Mike Fahey

Crowd Control Is A Real MMO Problem. WildStar Has The Solution.

Maybe there is something to this whole WildStar being subscription-based MMO thing. Every time I turn around, the folks at Carbine Studios are rolling out some incredibly fresh idea, like a “Disarm” skill that makes you have to run after your weapon. It’s sorcery! Let’s see how the game handles other annoying forms of crowd…

You’ll Pay A Monthly Fee To Play The Elder Scrolls Online

Putting an end to speculation that the massively multiplayer entry in Bethesda’s award-winning role-playing franchise would be free-to-play, Zenimax Online’s Matt Firor has confirmed The Elder Scrolls Online will follow a subscription-based business model. The general manager of Zenimax online confirmed monthly subscriptions for the eagerly-anticipated game during a pre-Gamescom interview with German site Gamestar.…

Not All New Skylanders Split In Half. Some Are Sabertooth Turtles.

More of a sabertooth turtle dinosaur, I suppose. This is Slobber Tooth, and he’s one of the latest non-splitting Skylanders champions, joining the fray when Swap Force hits October 13. The whole Swap Force mechanic is nice and all, but I’m a sucker for a well-designed one piece with a focus on function. I had…

EVE Online‘s Stunning Oculus Rift Demo Becomes A Real Game

Members of the press at E3 2013 and fans at this year’s CCP Fanfest wouldn’t shut up about how cool the Oculus Rift-powered EVE VR demo was, so CCP is making EVE: Valkyrie, a multiplayer space dogfighting game set in the EVE universe. I hope you’re all happy. I know I am. There can never…

Dungeon Keeper Returns… As A Mobile Game

The original dungeon defense game returns, but not to the PC from whence it came. EA is bringing back Dungeon Keeper as an iOS and Android mobile game this winter. I know you’re upset, PC folks. Bullfrog’s classic was the sort of game you could only find on PC back in the late 90s, a…

Defiance ‘Castithan Charge Pack’ Adds Playable Creepy White People

Nothing plays on the TV screen quite as well as an alien race whose defining feature is cake makeup and contact lenses. Defiance‘s dorkiest extraterrestrials look much better as playable characters in today’s ‘Castithan Charge Pack’ release. The ‘Castithan Charge Pack’ is a two-pronged bit of downloadable content for the video game portion of trion…

The Fix For Disney Infinity PlayStation 3 Problems Is In

After two days of PlayStation 3 players being unable to play Disney Infinity properly without the game locking up and save game corruption, patch 1.03 has arrived to make things all better, mostly. The previous patch, 1.01, caused the game to lock up shortly after launching, as well as corrupting game saves. A workaround for…

Stop Making Peggle 2 So Damn Sexy, PopCap

Revealed this morning as an Xbox One timed exclusive, Peggle 2 got a little more stage time at EA’s Gamescom presser than it did at E3, parading about its balls and pegs like it was in some sort of first-ever gameplay trailer. As pretty as all many of the other Xbox One games coming this…

Have You Ever Seen Ryse: Son of Rome‘s Co-Op Gladiator Movie?

We’ve seen plenty of combat in Xbox One’s Ryse: Son of Rome, but where’s the love? Why, it’s in the game’s cooperative multiplayer mode, which combines the thrill of gladiatorial combat with the convenience of modular furniture. It’s like fighting to the death with friends in Ikea.

Lords of the Fallen Introduces Us To Gaming’s Latest Badass

Meet Harkyn, a man who has just trudged across the world carrying an incredibly heavy-looking hammer, just to give a god’s fingers the finger. Harkyn is the main character of CI Games’ Lords of the Fallen, a new third-person action role-playing game that started as a stunning piece of concept art and then escalated to…

Killer Instinct Characters Are $5 A Pop, But Wait — There’s More

How much would you pay for classic characters like Sabrewulf, Glacius and the newly-announced Thunder in the upcoming free-to-download Xbox One exclusive Killer Instinct? Microsoft has slapped a $4.99 price tag on each character’s head, but why buy piecemeal when you can get the whole shebang for $20? In case you missed it at E3,…

WildStar Is A Subscription-Based MMO? How Brave.

The second-most exciting upcoming massively multiplayer online role-playing game announced plans today to require users pay an ongoing monthly fee to access its contents. Thankfully, there’s still a way to play WildStar for free. In an age where all but the most successful MMO games have succumbed to the allure of the free-to-play, microtransaction-based business…

That’s Not How You Play Disney Infinity, Good Morning America

“A brand-new game where all the Disney characters are available to everyone who plays it anytime.” Good Morning America is slightly off in its description of Disney Infinity, but not as off as they are when they start hopping on a giant replica of the game’s interface module, pretending to play. Lara Spencer’s enthusiasm for…

Here’s Where You Can Stick Your Disney Infinity Toys

Just as Power A did with Skylanders, gaming peripheral makers PDP have teamed with Disney to give Infinity gamers a place to put their toys when they aren’t using them. Here’s a quick look at what storage PDP has in stores. My favorite product of the line has to be the figure display cases ($14.96…

Dragon Age Goes Mobile With A Free-To-Play Oh You’ve Stopped Caring

The greatest heroes of the Dragon Age universe assemble for Heroes of Dragon Age, a free-to-play mobile game that doesn’t look like it would appeal to fans of those heroes very much at all. Discovered via Eurogamer and verfied with EA Mobile, Heroes of Dragon Age is a riff on my least favorite mobile-specific game…

I propose a new rule: no releasing “launch” trailers until the game has actually launched. Now I have to watch this over and over again until The Bureau: XCOM Declassified actually launches, which is tomorrow. Hmph.

About That Disney Infinity Review…

In a perfect world, this image would have a little yellow circle in the top left corner, and this article would be titled: Disney Infinity: The Kotaku Review. Unfortunately, this is not the case. First off, shipping issues kept the proper version of Disney’s ambitious toys meets video games project from arriving until Friday morning.…

How Much Is Disney Infinity Going To Cost You?

Disney’s collectible toy video game platform launches tomorrow, which means parents and fans will be raiding video game aisles across the country to score the initial wave of toys and playsets. How much money should they bring? All of it. First thing you’re going to need, whether you’re a curious gamer or a haggard parent,…

Tales of Xillia The Kotaku Review

Tales of Xillia is pretty awesome. You should totally play it. That’s exactly the sort of review I would have written back in 1995 had I played the very first game in Namco’s long-running role-playing series, Tales of Phantasia, on the Super Famicom. I would have tweaked the wording slightly for each subsequent game, maybe…

Project Gotham Devs Get Back In The Race With 2K Drive

2K Drive isn’t just a new racing game from the makers of Project Gotham Racing. It’s a massive mobile celebration of automotive culture — from the makers of Project Gotham Racing. Coming this fall to iOS as a premium title (hooray, let us pay for things already!), 2K Drive is going to give the likes…