Kate Cox

Got a Computer? Settle in for PC Gaming Lives.

It’s a bird! It’s a plane! No, wait, it’s a gaming PC. Which looks nothing at all like a plane. It’s time for PC Gaming Lives!

Iron Man PC Case Gallery

Dwarf Fortress: the Game That Takes a 238-Page Illustrated Technical Manual to Learn

There are those of us who, when told, “You’ll really like this game once you sit down with the 200-page how-to book,” might say, “no, thank you.” I am one of those likely to balk and walk away. Dwarf Fortress is one of those games where every PC gamer knows someone who plays it, and…

On the Rain-Slick Precipice of Darkness Episode 3: The Kotaku Review

Have you been feeling a distinct lack of Final Fantasy IV in your life lately? Do you really miss the early 1990s? Were 32-bit games just two times too many bits for you? Have you grown weary of the third dimension? If so, congratulations: you are exactly the niche that On the Rain-Slick Precipice of…

Mass Effect 3 Extended Cut DLC Now Available on PC

For PC ME3 players, Origin is now updated to include the Extended Cut, for free, under “Game Add-Ons.” Edit:And after a brief period where it showed up as “unreleased,” will now download and install correctly.

Here Are the New Mass Effect 3 Endings You Requested

My copy of Mass Effect 3, well-loved and much-played, is on PC. As I look right now, Origin hasn’t updated with the Extended Cut DLC yet, so I haven’t been able to experience any of the new content for myself. My Shepards — Eve Shepard, who shall we say, chose to be controlling, and Kate…

There are Wine Glasses, and Then There Are Vine Glasses

Over at Etsy shop The Basement Invaders, Jason and Alex make a variety of Nintendo-inspired goodies. There are Yoshi egg earrings aplenty, but my favorites are the piranha plant wine glasses. Or maybe the thwomp glasses, which glare angrily at you. Then again, they may be a bad idea; I’d be tempted to slam them…

SimCity Social Is Not Exactly Sim City, But It Is Very Social

“Kate,” Mike Fahey announced proudly to Kotaku’s group chat, “I just made birds poop on your city.” I switched tabs to look and lo and behold, yes he had. Waves of seagulls appeared, dropping their ugly white bombs all across my otherwise-happy little hamlet. The war was on. I immediately went to Mike’s town and…

Mass Effect 3 Extended Ending DLC Available for Download Very Early Tomorrow Morning

When do you get to download and try out the new! improved! endings to Mass Effect 3? It depends what platform you’re on. According to a series of tweets from producer Michael Gamble, the DLC will likely be available in the early morning (around 5:00 a.m. Eastern time) for Xbox users, sometime in the afternoon…

Two of the Men Behind LulzSec Attacks on Nintendo and Sony Plead Guilty

Two of the members of LulzSec behind last year’s attacks on other gaming websites, have plead guilty in a British court today. The Telegraph reports that Ryan Cleary and Jake Davis plead guilty to multiple charges of “conspiracy to do an unauthorized act or acts with intent to impair.” Davis is also facing charges in…

Curt Schilling’s $50 Million is Gone, Along With the Rest of 38 Studios

The meltdown and collapse of 38 Studios not only halted the development of a potentially promising game in progress, but also hurt plenty of people In a recent interview with Boston-area sports radio network WEEI, studio founder Curt Schilling—formerly a major league baseball pitching star—explained how the studio collapse hit him, personally. In addition to…

The Games Are Everywhere, But the Money’s Still in Consoles

There’s this constant argument lately among gamers, over who really plays, what counts as a game, and where all the business is, anyway. The folks at Mashable have shared an infographic from Statista that sums up the answers, and they are not out of line with what you might expect. There are more people playing…

What Are The Best Innovations In Gaming? The Ones That Let Me Walk Away From the Game.

I play many more games now than I used to when I was younger. There are a bunch of reasons for that. One is money: I have much more access to cash as a working adult than I did as a kid, teenager, or student. Another is time: again, as an adult without kids I…

Cliff Bleszinski Thinks Modern Games are Too Easy, Promises Gears of War: Judgment Will Be Different

Cliff Bleszinski and the team at Epic are focusing hard on making sure next year’s Gears of War: Judgment actively challenges players. And if that results in a narrower audience? Bleszinski’s okay with that. Speaking with the site Xbox 360 Achievements, Bleszinski expressed his concerns that in trying to reach more players, the current generation…

Syndicate Developers Knew They Wouldn’t Please Everyone, Or Possibly Anyone

Early this year, Starbreeze Studios and EA launched Syndicate, an FPS reboot of a 1990s tactical classic. The game met with decidedly mixed reviews, and although some players enjoyed it, in terms of sales it’s mostly gone down as a flop. Speaking with Edge, Starbreeze CEO Mikael Nermark said he and his studio were proud…

Brand-New Indie Game Resonance is the Best 1990s Adventure Game I’ve Played in Years

I am a big fan of adventure games. They’ve been my favorite genre for decades. I like them quite a lot. Enough to have named my cat Guybrush. I have sampled and enjoyed many indie adventure games, both old and new, this year. And I mention all of this so that you will realize the…

Divinity: Original Sin Turns a Single-Player Killfest Into Turn-Based, Group Combat. And Succeeds.

Larian Studios’ Divinity franchise has had an uneven past. The first game, Divine Divinity, was very good, but others have been more mixed. At E3 this year, Larian showed off two games set in the Divinity universe. One, Dragon Commander, is a real-time strategy game focusing on the dragon knight idea introduced in Divinity II.…

The End of Chivalry, Cheesy Action Movies, and Fascist Elves: A Chat With the Man Who Runs Paradox

The first morning of E3, I sat down to talk with Fredrik Wester, CEO of Paradox Interactive. Paradox has, in the past, generally specialized in careful, strategic games with historical settings. But their upcoming titles all deviate from that scheme in some way. While The War of the Roses is historical, it’s anything but a…

PC Gaming Lives, Live!

It’s time for PC Gaming Lives! Which you may have noticed begins an hour later than it used to. Rumors of its death are highly exaggerated.

It’s Hot Out. Perhaps You Should Stay Inside for the Summer of Arcade, Instead.

The Xbox Live Summer of Arcade promotion has become a bona fide hot weather event in gaming. For the fifth summer running, Microsoft will be releasing and promoting promising download-only titles via Xbox Live Arcade. This year, the Summer of Arcade starts on July 18 and runs until mid-August. What’s on deck, when’s it coming…