Toys ‘R’ Us’ New AI-Generated Ad Is Truly Horrible And More Of The Week’s Takes

Photo: FromSoftware, Image: Epic Games, FromSoftware / Bandai Namco, Nintendo / Kotaku, Square Enix, Screenshot: Playground Games / Kotaku

Toys ‘R’ Us—or, more accurately, the brand’s reanimated corpse—made waves this week with the release of an AI-generated ad that inadvertently reveals so much about this era of widespread “enshittification.” Our piece on that, as well as a lament for the way expiring licenses are killing Forza Horizon 4, a celebration of the year’s best gaming bop, and more, all await in the pages ahead.

Gif: Toys “R” Us / Kotaku

Private equity vultures made Toys ‘R’ Us go bankrupt in 2017. All its U.S. stores closed in 2021. But the zombie brand is still around thanks to a licensing deal with Macy’s. Now it’s using generative AI to reanimate its corpse with an origin story ad that puts its 70-year history in a machine learning blender, just so it can repulse anyone who still knows it exists. – Ethan Gach Read More

Photo: FromSoftware

The sheer scale of Shadow of the Erdtree, Elden Ring’s excellent (and punishing) new DLC, is enough to amaze you. The large map stacks on top of itself, offering myriad nooks and crannies to explore, new weapons to wield, new armor to wear, and new bosses to fight. It’s so massive that I said in my review FromSoftware could have called this DLC the base game and released that in 2022 and we would have been ecstatic. But if there is one major mark against Erdtree, one area that feels half-baked, it’s the Abyssal Woods. – Alyssa Mercante Read More

Image: Epic Games

2023’s Alan Wake II is an impressive horror game that melds mediums and tells a metatextual story about creating art. It’s a wondrous accomplishment of game design. It also has one of the catchiest songs ever put into a video game, memorably accompanied by a spectacular interactive performance. So I shouldn’t have been surprised to find out that Night Springs, the game’s DLC, also has a song I can’t stop listening to. But the DLC has a twist: this is a proper theme song, and now I think every video game needs one too. – Willa Rowe Read More

Image: FromSoftware / Bandai Namco

Elden Ring has once again found itself at the center of a huge discourse around video game difficulty and I’m already mostly bored of it. Not only do we keep having the same conversation, but it often feels like the wrong conversation, too. However, there’s a wrinkle in this latest round that has piqued my curiosity because it digs into FromSoftware’s philosophy around boss fights, and how every one of them in the Shadow of the Erdtree expansion seems to have infinite combos. – Moises Taveras Read More

Screenshot: Playground Games / Kotaku

News has arrived that Forza Horizon 4’s DLC is getting unlisted from all gaming stores, with the entire game getting entirely pulled from sale this December 15. This is one of the most beloved racing games—hell, most beloved games—of the last decade. And in a few months, it’ll just be gone. Why? Because of licensing. – John Walker Read More

Image: Nintendo / Kotaku

Donkey Kong Country Returns HD is an enhanced version of the 2o10 Wii game coming to Switch in 2025, and fans can’t believe Nintendo is charging $60 for it. The price was revealed in the new eShop listing and makes last year’s Metroid Prime Remaster look like an incredible deal by comparison. – Ethan Gach Read More

Image: Square Enix

At the time of writing, Final Fantasy XIV’s servers are down for maintenance. When they come back up on June 28, players will dive into the new adventures awaiting in Dawntrail. This means that the age of Endwalker is over. On the precipice of a new beginning for the MMO that has been running for over a decade, I wanted to look back on the game’s uneven, tedious, but ultimately emotionally resonant finale. – Willa Rowe Read More