Tolkien’s influence on video games stretches back decades. Fans have been playing games based on The Lord of the Rings (and The Hobbit) for almost as long as there have been video games, and for every misguided flop there has been a game that has been surprisingly OK for a licensed product. And in some cases much…
Source: Kotaku – The Best Lord Of The Rings Video Games
Valve’s Portal, released in 2007 (!), is one of the last games you’d expect to see the humble little N64 being able to manage, and yet here we are in 2022, seeing it manage it quite nicely.
Source: Kotaku – Somehow, The N64 Can Do Portal
Tragedy struck New York on May 14 as an 18-year-old white male shot and killed at least 10 people in the city of Buffalo, police said. The shooter, whose online username is reportedly “jimboboiii”, has been taken into custody after livestreaming the whole thing on gaming platform Twitch, the company confirmed on…
Source: Kotaku – Mass Shooting Apparently Planned On Discord, Streamed On Twitch, Investigated As Hate Crime
Once, long ago, buying and playing a video game was pretty easy. You bought the disc or cart, stuck it in the console, and hit play. Not so much anymore. Case in point: The not-so-great cloud-streaming-only versions of Kingdom Hearts released on Switch earlier this year recently got an update, and now feature a…
Source: Kotaku – New Cloud Technology Warns You When Not To Play Kingdom Hearts
Today Activision Blizzard fulfilled its daily oopsie quota by blogging about how the publisher’s subsidiaries have apparently been using a special tool to help develop more “diverse” characters. It apparently thinks it can accomplish this without, I don’t know, actually talking to or hiring marginalized developers.…
Source: Kotaku – Activision Blizzard’s New Diversity Game Tool Comes Across Terribly
If life were a Scream movie, I would likely have already been trapped under a garage door by now. It would have been punishment for spending $62 on a skort one time and watching Friday the 13th after eating a weed-infused chocolate chip cookie. It really enhanced the ki, ki, ki, ma, ma, ma of hockey mask killer Jason…
Source: Kotaku – 13 Killer Strategies For Dead By Daylight
Nintendo fans are currently up in arms, but not over graphical downgrades or Pokédex revamps. Nope, this time, it’s over a shunned character in an upcoming game, and not even an A-lister at that: Princess Daisy isn’t in Mario Strikers: Battle League.
Source: Kotaku – The Super Mario Daisy Fandom Is Ready To Riot Against Nintendo
Lego Star Wars: The Skywalker Saga did something very few games have done over the last few years: It topped April’s NPD Switch sales chart, becoming the first non-Nintendo published game to do so in over a year. And Skywalker Saga not only topped the Switch sales charts last month, but the charts of all other…
Source: Kotaku – Lego Star Wars Becomes First Non-Nintendo Game To Top Switch Charts In Over A Year
The market frenzy leading to record-breaking prices for retro games appears to have slowed since last year, but frustration over the collectible grading firm at the center of the spike hasn’t. Earlier this week a number of Wata Games customers filed a class action lawsuit attempting to put an end to some of the…
Source: Kotaku – Skyrocketing Retro Game Price ‘Manipulation’ Controversy Goes To Court
Loopmancer is what would happen if a cyberpunk Sleeping Dogs was made into a Groundhog Day-esque roguelite.
Source: Kotaku – A Cyberpunk Game That’s Blade Runner Meets Groundhog Day
Recent NPD figures reveal that FromSoftware’s latest grueling action-RPG, Elden Ring, is toppling over literal titans as it outsells Call of Duty: Vanguard, challenges Cyberpunk 2077, and, as Forbes’ Paul Tassi highlights, has shipped up to “half the lifetime sales of the entire Dark Souls trilogy’’ while leaving its…
Source: Kotaku – Elden Ring Officially Mainstream As Sales Top Call of Duty
A well-known leaker who goes by the username Dusk Golem has obtained and shared several images from a supposed in-development Silent Hill game on Thursday. The screens, posted to Dusk Golem’s Twitter account, weren’t up for long. According to the leaker, Konami swiftly swooped in to take those images down, though the…
Source: Kotaku – Leaker Says Konami Pulled Silent Hill Pics It Apparently Doesn’t Want You To See
Following yesterday’s delay of Redfall and Starfield, Microsoft’s two big blockbusters for the year, the release slate for the back half of 2022 might seem especially barren. Pop quiz: Have you been paying attention to the Switch?
Source: Kotaku – PS5, Xbox Delays Are Setting Switch Up To Dominate The Rest Of 2022
Crypto markets are bottoming out and nothing’s immune, not even the potions critters use to breed in the Pokémon-style collectathon Axie Infinity. Called Smooth Love Potions, the currency has been trending down for some time now as players flood the market with it. For the first time in its history, however, it’s now…
Source: Kotaku – Crypto Pokémon Clone’s Currency Plunges To Less Than A Penny
When Grand Theft Auto: The Trilogy – Definitive Edition launched last year, it was a disaster. Three of the most beloved video games of all time had been officially re-released on modern hardware and not only looked like shit, but ran like it too. Things were so bad, in fact, that Rockstar had to offer fans some free…
Source: Kotaku – Six Months Later, Grand Theft Auto: The Trilogy Still Needs Some Work
The very first time I played Skyrim back in 2011 I rushed through the character creation and made a guy that ended up looking like Matt Pike, which ruled. The second time, though, I spent an age trying to put myself in the game and couldn’t get anywhere near it.
Source: Kotaku – Skyrim Player Recreates Themselves Perfectly In-Game
An internal email from PlayStation president Jim Ryan contains several paragraphs about cats, but doesn’t contain a hard stance in support of his staff’s reproductive rights, and even asks employees to “respect” anti-abortion views and opinions, leaving many PlayStation staff angry and upset.
Source: Kotaku – PlayStation Boss Asks Staff To Respect All Abortion Opinions In Email About Cats
It’s been nearly a month since a former employee filed a National Labor Relations Board complaint against Nintendo alleging surveillance, coercion, and retaliation. Outside of an initial statement denying the company engaged in union-busting, the house of Mario has remained publicly silent in the face of an increasing…
Source: Kotaku – Nintendo Still Silent On Workplace Allegations Despite Acknowledging Them Internally
Today, in honor of the 12-year anniversary of Alan Wake’s original release this week, Remedy provided some fresh news about the franchise. Included was the announcement that the remastered Alan Wake is coming to Switch this year, as well as some more details about the barely-talked about TV show adaptation, first…
Source: Kotaku – Alan Wake Is Coming To Switch And Also TV Via AMC Show
