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Today's Play This features the flash game we covered yesterday that puts you in the shoes of a UAV pilot. From Evan's hands-on: More »
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No modern-day military practice comes under more fire than unmanned aerial vehicle attacks. Bombing by UAV gets called out as cowardly or as a morally indefensible method of waging combat. It's derisively been called video game warfare, a way of distancing the American public from the acts of violence done in their name. Fittingly, then, there's now a video game about it. More »
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It's many months in the past now, but you probably remember watching the title sequence for Deus Ex: Human Revolution and thinking "This game is going to be awesome." That's exactly what it was supposed to do. More »
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Almost every time we make a cosplay post here on Kotaku, the questions come out. Why are these grown men and women playing dress-ups? Why are these women (and sometimes men) walking around showing so much skin? More »
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The video above is supposed to be an homage to the 1980s graphic adventure games published by Sierra On-Line. But, if you watch the whole thing, you'll spot some characters who weren't part of that defunct publisher's stable. I've had the pleasure of seeing 8BW perform live and they put on a great show. They'll be performing at the Gamefest event that celebrates the opening of The Art of Video Games in March, so go check them out if you can. More »
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You did vote to get your favorite games into The Art of Video Games exhibit, didn't you? If not, don't crying that Buck Rogers: Planet of Zoom didn't make it into the show. Anyway, we're only two short months away from the exhibit's opening of at the Smithsonian American Art Museum and the Smithsonian's announced that they're holding a two-day celebration. More »
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Growing up in the 1970s and 1980s, I remember being awed at when the TV specials based on the Guinness Book of World Records would show up on network TV. I'd see really big things! Really small things! Weird life forms out of 1950s monster comics! A guy who'd never cut his fingernails, like, ever! One after another, images and feats that seemed otherworldly burned themselves into my brain. That's what comes to mind when I see the words "Guinness" and "World Records". Sadly, the Gamer's Edition of the Guinness World Record franchise doesn't engender the same kinds of thrills. More »
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In Manhattan's Greenwich Village neighborhood sits Alamo, a giant cube sculpture by Tony Rosenthal which dates back to 1967. The artwork, a.ka. the Cube, lives not far from New York University, The New School, and few other landmarks. It's been in music videos by Cypress Hill and other groups and has been the subject of a few pranks, including one that turned it into a giant Rubik's Cube. More »
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The Video Game Music Choir is a Boston based group that exclusively sings video game music . With arrangements from Portal, Uncharted, and Sonic Adventure 2, they have a little bit of something for everybody. More »
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Cwi Nqani's brush with video game greatness could've been mapped on the plot points of The Air Up There, Cool Runnings or The Gods Must Be Crazy or really any shallow movie where people from different cultures collide in an explosion of hilarity. As reported by CNN, the 32-year-old was selling his rural ethnic group's crafts in Namibia's capital city of Windhoek next to a tent where a World Cyber Games representative was hosting the country's national championships. Despite never seeing or playing digital games before, Nqani was the only person to play the Asphalt 6 mobile racing game, which automatically qualified him for a spot in the world finals. Those finals happened a week ago. More »
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Herman Cain delivered one of American politics' most bizarre WTF moments when he quoted the Pokemon movie during the press conference where he suspended his bid for the Republican presidential nomination. Host Jon Stewart and the writers at The Daily Show take that moment and make it more WTF-er by offering up a few other lines from the toyetic feature film that the CEO candidate could've uttered. More »
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When I talked to EA's Frank Gibeau earlier this fall about the making of Battlefield 3, the words that kept coming up were realistic and authentic. Yes, the ambitious war game still counts as fiction, what with its earthquake-aided insurrection and nuclear terrorism. However, it's not quite as popcorn as the plot presented in the competing game Modern Warfare 3 released by rival publisher Activision. More »
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If you're lucky or just old, you can remember the classic stand-up arcade era, where Pac-Man machines stood next to Defender and/or Donkey Kong and people lined up for the chance to play. Those same machines have become collector's items now and there's money—and stories—attached to each one. More »
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For once, you have to admire the restraint of the creative folks at Next Media Animation. Never ones to pass up low-hanging jokefruit, they don't make a Wii joke in the report that covers the westward march of urinal games. NMA does offer their visions of permutations of pee-based games for women and kids, though, and there's a few chuckles—or other reactions, depending on your proclivities—to be had while watching. More »
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First, they put advertisements in front of men's urinals, figuring dudes who have to answer nature's call are a built-in audience. Now, men's latrines are becoming interactive as the urinal consoles that have been in place in Japan begin their march westward. More »
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The masters of information over at Google are commemorating American Thanksgiving with a quaint turkey doodle taking place of their usual rainbow font. It's what you'll see if you're logging in from the United States. But non-American web surfers are getting something much cooler. More »
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Bethesda's latest RPG hit presents players with lots of things to see, hear and shout at. You can add taste to that list of action words, too, Gus Mastrapa's already cataloged what he's been eating in the game's virtual world but the lads at Joystiq have brought one of Tamriel's medieval recipes into the modern-day kitchen. More »
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Activision CEO Eric Hirshberg had some sharp words when asked about the criticism that Call Of Duty games get for their supposed glorification of violence and military aggression. More »
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There's the stereotype of the online gamer as an angry shut-in, using the anonymity of the internet to grief anyone in earshot. Especially, it seems, the women who dare enter an FPS lobby. More »
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We live in an age of gaming gorgeousness. Gamers' lives nowadays are filled with fancy normal mapping and illumination engines, powered by slickly encased hardware that outputs onto super-sharp screens. In short, there's a lot of thought given to aesthetics in the present day. But, it hasn't always been this way and an upcoming art show will showcase the uglier—yet vitally important—gaming hardware of yesteryear. More »
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Last week, some folks paid Kotaku the kindness of noticing how...let's call it "progressive"...we've begun to lean over the last few months since I came aboard as Editorial Director. (Dan Bruno, in particular; I had other discussions on Twitter.) Often there was a criticism behind the compliments: Why does an organization that unabashedly wants to encourage LGBT* and women's voices in gaming also unabashedly put up galleries of women in revealing cosplay or articles about the sex worker industry in Japan? Some critics used pretty unequivocal terms, calling some of our content "embarrassing" or (and this may not be an exact quote) "part of the problem". More »
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When a show's been around as long as the Simpsons, it'll periodically touch on the cultural ripple effect generated by the video games industry. Last night's episode of the long-running cartoon—"The Food Wife," which deals with Marge's obsession with foodie culture—took Homer and art to a fictionalized version of video games' biggest trade show, with pitch-perfect parodies of some familiar franchises. One really dead-on bit has a developer lamenting the months he's lost on a game that Bart manages to finish in a few minutes. A GameTrailers interview about the episode with Simpsons writer Matt Selman appears above and you can head over to the Simpsons official site to watch clips from the episode. More »
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It's Game of the Year season. You know what that means. All the AAA games that you've been waiting for are jockeying to break into your saving account. It also means that various commentators and outlets on the video game medium—Kotaku, included—are stumbling over themselves to add even more hype to games like Arkham City, Skyrim and Uncharted 3. More »
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The hardest lesson taught by Tetris is that success isn't infinitely sustainable. Those blocks are going to get unmanageable at some point. More »
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The latest Call of Duty's out today and there's going to be lots of trash talk and cuss words among the many fans who'll be cutting class, calling in sick and otherwise shirking their duties to play the latest entry in Activision's best -selling FPS series. But, as Jenny Haniver can attest, there's a special kind of trash talk reserved for female players. It's filled with casual sexism, vulgar slurs and an angry dismissiveness of any skills a woman playing an online game might show. More »
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"Guile's Theme" isn't the only thing that makes life better. So does the Super Mario Bros. theme, as evident by this video. More »
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Streaming site Vimeo makes space for lots of different kinds of content. They've made a name for themselves as a cooler alternative to YouTube and you'll find cool mini-documentaries, visionary music videos and intensely personal narratives. More »
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A few days back, I did a story on this not-a-wedding picture whose title riffed on the iconic special move from Street Fighter. That got me thinking about geek wedding, geek proposals and geek romance. And, as if the internet were reading my mind, messages and pictures about all of the above have been floating in. More »
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Even though many directors clearly play video games-Zack Snyder, Guillermo Del Toro and Christopher Nolan come to mind—and acknowledge them as a creative enrterprise, there still hasn't been a film that compellingly channels the appeal of the medium. More »
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Daniella Zelli is making me hungry. She runs a website called Gourmet Gaming, which exists solely to take the food found in video games and bring it into the real world. More »
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When Italian TV wants to go all out and make an awesome commercial, it goes all out. More »
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Its beginnings were humble. During the late 1970s and early 1980s, Japanese fans went to manga and anime conventions dressed as their favorite characters. There's a long history of people dressing as their favorite characters in the West, too—notably, Trekkies. More »
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It was horrifying. A young man with chemically curled hair and hipster glasses dumped the mummified body on the apartment floor. The 22-year-old girl was wrapped countless times in Saran wrap. More »
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Actually, it's not a bar. It's a Chinese market, where this abomination hails from, bringing together the very worst in Xbox, PlayStation and ill-advised superhero movie sequels. More »
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The earlier Zelda games were tough, but ask most people on the street what the toughest dungeon in the entire series is and they'll probably say it's Ocarina of Time's Water Temple. Even over a decade on, it still hurts to say it out loud. More »
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Budding game artist Ed Chee (Monkey Island 2 Special Edition) will be displaying some of his works in an exhibition to be held in Toronto early next month. What makes this cool is that all the paintings were done not in paint, but on a Nintendo DS. More »
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First it was planking, now it's... ScarlettJohanssonning? More »
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A Reddit user who says his dad works at Nintendo of America posted this image yesterday of a commemorative gift given to the man after twenty years service at the company. More »
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The 49th Amusement Machine show wrapped up recently in Japan. The show played host to new arcade games like Sega's Operation G.H.O.S.T., new medal games for Monster Hunter and Pokémon, and a bunch of prizes. More »
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