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23 God of War Ragnarök Tips Before Playing

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Screenshot: Santa Monica Studio / Sony / Kotaku

Boy, here are some God of War Ragnarök tips. And yes, it’s very good and delivers a satisfying conclusion for this new era of the franchise.

02:39

The Week In Games: Gold Rings And Ragnarök

Monday 6:24PM

So, knowing that and after all the hype, you are likely excited to just jump right in and get going with Kratos and friends. But before you start playing Ragnarök, here are some tips to consider from me, someone who has played over 40 hours of it. And don’t worry, there are no major spoilers below.

You Can Pause Cutscenes

A simple tip, but good to know because some of the cutscenes in Ragnarök are very long. You might need a bathroom break!

Set “Swipe Up” To Quickly See Where To Go

The PS5 and PS4 controllers have touchpads. While these are used by most games as little more than giant buttons, God of War lets you assign certain actions to swipes. Personally, setting it to point the camera in the direction of my current objective was the only useful action I found in the game. Technically, you can do the same thing with a button press, but this is quicker and easier.

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Screenshot: Santa Monica Studio / Sony / Kotaku

Pre-Ice Your Axe Before Fights

One of the first things you learn about is the ability to “charge” up your Levithan axe with ice, and it’s a great thing to do for the rest of the game. Anytime you get a chance to hold triangle to “ice up” your axe, do it! You’ll do more damage and gain access to special attacks. Later on, grab the upgrade that lets you ice up your axe while sprinting, too.

Save Health Drops For Later

During fights, an enemy will sometimes drop a health pick up. While you might be tempted to smash these right away to refill your HP, hold on! Leaving them around can save you during ambushes or bigger fights. Wait to pop these when you either know the area is completely clear or you are very, very low on health and need the boost. Early on, your HP will be low so managing these drops effectively can help you survive tough encounters.

Try Out The Dwarf Armor Set, Nidavellir

Not too far into the game, you’ll encounter a side quest involving mining rigs and the dwarves. Take a detour and finish up this questline as it will give you the materials needed to create the Nidavellir set of armor. This armor has a great bonus, whenever you execute a stunned enemy using R3, the armor provides a burst of health. Very useful in the early game!

Don’t Forget To Block And Counter

It’s easy to focus only on swinging your cool axe and chain blades because they’re so cool and make enemies go “SPLAT” or “BOOM” when used correctly. But wait! Don’t forget to block and dodge. Later enemies and harder bosses will demand you block and dodge attacks, so start practicing early on. (And remember, you can’t block attacks that are marked by red circles!)

Screenshot: Santa Monica Studio / Sony / Kotaku

Use Atreus To Locate Missing Enemies

Sometimes you might kill what you think is the last enemy, but the combat music keeps playing and you can’t access any loot. This isn’t a bug, but instead, there’s likely a lone enemy hanging around somewhere. A quick way to find it is to press square and use Atreus’ bow attack to find it as he will fire the bow in the direction of the baddie.

Get Aggressive Skills For Atreus

Speaking of Atreus, when upgrading his skills, focus on the ones that make him more aggressive and give him more ways to stun, damage, and counter enemies. This will make him far more useful in fights.

Take Advantage Of The Blades Grapple When You Unlock It

Early on, you’ll be able to unlock an ability for your Blades of Chaos called “Hyperion Grapple.” Once unlocked, aim your blades at an enemy and hold R1. Kratos will zip across the battlefield and slam into the bad guy or monster via the blades chains. This will deal a lot of stun damage, which is useful as it will often let you execute the enemy.

You can even buff it to do more stun damage, making it a very powerful move to take down big enemies or clean out tiny ones as it has no cooldown.

Need To Stun Something? Punch It!

While your axe and blades are amazing and very powerful, don’t forget that Kratos has some beefy fists that can be useful in a fight. That’s because his fists do more stun damage, filling up that stun meter below enemies HP bar.

In fact, some enemies, like the armor-covered Travelers, are better to punch than slash, because once stunned you are able to rip off their armor and make them more vulnerable to other attacks. Fast and annoying creatures can also be stunned and put in their place with Dad of War’s fists of fury.

Screenshot: Santa Monica Studio / Sony / Kotaku

Love The Spear. Worship The Spear. Upgrade It Too!

Fairly late in the game, you will gain access to a new weapon: a magical spear. I won’t spoil how you get it or why, but it’s very cool and useful. What makes this spear powerful is that you can throw magical copies of it forever, giving Kratos a powerful ranged weapon. And the spears can impale enemies, which Kratos can later make explode when you hold triangle. All of this is good and you should try to upgrade it ASAP once you unlock it.

Those Air Vents You See? Ignore Them Until You Get The Spear

The spear isn’t just a great weapon, it helps solve later-game puzzles, too! All those small air vents you see in the various realms? Those can’t be used until you get the spear. Come back with it to solve those puzzles.

Same Goes For The Glowing Yellow Cracks

Yeah, those need the spear, too.

Keep An Eye Out For Chests

They can be hidden in many places and are very important. Each of these will give you more resources and hacksilver, letting you upgrade all your god killin’ gear. Keep a special eye out for Nornir chests which are dark blue and locked behind runes. You’ll need to solve a little puzzle to open these, but they award health and rage upgrades!

Sell Armor And Weapons You Don’t Use

Having more hacksilver and crafting resources is useful early on as you start the game with basically nothing. So, feel free to sell any armor or weapons you find that you don’t want. And don’t worry, if in a few hours you feel like you made a mistake, you can always re-craft that stuff later.

But trust me, you’ll quickly find a few pieces of gear you love, and everything else can and should be sold to help boost the stuff you are actually using.

Oh, And Sell All The Artifacts, Too

After you find books or other collectibles, you can sell them to blacksmiths. And you don’t get punished for doing so. In fact, the game even tells you this at one point. So sell that stuff too!

Screenshot: Santa Monica Studio / Sony / Kotaku

Make Sure To Use Your XP To Get New Skills

In all the chaos of killing and looting, you might forget to take a moment to level up your skills and unlock new ones. So, make a habit of always checking your skills whenever you see a blacksmith, beat a boss, or after a cutscene. These happen frequently enough that you shouldn’t go too long without upgrading Kratos.

Also, Upgrade Your Rune Attacks And Abilities

There’s a lot of shit to upgrade in this game. (In fact, there’s probably too much stuff to tinker with, really.) Another thing to upgrade are your weapons, which can each be equipped with two runes. Upgrading these runes can improve the already powerful special attacks in some great ways.

Oh, Also, Also Upgrade Your Skills Once You’ve Completed The Associated Challenge

Wait, there’s more shit to upgrade. Over the course of the game, you’ll complete challenges that connect to different skills. Once you’ve fully completed all levels of a challenge, you are able to upgrade that associated skill. For example, the fantastic Hyperion Pull ability I mentioned earlier can be tweaked, after you’ve used it enough times, to do even more stun damage.

Pick One Or Two Stats You Care About And Focus On That

Okay, so all that upgrading and armor management and skill tweaking might seem messy and hard to follow. And it sort of is! But luckily, you can also mostly ignore it all and just pick out two stats you care most about.

So if, like me, you just want to do lots of damage and have tons of health, just focus on gear that increases your vitality and strength. I did this and made it easily to the end of the game as a god-killin’ machine.

Screenshot: Santa Monica Studio / Sony / Kotaku

Use Hex Arrows To Freeze Things Without The Axe Being Embedded

See something that you need frozen? Throw your axe at it. Simple. But what if there are two things? Well don’t forget you can have companions fire hex arrows at something, like a large gear connected to a door, and when you freeze that, the gear will remain frozen even after you recall the axe. This will let you freeze two different things at once!

On PS5? Play At 120 FPS If Your TV Allows It

If you are lucky enough to own a PS5, then take advantage of Ragnarök’s suite of visual options. Specifically, if you have a TV setup that allows it, play the game at 120fps. Seriously. It’s amazing and makes me unable to go back to 60fps or…shudders…30fps.

To turn on 120fps, hop into the visual settings and select “Performance Mode” and then turn on “High Frame Rate Mode.” Voila! You too can kill gods at a silky smooth 120 frames per second.

You Can Keep Playing Once The Credits Roll (And You Should)

I won’t spoil how God of War does this, what it means for the story or how it works with the other characters in the game. But yes, you can keep playing and finish up side quests you didn’t complete before wrapping up the main story.

And you should keep playing once the game “ends” because there are some fun moments and conversations to be found out there once all is said and done.

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Halo 4, 10 Years Later, Remains an Admirable Mess

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Image: 343 Industries/Microsoft

It’s a law of nature that eventually, every long-running game franchise will have a particular entry that gets dinged for straying too far from what made it so fun in the first place. Your Super Mario Sunshine, your Dragon Age II, Assassin’s Creed III, and so on. Whether or not that opinion changes more favorably over time, the initial specter of negativity will forever hover it. Microsoft’s Halo is no exception, except that negative specter hasn’t hovered over one particular game, but one whole studio.

Halo 4 released for the Xbox 360 on November 6, 2012, and was the first full entry from developer 343 Industries. The studio became the official stewards of the franchise after Bungie bowed out with Halo Reach in 2010, and prior to Halo 4, made Reach map packs and lead development on the 2011 remake to Halo: Combat Evolved. For what was the start of what would come to be known as the “Reclaimer Saga,” 343 wanted to put a bigger focus on narrative than Bungie’s games, which they achieved by bringing to the forefront the series’ deeper Forerunner lore that was present in the earlier games, but not the large focal point.

For a franchise whose earlier entries could best be summed up as “guy in helmet kills aliens,” and as the game industry was beginning to put a greater focus on characters in its single player offerings, you can see why 343 would follow suit. With that in mind, it makes sense why Halo 4 elects to weave in Master Chief and Cortana’s efforts to get back to Earth amidst the latter’s deteriorating mental state and subsequent death with the arrival of the Forerunner Didact, who wants to convert humans into robotic Promethean warriors under his rule to conquer the galaxy. If there’s anything that Halo could be suited for, it would be a deeper exploration of character, and whether one chooses to look at Chief and Cortana’s dynamic as platonic or romantic, there is something there that’s made their adventures worth following over years. But while the campaign tries its best, the end result is ultimately kind of a Mess.

Image: 343 Industries/Microsoft

No doubt, there’s some highlights: the opening wherein Chief and Cortana try to escape the ship they’ve spent years in cryo sleep on while being invaded by the Covenant is chaotic and dizzying, and the moment where the pair crash land on the world of Requiem and Chief looks up at the hovering skyscrapers brings a similar sense of bigness and awe akin to when the they stepped onto the Halo ring in the original game. Similarly, the penultimate mission, which is basically a Death Star run, can’t help but feel awesome thanks largely in part to a strong musical backing from co-composer Kazuma Jinnouchi.

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But the biggest problem of Halo 4’s campaign, and the Reclaimer Saga overall, is that it too easily overindulges in the series’ already established mythology, or just stacks on new lore without doing a decent enough job of establishing why it’s different than what’s come before. Amidst the Chief-Cortana story, which features some of the series’ best writing for the characters, the Forerunner of it all begins to feel like it’s mired in too much terminology to be approachable to anyone not already waist-deep in expanded media. And it’s a shame to say this, because Halo 4 contains one of the series’ most interesting additions that’s come to define 343’s future games, and even the Halo TV series.

Halo 4 features standard co-op similar to that of its predecessors, while also introducing a new mode called Spartan Ops. Set after the events of the game’s campaign, up to four players with their own customizable Spartans in would participate in missions with their own narrative hook and weekly release schedule. That mode didn’t last longer than the first season, and narrative events previously meant for future seasons were converted into monthly comics that served to bridge the campaigns of Halo 4 and Halo 5. But its spirit lived on on in 343’s sequels: Halo 5’s co-op puts players in the boots of three named Spartans on the respective teams of Master Chief and Jameson Locke. Halo Infinite, though it’s following in the footsteps of other live service games by featuring narrative events in its seasonal model, couldn’t have gotten there without Spartan Ops laying the foundation for the franchise to explo.

Image: 343 Industries/Microsoft

Amongst the pantheon of Halo developers, 343’s tenure hasn’t been without its issues and controversies, both overall and specific to certain entries. As stated at the jump, it’s the curse of any long-running franchise: the idea of what it is becomes held so tightly by fans that anything that deviates from it is seen as a gross betrayal. In this case, the franchise’s peak would be Halo 3, a juggernaut that was so big that it brought in players who never gave the series so much as a glance back then. At best, anything else that’s come after can only hope to reach second place or maybe be seen as a close enough equal, depending on one’s estimation of a particular game.

For 343, its Halo games feel like they come so close to perfection. Halo 4, 5, and Infinite have their respective strengths and weakness, and each one feels like they get a certain part of what makes the franchise so beloved and why it deserves to stick around. But each time the developers attempt to correct what didn’t work in a previous entry, the cracks in the franchise’s identity begin to show, and it’s getting to the point where they either need to get wholly new armor or move on to a new journey.

Want more io9 news? Check out when to expect the latest Marvel and Star Wars releases, what’s next for the DC Universe on film and TV, and everything you need to know about House of the Dragon and Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power.

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Technology

The Internet’s Biggest God Of War Ragnarök Questions, Answered

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Image: PlayStation / Sony Santa Monica

It’s November, and people are scrambling to figure out their game of the year picks. God Of War Ragnarök’s release looms before them like they’re ants in a terrarium. It’s getting ready to swoop in.

To help you get your affairs in order before it does—and to help clarify the situation around God of War’s accidentally sullied roll out—I traveled the internet and collected its urgent Ragnarök questions like a gamer hunter-gatherer. I share my spoils with you.

What is God Of War Ragnarök’s release date?

Officially, November 9. But, reportedly, people are already buying copies from game stores and receiving God of War PlayStation bundles instead of the ones they purchased for Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2. Oops!

Here is the current line-up:

Game designer and Santa Monica Studio creative director Cory Barlog, who has been leading some combination of animation, direction, or writing for the God of War franchise since 2005, is back as Ragnarök’s producer. Eric Williams, who Barlog once described as “a beast,” is directing.

Barlog is not pleased with the early Ragnarök shipments, by the way.

Anyone else plan on being “sick” on November 9 or 10?

No, I’m not. Thanks for asking.

Is God Of War Ragnarök coming to PC?

Eventually…maybe? It’s possible?

Historically, God of War has been a firm, PlayStation-exclusive franchise, but 2018’s God of War made it to PC this January. The port is stunning, so it wouldn’t be a total surprise. When that 2018 port came out, though, Barlog told Game Informer that a computer-ready Ragnarök depends primarily on Sony’s wiles.

“Right now, we’re taking it one game at a time, kind of looking at each one and determining, ‘Okay, is this the best thing?’ And we’ll gauge how it does,” he said in the interview. “Do people enjoy it? Did we do it right? Is there anything we did wrong? What can we do better in the future if we do this again? But at the end of the day, ultimately, it’s Sony’s decision.”

Yes. Thanks for asking. There’s currently a conspiracy that has Xbox diehards, torn up about Ragnarök’s mind-blowing PS5 graphics, spreading leaked Ragnarök information online like petulant babies spitting out their milk. I haven’t seen any tangible proof to support this theory, and, relatedly, I will never understand why strangers care about what console another stranger has. Neither Sony nor Microsoft will ever deliver a gift basket as a reward for posting 1,000 hot-head-crafted tweets about the other, you heard it here first.

Is God Of War Ragnarök the last game in the rebooted series?

Yeah, it is. Barlog confirmed it in a 2021 interview with YouTuber Kaptain Kuba, saying, “The first game took five years. […]Then if you think, ‘Wow, a third one in that same [length of time],’ we’re talking like a span of close to 15 years of a single story.”

Barlog continued to say that taking an estimated 15 years just to finish one God of War story arc would feel “too stretched out.” He’s taking on the quit while you’re ahead mentality.

And this isn’t cause for panic— Ragnarök is not the end of all God of War games, it’s only the conclusion to 2018’s God of War.

GOW ending leak?

This is Google’s favorite question. I won’t answer it explicitly in the interest of avoiding mean emails, but I can point you in the right direction.

Can I finish playing God of War before God Of War Ragnarök comes out?

Twitch streamer Adriana Chechik, whom I am wishing a very smooth recovery to following her awful back injury at TwitchCon, asked this on Twitter on October 24.

Yeah, you totally can finish God of War before November 9. It’s a good time to refresh your memory or get a taste for the story-driven series, but keep in mind that the game will take you 30-ish hours to complete. Budget your time, queue up some tips, and be open to the game’s relaxed “Give Me a Story” mode, which expedites combat a bit.

Do you care about God Of War Ragnarök?

I’ve never really thought about it before. I’m excited for Ragnarök, definitely. But do I care about it?

Would I tuck in underneath one of Anthropologie’s “bohemian blankets” like they do in the show Girls? Would I light a candle? Would I hold Kratos’ bald head back while he’s yacking up Lemnian wine on a Saturday? Probably not, his scalp kind of scares me.

Does r/GodofWar contain graphic surgeries or procedures?

God (of war), I hope so.

 



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God of War Ragnarök Leaks Early, Big Spoilers Are Everywhere

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Screenshot: Sony Santa Monica | Kotaku

The upcoming God of War Ragnarök, one of the biggest PlayStation games of the year, isn’t supposed to be out until November 9, but over the past 24 hours video and social media sites have been flooded with clips of people playing their way through the entire game.

We wrote a similar story last week, but it was relatively minor by comparison; some people reviewing the game had accidentally shared their screenshots, and while some of them could maybe have suggested certain things that were going to happen, most were just very pretty.

This, though, is the whole game being out there, over a week before release. It’s believed the game leaked when a store in the US, with its stock already in-hand, accidentally started selling copies early, which in this genre of news story is a tale as old as time. Director Cory Barlog is understandably a bit disappointed:

Meanwhile, given how easy it is to stumble upon footage at the moment—some YouTube videos have millions of views already—developers Santa Monica Studio have issued a statement that’s asking everyone to be considerate of fans who don’t want the game to be spoiled, but also more practically for those fans to maybe try and stay off much of the internet for the next week:

As we approach launch, it is important for our studio to preserve the experience of God of War Ragnarök for players who want to enjoy the game for the first time without spoilers.

We ask that you please be considerate of the many fans who do not want to accidentally see clips, gameplay, or narrative spoilers and avoid sharing them wider.

We are doing our best to limit the exposure of unsanctioned footage and screenshots, but the reality is that we cannot catch everything.

For those of you who do not want to risk seeing anything before launch, we strongly advise that you mute any keywords or hashtags associated with the game until release day.

We appreciate the support you’ve shown us more than we can say. We can assure you it will be worth the wait to experience the game yourself when it is released in less than two weeks on November 9th.

Thank you

Santa Monica Studio

While there’s always a very constructive discussion to be had about the way “spoiler culture” has shaped discussion of our favourite games, shows and movies, the God of War games are plodding singleplayer adventures where seeing the story unfold is half the reason people are playing them. If that’s you, you might want to heed Sony’s advice and just mute everything for the next week!

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Modern Warfare 2 Fans Are Mad About Fair Matches

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Screenshot: Activision

Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2 drops on October 28, though if you preordered it, you’ve likely already gotten some through some of the campaign. But ahead of the game’s full release, which will give folks full access to the multiplayer component, some are decrying the game’s skill-based matchmaking (SBMM).

Modern Warfare 2 is Infinity Ward’s latest entry in the Call of Duty series. A reboot of 2009’s eponymous title and a direct sequel to 2019’s rebooted Modern Warfare, this new shooter sees you hunting down various high-profile military ops to prevent global catastrophe by…shooting them in the face. It’s a solid game with some impressive visuals that Kotaku staff writer Claire Jackson said gets sluggish after a boring start. But while there are some problematic elements in the game’s campaign, that isn’t what has the community riled up. Nah, it’s the not-even-out multiplayer component.

Read More: Call Of Duty: Modern Warfare II Is A Precision-Made Boredom Machine

Popular streamer Timothy “TimTheTatman” Betar is seemingly at the center of the discourse around Modern Warfare 2 and skill-based matchmaking. In an October 23 video, he said that while he’ll “be here” when the game launches in full this weekend, he’ll only stream the game for “a day.” He’ll still grind it off-stream for the camos but clarified he can’t stream Modern Warfare 2. The reason? Skill-based matchmaking apparently sucks the enjoyment outta the multiplayer experience because he’s playing against highly skilled players that body him, and he isn’t having fun with the established “meta” and the “good guns” folks regularly use. His solution? Create two separate playlists: a Quick Play one not based around SBMM and a Ranked one that is.

“If SBMM wasn’t a thing, I would stream multiplayer,” he said. “SBMM—I’ve said this before and I’ll say it again, man—is, I dare say, killing video games.”

TimTheTatman

Skill-based matchmaking is exactly what it sounds like. It’s a feature usually employed in multiplayer games that pairs you with other players around your skill level. Only level 10 months after a game launched but still wanna check out the multiplayer component? No problem. SBMM should—heavy emphasis on the “should” here—match you with other folks that are also level 10. Getting better at the game and leveling up at a rapid clip? The game’s SBMM should—again, heavy emphasis the word “should”—recognize this, placing you with others that are equally improving their skills. It doesn’t always work out this way, but that’s the general idea behind the methodology.

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However, much like TimTheTatman, folks online aren’t—and haven’t been for a minute now—too happy with the feature’s implementation in competitive games. A cursory glance at Twitter pulls up multiple people decrying skill-based matchmaking. Some have brought up how competitive shooters back in the day, such as Halo 2, apparently didn’t have SBMM and were still great fun. (A former Halo designer was quick to counter that point, though.) Others have said they straight-up hate the feature. A few, like gaming collective FaZe Clan, have questioned whether skill-based matchmaking belongs in Call of Duty games at all. Most seem to agree, however, that SBMM is ruining the game for them in some capacity. But, of course, SBMM has been in games for a long while now.

Read More: Modern Warfare II Makes You Aim Your Gun At Civilians To ‘De-Escalate’

Kotaku reached out to Activision and TimTheTatman comment.

There’s some irony to the complaints here. If one player has hit prestige, frequently ending matches with some insane kill-death ratio, then they should obviously be placed with other equally dominating players. They shouldn’t be given the opportunity to jump into non skill-based lobbies to crush folks still learning the ropes. It’s like a heavyweight boxer packing a ton of muscle taking on a lightweight half their size. Like, that’s a clear unfair advantage. If you wanna be the best, you gotta beat the best, right? Like Twitter user headfallsoff aptly asked in response to the SBMM discourse: “What would Goku think”? Yeah, he’d be disappointed.

 



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Modern Warfare II Disc Is Nearly Empty

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Image: Activision / Kotaku

Players who received early physical copies of Call of Duty: Modern Warfare II have reported that the discs included contain only about 72MB of data, forcing players to connect to the internet and download the other 100+ GB of data to actually play the game.

Officially, Modern Warfare II isn’t out until tomorrow. But as usual, a few copies of the upcoming military first-person shooter slipped out of the warehouses a bit early and ended up in the hands of some lucky players. In theory, this disc should contain the game’s campaign, which was released early digitally, and it should also include its multiplayer, which fully launches for all tomorrow on the official release date. But as reported by Eurogamer, that’s not the case. Instead, players who got early copies of Modern Warfare II discovered that the disc was basically empty and they would have to download and install the entire game via the internet before they could play.

Kotaku has reached out to Activision about these dummy discs and if the company plans on offering actual retail copies of the game in the future.

Modern Warfare II–-after the latest patch—is reportedly over 150+ GB large when you include campaign and multiplayer. (And that doesn’t include the yet-to-be-released Warzone 2.0 that’s out in November.) While some players will be able to download the game easily and quickly, for others the large file size could take hours or days to download and it could push them over their existing internet data cap. Another problem, as pointed out by Eurogamer, is that in some parts of the world, energy costs are rising rapidly, and leaving a large, next-gen console running for hours to download a game could be a costly situation.

Read More: The Tricky, Essential Art of Preserving Canceled Games Like Starfox 2

But even if everyone in the world had great internet, low energy bills, and tons of free time to wait around for MW2 to download, it wouldn’t change how inconvenient this dummy disc situation is. It ends up making it harder to preserve console versions of the game legally, another blow to game preservation. And sure, this isn’t the first time a publisher has shipped nearly empty discs, but it still sucks that it’s happening again as it makes preserving games much, much harder for what is one of the biggest franchises in the world.

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Plus, what happens when the Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2 servers die one day? Well, you can probably guess. Unless Activision changes something in the future, the disc and all 72MB of its data will just become a paperweight once the servers die. At least you can play the other 46 Call of Duty games that are also called Modern Warfare instead.

 

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Technology

A True Teenage Horror Story

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It would come sooner or later. There was no escape.
Image: Microsoft / Evan Amos / Kotaku

Hidden from the bustle of Jamaica Avenue, down a winding flight of stairs, the shop looked like a mausoleum, with stacks of busted PS2s, OG Xboxes, and GameCubes lining the walls. That small store in the Jamaica Colosseum Mall was the same place I’d once purchased Splinter Cell on PS2, Doom 3 for Xbox, and the Halo 2 Multiplayer Map Pack, among many others. But the dead consoles served as a jarring reminder that as vivid as the worlds those boxes produced could feel, sooner or later our machines of dreams would cease to function.

Back in late 2005, standing on the cusp of a new console generation, I understood intellectually that, over time, some of the new, cutting-edge Xbox 360s and not-yet-released PlayStation 3s would die someday. Maybe after another decade that shop would be filled with hourglass-shaped white monoliths and glossy black Foreman grills. But not just yet. It was the beginning of a new era, after all.

Back then, my teenage social circle was busy bickering over silly console wars, arguing in fast-food restaurants over whether or not Killzone 2’s 2005 E3 demo was real, or our PlayStation friends’ assurances that once we saw the next-gen SOCOM, we’d leave Halo and Xbox forever. But we all agreed on one thing: We were all psyched for the wild new possibilities these new machines promised. HD graphics, better custom music playlists, a conclusion (finally!) to Halo 2, and the promise of true next-gen experiences like Gears of War. What a time to be alive.

And in an era of expensive texting plans and limited social media, the new HD consoles’ online functionality would soon mark a shift in our social lives. In fact, that was the very reason many of us sought out broadband internet. United online, our circle would surely stay as bright as the flashy rings on the Xbox 360 itself.

We all saved up enough from whatever random jobs we had at the time to buy 360s and fulfill the escapist desire that beckoned us after last period let out. Our afternoons were filled with round after round of Halo 2 (eventually Halo 3), trash talking, arguing over whether Korn was better off without Head, figuring out how to best apply Gears of War cover tactics to Halo, convincing someone to give Lost Planet a try, ordering Chinese takeout (leaving one friend in particular stuck with the bill. We’re good now, right?), trading burned Incubus and HIM discographies to rip to our 360 hard drives, blasting Lamb of God’s Sacrament, and saying things like, “oh my god, have you seen this Mass Effect game coming out?” “Oblivion looks nuts!” and “Would you kindly die so I can take your sniper rifle?” Single-player or multi, gaming never felt more exciting or promising.

Who knew that E-day would be the least of our fears?
Image: The Coalition

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But in between the hollering over killing sprees and chainsawing aliens, talk occasionally turned to the rumors surfacing on forums about Xbox 360s suddenly failing. It always went the same way: a black screen, a bunch of red lights around the power button, and silence. Soon this failure had a name: The Red Ring of Death, or RRoD for short. I started out a skeptic and soon became a denier. “It can’t happen to us,” I thought. We were all relying on the 360 to stay in touch and game together as we drifted toward adulthood. It couldn’t happen to us.

The apparent cause always varied: different people playing different games for different periods of time. Eventually it seemed like the only thing these stories had in common was that three-quarters of the power button lit up red like a stoplight. Surely, I thought, folks just needed to take better care of their machines. It didn’t feel right. It didn’t make sense. It wasn’t the 360’s time to start dying. We all thought it was still in its best day. In our best days even.

We thought wrong.

The first among us who fell victim had it the worst. Over the course of a few years, one friend in particular would go through four Xbox 360s. By then, our social circle was in panic mode. We tried to become experts on which models shipped when, trying to glue together the internet anecdotes with what we were hearing from victims we personally knew. Which 360s were most susceptible? Were launch models okay? The Halo 3 edition? The Elite? Does horizontal or vertical orientation matter? The panic of losing our machines made it hard to be sure. But it wasn’t just about missing out on Halo nights. The 360 had become central to how we socialized.

We all started to physically drift apart after high school. Sure, MySpace was a thing, but it was Xbox Live that really kept our social circle intact. That’s where we not only gamed, but also talked about music, movies, life. All of it. Live became somewhat of a digital safe space as we faced the challenges of becoming adults.

But the red rings followed us online. When one of us fell to them, a portion of that social circle, much like the error sign on the machine itself, went dark. Microsoft’s repair program was generous, but we also couldn’t shake the fear of needing to spend another three or four hundred dollars. We worried over how much time we should spend on the machine. How much time we should spend with each other.

We all feared that we were gaming on borrowed time. A game of Capture the Flag could be redly interrupted. Some, like myself, tried to dig into the denial. How could the problem possibly be so widespread? But when someone with a Halo 3 edition finally got the error, the inevitability of death was too naked to deny. Eventually someone even RRoDed on an Elite, which we’d been sure was bulletproof. I remember a brief text exchange. “I did everything to keep it safe! I had three feet of space around it and an intercooler! How does this keep happening?”

Repair turnaround took weeks. And in the hectic buzz of moving from high school to college and getting full-time jobs, those weeks made it hard to keep up with each other and stay in touch. A 360 dying meant you wouldn’t speak to someone for weeks. Forget about rounds of Halo. We weren’t just deprived of our favorite game, the red rings actively pulled us apart from each other.

Grenades were exchanged for tumbleweeds as my friends fell to the rings.
Screenshot: 343 Industries / Kotaku

The red rings of death became a fog that swallowed each of us, one by one. Somehow my launch console remained exempt, but the fear of it hitting me became too much. Toward the end of the decade I started exploring the PlayStation 3’s library, and tried to convince friends to do the same. But the damage was done. Time continued to pass and the Xbox 360, once central to my social circle, didn’t just fail us. It killed us, one by one.

In the blur of years during which everyone else I knew suffered red rings, things started to calm down. Newer Xbox models appeared to address the underlying overheating issue, but our online social circle was smaller by then.

Even so, the 360 generation was far from over. We’d been through the worst of it, and still had amazing games to look forward to. One evening, I, the sole survivor, sat down to start up a new Mass Effect playthrough to get ready for the sequel.

But it was not to be. A dreadfully familiar series of lights appeared on the face of my Xbox, denying me entrance to the sci-fi RPG futureworld. After tearing through all of my friends, the Red Ring of Death had finally come for me.

 

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Technology

Lady Dimitrescu Will Be Shorter For Resident Evil DLC

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Yeah, she’s shorter but you’ll still need Eren Jaeger’s 3D maneuver gear to give her a smooch.
Image: Capcom

Lady Dimitrescu, otherwise known as Tall Vampire Lady or simply Big Lady if you’re experiencing a loss for words, might have to get a more diminutive nickname that doesn’t reference her towering height come the release of Resident Evil Village’s first major DLC because Capcom will be making her a little bit shorter.

Resident Evil Village’s big upcoming DLC collection, collectively dubbed “Winters’ Expansion”, was first announced back in June during Capcom’s not-E3 broadcast. In it, players will play as protagonist Ethan Winter’s now-teenage daughter, Rose, to tie up loose ends from Village’s story. It will let you play the game’s score attack-style “The Mercenaries” mode as Chris Redfield, Karl Heisenberg, and Lady Dimitrescu. However, players won’t get to live vicariously as Lady D when it comes to her canonical height in Mercenaries mode.

In an interview with Polygon, Kento Kinoshita, the director for the Winters’ expansion, revealed that Capcom had to nerf Lady D’s height in order to give players a smoother gameplay experience. Ready for Lady DummyThicc’s new height reveal? Here we go. Instead of Lady D towering over you at a whopping 9’6″, she’ll be a bit shy of nine feet tall. If you can’t handle her at her shortest, you didn’t deserve her at her tallest.

Capcom

Read More: I Figured Out How Tall The Sexy Resident Evil Lady Is Because Of Course I Did

During the development of RE Village’s Mercenaries mode, Kinoshita told Polygon that Lady Dimitrescu’s height presented a challenge for developers. Despite the difficulties in translating Lady D’s height into Mercenaries, Kinoshita said the overwhelming fan response to that element of Lady Dimitrescu’s “tall stature” was “too important not to” include in the game mode.

“For The Mercenaries, it’s necessary that the player can control their character easily, and to make that possible we did adjust her height to a little under nine feet tall,” Kinoshita told Polygon. “At that height, the player just barely avoids bumping into the ceiling.”

Kinoshita also revealed that Capcom was also able to preserve Lady D’s “calm, dignified side, [and] excitable, deranged side” in The Mercenaries, so do with that information what you will.

All the Winters’ Expansion updates will launch October 28 and be available both separately, and as a bundle with the original game known as Resident Evil Village Gold Edition.

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Technology

Splatoon 3’s Most-Hated Gun Needs To Go, Players Say

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Oh great, here’s this jerk using the gun.
Image: Nintendo / Kotaku

With Splatoon 3 finally out on Nintendo Switch, folks have no doubt tried their hands at a variety of the game’s eclectic weapons. There are plenty to check out, from the classic rapid-firing Splattershot Jr. to newer weapons like the quick-slashing Splatana (which has quickly become a fave of mine). However, while each has its hater, there’s almost always someone complaining about the Clash Blaster, a pencil-sharpener-looking gun that’s frequently called out by players for being annoyingly busted. And I totally agree. The Clash Blaster is cheap.

A colorful ink-painting shooter, Splatoon 3 lets you unlock various pieces of gear—such as hats and shirts, alongside guns—after leveling up either through single- or multiplayer. Each level rewards you with a new weapon to experiment with, though you still have to purchase them with Sheldon Licenses, a type of currency you acquire by playing the game. The infamous Clash Blaster is one of the weapons you can get at level 22. And people hate it so much that there have been rather threatening messages littered throughout the hub world urging folks to stop maining it. Now!

Totally not ominous at all.
Screenshot: Nintendo / Kotaku

What Makes Clash Blaster So OP?

The Clash Blaster is deadly. Originally appearing in Splatoon 2 and built for use in mid-to-short range skirmishes, it can kill an opponent with two good body hits or three-to-four shots around the feet. That makes it a nuisance to deal with. On top of doing solid damage, its blast radius is wide enough to still hit combatants even when shots miss. So, get caught in the Clash Blaster’s range and you’re pretty much dead. There’s no escaping it, really.

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$663 Total Value

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An array of games from 2K have been bundled together. You can pay what you want to support the cause, but if you want access to some of the big hits like Borderlands 3, The Bioshock Collection, XCOM: The Ultimate Collection, and Sid Meier’s Civilizatrion VI, you’ll have to pay at least $16. But hey, that’s hardly anything compared to the $663 value you’re getting from all 18 games combined.

I can attest to this. As a blind gamer with atrocious accuracy due to an eye condition called keratoconus, I still managed to get kills in the double digits with the Clash Blaster. It’s a weapon so OP I didn’t need to have the best aim to use it. As long as I could shoot around the vicinity of the opponent in front of me, they’re definitely getting murked. The same thing happened every time I went against it in PvP. Seriously, it slaps. Or splats, I guess.

Why Do Folks Hate Clash Blaster So Much?

As outlined above, the Clash Blaster is hella powerful. You don’t have to be a top-tier player to ascend the multiplayer charts when using the pencil-sharpener-looking gun. And it’s for that reason many folks can’t stand it. Just type in “Clash Blaster” into Reddit or Twitter, and you’ll see copious complaints about the gun and how it’s an unfair weapon. Some will say it’s “still busted as fuck,” while others ask why, of all the available weaponry to choose from, would anyone main the gun when it’s so OP and capable of ruining the fun and wrecking squid boys and girls alike. The hate for the Clash Blaster goes all the way back to Splatoon 2, for Christ’s sake. Talk about holding a grudge. In gaming, there may not always be a Call of Duty game on PlayStation, but you can bet there’ll always be a Splatoon player complaining about the Clash Blaster.

I mean, even before Splatoon 3 launched on September 9, the game’s official subreddit was home to frequent Cash Blaster callouts. Some begged Nintendo to remove the Clash Blaster from the threequel. And when the company revealed that the gun would make a return, some took the news very, very hard. You can always count on someone posting about how the pencil-sharpener-looking gun spoils the inky fun.

While the Clash Blaster may be an annoying gun, it isn’t the one I’d label the most aggravating to go against. There are other weapons on my shitlist—namely the incredibly swift Inkbrush and Octobrush, as well as the wide-ranging Rollers that effortlessly flatten you. But I won’t deny just how irksome the Clash Blaster can be, especially when in some capable hands.

Splatoon 3 has been a pretty big success for Nintendo despite not being on the market for a full week yet. In fact, the third-person shooter has already sold over three million copies in just three days in Japan, making it way more popular than Breath of the Wild or even Pokémon games. That’s wild.

 



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Technology

Soulslikes Need Easy Mode And Steelrising Proves It

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Image: Spiders / Nacon

The opening moments of Steelrising felt surprisingly doable and fun for a soulslike, a genre of game that often starts out with tough challenges and a “go figure it out” kinda vibe. But once I hit the second map, I encountered an enemy that made me reach for the game’s “Assist Mode.” You might think that flipping on an “Easy Mode” let me breeze through the rest of the game, mindlessly. But it didn’t. Far from it. The game remains hard, but there was room to learn with more patient pacing. With this mode turned on, the game isn’t constantly sending me back to a spawn area, drained of my experience points with time lost to loading screens. The mode offers variable difficulty options, so I can scale up to where the game wants me to be. Steelrising isn’t dethroning the masters of this genre. But it sure as hell is showing at least one way they can improve, and with a pretty cool aesthetic at that.

Steelrising is the latest title from French developer Spiders. It’s a soulslike where you play as Aegis, a clockwork “automat” who must do battle with other similar creations in a steampunky alternative history twist on the French revolution. The studio is known for narrative-focused RPGs such as 2016’s The Technomancer and 2019’s Greedfall.

Spiders’ previous games, while perhaps being generally similar to something like a Mass Effect, usually march to the beat of their own drum. With Steelrising, I initially wasn’t thrilled about seeing the studio chase the model of another game so closely, only to predictably fall shy of the incredibly strong standard FromSoftware has set in this genre over the years.

If you are a diehard Miayazaki fan who doesn’t have time for imitators, Steelrising isn’t likely to grab your attention. Despite an imaginative premise and some great character design with digestible RPG mechanics, there’s just something missing here. It also struggled to maintain 60 frames-per-second on PC for me, which made the experience feel rougher than it should. Yet, all the boxes have been checked: enemies are tough, you need to level up to meet their health and attack power, when you die you drop your XP, and return back to the last spawn point with all of the enemies having been refreshed, tasked with recovering your don’t-call-’em-souls. You’ll continue to unlock new shortcuts and ways of traversing the winding maps as you move forward. Ya get the picture.

But the “Assist Mode” is where it is worthy of note and conversation.

Gif: Spiders / Nacon / Kotaku

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This mode is a set of options that lets you change a variety of the game’s functions. You can modulate the damage you take, scaling it down to 0% if you desire (you’ll still take fall damage though). You can also choose to keep your XP when you die, adjust your stamina regeneration rate, and affect the “cooling” timer you’ll get when you perform too many actions in a row. If any soulslike is to consider adding difficulty options, Steelrising is a clear model of how to do this.

Those who bristle at the notion of easing the difficulty of a soulslike are likely worried that the core experience risks being diluted or lost, or simply misses the point of the genre. Many might worry that it’s the virtual equivalent of removing guns from a shooter or jumping from a platformer. But Steelrising’s Assist Mode doesn’t pull you away from the core gameplay. Rather, it lets you get a different perspective on it so you can actually get better at the core skills of attacking and dodging and potentially learn how leveling up can change those dynamics.

The option I found the most use of was to reduce the damage to 0%. This meant that the first enemy that truly gave me some troubles, an automat that flings giant steel balls around on chains connected to its arms, could teach me its movesets instead of just beat the shit out of me and forcing me to restart every time I failed. It went from being a giant asshole to a sparring partner.

It still knocked me on my ass every single time. But I could get up and say “okay, when it moves like this, I’ve got to get out of the way.” I learned where the openings were, how quick I should be in pressing my attack. I was able to bake a muscle memory into my response to this kind of enemy, and I didn’t have to go allllll the wayyy back to the damn spawn point and face allll the daaaamn enemiess agaaaaain to learn that. I would love there to be a “fake health bar” so I could get a sense of how much damage they do to know “well, I would’ve died at this point.” Assist Mode helped me understand the language of the game, and has prepared me for when I’m ready to take those training wheels off, take down these foes, and feel accomplished in how I’ve gotten better.

Screenshot: Spiders / Nacon / Kotaku

The other difficulty options can also adjust what kind of game this is. Having XP stay with you means death plays a different role in the game. Stamina regeneration can make the game feel a bit quicker. Granted, when you turn on any of these features, there are certain achievements you can’t unlock. But that’s fine! In fact, it really does preserve the crushing difficulty the devs were aiming for. It makes playing the game the way it was designed as something you could aspire to, not be punished so often for failing to meet its demands.

I enjoy challenges and difficult experiences in video games and elsewhere. I like to see my own improvement in the things I find interest in. But soulslikes have, far too often, been too punishing of a teacher for me. And as someone who struggles with my mental health and has to fight off enough real demons when something is frustrating, soulslikes have remained something that feels too unkind to me. I’m just less likely to engage with them. I want to experience the thrill of beating these games, the accomplishment of having mastered something. I just need to prioritize my personal cooldown timer for things in life that will never have a difficulty slider. Steelrising proves that a game can do this while still being quite hard.

“Assist Mode” didn’t simply make the game easier. It was a helping hand that reframed the frenetic action to say, “hey, you can actually do this. And here’s how.” Games need more of this.

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