On Monday July 17th, we at Kotaku UK received an email about Ark: Survival Evolved, offering an interview with its developer Studio Wildcard to discuss a major change. Wildcard would today announce, we were told, that all official game servers would be wiped at launch, despite previously pledging that this would never…
Warning: If you haven’t played Deus Ex, but have maybe bought it in a Steam Sale as something you’re absolutely going to play one day, this article will drive a twelve-car train of spoilers through that dream like you’re Leonardo DiCaprio in Inception.
The same game can be different things to different people, with gender, history, age, cultural background and political beliefs working to influence and funnel its messages and meanings for every unique player.
For some, a game’s end credits are a time to put the controller down, sit back and appreciate the efforts of the people that brought you the experience you’ve (hopefully) just enjoyed.
Games with what you could call celebrity endorsements are not unknown. But Richard Dawkins: Evolution is something of a different breed. Professor Dawkins is one of the world’s foremost scientists as well as perhaps its greatest populariser of science - fitting into a noble tradition of thinkers who went the extra…
Video games are amazing, because you can be anyone or anything in the universe: a blue hedgehog! A ghost! A unicorn with rocket launchers! About 80% of the time, though, you get to be a brooding white guy. There are so many of them that it’s hard to keep track. And they all seem to have dead wives.
In the first years of my career as a games writer, I got used to a certain reaction from my parents’ friends when they were told about what I was doing for a living. It was usually along the lines of “what a waste”. I imagined them shaking their heads as if they’d just been quietly informed that I was shooting heroin.…
I love when Nintendo games aren’t afraid to be weird. Paper Mario: Color Splash is funnier and more irreverent than anything else on the Wii U, occupying a strange, occasionally conflicted territory somewhere between platform-adventure and RPG.
Kotaku UK wrapped up their Star Citizen investigation today with two new pieces. There’s a look at what happened to Star Marine, the game’s missing module, as well as a good summary of Kotaku UK’s entire series.
Kotaku UK continues their Star Citizen series with two new pieces. The first looks at Star Citizen’s superbackers, and the second is about a 24-year feud that’s dogged the game.
Over at Kotaku UK, Julian Benson went inside the troubled development of Star Citizen. He interviewed numerous people involved in the project, including Chris Roberts.
Like most Brits, I have a deep and abiding love of David Attenborough’s nature documentaries that stretches back to my earliest memories of watching lions and tigers padding around the savannah on TV with my family. More recently, the Planet Earth, Frozen Planet and Life series have provided a quiet backdrop to…
I remember the first time I went shoplifting. The sun was shining, Marin was singing, and I needed a shovel.
Over at Kotaku UK, Julian Benson conducted interviews about what the UK leaving the European Union could mean for game developers. Developers expressed concerns about hiring and their studios’ financial futures. It’s an on-the-ground look that’s worth reading in full.
E3’s press conferences are great for showcasing all those fancy-pantsy new games but, more importantly, they’re also an invaluable source of the most glorious corporate folly: a place to revel in poorly-conceived skits, mirthless misfires and moments of such inexplicable lunacy that its impossible to see how anyone…
Over at Kotaku UK, Keza MacDonald reported on how Fable Legends took down Lionhead. It’s an in-depth look at why Lionhead was both an innovative studio and one Microsoft was willing to risk. Give it a read!
As I arrive at the Virtuality booth at Play Expo Blackpool, things aren’t going too well. The booth has just opened, and the first members of the public to arrive are having a go on Dactyl Nightmare, one of the earliest VR games. But the viewing screen shows that the game world in the right-hand VR pod is being tilted…
One of Minecraft’s more remarkable side-effects is how it gave rise to (or, indeed, popularised) an entirely new genre: the survival game. Steam is absolutely packed with survival games, many of them unfinished and a surprising number of them pretty damn good regardless. Tough and uncompromising wilderness survival…
The new Doom, really, is rather like the old Doom. You fight swarms of hulking demons. You never stop moving for fear of being swamped in laser fire, missiles, and pile-driving hell knights. Your screen is permanently suffused with explosions, blood, and chunks of bodies. You, the Doom Marine, are what stands between…
Two weeks ago, at EVE Fanfest, a convention for players of space MMO EVE Online, I began hearing odd snatches of conversation: “Dude, the pope’s in our hotel”, “Did you kiss the ring?”. This is at the same time as the real pope is out in Greece meeting with refugees, so, clearly, we’re talking about a different pope.
