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There's retiring old video game characters by not using them any more, and then there's retiring old video game characters by building little models of them and destroying them. More »
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Chen Rong-yu of Taiwan checked into an internet cafe in the city of New Taipei on Tuesday evening to play popular multiplayer PC game League of Legends. Wednesday evening a waitress found the 23-year-old sitting rigidly in his chair, hands outstretched towards the computer. More »
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In today's tear-jerking and slightly spoilery edition of Speak Up on Kotaku, commenter Firescorpio tells us about a special relationship he formed in Skyrim, and how he wound up ruining it. More »
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Only 12,632 people died in a spectacular hail of gunfire like Nathan Drake in Uncharted 3 in a year. Only 1,981 were dispatched like a guard in Assassin's Creed. Just 7,032 people shuffled off their mortal coil like Slippy Toad. Chances are when you eat it, it will be at the hand of a stroke, heart attack or something mundane like the flu, according to figures from the National Vital Statistics System and National Center for Health. More »
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Look, if you want to invert flight controls on your own game, fine. You're a freak, but it's your game, so whatever. Just know that you should never, ever do it when other people are around. More »
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In Spider-Man: Edge of Time the whole of reality is warped into something darker and more sinister, all because of the death of one Peter Parker. We're in charge of making sure it doesn't happen again. More »
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Orange-stained fingers around the world were clenched in grief last week, when the legendary marketing man credited with the creation of Doritos passed away. But take heart, snack fans; Arch West is taking his cheese powder-infused tortilla chips with him on his eternal journey. More »
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In today's very special installment of Speak Up on Kotaku, commenter Mark Vincent N. Cocjin waxes eloquently on the ghostly digital echoes left behind when a gamer passes on. More »
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There's a place called "The Gun Store" in Las Vegas where you can shoot a real AK-47 at different targets (including zombies and Osama bin Laden, though I suspect the latter has been discontinued). It's expensive, over a dollar per round, and as you can imagine, those will mount up pretty quickly when you are shooting an AK-47. They have loads of other guns as well, including a 1911 Colt .45. More »
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The extended announcement trailer for THQ's Darksiders II is here, giving us a deeper appreciation of Death and his majestic steed. Is it just me, or is that horse looking a little pallid? More »
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War rode proud and strong through the battle between good and evil in the original Darksiders, but he's only one of four apocalyptic horsepersons of interest. War, Famine, and Pestilence take the bench as Death saddles up his pale horse for Darksiders II. More »
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Every couple of weeks we deliver a list of our favorite (mostly) new Xbox Live Indie games to officials involved with the Xbox 360. We pick our favorite indie games; they list them in a corner of the Xbox Live Games Marketplace called Kotaku's Favorites (it's in the Indie channel). More »
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Princess Zelda is in tears, a kingdom mourns, but at least we can rest easy knowing that Link died fighting the good fight, trying to save the world from unfathomable evil. More »
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The dangers of internet addiction in China were demonstrated yesterday, when an unidentified 30-year-old man collapsed in an internet cafe outside of Beijing following three days of nonstop online gaming. More »
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Some of our braver readers may have tried a "Monte Cristo" sandwich in their time. If you're still alive and with us, congratulations. You are, however, a coward compared to what Sony mascot Kevin Butler chows down on. More »
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The Old Republic world designer Jesse Sky and his team are responsible for creating Flashpoints, moments of group-based galactic crisis in the game on the same level as the Death Star battle. No pressure. More »
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There seem to be few gaming stories out of Korea lately that don't involve some sort of fatality. In this case, a 19-year-old college student died after a 12-hour-session with an FPS at an Internet parlor. More »
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Before Media Molecule decided to end Sackboy's life in a puff of smoke, LittleBigPlanet's creators had other, more gruesome ideas in mind. Check out the developer's Sackboy death reel. More »
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A trio of sinister skeletal figures joins the cast of Sony's PlayStation Move sports game this week, as the Haunted Pack brings the undead back to Sports Champions. More »
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Glenn Shadix might be more famous for his role as Otho in Beetlejuice, but we'll always remember him as Father Ripper from Heathers, who blamed a teen's death on "the MTV video games." More »
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The fact that your player keeps fighting after he or she dies in Guild Wars 2 is almost as shocking as the fact that the game has no dedicated healer class. ArenaNet's Jon Peters, Eric Flannum, and Isaiah Cartwright explain. More »
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Generations of movie-goers will remember Dennis Hopper as the rebel biker Billy from 1969's Easy Rider, but we'll always remember the late actor as King Koopa. More »
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These science posts at Kotaku give me an opportunity to talk about something near and dear to my heart: The Robot menace. A Japanese couple being married by a robot? What if it misinterprets "til death do us part?" More »
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It's the last day to play Halo 2 on Xbox Live, and Bungie is taking the opportunity to deliver long-time players some thank yous and fake news via the game's matchmaking message center. More »
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Valve's poster for Left 4 Dead 2's The Passing downloadable content finally gets a tagline: Nobody Survives Forever. And while the original survivors will be showing up at the beginning of The Passing, only three make it to the end. More »
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The star of classic films such as Silver Bullet, Lucas, and The Lost Boys, as well as Digital Pictures' Double Switch for the PC, Sega CD, and Saturn, actor Corey Haim died today at the age of 38. More »
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A three-year-old in Wilson County, Tennessee died Sunday evening after accidentally shooting herself in the abdomen with a weapon she may have mistaken for a plastic Wii facsimile. More »
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World of Warcraft patch 3.3.2 brings with it the final wings of the Icecrown Citadel, and with it the final confrontation with Arthas of Menethil, the Lich King. Witness his final moments here, but be warned: spoilers abound. More »
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Those of you following along with Telltales Games' episodic adventure, Tales of Monkey Island, knew this was coming. The rest of you may want to sit down. More »
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While I was playing an early PlayStation 3 version of EA's December World War II game, The Saboteur, yesterday, I was told not to worry about running over certain characters. The game's developers, see, had to decide whose death matters. More »
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Wrestling manager Captain Lou, Cyndi Lauper's fake dad, and Mario in The Super Mario Bros. Super Show!, Lou Albano passed away today at the age of 76. More »
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An AP story about online death-notification services ledes with a Warcraft gamer, who died mid-quest and left his bereaved daughter to find his friends and explain why he was suddenly gone. More »
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As mentioned in the Test Realm patch notes we posted on last month, a blue Blizzard post confirms that they are indeed removing restrictions to allow players to create Death Knights on any server. More »
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It's bad enough when a pixellated hound dog is overly critical towards your duck hunting skills, but when he starts in on your job situation and your sexual performance, things have gone too far. More »
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A relaxing day at a video game center in southwestern China turned deadly yesterday when an argument sparked an armed battle that resulted in the death of five people. According to Chongqing city police as quoted by the official Xinhua news agency, some youths were involved in an argument with the manager of the Milky Way Express games center, which escalated into a full-scale fight involving more than 20 people, some armed with knives and batons. When the smoke cleared, five people were left dead, with at least two injured. More »
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This here is a video compilation of all the death sequences found in Dead Space. The majority of them are decapitations or involve several limbs being chopped off. However, there are some pretty creative ones as well, particularly the sequence starting at 3:28 (which is also my favorite). Be warned though, this video does contain spoilers from boss fights, so you may want to wait until you complete the game. To be on the safe side, I put the video after the jump. Oh, and make sure you enter Ash's contest, too! More »
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There's a very interesting article over at Eludamos, one of the open-access academic journals that's done a nice job of getting fascinating articles in each issue; this volume is no exception, and the article I found particularly thought provoking is on the issue of death in narrative-driven games. Jason Tocci isn't arguing that the death mechanic has no place in games, but it's a cop out for many narrative-driven games — and can create frustrating gaming experiences for end users. This is, in Tocci's view, a hold over from earlier design decisions when games were more limited in what they could do: More »
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I'm so very conflicted about Castlevania Judgment. Mixing classic and current Castlevania characters together in a fighting game is such a cool concept, but from what we've seen so far it looks like the implementation of said concept is severely lacking. Now, with the release of the game only a month away, Konami finally reveals a few more characters for the game, adding to the already announced Alucard, Simon, Dracula, and Maria. More »
]]> http://kotaku.com/index.php?op=postcommentfeed&postId=5064614&view=rss&microfeed=true Here's a couple of flythrough videos of two of the maps for the upcoming PlayStation 3 entry in the popular tactical shooter series, SOCOM: Confrontation. Looking at these you might marvel at the details and the textures, working out specific strategies you will use on each map when the game comes out. I, on the other hand, only see an endless sea of corpses littering every surface, each one bearing my name. I might die a great deal in SOCOM matches, but I die tactically, dammit. More »
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Here's the debut trailer for dtp and Deck 13's Venetica to go along with the screenshots and press release from earlier today. Nice try on on the movie guy voice, but it certainly looks...interesting. Definitely erring on the action side of action RPG, though from the scenes we do see we can infer that they won't be skimping on story, unless she's just the kind of girl who hugs everyone, which is a story in and of itself! More »
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