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Andrew Lloyd Webber Is Making A Game And It Will Undoubtedly Embarrass You
Being caught belting out the entirety of Phantom of the Opera in your living room can be pretty embarrassing. (In my defense, I was nine and I could, in fact, hit those notes. Mostly.) This fall, you can at least try to recapture some of your dignity (you won’t succeed, but you can try) by…
By Kate Cox -
I Can’t Wait To See More of Chell’s Life After Aperture
(Caution: Portal 2 ending spoilers ahead!) Portal 2 had a satisfying, if ambiguous, ending. The player, in the form of Chell, finally got to breathe the air free of Aperture. There was no deer. But what comes next for our silent heroine? One fan started this music video using Valve’s new Source Filmmaker. It’s the…
By Kate Cox -
Watch The Mars Rover Landing Live On Your Xbox This Weekend
The game that lets you try your own hand at landing the next Mars rover may not be as cool as advertised, but the real event probably will be. And the real event is coming up this weekend, with Curiosity scheduled to land on the Martian surface late Sunday night (or early Monday morning, depending…
By Kate Cox -
ReviewsThe Secret World: The Kotaku Review
As it turns out, I was born to be a Dragon. In the old adage about a butterfly flapping its wings in China to cause a hurricane in Texas, the Dragon are the ones who put the butterfly into position and tell it when to flap. They are agents of chaos, slipping into and moving…
By Kate Cox -
There Are Many Places Cats Do Not Belong
I’m not Kirk. I don’t look a thing like him. I can’t even play Kirk on TV. He’s a jazz saxophonist. I’m a classical French horn player. I mean, really. We’re just worlds apart. But what I can do is bring you evening nonsense. Despite the fact that Guybrush—an on-topic cat—has taken over my mouse…
By Kate Cox -
Need to play Spelunky Right This Second? In Your Browser? Now You Can.
Cave exploration has been all the rage this summer. Well, virtual caves, at least. With deadly, deadly consequences. In other words, everyone keeps playing and talking about Spelunky ever since its July debut on Xbox Live. But what if you really need to get yourself killed in new and creative ways when you’re someplace with…
By Kate Cox -
Hindu Group Wants Religious Arena Combat Game Pulled From QuakeCon
QuakeCon 2012 is coming up in just a few days. It’s a huge LAN party, featuring well-known speakers and panelists, and sprawling over Dallas. The roster of games, of course, features Quake tournaments but other games make a showing as well. This year, the online battle arena game Smite is one of a handful of…
By Kate Cox -
It’s Much Easier to Play A Game When You Can Tell What The Buttons Do
Over the years, I’ve dabbled in a hefty number of video games. I’m pretty used to sitting down and picking up a new system reasonably quickly. It’s part of my job, after all. I may not be good at it right away (or ever), but I can navigate myself around a world and figure out…
By Kate Cox -
One Stranger Made a World of Difference to a Fifteen-Year-Old’s Journey
Since the year before I got married, it’s become an annual ritual, an immutable part of my life. For one week every summer, my husband’s family all get together in a bunch of little apartments down by the beach, on the Outer Banks of North Carolina. The horde of us are about thirty strong, these…
By Kate Cox -
These Covers Make it Easy to Make Your Gaming Library Look Like The More Traditional Kind
I have to admit: I love these custom game case covers. The idea strikes me as a brilliant one. It’s not that I’m ashamed of our collection of video games. I placed them all on a couple of very visible shelves, after all. Every game there is there for a reason. No, it’s not that…
By Kate Cox -
Want to Turn San Andreas Into Your Own Private Gotham? There’s a Mod For That.
Wouldn’t it be awesome to be Batman? I mean, without all of the angst, perhaps. And without the years of training. And the constant threat of bodily harm. And the… hmm. Okay, you know what? Forget being Batman. I just want the cool parts of being Batman. The Batmobile and the suit and the jumping…
By Kate Cox -
The Best Way To Play Skyrim Might Just Be to Make It Kid-Friendly
Generations of gamers who have not only the arcade but also years of computer, Nintendo, and PlayStation games in their pasts are now, themselves, raising children. In a world of wall-to-wall screens and endless gaming options, it can be hard to find just the right game for game-loving parents and their inquisitive kids to enjoy…
By Kate Cox -
Guild Wars 2‘s Asura Make The Nerdiest Yo Momma Jokes
It’s been a while now since I got to try out Guild Wars 2. I didn’t have the chance to meet the Asura, ArenaNet’s answer to gnomes, during the most recent beta event But if you did, you might have run into these little guys. For a race of tinkering, researching geniuses, your mama’s IQ…
By Kate Cox -
Ubisoft’s uPlay Has a Security Hole. Here’s How You Can Fix It. [Update]
Ubisoft has caught a lot of flak from PC gamers over their uPlay system, online-authentication DRM that most recently came to attention for being unavailable at exactly the wrong time. As it now turns out, uPlay is not only inconvenient to gamers, but it also comes with an insecure, exploitable browser plugin. Rock Paper Shotgun…
By Kate Cox -
This Game Is Sort Of Like Bejeweled. Minus The Jewels.
As a kid, I was absolutely enamored of those books of “brain teasers” that had to be solved by drawing tables and marking off the little “yes” and “no” boxes. You know the type: if the marathon has five racers, and the one in the yellow shoes didn’t finish fifth, and the one in the…
By Kate Cox -
This Truly is The Box Solid Snake Belongs In
It’s almost like a Wheel of Fortune-style before-and-after. “Solid Snake in a box” + “a box full of kittens” = “Solid Snake in a box full of kittens!” The artists, Becky & Frank of webcomic Tiny Kitten Teeth, painted this particular rendition of Solid Snake (“in his natural habitat,” they explain) for artist Olly Moss,…
By Kate Cox -
The Worst Movie Ever Made Gets A Game Designed to Play Like Some of the Best Ever Made
What little fame Manos: The Hands of Fate has, it has for exactly the wrong reasons. It is quite probably the worst movie ever to exist. Everything about it is awful. It is so very bad, in fact, that it gained comic fame after being featured on one of the best episodes of Mystery Science…
By Kate Cox -
It’s Okay if You Suck At Old Rhythm Games. You Can Blame Your TV.
Yes, games used to exist on a different learning curve than they do now. And sometimes, when we might backtrack to an older favorite like Parappa the Rapper, we might have a a hard time getting back in the groove of a forgotten, unforgiving skill set. But over at Edge, Dewi Tanner explains that actually,…
By Kate Cox -
Metal Gear Rising: Revengeance Tutorial Teaches You To Very Carefully Take Down Evil Watermelons With Blade Mode
Much has been made of the fancy blade mode in Metal Gear Rising: Revengeance. It’s all about Raiden and his slicey-dicey sword. But how does it actually work? A few minutes of gameplay tutorial are now making the rounds, via IGN, showing the cyborg ninja himself in action. The watermelon-slicing is a little Fruit Ninja,…
By Kate Cox -
Too Bad You Can’t Actually Travel Across The Room With These Portals
Sure, it’s fairly cheap and easy to make yourself a Portal-themed mirror with some paint and a quick trip to IKEA. But what really makes a portal fun isn’t just its blue or orange halo but rather, that trippy infinity effect. For that, you need two mirrors. And some LEDs. Or if you’re not particularly…
By Kate Cox
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