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The name of the game is perverted, but Touch My Katamari is still a winner among the PlayStation Vita launch line-up. The game may have touch controls, but who needs them? The Vita has twin analog sticks, and that's what Namco's great everything-rolling game needs. More »
]]> http://kotaku.com/index.php?op=postcommentfeed&postId=5885127&view=rss&microfeed=true After posting my initial impressions of gameplay on the Razer Blade yesterday, company reps contacted me to make sure my video card was working properly. It was not. Now it is, and my impressions have been updated. More »
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Major League Baseball 2K12 is widely expected to be in its walk year, the final season of a fat contract going back to 2005. Unlike a superstar in the big leagues, this is not a cause for optimism that fans will see an above-average performance. Not when the performer is the one paying the contract, and not when it has been notoriously inconsistent despite having the Xbox 360 all to itself. More »
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Yes, you read that right. Alan Wake now has a horde mode, and a rather good one at that. It seems that every game has one these days. However, is this something that Alan Wake fans want? More »
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What if I told you Square Enix and Tik games were coming out with a game based on the celebrated and psychedelic characters of Nathan Jurevicious next week? What if I told you I've played it and it was a ton of fun? What if I told you it reminded me of one of my favorite PS1 platformers of all time? Would you be as curious as I am as to why nobody has been talking about this game? Of course you possibly might! More »
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Microsoft's Flight Simulator has for years been the most successful and prominent flight simulator worldwide. Microsoft Flight is a completely different take on the franchise, so much so that it isn't part of the franchise whatsoever. More »
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A long-forgotten truth of NFL Blitz revealed itself to me as I looked to salt away my first victory: You don't salt away any victories in NFL Blitz. You want a time-consuming play? Unload a deep pass route, like the fondly remembered "Da Bomb." More »
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Once upon a time, there was a PS3 exclusive called Sorcery. It looked like the kind of high-definition motion-control game that would pull in gamers skeptical of what Sony's Move controller could do. It even got nominated as one of the best games Kotaku saw at last year's E3. Yet, it suddenly and mysteriously disappeared. Just as mysteriously, it blinked back into existence last week, at press demos held by Sony in New York City. So how does the second coming of Sorcery feel? Pretty damned good. More »
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I don't know if it's the bite-sized gameplay, the escalating challenge, the flashing lights, or the pulsing soundtrack from electronica artist Smiletron, but Waves is the most addictive little twin-stick shooter I've played since Geometry Wars. More »
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When I first loaded up Michael P. Consoli's Against the Wall I felt the early onset of panic. In front of me, stretching out in all four directions was a vertical wall made of blocks of varying sizes. More »
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I don't particularly want to admit that Natsume's Gabrielle's Ghostly Groove 3D is my favorite game on the 3DS, but when I play a game every chance I can get for two weeks straight I feel I should mention it. Be gentle. More »
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Join me as I go on a mystical journey on the back of a giant turtle, learning the ways of the new Monk class, the ways of the Pandaren race, and how strange it is to play a melee character in World of Warcraft without an auto attack. More »
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Necessary roughness A little-known title from an unproven developer being released at the budget price of $39.99, The Cursed Crusade doesn't seem to have a lot going for it, but in the ringing of an iron mace against an enemy's plate-covered head, I found promise. More »
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The inability to switch off between players was one of the few drawbacks of an otherwise rollicking NBA Jam revival last year. It required some clunky manipulation of your starting lineup and defense, for those who actually played it, often left a man open as you instinctively swarmed to the guy your CPU partner was guarding. More »
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It is 2 a.m. and I'm going to score 60 points with Dell Curry. Having unlocked the 1992-1993 Charlotte Hornets—you had better believe it was the first thing I did in NBA 2K12—I've started Dell in place of Kendall Gill and he is, well, he's beating his son. Stephen Curry's Golden State Warriors have no answer for Mister Hornet. A graphic pops up: DELL CURRY: 24 points. REST OF TEAM: 2. It's the second quarter. More »
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I'm now 24 hours into Dark Souls, the successor to 2009's brilliant and challenging role-playing game Demon's Souls. I have, of course, died many times in my struggle to become un-undead. I have killed a half-dozen of its major demons, explored deeply its open world, but have just barely begun to scratch its hard surface. More »
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Sumioni, aka "Ink Demon", is a stunner. Looks can be deceiving, and looks aren't everything. Thankfully, Sumioni's beauty is more than skin deep. More »
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Warning: Today's Speak Up on Kotaku might send you to your local video game retailer with $100 in hand, as commenter PoweredByHentai goes hands-on with Sony's recently-released wireless PlayStation 3 headset. More »
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In the online multiplayer era of sports gaming, I have been a Grinch-like hermit, rarely venturing forth into it except to ragequit and rant that none of what they do reflects reality, and to get off my lawn. Madden, which has a culture of elite play spanning about a decade, television shows celebrating it, and a cottage industry of strategy advisors supporting it, is one of the more intimidating environments for a newcomer. Brutal experiences early on can kill not only fun, but a desire to return. More »
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Previewed this spring, the list of Madden NFL 12's improvements to its Franchise campaign read like a letter to Santa written by the hardcore football fan. Wished-for features like draft-pick trades, custom playbooks and training camp cut days join new concepts like a fast-paced free agency period under the hood of Madden's most popular mode. But do they assemble into an engine, or are they a collection of useful parts? More »
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Simulation-quality sports video games all now ship with some kind of solo career mode, in which you create or control one player throughout his entire career. By far, this fantasy experience is most underserved by the football games. NCAA Football 12 made a substantial effort to upgrade its career this year, and although Madden NFL 12 does add some new features with "Superstar," it remains inexcusably neglected next to the rest of the product. More »
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Basketball is the sport that always unmasks me as a panicky klutz, whether that is in a video game or in real life. I don't see things very well, don't have great anticipation, and overreact to most everything. On defense, it takes nothing to get me in the air, although such a statement implies there is actual daylight between my feet and the hardwood. More »
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It's a little bit Virtua Fighter, a little bit Madworld. More »
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Juliet Starling is a dangerous high school girl in trouble. She's the star of Lollipop Chainsaw, the rainbow-bright zombie game and maybe the first to employ foul language as a physical weapon. More »
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The people showcasing From Software's role-playing game Dark Souls—which you've likely heard is something of a challenge—were prone to frequent deaths during a brand-new demonstration of the game. At least its prison break was a breeze and we learned a few new things about the Demon's Souls spiritual sequel. More »
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Be warned: I am a strident fan of classic computer real-time strategy series Age of Empires and when finally given the opportunity to play a new take on the game I will go to great lengths to make sure it sticks around. More »
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From its bittersweet debut trailer to its brutally gore-ified combat, Dead Island has captured the attention of zombie gamer around the globe. Earlier this week it captured my attention for several hours, and I wasn't entirely pleased. More »
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I mean no disrespect when I say this: I couldn't give a dragon's ass about the story in Skyrim. It may well be wonderful, but as the fifth installment in The Elder Scrolls series—none of which I've played for more than an hour or two at most—I've never had any opportunity to understand, let alone grow to love, the story. More »
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It's okay if you've never heard of Hard Reset, the new single-player cyberpunk first-person shooter coming next month from Polish developer Flying Wild Hog. Up until a couple of weeks ago, no one had. It happens. It just doesn't happen often with a game this good being released this soon. More »
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At first glance, The Hidden looks an awful lot like Face Raiders, one of the free augmented reality games pre-installed on every 3DS. Like Face Raiders, The Hiddenis a shooter that uses the 3DS' camera to superimpose things for you to shoot in your real world environment, turning whatever room you're in into a shooting gallery with ghosts coming in from all directions. More »
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Rage opens with a glimpse of a fictional future once considered possible. More »
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It wasn't until 72 hours later, when I flew home and resumed an old save file in Batman: Arkham Asylum that I truly appreciated the innate quality of brawling I experienced in Batman: Arkham City, a game I missed at E3 but, at long last, got my paws on at Comic-Con 2011. More »
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Plants Vs. Zombies, PixelJunk Monsters, Command & Conquer: A lot of video games come to mind when you first play Starhawk, none of them are shooters. But really, that's what this game is. More »
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Beautiful adventure game Insanely Twisted Shadow Planet comes to Xbox Live Arcade next week. It is a mysterious, quiet game—Dimmu Borgir music notwithstanding—that is Metroid-like, full of exploration, power ups and re-exploration, at least on the single-player side. More »
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Depending upon the consoles you own, the bad news about GoldenEye: Reloaded may still be the good news. It is most definitely a high-definition remastering of last year's title reboot on the Wii. But given the much larger shooter constituency on the PS3 and 360, and online multiplayer's vastly greater viability on those consoles, that may be all the game needs. More »
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San Francisco is a city long associated with rights movements, idealism, and rallies for peace, making it a useful backdrop for X-Men: Destiny. But Silicon Knights isn't planning on a Summer of Love in when the game arrives this fall. More »
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The video game version of The Adventures of Tintin isn't always a platformer, but when it is it feels a lot like a richer, more complex version of the old Super Mario games I love to play. More »
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The nondescript opening scenes of Resistance 3 seemed to me to fit the game: Everything is brown, bland, boring. But as I fight my way from Oklahoma to St. Louis my take on the game changes, drastically. More »
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For a guy who can't seem to survive two minutes in the foreboding, swords-and-dungeons world of Dark Souls, I must seem unnecessarily worried about how difficult the game will be. More »
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It has come to my attention that people get angry about Zelda video games. More »
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