It’s right there in the Bible—ask, and it will be given to you. It’s also right there on gaming Twitter, where the small gaming podcast Super Pod Saga posed an innocent question on January 15 and people showed up to respond in droves: “What is the most useless piece of video game knowledge you know?”
Apparently, there are a lot of people that think a lot of useless thoughts about video games. Who knew? In the week and a half since posting, Super Pod Saga received over ten thousand responses to their tweet. But a lot of it, I’d say, isn’t necessarily useless, but essential.
Take this response about action-adventure series Devil May Cry, for example: “Dante and Vergil have an insane healing factor that essentially heals as the damage is being done, so no wounds or scars. Due to this, they’re likely uncircumcised.”
Tell me honestly. What was I supposed to do if I had never read that? Never know whether or not Dante and Vergil are circumcised? Be forced to wander the Earth, alone forever in my confusion? Can you even imagine that?
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Officially-licensed socks Sock Affairs wants you to enrobe your feet in their officially licensed socks with art from Pink Floyd and AC/DC records.
Or what about this: “In Xenoblade 3, all characters in the game’s files are listed with a number for gender. Zero is male, One is female; however, the character Juniper is listed as two. Furthermore, in Xenoblade 2, the character Roc’s gender is listed as four. Thus, there are at least five genders in Xenoblade.” I mean, that’s just inspirational.
Ah, the breeze of womanhood! Dinosaurs!
Kotaku staffers have been holding onto their own niche video game info, too. I know this, because I begged them to tell me in pursuit of self-actualization.
“The li’l fire breathing dinosaur from Super Mario World is named after the singer in Nine Inch Nails,” social media editor Jeb Biggart told me. “That feels pretty useless.”
Yes, great stuff. More, give me more.
“In the Halo 2 level Quarantine, Flood [parasitic creatures] can be seen driving around in Warthogs/tanks/etc. This is the only time in the series where they do this, and it’s really weird,” staff writer Zack Zwiezen said.
“The music in NES Back to the Future, a terribly obnoxious, grating repetitive theme that bears no immediately apparent resemblance to anything is actually a wildly sped up version of the hit song from the movie, ‘The Power of Love’ by Huey Lewis and the News,” said managing editor Carolyn Petit. “Perhaps because they programmed the music, but then found out they didn’t have the rights to the song, so they just sped it way up. I do not know the reason for this.”
Thank you all. My power grows. My mind expands. My trivia senses are tingling.
Now, what’s your favorite bit of random video game knowledge? Let it out, it’s for my health.
The 2022 Game Awards ended with a random kid sneaking up on stage and muttering nonsense about “reformed Rabbi Bill Clinton.” The 2022 Game Awards is now, understandably, trying to pretend that never happened, blurring the kid out of a picture celebrating Elden Ring developer FromSoftware’s second Game of the Year win.
“FromSoftware is the first studio to win 2 Game of the Year awards at The Game Awards,” the event’s social media account tweeted on Wednesday. The studio won in 2019 for Sekiro: Shadows Die Twice, and again earlier this month for Elden Ring. “Congratulations FromSoftware,” it concludes. Attached was a picture of director and studio president, Hidetaka Miyazaki, holding the award alongside a member of the team who was translating his acceptance speech that night.
But it didn’t take an eagle-eyed observer to notice that the Bill Clinton prankster from that night, who had been standing behind both men, was sloppily Photoshopped out of the image. “LOSING MY MIND THAT THEY BLURRED THE KID LMFAOO,” quote-tweeted Twitch streamer GamesCage. “Hahaha you gotta use ‘content aware fill’ tool in photoshop to remove background assets next time,” added FromSoftware dataminer, Lance McDonald.
The kid who crashed the Game Awards that night was later revealed to be Matan Even, a high schooler with a penchant for clout-chasing IRL stunts, who later gained notoriety on the internet. He previously trolled an NBA fan cam with a freedom for Hong Kong t-shirt, and interrupted a BlizzCon panel with a similar message. He’s appeared twice on InfoWars to discuss Chinese censorship, but his social media presence shows no allegiance to one particular political ideology, and he has since distanced himself from InfoWars host Owen Shroyer, whom he had previously called his “favorite person” on the right-wing conspiracy network.
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Even’s stunt at The Game Awards was seemingly devoid of any larger substance or meaning, but it did momentarily steal the spotlight away from the rest of the ceremony. Host Geoff Keighley laughed it off as security escorted the minor off stage, and though he later tweeted that Even had been arrested, LAPD claim he was only escorted to a local police station before being released without any charges.
The blurred tweet would seem to indicate that Keighley’s Game Awards still feels besmirched on some level by the interloper that night. Apparently not besmirched enough to get someone with more Photoshop experience to fix the image, however. It took Kotaku’s own Zack Zwiezen less than fifteen minutes to properly edit the kid out of the image. Or as one person pointed out, The Game Awards could have simply used one of the many other stills in which the kid is out of view.
The Game Awards did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
If you, like me John Walker, are still fathoming your way through the lower echelons of Marvel Snap, there’s a good chance there are cards you’re clinging on to because they were working so well for you. However, you’re now starting to lose more often, wondering what went wrong. The answer is: Kill your darlings.
With the help of my colleague Zack Zwiezen—who has been playing the game for some time now—we’ve come up with a list of cards that you might want to cut from your decks.
Now, let’s be clear: Neither of us is saying these cards are totally useless, or that keeping them in your deck is always a bad idea. It’s just, they’re the ones that felt so good early on that you might not have been able to bring yourself to acknowledge their weaknesses, and are holding you back from experimenting with more interesting combinations. Be bold, be brave, and let these babies go.
And remember you can always add them back later if you experiment too much and end up with a stinker deck! Anyway, let’s start cutting some cards!
Quicksilver
Image: Marvel / Second Dinner / Kotaku
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As Kotaku has previously broken down, Quicksilver was developer Second Dinner’s brilliant solution to entirely removing the concept of mulligans from their deckbuilding card game. Guaranteeing a 1-cost card in your hand at the start of every game ensures you can always play in the first round, every time, and add 2 power to the board right away. Which, at first, felt vital. Except, the more you play, the more you realize that being able to play in the first round isn’t actually all that important.
Chances are, you’re not going to be placing down anything game-changing that first turn. And indeed by not playing in round one, you fend off other 1-cost cards like Elektra. You can even obnoxiously opt out of playing a 1-cost you might have in your hand in Round 1, just so you can play two of them more tactically in Round 2. Again, for example, Elektra!
And, as we’ll get to below, decks that opt for as many 1-cost cards as possible will get increasingly weak as you climb the ranks, meaning Quicksilver’s lack of any further abilities quickly makes him more of a burden than a boon.
Uatu
Image: Marvel / Second Dinner / Kotaku
When you first stumble upon Uatu, he feels like a secret hack, a card offering you special insight unavailable to anyone yet to find him. His ability to show you the properties of unrevealed locations feels like something that lets you plan ahead and make psychic moves your opponent can’t predict. And, to some extent, on some level, he sort of does.
Except, that won’t happen nearly often enough to justify Uatu taking up a valuable slot in your 12-card deck. The issue lies in the number of conditions that need to be right for him to actually prove helpful. Rather obviously, you need the luck of drawing him early enough to work. Unless you get him in the first or second round, Uatu’s ability is pretty useless. Secondly, you need to be playing a game with locations where prior knowledge is actually of use.
So many locations have properties where foreknowledge is of very little value. Finding out that when it reveals you’ll get a random card added to your hand, a random card taken from it, or a 12-power card added to both sides…it’s very rare that this will be vital information to you. Yes, there are absolutely circumstances where it’s great, where knowing each card will get 5+ power when played there means you can load up and dominate where your opponent might not know to. But does that happen frequently enough for Uatu to remain a vital card? Really, no.
Hulk
Image: Marvel / Second Dinner / Kotaku
This one is hard. But listen: There are better and more interesting ways for a big finish. Hulk’s there from the start to give you that satisfaction of playing a ridiculous 12-power card on those Pool 1 bots. But he’s baby food, and you’re ready for solids.
Sure, you’ve nothing else in your deck that offers that much power. It’s simple logic. But Hulk’s simplicity is the issue. Using up all your energy in Round 6 on one card that does nothing other than add a bunch of power means you’re missing out on much more fun big finishes. Never mind that Shang-Chi, available from Collection Level 222, can obliterate him with his “Destroy all enemy cards at this location that have 9 or more Power.”
But there are so many cards that do more interesting things in the final round, especially if you have a themed deck. The trick is whether or not your Hulk is serving a specific purpose, or just there because the number is big. But consider cards like Odin, who adds 8 power, but also refires all the On Reveal abilities of the other cards at the location. That means you can see White Tiger putting out another 7-power card onto another location, bringing her total contribution to 15, while at the same time retriggering Gamora’s additional +5 power if the opponent plays a card there. That puts Gamora up to a total of 17, even without taking into account a possible third card at the location, just playing Odin has increased our power by 20. Take that, Hulk.
America Chavez
Image: Marvel / Second Dinner / Kotaku
When you first get this card you might be excited. America is a 6-cost/9-power card that always shows up on turn six, which is usually the last turn of most Marvel Snap games. And yeah, it’s nice knowing a powerful 9-power card is definitely going to show up at the end of your match. But this also means she’s not hanging around in your hand, meaning she can’t get buffed or randomly tossed into the field early on. This may or may not be a problem depending on the deck you’re running; if your entire deck is constructed around her showing up at the end, that’s one thing. But consider the options carefully.
While adding 9-power at the end of a match can be useful, you’ll quickly encounter games as you rank up where 9-power just isn’t enough to win back a zone or lock something down. Sometimes, you may even want to trick your opponent into thinking you’re going to play a big card, only to make a more modest play on a zone that you can win with a smaller number without invoking the wrath of Shang. And unlike the Hulk who is very strong, America is only sort of strong. In a specific deck built around buffing, she can work, but there are better 6 and even 5-cost cards to swap in instead.
Domino
Image: Marvel / Second Dinner / Kotaku
Let’s just toss this on here too, while we are talking about America Chavez and Quicksilver. Like those cards, Domino has a unique ability that means she is guaranteed to end up in your hand on turn two. And as a 2-cost/3-power, she seems useful as a follow-up to Quicksilver on turn one. And early on, you can definitely win with Domino. But eventually, you’ll need to get over these cards.
It’s hard, I know, but while giving them up means you give up the consistency of always knowing what’s coming on turns one, two, and six, you are also giving up three slots in your small 12-card deck to characters with no other purpose. They don’t buff, boost, move, kill, destroy, or do anything useful like that. Again, in certain decks, these cards can be useful. But there are just so many better cards that you could use instead of Domino, Quicksilver, and America. Say goodbye to consistency and hello to chaos. It’s the Marvel Snap way.
Mantis
Image: Marvel / Second Dinner / Kotaku
Mantis, like the other Guardians of the Galaxy-related characters, has a reveal ability that pops when your opponent plays a card in that location on the same turn it’s played. But unlike Gamora, Star-Lord, or Rocket, Mantis doesn’t get a power boost, instead drawing a card from the opposing player’s deck. This is fun and chaotic, which we support! Snap is more fun when things are hard to predict and wild. But this becomes far less useful in most situations pretty quickly, unless you happen to be running a deck predicated on amassing as many cards as possible. For example, a Devil Dinosaur deck could use Mantis at the start. But otherwise, she may not be useful to you if it’s not an intentional choice.
The number of times people play Mantis, get a card, and then never use that card because it doesn’t sync up with their deck’s synergy is high. And that’s if your opponent plays a card that turn and you guess the location right. If you don’t do that, then Mantis is a crappy 1-cost/2-power paperweight just begging to be killed by Elektra or worse, left there with no way for you to remove it, taking up valuable real estate. So, yeah, ditch Mantis. And if you are screaming “Well, she is a part of my Zoo Deck!” right now, here’s more bad news…
Zoo Decks
Image: Marvel / Second Dinner / Kotaku
The “Zoo Deck” was certainly one of the most popular meta decks of Snap’s early days, but in the face of the more common addition of Killmonger to players’ decks, it’s now proving a liability.
A Zoo Deck is a community-given name for decks that put together a lot of low-cost cards, especially 1-cost cards, which often have animal art on them. (Not often enough to justify the name, but that’s the name they’ve gotten anyway.) Advocates celebrate that they allow you to play multiple cards in later rounds, surprising players who rely on hefty 5 and 6-cost cards, like some sort of cheeky rascal scampering between the angry giant’s legs. Except, because of Killmonger, they’re pretty much useless.
Killmonger does appear to be an incredible OP card, although he can only be picked up by players who’ve reached Collection Level 462. At just 3-cost, with 3 power, it’s a card that can be played from round 3 onward, and devastatingly takes out every single 1-cost card from the board. Yours and theirs. And people in Pool 2 are reporting seeing it showing up a lot. The effects are brutal. Oh, and Zoo Decks can also get beat badly by a Scorpion, which lowers the attack power of all the cards in your hand by one, which can easily cost you a close match when most 1-cost cards are low in power. So yeah, Zoo Decks are fun…but not worth it later on.
While digital and physical sales of the Saints Row reboot hit a strong second place in both American and European markets, the open-world crime sim was denied first place by Madden NFL 23 and Grand Theft Auto V, respectively. While second place isn’t bad, the Saints Row reboot has actually been a bit of a flop, at least as far as Embracer CEO Lars Wingefors is concerned.
As reported by GamesIndustry.biz, 7.7 million games sold in tracked European territories during the month of August, and 2013’s Grand Theft Auto V lead the pack. Saints Row came in at second, sandwiched between Rockstar’s god-tier mega hit and FIFA 22. And in the States, Video Game Chronicle has the NPD stats, showing the crime reboot losing out to Madden NFL 23. Quite a duo: Madden NFL 23 had disastrous reviews, and GTA V came out (exhales) nine years ago.
To be fair, Saints Row didn’t launch until August 23, while GTA V was of course available during the entire month. (Madden came out on August 19.) But Embracer CEO Lars Wingefors seems pretty down on its performance, too. Axios’ Stephen Totilo reports that during an investor call today, Wingefors described the crime-sim reboot as “one of the harder ones” for the company to see a return on. He’s hoping to see a “greater reception” on the game and that, while it certainly won over some players, many others haven’t been convinced.
It wasn’t all gloom and doom, however. Wingefors stressed that the company needs to “wait until the quarterly report in November to have more details.” Responding to inquiries about the future of the franchise, Wingefors highlighted his trust in those working on the game and said that any potential decisions are uncertain for now.
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2022’s Saints Row, a reboot of the long-running open-world crime series, has been fighting an uphill battle since its somewhat polarizing reveal last year. Though the series has always played second fiddle to the GTA titan, its reappearance hasn’t been terribly well received by critics and fans alike, though Kotaku’s Zack Zwiezen found it a fun-enough time.
It’s one thing to contemplate what a modern Saints Row would need to look like and achieve in order to be as popular with gamers as it once was; it’s another to consider how anything at this point could unseat something that remains as remarkably popular as Grand Theft Auto V. Aside, that is, from its recently-leaked-to-all-hellsequel.
I hate to see you go but I love to watch you walk away.Gif: Sugergiant Games / Kotaku
Hope you got your fill playing the best game of 2020, aka Hades, because the nextwave of Xbox Game Pass games are upon us and alas, some games are leaving, too. Although this month’s lineup of games is short on big-budget blockbusters, it has a few sleeper hit indie games you’d be wise to check out. Without further ado, here’s what’s coming to Microsoft’s games-on-demand service in the coming weeks.
August 16
Coffee Talk (cloud, console, and PC)
August 23
Midnight Fight Express (cloud, console, and PC)
August 25
Exapunks (PC)
Opus: Echo of Starsong – Full Bloom Edition (console and PC)
August 30
Commandos 3 – HD Remaster (cloud, Console, and PC)
Immortality (cloud, PC, Xbox Series X|S)
Immortals Fenyx Rising (cloud, Console, and PC)
Tinykin (console and PC)
And here’s the full list of games leaving as of August 31:
Elite Dangerous (cloud and console)
Hades (cloud, console, and PC)
Myst (cloud, console, and PC)
NBA 2K22 (cloud and console)
Signs of the Sojourner (cloud, console, and PC)
Spiritfarer (cloud, console, and PC)
Twelve Minutes (cloud, console, and PC)
Two Point Hospital (cloud, console, and PC)
What Remains of Edith Finch (cloud, console, and PC)
World War Z (cloud, console, and PC)
Read More: Playing Coffee Talk Reminds Me Of The Quiet Joys Of Being A Barista
The one “big” game on the list, Ubisoft’s open-world, Breath of the Wild-esque Immortals: Fenyx Rising, struck our own Zack Zwiezen as “a welcome streamlining of large-scale Ubisoft game design, full of great puzzles and amusing storytelling.” But indie gems dominate this month’s additions, so let’s talk about those. Coffee Talk, developed by Toge Productions, is exactly what it sounds like: a game in which you make coffee and you chat with customers. However, strange things are brewing at your alternative-Seattle cafe, as your patrons include “fantasy-inspired” people with “modern problems,” so serve responsibly. Similarly to VA-11 HALL-A: Cyberpunk Bartender Action, you’ll be tasked with remembering customers’ orders and mixing their caffeinated refreshments before they tackle the day. In Kotaku’s review of the game, Harper Jay said it was the first game they’d played in months that genuinely relaxed them.
Then there’s the sci-fi visual novel, Opus: Echo of Starsong, which Kotaku’s Sisi Jiang described as a game that would satiate the hunger of Destiny’s most diligent lore hunters. Toss in the other offerings, including the intricate, technical cult hit puzzle game Exapunks from Zachtronics, and there may just be enough here to make you forget that Hades is leaving. In any case, you’ve got yourself a bountiful helping of indie games to try out in August. Happy playing.
Over the past week, the gaming world has been obsessed with an indie shooter coming to Xbox, treating it with the fervor (and wildfire social media metrics) of a forthcoming AAA tentpole. But here’s the weird part: This game’s already out. It’s been playable on multiple platforms for years.
You may have heard of Hypercharge: Unboxed, a wave-based shooter that casts you as an action figure pitted against a ton of other action figures—big Toy Story vibes here. Developed and self-published by Digital Cybercherries, Hypercharge does a lot with a little, marrying both first- and third-person shooting with base-building elements in childhood-inspired environments. It’s also multiplayer, sporting both online and, in a sadly rare but much appreciated boon, local co-op.
By most accounts, Hypercharge is pretty damn good, sporting a “very positive” (91%) rating on Steam. Here’s a brief summary via Kotaku’s Zack Zwiezen, who wrote positively about the game two years ago:
The basic gameplay loop has you break out of your toy packaging and then you search around a map for tokens, which you use to buy defenses and upgrades to help protect your energy stations. After a few minutes, a wave of enemies attacks. You fight them back, and then get another few minutes to search for more loot and build more defenses. It’s not a terribly new or fresh spin on this type of gameplay, but what is here is solid. Guns feel good, enemies react when you shoot them, and movement is fast and snappy.
Screenshot: Digital Cybercherries
Though it was first released in early access five years ago, Hypercharge saw a full release for Switch and PC in 2020. But you wouldn’t immediately glean that from the game’s official feeds, which could easily be read by a casual observer to indicate the game isn’t out yet. On Twitter specifically, Hypercharge has picked up the sort of buzz typically reserved for big-budget games, thanks to what appears to be a shrewdly engineered digital marketing strategy.
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Right now, Hypercharge’s Twitter page laser-focuses on Xbox to the exclusion of the other platforms it’s playable on. The current banner photo specifically calls out “Xbox players,” urging prospective players to vaguely “sign up” for…something. (Click through, and you’ll learn it’s a newsletter.) The pinned tweet—a post that stays at the top of a Twitter account’s feed, regardless of the chronological order of posts—refers solely to the “Xbox Series S.” The bio is a call to action for “Xbox players” with no mention of other platforms, as is textbook for pretty much every other game with a social media presence; if you want links to Hypercharge’s Steam or Nintendo eShop storefront pages, you’ll have to first click through a Linktree.
Video clips about Hypercharge’s gameplay have gone mega-viral a few times over the past few months in the wake of a marketing push, seemingly launched in the spring, to build buzz for a potential Xbox release. Just this weekend, one such clip picked up more than 13 million views, thanks in part to cross-feed shares by popular gaming personalities with large followings, like esports commentator Jake Lucky. (Lucky’s accompanying text could also be read as if Hypercharge is a yet-to-be-released game: “These 5 dudes are trying to make an indie game where you play as an action figure in a toy store…and it’s sick.”)
This strategy—essentially, treating Hypercharge as if it’s a totally new game—makes sense, seeing as the game hasn’t exactly taken off on existing platforms. According to Steam-tracking database Steamcharts, Hypercharge’s all-time max concurrents is less than a thousand players. And while official metrics aren’t publicly available for Nintendo’s storefronts, c’mon.
It’s unclear just how much the studio anticipated the recent buzz. Representatives for Digital Cybercherries did not respond to a request for comment in time for publication.
Screenshot: Digital Cybercherries
But intentional or not, the dividends are apparent. Digital Cybercherries says more than 20,000 people signed up for the newsletter last week. That’s in addition to the videos that pick up millions of views, and the relatively high level of engagement on its social media posts, which regularly garner thousands of likes. Of course, this level of attention regrettably has drawbacks. Last week, the studio released a statement calling out the toxicity it’s received regarding the lack of a specific release date.
Speaking personally, and maybe I’m just a sucker, but the past few weeks of buzz are…totally working on me? Hypercharge is not the sort of game I’d play on Switch (not enough technical horsepower) or PC (no gaming rig for me). But I’d totally play it on Xbox—where I typically play local co-op games, which are, and I’m just reiterating how much of a bummer this is, few and far between these days.
A week ago, I thought Hypercharge was just another shooter. Now, it’s charged to the top of my “gimme gimme gimme” list. Hypercharge is broadly slated for an Xbox release early next year, according toThe Verge’s Tom Warren, with the window open for a launch on Xbox Game Pass, Microsoft’s enormously popular games-on-demand service. Let’s see if the buzz can hold ‘til then.
Last week Blizzard launched Diablo Immortal, the next entry in its long-running, loot-driven action-RPG franchise. However, unlike previous games, this one is free-to-play, and was built from the ground up to be a mobile game first. While it did also come out on PC last week, the reality is this is a very different kind of Diablo. Between being a phone title, having F2P-style in-app purchases, and being part of a popular legacy franchise, it’s created a large debate about the game and its true cost.
Kotaku staff writer Zack Zwiezen and editor John Walker have both been playing, so got together to chat about the game, how much they’re enjoying it, and why it might not be the evil, money-sucking monster some have claimed. At the very least, it’s a perfect way to kill some time while watching old episodes of The Simpsons.
John Walker: How many previous Diablos have you played?
Zack Zwiezen: I played a lot of Diablo III and its expansion and some Diablo II…
John: When you say a “lot”, do you mean you got to the point of playing online with a regular group until it accidentally became your full-time unpaid job?
Zack: Oh well, not that much. I did however buy and play it on three different platforms across at least 250+ hours.
John: It’s impressive you weren’t turned. You know. Into one of them.
Anyway, I’ve played a bunch of all of them, but never “properly.” I’ve always approached them as single-player ARPGs, something to aimlessly click on while watching a crummy TV show. And absolutely loved them for that.
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Zack: Same. Back in the prime of my Diablo III days, I’d burn through podcasts and long YouTube video essays while killing thousands of demons and skeletons. It was a perfect thing to combo with another piece of entertainment, assuming you didn’t want to focus on either entirely. And Diablo Immortal has started to fill a similar role in my life.
John: Yeah, me too. Except, I keep finding myself teaming up with other people.
Zack: Disgusting, John. I thought you were better than that.
Screenshot: Blizzard / Kotaku
John: I hate doing that normally. As soon as other people are playing, I become certain they all hate me and I’m ruining the game for them. But here I both don’t care and clearly aren’t.
Zack: This has also been my experience when I play with others in Immortal. Usually, we just plow through a dungeon creating a mess of particles and fire that cause my iPad battery to weep softly as it quickly dies.
John: And then we part, without even a goodbye. Cheap, meaningless raiding. The best kind.
Zack: Yeah, it really is. I never feel like I need to look up a guide or yell at anyone for messing up. We all get the assignment and without voice chat can quickly pull it off. Good shit.
John: Yeah, I’m playing it, like, all the time, both at my PC and then picking up right where I left off on my phone, and I’m having a great time with it, and the more I’m enjoying it, the more I’m convinced that people who vociferously like Diablo must surely hate it. Because die-hard Diablo people usually hate anything I love. Like my wife, and son.
Zack: But John, I’ve been told by folks online that Diablo Immortal is actually bad and evil! That it will steal your bank account or something.
John: Have you, at any point, felt like you needed to pay for anything?
Zack: No. I’ve definitely seen some ads pop up and the game isn’t shy about that stuff, like pestering you that a cheap chest is on sale. But hours and hours into the game, at level 32 or something like that, I’ve never hit a paywall. And as someone who has played a lot of mobile games in my life, that is not always the case!
John: Why has Blizzard just made this whole game for free?
Zack: I don’t know. I keep thinking about how this game with a few changes could easily be a $40 thing. And yet, if you just want to play the story of Diablo Immortal and run some raids online, you can do all that for…nothing? At least that’s what it feels like to me. What level are you at?
John: I am level 51! And I am a Shadow!
Zack: And have you spent any money in-game because you needed to or felt like it was the only way to move forward?
John: Never. I paid for a Battle Pass because I’ve never done that before in any game, and wanted to know what would happen.
Zack: I’m so proud of you. The grumpy old man can evolve.
As for buying stuff in-game, I know that if you want the best of the best gear and items, the stuff you’ll need to win in PvP and top the leaderboards, you’ll likely need to fork over a lot of money. But I just don’t care about any of that. As we established, this is a game that I play when I’m watching YouTube or old Simpsons episodes, so all the anger around it has confused me. You don’t have to spend $100k in this game, as that one YouTuber alleged. I promise!
John: Yeah, the game just doesn’t seem to want me to have paid for any of that to do anything it has offered so far. So, say, in a couple of days I hit some sort of end-game wall, Shadows vs. Immortals I think it’s about, and to take part in all that bullshit I’d need the best equipment? I’d say, “Yay, I finished this extraordinarily detailed free game!”
Zack: Right. I’m at the same point. If the awesome free game stops letting me play after 30 hours or whatever, I’ll just move on and enjoy something else.
This all reminds me of how some folks will waste days or weeks playing games they hate, that they find broken or unfair or bad. And I just wish some people would realize that it’s okay to hit a wall and move on. Not everything needs to be min-maxed and perfected. You don’t always need to get the best of the best and win the whole thing. You can just…move on.
John: Yeah! It’s like a Happy Meal toy that’s surprisingly decent. You’re not going to play with it forever, but you didn’t throw it out that same day.
Zack: And yet, there are people reading this who will leave angry comments below saying we are shills or ruining gaming…
John: Well, here’s the thing. The other thing that keeps surprising me is how needlessly detailed it is. I know this is Blizzard, and this is what it does, but at the same time the game says “NetEase” when it loads up too. But you do a dungeon and suddenly the boss fight turns out to be three stages, each one involving a big environmental change, and then there’s a surprise bonus bit at the end. Or maybe I’m just doing some of the bounties from the bounty board, and instead of “kill 10 of those” which some are, it turns out to be a whole little story, an investigation into a crime or something.
This isn’t disposable. This is a whole proper Blizzard game. It’s odd, because it really doesn’t feel like playing Diablo at all. It feels maybe closer to World of Warcraft?
Zack: Yes! And all the tiny little animations and details out in the world too. I saw someone getting dragged to their death and it was a bit shocking and gruesome and I was like…wait, this is on my iPad! This is not the kind of game I expect to play for free on a tablet. I keep looking around, thinking a cop will show up and arrest me for stealing this $60 game.
John: Well, I mentioned it earlier, but it’s both on my telephone and my PC. I can genuinely walk away from my desk, and just carry on playing on my phone.
Zack: Which is another very awesome thing about Immortal.
John: You know what? If I’d paid $60 for it, I’d probably be a bit miffed at the graphics and how incredibly flaky and buggy it is. I’m forgiving a lot for the $0 entry fee. It disconnects me so damn often, and I’ve had it crash both on my phone and PC a huge number of times.
Also, the PC version is abysmal. It doesn’t even have resolution settings, and looks like what it is: a mobile game stretched far too thin onto a monitor.
Zack: I can’t actually play the PC version at the moment. It’s too dark and the map keeps breaking. But credit to Blizzard for doing a PC port at all so I don’t have to try and emulate it using Bluestacks. And yeah, the zero-dollar price helps me not be too bothered by all these issues and shortcomings
John: It’s odd, given Blizzard’s PC origins, that the desktop version is quite so poor though. Although it’s rather cheekily called it a “beta”. Mmmmmhmmm, this identical product to the telephone version is magically in beta now that it’s on my PC? Hmmm…
Zack: It’s for sure an odd thing, but hopefully it’ll get improved. And if not, the iPad version has been working well for me, even with its touch controls. But ultimately, I keep wondering why this game has broken some people online.
John: Oh, because it has the word “Diablo” involved. I remember writing in 2011 about how heinous it was that Blizzard was forcing always-on internet requirements on Diablo III, and was roasted online for my dissent. Then the game comes out and I say I’m having fun and I’m equally harassed.
Screenshot: Blizzard / Kotaku
Zack: Yeah. I think Diablo has a tendency to, ironically, drive people mad. And I’ll admit that if this was the only Diablo game we knew Blizzard was working on, I’d be a bit sad. But Diablo IV is coming. We’ve seen it. So I just don’t get the weird army of angry fans who seem hell-bent on attacking people who enjoy Immortal.
John: But is it? Will it ever really come out, Diablo IV? Will it? Also, if Blizzard hadn’t wasted all its time making this really very good free mobile game, it’d have finished Diablo IV over 40 years ago!
Zack: Well, the future of Diablo, the next game, and what happens next might be the perfect reason to do another VGchat. However, seeing as you are British, sarcasm is beginning to creep into this current chat, so I think we should wrap it up.
And also, to answer your sarcastic query, I do assume Diablo IV will one day be finished and released simply because the Diablo brand is…Immortal!
John: I feel good that I ironically mocked the people who haven’t read this far and are already leaving their comments, rather than acknowledge your terrible “joke.”
Pour one out for every kid who one-strapped a backpack in middle school, as they’re likely in mourning today. With Apple’s discontinuation of the 7th-generation iPod Touch, announced yesterday, it’s official: the iPod is dead.
Ostensibly, the iPod was a music device, meant to digitize song libraries and move listeners away from the limitations and galactically better sound quality of physical media. (Whether such a shift was good for the music industry is, of course, another story.) But over its many iterations, the iPod also heralded another revolution: that of mobile gaming.
Once upon a time, mobile gaming consisted of playing Brick or Snake on your parents’ dusty Nokia. And sure, following its 2001 launch, the iPod—which literally featured a shoddy port of Brick following the device’s 2001 launch—had a similar landscape for a while. Over the next few years, the offerings grew, but not by much. In 2006, EA released iPod versions of minted classics like Sudoku and Solitaire. Kaplan, the for-profit educational behemoth, released a series of SAT prep study courses (to which I can only say: lol). Compared to other mobile gaming devices of the era, like, say, the Nintendo DS, the iPod was hardly revolutionary.
Then came the iPod Touch.
First released in 2007, the iPod Touch totally reimagined the iPod’s design. Rather than a brick with a wonkily controlled track wheel, the iPod Touch looked a lot like its contemporary, the iPhone: sleek, rectangular, affixed with a glass touch screen that coated its entire silhouette. Unlike the iPhone, you couldn’t use an iPod Touch to summon and instantly lose the courage to dial up your crush from algebra. But if you had a Wifi connection, you could download a bunch of games that’d at least distract you during algebra.
And some of the games of the era were truly excellent. Fruit Ninja! Tap Tap Revenge! Words with Friends! Temple Run practically created, or at least widely popularized, a new genre, laying the groundwork for truly terrific endless runners like Alto’s Odyssey. Personally, I had a soft spot for Doodle Jump, a platformer that cast you as an elephant (?) wearing a jetpack. The visuals, stylized to look like a lined paper notebook, are inked in memory. But for me, at least, it was also an early introduction to the wider world of leaderboards.
Some games, quality aside, went on to become legit cultural behemoths. Angry Birds spawned a feature film, along with crossovers with Star Wars and Transformers, and a gazillion other spin-offs. (My grandmother once bought me an Angry Birds bath mat, presuming that, seeing as I like video games, I must like Angry Birds, the only video game.) The impact was undeniable.
Raise your hand if these ads left an indelible impact on you, too.
And so, news of the iPod’s death set off a spirited wave of nostalgia in Kotaku’s Slack this afternoon.
Staff editor Lisa Marie Segarra shouted out pretty much all of the games listed above, and further pointed to the iPod as a catalyst for the indisputable Candy Crush craze. She also praised the tilt controls that came with some games, which were “so innovative at the time. Or at least it felt like it.”
“What a time to be alive,” added staff writer Zack Zwiezen. “I truly miss the older era of the App Store. … No doubt we have great stuff today, but I can’t help but long for those simpler times when I drank fake beer and played with knock-off lightsaber apps.”
The times are indeed less simple. Rather than the handful of must-play options, Apple’s gaming ecosystem is bigger than ever, as major games—everything from blockbusters like XCOM and Genshin Impact to indie sleeper hits like Sayonara Wild Hearts and Baba is You—make their way to the App Store. Apple Arcade, a subscription service that grants access to a library of games, is slowly becoming an essential scouting ground for under-the-radar gems. (Many Apple Arcade games eventually make their way to Nintendo Switch or traditional consoles, where they become ‘legitimized’ in the eyes of the hardcore player, something that goes on to obscure mobile game origins.)
But every time one of these once-essential devices gasps its final breath, I find myself struck at the finality—how everything, no matter its apparent staying power or cultural impact, is ephemeral, a fleeting moment you don’t realize was fleeting until it’s gone. As they say: Wouldn’t it be nice to recognize you’re living in the good times when you’re actually living in the good times? I think so.
Anyway, yeah, RIP to the iPod. You had a good run. You’ve left a good legacy. And to really get all mid-2000s: Thnks fr th Mmrs.
Halo Infinite’s second season kicked off today, ushering in a handful of new maps, modes, and cosmetics to the popular multiplayer shooter. Developer 343 Industries detailed all of the minor changes in patch notes that are so long they come with a six-chapter table of contents.
They’re so long that you—by which I mean my colleague Zack Zwiezen, thanks Zack!—can turn it into a GIF:
Gif: 343 Industries / Kotaku
Some of the stuff within isn’t news. We knew, for instance, that Halo Infinite’s second season would add a variety of modes—King of the Hill, the return of Attrition, and the introduction of the battle royale-ish Last Spartan Standing—from day one. We knew, too, that it would nerf the arguably overpowered but fun mangler into the floor, a decision pros are thrilled about but that I personally will never recover from.
But we didn’t know just how badly 343 would nerf it. In addition to reduced melee damage, it also had its ammo stores slashed by 25 percent. On the plus side, the ravager, which 343 previously said it was considering improving, has been buffed into usefulness: You can now kill enemies with two standard shots. And the weapon’s alternate fire, a sort of charged-up burst, is now more than twice as powerful.
Halo Infinite’s least useful vehicles have been seriously improved as well. For one thing, the banshee, a flimsy, tough-to-control flying vehicle often jokingly referred to by players as the “badshee,” got totally overhauled. You actually have control over its speed now. The cooldown for its bomb has been reduced, and its standard plasma cannon. On land, the chopper, too, is stronger: You can destroy any vehicle (well, except for a tank) by ramming the chopper’s grill into it. Speaking of vehicles, bots, apparently, will now automatically hop in as “either passengers or gunners.”
Yes, they’re becoming even more human.
Equipment, too, has received a handful of improvements designed to keep players alive longer. The portable drop wall, one of the most invaluable pieces of gear in the campaign, will now spawn faster and can absorb more damage. And the overshield, already pretty damn powerful, now adds an entire half a shield bar on top of what it already added.
All of those changes are in addition to handful of notable quality-of-life improvements:
You can now tweak the thickness of player outlines—a huge boon to players who may have low vision or be vision-impaired.
The rocket launcher no longer takes 47 seconds to switch. (Also, firing it at a warthog’s windshield no longer deals bonus damage.)
When you board an enemy tank, planting a grenade will instantly kill the pilot.
For the 11 of you who complained, the left shoulder pad of the hyper-specific Jorge-052 armor kit now shows the proper texture.
For the most part, the changes are more than welcome. But the update has already irked certain corners of Halo Infinite’s most dedicated community, thanks to two errant lines: “Velocity gained from landing into a slide on a ramp has proportional reduction based on fall height” and “Removing or adjusting collision on small props and thin ledges.”
In other words, Halo Infinite’s so-called “skill jumps”—essentially, making use of not-quite-official movement tricks to zip around the map—are now in limbo. For instance, on the Streets map, you could jump on what appeared to be a purely cosmetic awning and clamber to a pathway that otherwise would require looping halfway around the map. (Optic Gaming’s Tommy “Lucid” Wilson frequently used this trick to great success in this weekend’s thrilling HCS Kansas City Major championship event for Halo Infinite.) That one apparently is no more. Others, like an electrical box that served as a ledge on the Live Fire map, are also gone.
Halo Infinite’s highest-skilled players are apoplectic at the change. “Does 343 want Halo to fail?” one player asked in a tweet about the removal of skill jumps. Another called the choice “baffling.” The Halo esports commentator Alexander “Shyway” Hope, who specializes in finding and detailing such skill jumps, tweeted that the change was “extremely disappointing” and called for 343 to hold a public discussion with players about it.
Even if skill jumps don’t come back, players will no doubt figure new traversal tricks over the coming days and weeks, and hammer out even more creative ways to make the most of the season. In the meantime, you can read the season’s entire patch notes here. Bring a bookmark.
Borderlands games are always best enjoyed with friends, so it’s a bummer that players of the latest entry, Tiny Tina’s Wonderlands, have had to fly solo—at least, if they’re trying to play online, or make use of the ballyhooed crossplay feature. For the past two weeks, the latest in Gearbox’s series of loot-shooters has had some seriously wonky server woes.
This isn’t exactly a surprise; online multiplayer games launch in various states of “busted” all the damn time, and the Borderlands series itself doesn’t have the best track record. But it’s a bit different than your typical case of server woes. For one thing, sure, while the servers are busted, they’re not engulfed in a headline-generating five-alarm fire the way launch windows for, say, Outriders or Diablo III famously were. For another, while issues persist, the game’s official channels have been oddly silent about the matter.
Tiny Tina’s Wonderlands, which came out late last month for Xbox, PlayStation, and PC, is the first Borderlands game to launch with full crossplay. Like previous Borderlands games, Tiny Tina’s Wonderlands facilitates online groups through Gearbox’s proprietary online service, Shift. You can also use the service to redeem “Shift codes,” single-use tokens that award you a rare piece of gear in-game. (One kind soul assembled a Twitter bot that announces availability for and releases Shift codes.) You can monitor the status of Shift via its official Twitter account.
On March 25, Wonderlands’ official launch day, the account noted how, even though players might see a notification saying they’ve been disconnected from Shift, they’re actually fine; it’s just an errant pop-up. Three hours later, Gearbox said it noticed “reports” of “instability,” and spent the next few days chronicling its efforts to improve functionality. On March 29, Gearbox rolled out an update intended to address crashes on all platforms. By March 31, the studio said that “most players” are in the clear, with “limited cases of disconnections” through the world’s worst holiday.
“We’ve seen some reports of players disconnecting from online play,” reads the account’s most recent tweet, posted on April 2. “If these issues persist, please restart your game!”
Unfortunately, restarting your game doesn’t always seem to do the trick. In response to the account’s tweet, players say that reboots don’t fix connectivity woes, and when they do, it’s only a temporary salve. (Funny aside: One player even pointed out how they couldn’t even submit a ticket through the Shift support page.) Over on the game’s subreddit, there’s a thread, closing in on 1,000 comments, where players commiserating about how they can’t play with friends online. Connection issues seem to be most keenly felt during crossplay sessions, but it’s still not exactly smooth sailing with traditional matchmaking on the same platform.
Earlier this week, for instance, I partied up with my colleague Zack Zwiezen, both of us playing on Xbox Series X with wired connections. We made it about 75 percent of the way through the tutorial segment before Zack disappeared into the ether. We couldn’t get a game going again for the rest of the evening. Zack also told me how he’s run into serious crossplay issues while playing with his fiancée, on PC and Xbox. They often can’t start a game, he said, despite both playing off the same modem. In the rare instances where they can get one going, it’s laggy and desynced AF. Zack told me how one player would kill enemies, see them die, and have them pop right back up as if nothing happened.
Hey, at least there’s splitscreen!
Representatives for Gearbox declined to answer queries on the record and directed Kotaku to the Shift status Twitter account instead.