The hit 2024 survival crafting sim Palworld is conspicuously absent from the Nintendo eShop amid an ongoing battle with Nintendo, which has accused the game of violating its patents. The same can’t be said for Palland, a cheap knock-off that Nintendo seemed to have no problem approving for sale on the Switch eShop earlier this … Read more
Last night, country-music-it-girl-turned-pop-culture-centerpiece Taylor Swift did something a little different. She announced a new album called The Life of a Showgirl, but not with the usual gravitas she’s become known for throughout her 20-year career. Rather than endless teases, easter eggs, or waiting until she was on stage accepting an award, Swift revealed her 12th … Read more
The Nintendo Switch is home to a number of games in The Legend of Zelda franchise, such as the award-winning open-world adventures of Breath of the Wild and Tears of the Kingdom, the inventive Zelda-starring Echoes of Wisdom, and quite a few classic titles via a Nintendo Switch Online subscription. Last but not least, we … Read more
I haven’t touched many first-person shooters, let alone multiplayer ones, this year, as I got to a point where I just felt like I needed a good break from the genre. Well, it looks like breaktime is over, as last night I sunk quite a few hours into a fantastic new roguelike FPS that I’ll … Read more
An incident at a Burbank Chuck E. Cheese on August 7 is a useful PSA for what not to do at the kids arcade chain. An adult woman snuck into the Snow Day game meant for very small children and got her arm stuck in one of the holes. I guess she didn’t want the … Read more
Later this month, Helldivers 2—previously a PS5- and PC-only PlayStation-published sci-fi shooter—arrives on Xbox with crossplay support. And a new trailer teases the possibility that some Orbital Drop Shock Troopers from Halo 3: ODST might appear as backup. Back in July, Arrowhead and PlayStation Studios announced that their super-successful live-service shooter Helldivers 2 would arrive … Read more
Is Marvel Rivals throwing you easy wins to stop you from rage-quitting? Will the newly teased Retro 45 emulation device really be the ultimate N64 and Dreamcast handheld? And where the hell is that remake of Max Payne? It’s another edition of Morning Checkpoint, Kotaku‘s daily roundup of gaming news and culture. Also Hoagie heroes … Read more
Brendan “PlayerUnknown” Greene changed the entire course of gaming in 2017 with the release of PlayerUnknown’s Battlegrounds, now known nonsensically as PUBG Battlegrounds. (Plunkbat forever.) Making battle royale games a thing, without it–for good or ill–we wouldn’t have Fortnite, one of the most successful games ever. PUBG isn’t doing too badly itself, with more than half a million … Read more
Remedy, the creators of Alan Wake and Control have had a good six months. The company’s revenue has risen by 63 percent, which is just the sort of good news you want to be able to tell your parents, and at the same time the company completed buying all the rights to Control from publishers 505 Games, as … Read more
I’m here to start the campaign to replace the term “4X” with “4E”. Call me a pedant, but if you look very carefully the words “Explore,” “Expand,” “Exploit” and “Exterminate” all begin with an E. I’ll compromise on “4Ex” games–I’m nothing if not magnanimous. So, the good news is, Steam is having a big … Read more