Jason Schreier

‘You Can Play As A Door For The Rest Of The Game’ – Dishonored‘s Amazing April Fools Commentary

Sometimes developer diaries are boring. This April Fools developer diary, brilliantly delivered by Dishonored directors Raf Colantonio and Harvey Smith, is not boring. It is amazing. Watch it.

Tell Us What You See In The First Screenshot For The Planescape: Torment Successor

Here’s the first screenshot for Torment: Tides of Numenera, the spiritual successor to Planescape: Torment that briefly held the record for “first Kickstarter to $1 million” before it was smashed by Veronica Mars last month. Torment: Tides of Numenera, an isometric RPG that aims to carry on Planescape‘s themes, if not its setting, has already…

New Mural Could Reveal Grand Theft Auto V Box Art

Looks like Rockstar is building a big ol’ Grand Theft Auto V mural in downtown Manhattan. It could hint at box art for the upcoming open world game — Rockstar built a similar mural to show off GTAIV‘s box art back in 2007, and that “RP” on the bottom left sure looks like the ESRB’s…

The Case Of The Flawed Metacritic Study

A study looking into the hidden formula that drives Metacritic made headlines this week, but Kotaku has discovered some critical errors that call it into question. Earlier this week, Full Sail University professor Adams Greenwood-Ericksen held a GDC session in San Francisco in which he shared some of his research on the effects of Metacritic,…

Watch A Bunch Of People Talk About JRPGs

This week’s Random Encounters is a special bonus video edition! Here’s footage of my JRPG panel at PAX East last weekend, Do JRPGs Really Still Matter?*, brought to you by MMO Reporter *Spoilers: the answer is yes. Yes they do.

Two Game Developers Quit Non-Profit, Objecting To Female Dancers At Party [UPDATE]

At least two members of the International Game Developers Association have resigned from their positions following a San Francisco party Tuesday night during which scantily-clad women reportedly made some attendees feel uncomfortable. Forbes blogger Carol Pinchefsky wrote about the party yesterday, describing a scene where women in skimpy shirts and costumes danced on stage. Student…

Don’t Expect The Next Dragon Age Or Mass Effect On Wii U

Last year, Nintendo of America president Reggie Fils-Aime said his company wasn’t worried about third-party publishers shying away from the Wii U. The Wii had its issues, yes, but Fils-Aime promised that history wouldn’t repeat itself “What I would tell you is that, fundamentally, the reason certain games didn’t make it to the Wii was…

Here’s the first teaser for the anime adaptation of Persona 3, which will be out in Japan this fall.

It’s An RPG… And An RTS… And A Zombie Survival Game

This is State of Decay, a new Microsoft-published Xbox Live Arcade game that might be one of the most ambitious digital titles I’ve ever seen. It’s an RPG, and also an RTS, and also a zombie survival game, and also a simulator, and if you’re confused by all this, I know exactly how you feel.…

The Next Penny Arcade RPG Has A Killer World Map

Gotta love the world map, that humble little collection of icons that offers up a treasure trove of discoveries and possibilities. Penny Arcade’s On the Rain-Slick Precipice of Darkness 4, out this spring, has a killer, old-school-styled world map that I really want to dig into. I saw the upcoming RPG at PAX East this…

15 Things You Should Know About Dishonored‘s New DLC

We haven’t talked a lot about Dishonored since it came out last October, which is really too bad, because I think Dishonored is a fantastic game Good news for anyone who agrees with me: we’re getting downloadable content in just a few weeks that will tell a new story in the grisly world of Dishonored.…

Bastion‘s Writer Talks About Their Next Game, Transistor

There were a lot of big games at PAX East last weekend—Watch Dogs, Assassin’s Creed IV, The Last of Us—but the biggest lines were for Transistor, the newest action-RPG from the makers of Bastion We’ll have impressions from the show later today, but for now, check out this short video I shot while chatting with…

The Console Version Of Diablo III Could Very Well Be The Best One

There are two reasons the console port of Diablo III, announced by Blizzard last month and shown off at PAX East this weekend, could be the definitive version of the game. The first reason is obvious: you can play offline. You don’t have to worry about server errors or Time Warner Cable while playing this…

Jason is out in Boston for PAX East, so no Random Encounters this week. Sorry!

Capcom will re-release brawlers Dungeons & Dragons: Shadow Over Mystara and Tower of Doom on PC/consoles this June.

Blizzard Reveals Hearthstone: Heroes of Warcraft

Blizzard has just announced Hearthstone: Heroes of Warcraft, a free-to-play collectible card game set in the universe of Warcraft You can play as one of nine World of Warcraft classes, collect cards, and battle people online. No release date yet, but the game will be out for PC and Mac, with an iPad version coming…

BioShock Infinite: The IGN Review: The Kotaku Review

We’ve been playing BioShock Infinite, but we can’t tell you about it just yet. In order to get our early copy, we agreed to stick to the embargo set by publisher 2K Games, which is up on Monday. But we can tell you about IGN‘s exclusive review of BioShock Infinite, which went live tonight. So…

These Computer Graphics Are So Incredible, It’s Kind Of Creepy

Speaking at the GPU Technology Conference in California this week, hardware company NVIDIA talked about their much-vaunted Titan graphics card, and showed off what they can do with it. The whole video is interesting, but the best part is virtual Ira, who you can see above. Terrifying/awesome/creepy/impressive.

StarCraft II: Heart of the Swarm sold 1.1 million copies in its first two days, Blizzard said in a press release today.

New Trailer Shows What Kingdom Hearts Looks Like In HD

Square Enix says the name for this game is Kingdom Hearts HD 1.5 ReMIX, but I’m not going to call it that. Let’s stick with… Kingdom Hearts 1.5 Here’s the official PAX trailer for Kingdom Hearts 1.5, an HD remake of the first Kingdom Hearts that also includes Kingdom Hearts Re:Chain of Memories, cinematic scenes…