leave Los Santos behind for a tropical vacation to Vice City.
I’m seeing double. Must be the work of an enemy Stand.Image: Epic Games / David Production / Shueisha / Netflix / Kotaku
Recently, Fortnite has become a wacky and eclectic ensemble of the best anime characters of all time with its Dragon Ball Z, Naruto, and My Hero Academia crossovers. However, some fans are calling out the battle royale’s latestoriginal skin for not being so original at all, but rather what they see as an egregious JoJo’s Bizarre Adventure knockoff.
Yesterday, the official Fortnite Twitter account made a post about its newest character skin, Hana. Hana sports a fashionably short chartreuse hairstyle while wearing a blue suit with an exposed midriff and matching chartreuse patterns. Hana’s also got a ghoul-like “inner demon” outfit named Keleritas. If you’ve watched the Netflix anime JoJo’s Bizarre Adventure: Stone Ocean, you wouldn’t be remiss in thinking I just wrote a word-for-word description of its titular character Jolyne Cujoh and her ghost-like Stand, Stone Free.
For those without JJBA brain rot, Jolyne Cujoh is the main character of JoJo’s Bizarre Adventure’s sixth part, Stone Ocean. Jolyne utilizes a magical ghost-like being called a stand to assist her in battles. Stone Ocean recently finished streaming on Netflix last month, though the show was poorly promoted online by the streaming service.
While some fans were more charitable than others when calling out Fortnite’s new character on Twitter for her uncanny resemblance to Jolyne, editing the character into the “Is That A MF JoJo’s Reference” meme and making requests for a future Fortnite x JJBA crossover, others saw it as a blatant rip-off.
Image: The Pokemon Company / 343 Industries / Kotaku
Halo has a long tradition of community-made maps and game modes that range everywhere from serious to silly. Recently, one map and mode combo that’s more on the playful and fun side of things caught the attention of 343 Industries as an opportunity to fix long-standing shooting issues. Named after a certain Pokémon notorious for digging and jumping out of holes, this community creation is now being used to pinpoint and fix aiming and shot registration woes, as they’ve plagued Halo Infinite since it launched just over a year ago.
Halo Infinite, the latest entry in the long-running and often critically acclaimed first person shooter series, only recently received an update that included a beta version of its in-game map creator: Forge. First premiering in Halo 3, Forge has been a staple of the series ever since 2007, allowing anyone to create a map of their own design with the tools necessary to create custom games for it, be those party and minigames or more traditional takes on the franchise’s well-known modes, like Slayer or Capture the Flag. One such community-created game, that takes its name from the Diglett Pokémon, seems to have caught 343’s eye as an opportunity to test drive fixes to the game’s core mechanics.
With community Forge maps popping up on a regular basis these days, 343 Industries’ senior community manager John Junyszek put out a tweet asking for the community’s favorite Forge minigames so far. When competitive Halo player Linz shouted out Digletts, a game where players pop out of holes to take sniper shots at one another, Junyszek followed up with an interesting bit of behind-the-scenes trivia:
Kotaku has reached out to 343 Industries for more information.
As many Halo fans have known, while Infinite’s core mechanics are solid and work well, there have been issues around aiming, with many players suspecting that the game seems particularly off when trying to line up precision shots with a sniper rifle, either descoped or while aiming down sights. Whether this is due to the game’s auto-aim function that eases controller aim (and exists on most modern shooters that take controller inputs), bullet magnetism, or the notorious desync issues many players have had with Infinite isn’t totally certain. Since Diglet is a game that only features aiming and shooting, it’s a pretty perfect test environment for studying aiming behavior. Junyszek said that the “minigame has recently helped our team further test and investigate various shot registration situations, especially in regards to latency and networking. Since it’s a curated environment without many variables, it’s helped us investigate specific scenarios.”
Check out the the Diglett game mode in action here:
343 Industries / iSpiteful
Who knew RPing as a Diglet armed with a legendary anti-materiel rifle could be so productive?
Destiny 2 is fixing a bunch of stuff for the month and change ahead of February’s massive Lightfall expansion. Players won’t have to grind so much to get into Grandmaster Nightfall missions. Iron Banner will be much more generous with armor drops in the weeks ahead. And armor mods, one of the most fun but esoteric parts of Bungie’s loot shooter, are finally getting unlocked for everyone.
Destiny 2sucks for new players. You can have plenty of fun, but some of the most interesting parts of the game are locked behind dozens of hours or more of grinding, unlocks, and luck. One of the things that new players have difficulty accessing is armor mods, which drastically change the ways you can play the game, but which are only sold on a rotating basis by a single in-game vendor named ADA-1 who is hidden in the far corner of the main social hub. While longtime players have access to all of them, new players can get stuck with huge holes in their arsenal when it comes to crafting fun builds. No longer.
Yesterday, Bungie unlocked all standard armor mods for all players. While raid mods and artifact mods will still need to be earned, Warmind, Well, and Charged with Light and other powerful mods no longer need to be found. Even if you just started playing Destiny 2, you can start experimenting with different synergies or, more likely, copy the best builds making the rounds online.
Screenshot: Bungie
“With big changes coming to buildcrafting in Lightfall, we want to give everyone a chance to enjoy all of the standard mods in their current state for the rest of the Season,” Bungie wrote in Thursday’s This Week At Bungie (TWAB) blog post. The studio will outline how mods will work differently in next week’s preview. In the meantime, however, players can enjoy some other quality of life improvements.
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Grandmaster Nightfalls now unlock at 1580 power and only require you to hit 1595 to reach the difficulty ceiling. Focusing costs for Trials of Osiris, Crucible, and Gambit weapons and armor have also all been reduced to 25 Legendary Shards. And most importantly, the remaining Iron Banner events this season will make it almost twice as easy to hit the rank reset and earn a full set of the hot new vintage Iron Banner armor.
Things have been extremely touch-and-go in Destiny 2 recently. While Season 19 has been applauded as one of the more fun and less grindy updates in some time, there have also been plenty of technical bugs and multiplayer complaints getting in the way. Last week’s Iron Banner session had all sorts of issues, not the least of which was players grinding tons of matches without managing to complete a set of armor. The upcoming changes should help earn some good will back ahead of Lightfall when Destiny 2 will likely once again start to feel like a completely new game again.
Justin Roiland, creator of TV series Rick and Morty and the recently released High on Life game, has been charged with domestic violence against a former girlfriend.
NBC News reports that it obtained Orange County Superior Court records stating that a criminal complaint was filed against Roiland back in May 2020 by the Orange County District Attorney. The complaint charges Roiland with “one felony count of domestic battery with corporal injury and one felony count of false imprisonment by menace, violence, fraud and/or deceit.” Roiland was arrested and released with a $50,000 bond in August 2020 and pleaded not guilty to both charges in October of that same year.
According to NBC News the victim says the incident between herself and Roiland occurred around Jan. 19 of that year. A protective order was filed in October 2020, which states that Roiland can not harass, threaten, surveil, or be within 100 feet of an unknown person protected under the order. The order also made Roiland relinquish ownership of any firearms he owned or possessed. The order lasts until October 2023. According to NBC News, Roiland is scheduled to appear in court Thursday for a pre-trial hearing.
This news comes shortly after the release of High on Life, a first-person shooter game created by Roiland’s video game company, Squanch Games. Despite the game’s popularity on Game Pass, Xbox’s Netflix-like game subscription service, it’s been at the center of controversy for its use of an AI generator to create poster art and vocal performances. Prior to High on Life’s release on December 13, Roiland launched two NFT projects in 2021 and 2022 called The Best I Could Do and Art Gobblers.
Yesterday, after 1,410 days (or 3 years and 10 months) the Grim Medicine cosmetic set—complete with the popular Plague Doctor skin—returned to Fortnite’sin-game store, letting players buy it for the first time since the start of the covid-19 pandemic. And many believe it was the pandemic itself that kept the plague-themed items and skins out of the game for such a long period of time.
I doubt I need to explain Fortniteto you, but just so everyone’s on the same page: Epic’s Fortnite is a free-to-play battle royale PVP shooter available on nearly every modern platform out there. It supports crossplay across all of them and for the last few years has been one of the most popular games in the world as it continues to expand and include more characters from other franchises, like Star Wars,Dragonball Z,and Street Fighter.
But Fortnite also has plenty of its own original skins and cosmetic items too, like Peely and the previously mentioned Plague Doctor. But until yesterday, these plague-related items hadn’t appeared in the game since March 1, 2019, making them extremely rare, as the only people who could use them were folks who bought them back when they were last available. Meanwhile, most other skins appear again and again in the store every few weeks or months.
Fans had theorized that the Grim Medicine cosmetic set had been blacklisted and retired by Epic due to the covid-19 pandemic. This makes sense, as including those skins during the height of the deadly pandemic that has killed over 6 million people worldwide as of January 2023 would have been a bad look.
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The working theory is that the skin popped up in the store on March 1, 2019. Then before it could appear again in the store, covid-19 was detected in Wuhan, China in December 2019 and eventually spread around the world, officially becoming a pandemic according to the World Health Organization on March 11, 2020. It’s not unreasonable that Epic saw this happening and decided to pull the plague-themed items from the store’s rotation in order to avoid any controversy.
The thing is, Epic has never officially confirmed this theory at any point. Kotaku has reached out about the skin and the long gap in time between it showing up, but didn’t hear back from the company. Still, even if Epic hasn’t officially confirmed the reason for the Grim Medicine items going missing for nearly four years, the covid-19 theory doesn’t seem unreasonable to me. And regardless of why, many players were excited to see it return, even if only to make a joke about its long absence. Or to point out that covid-19 is still a thing in 2023, which it is, and it’s still deadly and dangerous, too.
“One of my friends IMMEDIATELY dropped money into the game upon getting this notification. He’s been waiting since it was last in the shop,” tweeted one person. “LETS GOOOO! I finally got PLAGUE!!! I wanted him for 2 years,” tweeted another player upon seeing the news of the Plague Doctor’s return to Fortnite. Of course, there were other players who found it funny everybody was excited over the skin, and others who owned it already and were now sad to see their once rare skin become common once more.
Personally, I’m not excited about the Grim Medicine skins as I don’t really like how they look. And besides, I only like to buy the most cursed and bizarre skins in Fortnite, like Mr. Meeseeks from Rick and Morty.
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.
Doing well in Warzone is often about making the most out of what you can find on the field. But with the ability to recover or purchase your loadout, one of the best ways to gain an advantage over the competition is to grab your curated selection of guns and perks.
Call of Duty: Warzone 2.0 has a ton of guns. Like, a lot. There’s nothing wrong with picking one that looks, sounds, and feels great for your personal playing style, but with the game having been out for a little while, a specific meta is starting to emerge. Let’s jump into some of the best choices out there, broken down by category (I’ll also briefly cover how to get access to your loadout as well).
Best assault rifle loadout for Warzone 2.0
It doesn’t get any more steak and potatoes than an assault rifle in Warzone. While the trusty M4 is always a reliable and performant weapon, the TAQ-56 stuck out early on as one of the best assault rifles in Modern Warfare II.
You may prefer different attachments for different uses, but most assault rifles in Modern WarfareII benefit from prioritizing boosts to medium-range effectiveness. Sniper rifles, battle rifles, and marksman rifles will usually outpace an assault rifle at long distance, while SMGs are typically great for up-close engagements. Your mileage may vary, but here are some attachments to consider for the TAQ-56 assault rifle:
Maybe you shouldn’t use the grenade launcher, but c’mon where’s the fun in that?Screenshot: Activision / Kotaku
Muzzles: Harbinger D20 or Echoline GS-X Barrels: 17.5 Tundra Pro Barrel Underbarrel: FTAC Ripper 56 or Hellscream 40mm (for the lulz) Ammo Type: High Velocity or Armor Piercing (pierces walls and is effective against vehicles. Does fuck-all against armor tho) Magazine Size: 60 rounds
If you want to swap one of these out to gain an Optic, the Aim-OP V4 is a good choice. I personally prefer the Lonewolf, but that’s more of an aesthetic choice than a functional one.
And if the Taq V ain’t to your liking, you might also want to consider the M4, Kastov 762 or 74U. Folks out there also really like the Chimera, which you need to extract from Building 21 in the DMZ to obtain (good luck). I also like the STB 556 a fair bit.
Best SMG loadout for Warzone 2.0
SMGs put out a lot of bullets, and fast. Your running speed will usually be higher with one equipped as well, so having one of these will benefit you in more ways than just damage output.
While the FSS Hurricane and Vel 46 aren’t bad choices, when it comes to SMGs, the Fennec 45 is easily one of the best in Warzone 2. It’s not uncommon to find these on enemies, kitted out to an extreme degree for good reason: It fires bullets real-fuckin’-fast™ and feels damn stable while doing so.
The Hacksaw is a pretty fun Fennec blueprint.Screenshot: Activision / Kotaku
Here are some attachments to consider for the Fennec 45:
Optic: Cronen Mini Pro or SZ Holotherm Muzzles: XTEN RR-40 or Singuard MKV Barrels: Covert Force or ZLR 16.5 Ignition Barrel Underbarrels: FSS Skarkfin 90 or Agent Grip Magazine Size: 45 rounds
And if the Fennec isn’t your cup of high-bullet-output tea, you may wish to consider the Vaznev-9K.
Best Sniper Rifle loadout for Warzone 2.0
I expect opinions on this to diverge more than any other category on this list. Sniper rifles are a little rare out there in Al Mazrah, particularly for Warzone 2.0 proper which tends to see fights break out at close enough distances that a sniper would be somewhat of a disadvantage. In the DMZ, however, they’re often indispensably valuable.
Warzone 2.0 has a nice selection of sniper rifles which some might say don’t differ a whole lot between each other. For the most part, you can rely on powerful, bolt-action rifles doing substantial damage and frequently downing enemies with a single hit. But that Signal-50’s semi-auto rate of fire is hard to argue with. The Victus XMR has lately emerged as the go-to sniper rifle. If you struggle to land solid shots, one at a time, however, you might want to fall back on the Signal-50 for its higher rate of fire.
Screenshot: Activision / Kotaku
Here’re some great attachments choices for the Victus XMR:
Muzzles: Bruen Counter-Ops Muzzle or Bruen Agent 90 Silencer (reduced damage, but no negative to ADS speed) Barrel: Mack 8 33.5 Super Barrel Stock: XRK Rise 50 or FTAC Homeland Ammo Type: 50 Caliber High Velocity Guard: Corvus Responder
The RPK (why are we even considering other LMGs?)
The RPK sometimes feels like a damn Swiss Army knife. With high damage, fast rate of fire, and a decent-sized magazine that reloads nearly as quickly as an assault rifle, the slow-ass reload rates of other LMGs like the Rapp H or Sakin MG38 are left in the dust by this one clear standout. The RPK isn’t just one of the best LMGs, it’s one of the best guns in the game.
And though we’re talking about the battle royale, here’s a quick tip for DMZ: If you’re low on weapons, securing an RPK is your first objective. Most enemies tend to have them, and having a stash of these to fall back on when your insured weapon is on cooldown can help you build some momentum in the next deployment. Have I told you about my personal lord and savior, DMZ, yet? By the way, extraction shooters are amazing, in case you didn’t know.
Back to Warzone. Here are some great attachment choices for the RPK:
Screenshot: Activision / Kotaku
Optics: Aim-OP V4 or SZ Vortex-90 Muzzles: Polarfire-S or Zulu-60 Stock: Heavy Support Underbarrels: FTAC Ripper or VX Pineapple Rear Grips: Demo-X2 or Ivanov ST-70 Grip
What about battle rifles, marksman rifles, and other weapon loadout choices in Warzone 2.0?
Right now the Warzone meta centers around assault rifles, SMGs, and that darn RPK. Unless you’re going for some counter-cultural personal expression or are trying a new experimental build, everything listed above is likely your best choice when curating a loadout. But let’s consider a few alternatives if what I’ve mentioned so far isn’t to your liking.
Battle Rifles: Taq-V, FTAC Recon. (Some people like the SO-14. I fell off this in favor of the other two listed here). Marksman Rifles: EBR-14, TAQ-M Shotguns: LOL None.Season 01 Reloaded nerfed Shotguns pretty badly. The Bryson 800 is probably the best of these right now, but you’re better off just ignoring this category for now.
Recon: Double Time, Tracker, Focus, Birdseye Great for: Moving fast, keeping your aim on point under pressure, and gathering intel on your enemies
Things can get quite hot in Warzone. The Recon perk package will help you move faster with Double Time, spot enemy footprints with Tracker, avoid flinching when aiming at enemies with Focus, and Birdseye will reveal enemy locations and the direction they’re facing on the mini-map whenever you call up a UAV.
Specter: Double Time, Tracker, Spotter, Ghost Great for: Moving fast, spying on enemies, and laying low
Specter is similar to Recon in that it has Double Time and Tracker, but it adds Spotter for locating enemy equipment, and Ghost, making you invisible to UAVs, Portable Radars, and even that darn Heartbeat Sensor. That last perk kinda makes Specter a must-have.
Screenshot: Activision / Kotaku
Vanguard: Double Time, Bomb Squad, Resupply, High Alert Great for: Moving fast, reducing explosion damage, extra lethal equipment, and supernatural senses
Vanguard also comes with Double Time, so you’ll have your speed to rely on. You’ll also be able to move with less concern for explosions, as Bomb Squad will reduce damage from any non-Killstreak explosive. Resupply will help you stay stocked on lethal equipment, but High Alert is the real appeal of Vanguard as it will let you know when you’ve been spotted by an enemy you can’t see. If you value your privacy, grab this one for sure.
Screenshot: Activision / Kotaku
Weapon Specialist: Overkill, Strong Arm, Spotter, Survivor Great for: Carrying two primary weapons, throwing grenades more accurately, and staying alive
If you want your loadout to come with two assault rifles, an assault rifle and an SMG, an RPK and a sniper, or just about any combo of two primary weapons, look no further than the Weapon Specialist perk package. Overkill lets you slot two primaries into your loadout, and that’s by and large the main appeal here. But having the ability to accurately throw grenades, spot enemy equipment, and ping foes who down you (very handy for duos, trios, and quads) isn’t bad either.
What about tactical and lethal equipment?
Choosing the best tactical equipment in Warzone is often a matter of playing to the strengths of your playstyle. Also, in Warzone (as well as DMZ), tactical equipment might be something you frequently change up as you find new stuff on the map.
If you like to play it safe and keep some distance between you and other players, consider the Spotter Scope or Heartbeat Sensor.
Both Warzone and DMZ take place on a biiiig map. The Spotter Scope (essential in DMZ, imho) will help you spot potential danger ahead or behind you, while the Heartbeat Sensor is pretty handy when clearing a building. Watch the battery life on the Heartbeat Sensor, however, that thing evaporates quicker than a Steam Deck running Cyberpunk 2077.
Stims can save your life when you’re out of armor.
You’ll go into Warzone with two-plate armor vests (in DMZ you default to just one, which is even deadlier). Stims can often mean the difference between life and death as they’ll quickly juice your health back up. If you ask me, I save Stims for recovery on the battlefield, but you might decide to toss it in your loadout if you find you like to advance on an enemy even after your plates are broken.
Flash, Stun, Tear Gas and Smoke grenades are versatile and effective.
Want to piss off an advancing enemy who looks armed to the teeth? Blind ‘em with a flash grenade. Stun grenades can achieve similar results. Tear gas is also an effective way to screw with an enemy, exposing precious seconds of vulnerability. But if you want to vanish quickly, a big ploom of smoke can be very advantageous.
And if you’re a DMZ fan, I recommend saving more than a few Smoke grenades to spam the chopper when you’re exfiltrating. It’s a great way to obscure your location at a distance and confuse foes rushing the chopper. Be warned, however, thermal scopes (which include the Spotter Scope and Recon Drone) can see through that smoke.
What about Field upgrades?
Field upgrades don’t just give you an advantage, they can help your whole team. But they’re not a part of your loadout in Warzone (though they are in DMZ). You’ll have to find them on the field or grab ‘em at a Buy Station. Packing or finding a Munitions Box or Armor Box is one of the best options. Revive Pistols will also save you or a friendly if they’ve been downed, keeping you in the fight and out of the Gulag.
Beyond that, Battle Rage ain’t a bad choice if you like to get in people’s faces, and it pairs well with a high-output SMG like the Fennec 45.
I am personally a huge fan of the Recon Drone. In DMZ, at least, I’m never without it. In Warzone things might border too close to constant chaos for a Recon Drone to be of use, but it is a quick and effective way to get a bird’s eye perspective on what’s around you, following you, or just up ahead.
Inflatable Decoys can be hilarious when used well, but they take up a slot that might be better filled by other Field Upgrades mentioned here.
And how do I find my loadout?
Jeez this game has a lot of stuff you can find and use. You’ll spawn in on Warzone with a scrawny little pistol, so you’ll need to get that loadout from a few different places.
If you clear out an AI Stronghold, you’ll find a chest where you can acquire your loadout. Alternatively, you can wait until the announcer calls out random supply drops—but be warned, everyone will be gunning for those. You can now, thankfully, also buy your loadout via a Loadout Drop Grenade. This was added (back) into the game recently, and according to Raven Software might be subject to some changes and alterations.
Here’s the price breakdown for loadout drop grenades according to squad player counts:
Solos: $8,000
Duos: $16,000
Trios: $24,000
Quads: $32,000
Once you have one of these, you can just toss it out and wait for your Loadout to drop from the sky, ready to equip and slaughter the opposition with.
Like many battle royales, smart, in-the-moment decision making is just as essential as any weapon in the game. The weapon choices here will help you find the right loadout for your playstyle. I can’t help you with the exploding helicopters though.
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
With so many great titles available on the Steam Deck, 2022 was an explosive introduction to Valve’s handheld.Image: Valve / CD Projekt Red / Microsoft / rose-engine / Kotaku
Steam Deck, Valve’s mega-powerful mini-PC, only arrived this year, and while there are many reasons to check out one of the most exciting pieces of gaming hardware available today, the amount of great, hassle-free games available on the device is proof enough of its success.
But Steam is a big marketplace, and not every game works well on the Deck. While many hit games do run well on the device, some won’t launch, while others will have you chasing through various settings and scrolling forums and Reddit posts for solutions. Fun for the tech enthusiast, but not ideal when you just want a great gaming experience. Valve has made the process easier by labeling certain games “Verified” on the device, but sometimes that’s not always a guarantee that a game will run without issue.
Worry not, this list will guide you to the best experiences you can have in year one of the Steam Deck’s life. All but one of these games are Deck-verified. They work great on the first boot. That said, adjusting a few settings here and there might make a given game experience even better for you, so I’ll call that out where relevant. Tweaking the visual settings…can’t do that on a Switch!
As you may know, there are relatively simple ways to get non-Steam games running on the Deck, but those we’ll handle another time. This list is focused on great games you’re guaranteed to have access to right out of the box.
Update 12/27/2022: Wrapping up 2022, we’ve now bumped this list up to 20 amazing games you can play on the Steam Deck now. To hit this number we had to bend a rule: We now have two games that are technically not “Deck Verified,” but are still totally playable.
Update 10/21/2022: The Steam Deck’s library keeps growing, and so too does this list! I’ve added five new games to the main list and one new honorable mention. Nearly all of these games are Deck-verified, but I’ve made an exception for one particular title.
Those well-versed in their Metal Gear Solid trivia will know that the original ending for Metal Gear Solid 2 was changed before release. Scenes involving a massive ship crashing into Manhattan island were a bit too much in a very young post-9/11 world, with images and videos of planes striking the World Trade Center a constant in the media. In a recent interview, director Hideo Kojima talked about the complicated nature of releasing such a game after a world changing event and how it nearly drove him to quit Konami.
Metal Gear Solid 2: Sons of Liberty released in November of 2001 to much anticipation. As a series focused on “Tactical Espionage Action,” the games have never shied away from political themes, be they a part of the fictional story or commentaries on world events and history. While it’s been known for some time now that elements of the game were changed at the last minute due to the September 11 attacks, recent comments reveal that the stress and challenge of handling such a release were enough to push Hideo Kojima to quit Konami at the time. A conversation with Konami’s chairman, Kagemasa Kozuki was what convinced Kojima to stay back then.
Speaking with Shuka Yamada for IGN, Hideo Kojima described an awkward and tough situation after Metal Gear Solid 2, due to release in the Fall of 2001, contained images of the World Trade Center and other sites that were attacked on 9/11.
9/11 took place in 2001 right before the release of Metal Gear Solid 2. We’d just sent off the master, but the game featured both the World Trade Center and the Pentagon. It seemed impossible to release the game. I was called to the board of directors and they all turned pale when I explained the situation. Nobody would tell me what to do, with the exception of Mr. Kozuki, who tackled the issue.
As I thought about what to do, I went to speak with Mr. Kozuki about possibly quitting the company. That’s when he told me: ‘When this game comes out and society has their say about it, they’ll be talking about you, its creator, and me, the person who sold it. I doubt they’ll say anything about anyone else. What will you do? I’m ready for whatever happens.’
When I heard how far he was willing to go, I made the firm decision that we’d release it together. The rest is history.
MGS2 would go on to receive critical acclaim. The game’s tactical stealth gameplay was a dramatic evolution of what came before it and its meta-narrative filled with postmodern themes about digital information, virtual realities, among many others, is still relevant and widely discussed.
After MGS2 shipped, Kojima found himself in dire need of recovery. “I became completely exhausted, and I always end up in an awful state when I finish making a game,” he said. “After the first Metal Gear Solid, even after it was done I wasn’t recovering at all and ended up being passed from one hospital to the next.”
9/11 and the themes of Metal Gear Solid 2 weren’t the only time Kojima would face the need to alter his work. As we found out during The Game Awards this year, Kojima rewrote the original story for the sequel to the narrative-driven, post-apocalyptic delivery-service simulator, Death Stranding; the game’s themes of loneliness, isolation, and world-altering events were too close to what we all went through (and are still struggling with). The Covid-19 pandemic followed Death Stranding’s 2019 release by only a few months.
“Fiction changes when something that big happens,” Kojima told IGN. He continued:
That’s why I completely rewrote [Death Stranding 2]. You can’t pretend that something this big never happened. While the games themselves are based on characters who are not bound by our reality, the players themselves have gone through the pandemic, and a story written before that experience just wouldn’t resonate with them in the same way, whether it was a fantasy story or a sci-fi one.
Kojima Productions is currently working on Death Stranding 2. The company is also working on an unnamed game with Microsoft, a project Kojima says other publishers turned down; though he pitched the idea to a few places, he describes the game as requiring “infrastructure that was never needed before.” Other companies seemed to not be as into the idea, “they really seemed to think I was mad.”
Whatever that new game is, let’s hope he’s not predicting an awful future for us yet again.
2022 was truly the year of Elden Ring, with FromSoftware’s latest game exploding into the mainstream unlike anything it had previously created. As such, a lot of people played and finished Elden Ring. In fact, according to one set of data, Elden Ring was the most completed game of 2022. But funnily enough, the same source also pegs it as the game players were most likely to abandon before reaching the end.
If you’ve read Kotaku (or any other gaming website) in 2022, you are likely already familiar with Elden Ring, the latest game from Dark Souls creators FromSoftware. And like Dark Souls and Bloodborne, Elden Ring is a tough-as-nails action-RPG with a heavy focus on mystery, world-building, and boss fights. However, this time around FromSoftware added a true open world to its popular “Soulslike” formula. The end result? One of 2022’s most acclaimed, best-selling games. The open world in particular helped sway many to try Elden Ring for the first time, letting players avoid harder areas until later and ostensibly making it easier to finish than past FromSoftware adventures. And it seems that design choice paid off.
According to data on HowLongToBeat.com, Elden Ring is 2022’s most completed game, with nearly 6,000 users of the site reporting they have played and finished the massive open-world RPG. That’s an impressive number when you look at the runner-up games on the list. Stray, that adorable futuristic cat game, was completed by nearly 4,000 users. Meanwhile, in third with 2,500 completions, was Game Freak and Nintendo’s Switch hit, Pokemon Legends: Arceus. To see such a big and difficult game top the list is both a sign that Elden Ring is very good and also a hint at the kind of audience that is primarily using HowLongToBeat.com.
Screenshot: Howlongtobeat.com / Kotaku
But perhaps more interesting is that Elden Ring is also the most “retired” game. When users “retire” from a game on Howlongtobeat.com it means they have given up on it, either permanently or temporarily. Now, even though only 261 players officially retired from Elden Ring on the site, that’s still more than double any other game in 2022. Even if the dataset is a bit small and weird (how many people are logging into this site to admit defeat?) it’s still an interesting data point.
This all makes sense to me. Elden Ring was the most talked-about game of 2022, and with that many people playing, it makes sense that a good chunk of them might give up on it. Other data seems to suggest around half the people playing Elden Ring never reached the end. So I buy that Elden Ring could be the most completed game of 2022 while also being the game more people gave up on than anything else.
Some other interesting 2022 data from the site: Turns out Elden Ring is also on the most backlogs, has the most reviews, and is the longest game of 2022. However, Naughty Dog’s The Last Of Us Part 1 is the most positively reviewed game, and Diablo Immortal is the worst-reviewed.
Photoshop is my true Elden Ring, and I haven’t gotten gud yet.Image: FromSoftware / Kotaku
In recent years, it’s become harder and harder for me to make the kinds of in-depth, year-end personal best lists that I once prided myself on. That newfound difficulty is for one reason: I’m not playing as many games. This year, there are so many games I either didn’t play at all or didn’t spend enough time with that may have earned a place on this list if only I’d given them more of a chance. Those games include (but are not limited to) Perfect Tides, Xenoblade Chronicles 3, Pentiment, Citizen Sleeper, and Norco. I’m sorry I didn’t make time for you this year. I’m sure some of you, at least, are great.
So I’m keeping this year’s list to a tight five, acknowledging that it might have looked very different if I’d played more games. Please accept it in the spirit in which it’s given, not as an exhaustive evaluation of games in 2022, but as a snapshot of some of the games I spent time with and admired throughout the year.
Honorable Mention: God of War Ragnarök
Screenshot: Sony
I dunno, man. I didn’t love it. I’ll certainly remember it, though, in all its frustrating rigidity, and it’s one of the few games I played to completion this year, so it earns a spot on this list, if not a number. God of War Ragnarök is a game in which the main character, ostensibly a god, is frequently unable to leap across tiny gaps to smash the chest or reach the path on the other side because the true gods here, the game designers whose heavy hand you feel at every turn, say he has to do it the intended way. It’s an endlessly limiting game, with Kratos as trapped as Pac-Man in his maze. It’s a game in which characters are constantly wondering and worrying about whether their fates are dictated by prophecy, which is ironic given that the game itself is so trapped by formula and expectation.
Ragnarök seems to want to deepen Kratos as a character, to question all the unbridled rage and quick-time-event sex-minigame misogyny of the original God of War games, but it can’t actually shatter the chains that bind it, because then, what would it be? What would it be if Kratos didn’t haveto be an angry killing machine? What if he could actually show more emotional growth and expression than a tiny, late-game bit of tenderness, which only feels significant because we’re so used to seeing him express no tenderness at all? What if he could cast off patriarchy altogether and find a new way forward?
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Sadly, we may never know, as the marketplace still seems to set strict limits on just what a “AAA,” prestige release can be. The one thing I really appreciate about Ragnarök is how, in the end, one character is left truly broken by grief, and the game doesn’t try to bring it to a tidy resolution. There’s nothing anyone can say to fix it, to solve it, to make it go away. It felt like a kernel of surprising emotional honesty in a game that is mostly just going through the motions of being what fate dictates it must be.
Honorable Mention: Vampire Survivors
Screenshot: poncle
Here’s one that didn’t quite make the list but that I fully appreciated, without qualm or reservation. I’m normally very suspicious of games that seem focused on letting you become a ludicrously powerful figure who can wipe out enemies by the hundreds. Vampire Survivors, however, is just so gleefully unapologetic about it, fully embracing its nature as a video-game-ass video game, that it won me over. There’s a real sense of joy and discovery here as you pursue powerful new weapon fusions which let you harvest your unending legions of Castlevania-inspired foes even more effectively and in even more dazzling ways. On a really good run, the screen can get filled with so much 8-bit weaponry and pixelated carnage that it all starts to look like a psychedelic kaleidoscope of holy vengeance. Now that’s what I call gaming.
Atari 50
Screenshot: Atari / Digital Eclipse
Now the true list begins with this, game number five in my ranking. Almost certainly the best video game compilation ever made, this 50th anniversary Atari retrospective offers both a look back at one of the most important and influential forces in early home gaming, and a look at what the future of gaming retrospectives could and should be.
What elevates Atari 50 head and shoulders above your standard collection of older games is its gorgeous, timeline-format presentation. As you make your way through various aspects of Atari’s history—early arcade games, early console games, home computers, and so on—the games and the hardware are contextualized with tons of wonderful new interviews, archival footage, and other material that helps tell the story of just why these games, and the people who made them, are so important. Here’s hoping other developers take a cue from Atari 50 and give their early games the treatment they deserve.
Artist and writer Brianna Lei’s follow-up to her 2017 visual novel may be the most deeply human game of the year. The four central characters continue to navigate things like crushing parental expectations, confusing thoughts about gender, and romantic yearning for other girls in scenes that are by turns hilarious and heartbreaking.
It’s not just the subject matter or the great sense of humor that makes Butterfly Soup 2 remarkable, though; it’s that Lei reveals to us the rich and complicated inner lives of her characters—their hopes, their insecurities, their fears—in ways that feel organic, honest, and compassionate. In video games, the explorations of character that get the most attention and praise are often those that accompany big-budget mainstream action. In my opinion, though, there’s more heart and more insight into the human condition in this two-hour game about queer Asian high-school girls than there is in most post-apocalyptic blockbusters or games about violent dads trying to be better.
I was both excited about and wary of Return to Monkey Island, series creator Ron Gilbert’s return to the helm of the comedic pirate adventure saga. The last entry he oversaw was 1991’s Monkey Island 2: LeChuck’s Revenge, which has one of the all-time great video game endings—one so good, in fact, that for a long time I swore off later games in the series, as they both lacked Gilbert’s guiding hand and flew in the face of 2’s conclusion. Could even he, I wondered, make a game worthy of following up such a boldly uncompromising moment?
But here’s the thing. I’m a teensy bit older now than I was when Monkey Island 2 came out. I’m less wowed by raw artistic boldness and more moved by human frailty, kindness, and honesty. Ron Gilbert is older, too, and you feel a gentle reckoning with that in this game, as Guybrush goes on a kind of existential quest, one of those “what does it all mean” things that calls into question what his whole life as a pirate has really even been about. Return to Monkey Island is suffused with tenderness, above all. Sure, it’s still funny, and Guybrush is as irresistibly likable as ever, but there’s a poignant quality to him and the game itself this time around, an acceptance that things change and that life doesn’t quite play out the way you think it will. There’s beauty in that, too. Return to Monkey Island is just lovely.
Elden Ring
Screenshot: FromSoftware
When I first played Dark Souls, I felt like something in my brain was being rewired as I discovered all the intricate ways its interlocking, shortcut-filled world turned in on itself. And like many others, I found a kind of therapeutic catharsis in throwing myself against its grueling gauntlet, facing defeat again and again and again until finally, bruised and bloody, I stood victorious. It became a way of facing internal demons of doubt and fear, of enduring the world’s transphobic slings and arrows and remaining unbowed.
Elden Ring couldn’t quite match those glorious heights for me, though I appreciate that its open-world format, which makes its myriad challenges more approachable but no less uncompromising, meant that with this game, many got to experience those thrills for the first time. But even if it didn’t burrow into my very soul (no pun intended) the way Dark Souls did, the Lands Between still captivated me with their faded grandeur and their sense of true mystery—mystery of the sort that reveals, by contrast, just how embarrassingly eager so many game worlds are to force-feed you everything they have to offer.
Fortnite
Image: Epic Games
But alas, there was one world which captivated me even more. Epic’s battle-royale juggernaut continues to have, for my money, the best world in all of games—a world that is constantly changing, constantly evolving and slipping away; a world that, unlike most game worlds, actually exists in time and feels its passage. (It’s because the game is constantly reinventing itself that I have no qualms about including it on a 2022 list.)
Over the course of the game’s seasons and chapters, the world shifts in ways big and small, always in flux where so many worlds feel stagnant. Locations that come to feel as familiar to you as an old hoodie sooner or later fade, and when they’re gone, you can never, ever go back. As the world evolves, so too does the game, which is in a state of constant change—and loss. New gameplay mechanics, too, come and go with the seasons, not because the game is striving for some kind of ultimate, perfect “optimization” of mechanics and balance, but simply because things change.
The ever-evolving island is the perfect setting for this game of wild, radical contingency, a game in which the actions of players ping-pong off of each other in ways so complicated by chance and choice that there’s no room for the bullshit “meritocracy” mindset that poisons so much of gaming culture. Sure, some people are much better at the game than others, but with 99 players running around, their encounters influenced by so many factors, Fortnite is at least as much a big chaos-theory playground as it is a test of skill. Each match is home to a dozen or more stories that unfolded just so and will never, ever happen quite that way again. And as you make your way across the island, you see the evidence of them—a pile of goodies marking a player’s death near a few hastily tossed-up walls; a smoking semi-truck half-submerged in a river; a confrontation happening in the distance with players ping-ponging across the landscape, using this season’s shockwave hammers to fling themselves wildly into the air and then come crashing down on their opponents.
Of course, Fortnite constantly breaks my heart, too. In what I can only assume is an effort by Epic to make it so that all of the game’s human players win, on average, somewhat more than one out of every hundred games, it’s flooded the island with bots, beginning with the start of the game’s second chapter in October of 2019. They may seem like human players of rudimentary skill to those players who weren’t around back in the game’s pre-bot days, but their presence and simplistic behavior saps the game of much of its dynamism. I’d much rather have every confrontation be with a human adversary whose desire to survive and to win I can feel coming through in their actions, even if it means I rarely score a victory royale myself, than frequently encounter these non-human opponents who practically offer themselves up to my crosshairs.
But what can I do? The kind of life, vibrancy, comedy and tragedy that Fortnite offers remains unique in my experience in the gaming landscape, so I’ll keep leaping onto the island, always eager to see what signs of life and change I might stumble upon this time.
After over a decade of FromSoftware games holding court as the quintessential ‘git gud’ franchise, locking those of us without a masochist bent out of the discourse, Elden Ring’s open world opened up the gates for an entirely new player base. As such, it catapulted the work of Hidetaka Miyezaki to entirely new heights: Elden Ring is by far the best-selling FromSoftware title, it’s snatching up GOTY awards like Rowa Fruit, and it’s still generating passionate conversations 10 months after its release.
By subtly divesting from the tried and true FromSoftware formula and giving us a game unshackled by a single, punishing, linear path, EldenRing offered up the Lands Between on a beautifully ornate (but slightly Tarnished) silver platter. And we gobbled that shit up.
Feeding The Difficulty Discourse Machine
These guys are called Abductor Virgins, and they suck. Image: FromSoftware
The Souls game discourse has almost solely revolved around difficulty. Before Elden Ring was released, FromSoftware’s Yasuhiro Kitao told Eurogamer that the game was “made for all sorts of players,” not just “hardened veterans.” This sent the fanboys into a tailspin, but it piqued the interest of those who have never been able to enjoy the punishing gameplay of FromSoft’s oeuvre.
I wrote about Kitao’s quotes back when I was at GamesRadar, suggesting that what would make Elden Ring great would be its approachability, and that that approachability was made possible by its open world. It’s a helluva lot easier to avoid difficult areas if you can run around them on horseback, but previous Souls games forced you to choose between the difficult path and the bang-your-head-against-the-wall-because-it’s-impossible path. The promise of ample choice made me think that maybe, just maybe, Elden Ring could be a game I’d enjoy.
Image: FromSoftware / Kotaku
Conversely, Forbes published a response to my piece, one that hoped Elden Ring’s open world wouldn’t ruin the FromSoftware vibes by focusing too much on “making these games approachable rather than tough and gritty.” This was months before the release date, but the discourse machine turned and turned and turned, smoke spewing from every inch, its cogs grinding and grating with each new take chucked into its gaping maw.
Until February came, and brought with it the Lands Between, wide open for exploration like a darker, deadlier Breath of the Wild. Players quickly learned that most of them were accidentally skipping the combat tutorial, and a bit more slowly learned that the first boss (that fucking Tree Sentinel) was avoidable. Many of us who could never latch onto a FromSoft game willingly clung to Elden Ring’s teat, as we learned we could, in fact, get on a horse and fuck off away from some horrifying eldritch beast.
As we collectively made our way through Elden Ring, we were given the gift that comes only with truly open-world games: seemingly endless discoveries by ourselves, our friends, and other players on the internet.
Braving Brutal Battles For A Glimpse Of Beauty
Need a hand?Image: FromSoftware
The beauty of Elden Ring lies in its world that teems, bubbles, and spews with both friendly and deadly life, that tantalizes and terrifies with its landscapes, that beckons and shuns you in a single breath. I find this beauty in so many moments during my time with the game, like when I accidentally descend down to the Siofra River, not too long into my playthrough.
In Limgrave, I step on a platform and am whisked down, down, down, until I emerge into an astounding space: a fully realized night sky in a variety of bruise colors, littered with pinholes of light. Crumbling classical architecture obfuscates my view of this impossible galaxy and tombstones line the path leading away from the platform, which glowed a bizarre green during my descent but now lies dormant.
I am, as the kids say, gagged, and stumble aimlessly away from the platform, paying little attention to what enemies may lie in my path for the first time since booting up Elden Ring. This is a mistake I quickly pay for, as I walk directly into a horde of Claymen. They move slowly, but they hurt, and I am severely underleveled for this area. One of the weaponless magic conjurers takes me out in seconds with his weird bubbles, sending me back to the Site of Grace right next to the platform that brought me here. When I go back to fetch my several hundred runes, the same guy takes me out again.
“Fuck that,” I mumble before stepping on the stone circle at the center of the lift. “I’ll come back later.”
And I do, just much, much later. After I’ve discovered I’m a battle mage with an affinity for gravity magic and summons, and long after I fell the Tree Sentinel with a single Rock Sling, I return to the Siofra River from a completely different direction, and lay waste to its inhabitants. Then, after I’ve collected every last item dropped by a fallen NPC and picked all the Ghost Glovewort my eyes can see, I allow myself a second to breathe. I glance up at that still-impossible night sky, and exhale. I earned this. Elden Ring, unlike other FromSoftware games, gave me ample chances to amass the tools and experience I’d need to earn a brief respite.
Elden Ring Eternal
I’m an Aries.Screenshot: FromSoftware / Kotaku
But Elden Ring isn’t just somber and serious, it’s not just hours of grueling gameplay with brief, meditative breaks. It’s goofy as hell, like all FromSoftware games inherently are. There are stupid, dirty messages littered all over the ground, dozens upon dozens of ways to die that will make you chuckle in disbelief, and the ever-popular but always somewhat broken online play that encourages players to fuck with one another.
It’s this combination of punishing play, engaging story (thanks, George R.R. Martin), and asinine antics that make FromSoftware games, especially this one, so special. Elden Ring gives you enemies like Starscourge Radahn, who will in one moment beat the brakes off of you with gigantic meteors flung from a blood-red sky and in another send you into a fit of hysterics when you realize that he is, in fact, sitting on top of a very tiny horse. Elden Ring plays with you, offering up prophecies and moral quandaries that will have you scratching your head, but undercutting it with both accidental and purposeful absurdism.
Screenshot: FromSoftware
Elden Ring gives you a gigantic turtle wearing a pope hat. It gives you strange, unsettling storylines about grapes that are actually eyeballs. It tucks a giant bat grandma away amongst a rocky outcropping and gives her a haunting song to sing ad infinitum—or until you slash at her leathery, gray skin. It deflates your hope in humankind at one juncture just to build it back up again at the next.
It lets you explore this incredibly fucked-up world for hours upon hours, fall in love with some of its characters and revile the rest, taxing you physically and mentally with enemies plucked from the deepest depths of game design hell, and at the end, it presents you with a few options that don’t really fucking matter. It does all of this while making itself playable for us FromSoft plebeians, which therefore (brilliantly) means more of us will be talking about it than any game that came before.
When we inevitably look back at Elden Ring a decade from now, it will be difficult for us to remember exactly how much it defined the zeitgeist, just how far it permeated popular culture outside of gaming, and just how much we couldn’t stop talking about it. But now, ten months after its release, it’s hard to imagine we ever existed in a world without it.
Another one aimed at older kids, Nuts is the bonkers combination of Firewatch and…squirrel conspiracy theories?
In this one, you set up cameras to observe the behavior of squirrels in Melmoth Forest, and start discovering some very odd stuff. This develops into a story about the effect corporations have on the environment, and doesn’t wrap things up with a neat bow and happy ending. It’s obviously a great conversation starter, as well as a fun, sometimes unsettling game to play.
The reason it’s rated Teen is because of the presence of one curse word, “bullshit,” so there’s a good chance that’ll breeze past the more innocent, or not really bother the less so. But obviously the subject matter won’t quite match the “cute squirrels!” expectations of younger players.
There are more suggestions over at the Family Video Game Database, and you can curate your own lists based on your own kids’ proclivities.
Hopefully there’s something here that’ll help pass some of the yawning stretch of Sundays that makes up Christmas to New Year, and you might even end up not entirely resenting it.
Updated 12/21/22: We’ve removed Boomerang X, and added on Lego Star Wars: The Skywalker Saga, Trombone Champ, and Escape Simulator.
If you’ve played Half-Life 2 or Source engine mods, you’ve likely seen the in-game model “Corpse01.mdl.” The burnt corpse appears multiple times in Half-Life 2’s sewers and other parts of the game, and modders often used it in fan projects. All is well, yes? Well, it was until recently, when fans noticed that the game’s creepy-looking corpse has the face of an actual dead man on it.
Released in 2004, PC shooter Half-Life 2 was the highly anticipated follow-up to Valve’s first game, Half-Life. Upon release, it was widely praised by critics and players. But while it came out to huge acclaim, there was a time when Half-Life 2 wasn’t such a sure bet, as its development process was messy and protracted. Valve scrapped different versions, cut entire sections, and lightened up the game’s intended darker, grittier tone considerably for the final retail release. However, some leftovers of this darker version remain in the final game, including Corpse01.mdl. Playing the game as a kid, the body always looked hyper-realistic and creeped me out whenever I stumbled upon it. Now, we know why.
Valve’s macabre texture-cribbing was discovered completely by accident (h/t The Gamer). About two weeks ago on the r/eyeblech subreddit, someone posted graphic images of dead bodies they claimed were from a medical forensic textbook. (While I’ve personally verified the images posted are real and out there, I won’t be linking to them. A little Googlin’ will lead you to them if you really want to see them.)
In the comments on that post, someone pointed out that one of the images showing a burned corpse looked identical to the Corpse01 model from Half-Life 2. Another post picked up the thread and people quickly began comparing the images to the art in the game. Sure enough, they look identical. The only change appears to be that Valve copied the right eye of the corpse onto the left. That’s it though. The entire face of that model is seemingly a dead dude’s face. Yikes.
Then, three days ago, gaming YouTuber Richter Overtime uploaded a short and concise video detailing the history of the corpse and its connection to the image, and this seemed to take the story fully mainstream, with folks tweeting about it and sharing it more widely online. As you might expect, a lot of Half-Life fans were freaked out to learn that they have been looking at a real corpse for the past two decades. One modder has already created a new model to replace the old one for folks who feel uncomfortable leaving the original dead face in Half-Life 2.
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Kotaku has reached out to Valve about the corpse to verify its origins and to ask if the company has any plans to change it with a future patch.
Personally, I’m not sure this is a thing that should be in a video game. It seems to me like it might be time to remove this model and replace it with an image of anything but an actual burned human corpse.
