-
Fairytale Fights First Look Needs A Second Glance
Yesterday’s Fairytale Fights trailer was old b-roll footage accidentally uploaded to the press site. Here’s the real show Playlogic wanted you to see. Today I sat down with the developer for a hands-on demo of Fairytale Fights. My actual preview is embargoed until August 19, but I was given permission to share a couple of…
By AJ Glasser -
Tornado Outbreak Trailer Twists My Expectations
I’ve been fascinated with tornadoes since I saw this video when I was a kid. But rather than go out and almost get killed myself trying to recreate those guys’ experience, I’d rather play a game about tornadoes. Sadly, I’m not sure Tornado Outbreak can sate my sick interest. Because rather than playing as the…
By AJ Glasser -
What Do Gingerbread Men Bleed?
Beating up gingerbread men and other cutesy fairytale creatures sounds pretty awesome. But it’s a little… upsetting to discover that gingerbread men bleed actual blood. I was kind of expecting butter. Fairytale Fights is a hack’n’slash adventure where players take the role of famous fairytale characters to stab, maim and otherwise beat the beejesus out…
By AJ Glasser -
DSi Goes Retro In Chicago This Weekend
The Nintendo DSi tour bus is hitting this weekend’s Retro in Roscoe street festival in Chicago, bringing the high-tech glory of handheld gaming to a celebration of art and antiques. In addition to providing a bus full of playable DSi units, the press release says that the Mobile Tour bus is “interactive.” If this means…
By AJ Glasser -
Cursed Mountain Preview: Save Me, Science, Save Me
Agnostic mountain climbers today don’t know how good they have it with global positioning devices, high altitude helicopter rescue parties and 457 kHz standard avalanche beacons, something I realized while playing Deep Silver’s Cursed Mountain. Step into the shoes of Eric Simmons and his missing brother Frank if you want to know what mountaineering was…
By AJ Glasser -
Harvest Moon Gets Frantic Before Fall
Natsume announced today that Harvest Moon: Frantic Farming will hit the Nintendo DS next month. This begs the question: when was farming ever not frantic in Harvest Moon? The twist here is that instead of having to coax stubborn soil into yielding seasonal crops — the status quo of Harvest Moon games — the island…
By AJ Glasser -
We Won’t Mock You For Watching This New Hello Kitty Trailer
It’s cute, it’s pink and if you watch this trailer too many times, Hello Kitty might suck out your soul through your eyes. Not that I’m worried; she’s had my soul since 1986. Speaking of eyes, way to go Kotaku readers. By picking out that piece of profanity from the last batch of screenshots (which…
By AJ Glasser -
Reviews
Madballs in…Babo:Invasion Micro-Review: Drives You Mad, Busts Your Balls
Madballs in…Babo:Invasion is an action shooter for Xbox Live Arcade very loosely based on the deliberately disgusting toy line of the 1980s. The Madballs round out the cast of Babo Invasion, forming two factions of rowdy, rolling balls that somehow wield firearms despite having no arms. Sadly, unlike those somewhat popular squishy balls of the…
By AJ Glasser -
See The GLAAD On Games Panel For Yourself
If your Kotaku comment made it into the talking points of the Gay and Lesbian Alliance Against Defamation panel a couple of weeks ago, this video immortalizes your screen name. Even if you weren’t one of the chosen few, you can still get a lot from watching what went on at the panel. I pulled…
By AJ Glasser -
Reviews
Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince Review: Almost Half-Good
It’s a movie tie-in game for a film based on a blockbuster book series, so really, what did you expect of Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince besides visual fan service? Originality? The Harry Potter movie games are pretty much interchangeable. Harry runs around Hogwarts in some abbreviated version of the film’s plot with a…
By AJ Glasser -
Cursed Mountain First Look: Religion Is Scary
Before my first look at Deep Silver Vienna‘s Cursed Mountain, I always thought of Buddhism as an optimistic celebrity religion where you didn’t go to Hell. Now I think it’s the second-scariest religion ever. That’s not to say that developer Deep Silver has misrepresented Buddhism as an angry, savage religion that turns unwary mountaineers into…
By AJ Glasser -
New Marvel Ultimate Alliance 2 Vids
Didn’t get enough Marvel Ultimate Alliance 2 at Comic Con? Don’t worry — we’ve got a trio of videos for you right here. First up is the demo trailer with your standard dramatic music and character close-ups of fan favorites like Wolverine, Captain America and Iron Man. Next is a Penance vignette video, which I…
By AJ Glasser -
Arche Looks Delightfully Cheap In These Tales of VS. Clips
Fighting games featuring characters from various Japanese role-playing games within a series are so vogue these days. Even better than being in fashion, though, it means I can blast Lloyd with lighting from space. Arche from Tales of Phantasia kind of reminds me of Pikachu from Super Smash Bros. what with her ability to call…
By AJ Glasser -
New Hello Kitty Online Screens
I got an extended look at Hello Kitty Online yesterday and today I woke up with an infection of super-cute screen shots. Let me spread the love like a bad cold. I seriously wonder what the great architects and builders of world renowned landmarks like the Brooklyn Bridge and the Arc de Triumph would think…
By AJ Glasser -
Hello Kitty Online First Look: So Cute, It Causes Pink
There are three things going on with Hello Kitty Online that render me completely unable to look away. The first is the whole massively multiplayer online game aspect. That’s the last video game genre next to first-person shooter I would have thought of for a Hello Kitty game. Developers Sanrio Digital and Typhoon Games along…
By AJ Glasser -
Kingdom Hearts 358/2 Days Manga Kicks Off
Kingdom Hearts 358/2 Days isn’t due out in North America for another two months or so, but maybe the manga will tide you over ’til then. The July issue of Shounen Gangan features an eight-page preview chapter of the manga which basically re-hashes all the names and some of the neuroses of Organization XIII‘s members.…
By AJ Glasser -
DreamBox Succeeds At Tricking Kids Into Learning Math
Seven months ago, DreamBox Learning launched its math-based edutainment site for kids between kindergarten and second grade. Today, it’s making virtual headlines with success stories. The Wall Street Journal reports that DreamBox — along with other web-based learning game sites like SmartyCard, Brightstorm and Grockit — is closing the gap between between a child’s expected…
By AJ Glasser -
This Is What You Missed At The Distant Worlds Concert
Renowned Final Fantasy composer Nobuo Uematsu rocked San Francisco last Saturday along with Grammy award-winning conductor Arnie Roth at the Distant Worlds concert. It wouldn’t be Distant Worlds without the music of Final Fantasy and it wouldn’t the music of Final Fantasy without Spehiroth’s theme from Final Fantasy VII, One Winged Angel. There have been…
By AJ Glasser -
Insurance Group Rides Shotgun With Driving Game
Remember that brain-training flash game that Allstate Insurance was looking into as a way to offer insurance discounts to drivers? Now the AAA Foundation for Traffic Safety is behind it, too. Working with developer Posit Science, AAA is offering a new brain training game program called DriveSharp, which is pretty much the same thing as…
By AJ Glasser -
Champions Online Combat Preview: Challenge Accepted
After some hands-on time with Champions Online earlier this month, I pronounced myself skeptical of the combat system. My beef was that a lot of massively multiplayer online game developers claim that their combat is somehow fundamentally different than the usual system of point, click, cool down, then click again established in MMOs like EverQuest…
By AJ Glasser
AJ Glasser
AJ Glasser's posts