Kotaku's Reviews
The action-RPG series is as beautiful and refined as ever, but more familiar than
Afterlove EP is sympathetic to the fact that none of us handle grief in a way that is easy to swallow for everyone around us, but its best moments come when it’s willing to slap you across the face and tell you to do better.
Lost Records: Bloom & Rage captures how hard it is to make and maintain friendships no matter how old you are
Xbox's latest RPG streamlines the worst parts of bloated open-world games into something special
Cowboy Bebop and Firefly influence an even bigger, more ambitious cyberpunk noir RPG
MachineGames' latest is one of the best of 2024 and Indy's finest adventure in decades
NetEase's take on the hero shooter is unapologetic about its inspirations, but it should learn from Overwatch's mistakes instead of repeating them
It's an odd experiment, but charming humor and engaging gameplay make this blocky parody of Aloy's story a successful one, too
Almost ten years after her terrific debut, Max Caulfield returns in a worthy if uneven sequel
The long-awaited fourth entry in BioWare's fantasy series isn't just good, it's some of the studio's best work
While this new Quiet Place game isn’t the most innovative or scariest game I’ve played, it’s a very well-made and tense adventure that had me more terrified of metal cans and broken glass than any random zombie I’ve encountered in Resident Evil. Who knew trash could be so scary?
That’s unusual for me. I mostly play horror games for the scares, to distract myself from what I believe is the horror of my life — my anxiety disorder and a new round of insomnia, which can keep me up for days. On the most terrible occasions, I get too exhausted to do anything other than cry with the lights out. But Fear the Spotlight offers me solace over escapism. It tells me that love is everywhere, especially in the dark.
My hope is that Sega going back and reflecting on what Shadow has lost in the past 20 years will make the company think about what it can reclaim. What better time to realize this than during the Year of Shadow, just as a new generation of Sonic fans is about to learn all about him when Sonic the Hedgehog 3 premieres in December? Sometimes brand synergy leads to a genuine celebration of something, and in the case of Shadow Generations, it’s long overdue.
Fusing classic series sensibilities with modern ones, Echoes of Wisdom is an inventive and endearing adventure,
Funko Fusion could have been something fun! A wacky adventure mixing together different franchises and worlds. Instead, its a boring, annoying, barely functional third-person action game starring ugly Funko Pops solving bad puzzles and fighting the same 10 enemies over and over again with guns and laser pistols. Don’t play Funko Fusion. Save your money, buy some pizza, and watch one of the movies included in this collection instead. It will be much more enjoyable and you won’t have to restart the movie five times to reach the end.
It’s not the biggest budgets or the most polish. It’s creativity and experimentation, a willingness to try new things and keep pushing a young medium forward. With any luck, we’re just getting started.
The Plucky Squire's inventive puzzle-platforming looks to the past and future of the medium
It’s tempting to call Wild Bastards an evolution, but that’s unfair to Void, which has its excellent crafting elements and the permadeath of characters (albeit with persistent progress). What’s crucially similar about both, beyond the excellent art and fantastic sense of humor, is that unlike so many roguelite games, they both want you to win. They’re about progressing forward, being able to reach an ending, and then starting all over to try it completely differently. It’s just that in Wild Bastards, there’s so much more that can be different each time.
Structurally, The Answer is an often frustrating epilogue that shaves off some of the best parts of Persona games. Thankfully, Reload’s quality-of-life updates make the grind more tolerable and the remake adds enough small social elements like reading books and watching movies with your friends that it doesn’t feel like it’s all business. But as a meditation on grief, it feels like a kindness afforded to characters who once had to rile in the ambiguity of the original ending. It would have been easy for Persona 3 to end on a nihilistic note, showing the entire group fall apart without their leader and denying all the lessons they learned. But grief never really goes away. We just learn to help each other live with it a little more each day.
I can confidently say WoW is back. Well, it was back in Dragonflight, but it’s extra back now. Not only does The War Within make the player experience better with great additions like Warbands and Follower Dungeons, but it also demonstrates that Blizzard isn’t afraid to keep refining good ideas like Hero Talents or reworking those that may have failed previously and molded them into nuggets of fun and flavor like Delves. If this is just the start of what to expect with Warcraft in the era of The Worldsoul Saga, then I’m eager to stick around and see where these new adventures on Azeroth take us next.