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Former LulzSec Leader a Troublemaker Both Offline and Online
It’s now a well-worn adage that online, each of us can be anyone. You recognize an individual by their typed words and actions. It’s possible to get to know someone very personally indeed, and yet know virtually nothing about their daily lives. Where do they work? What city do they live in? How do they…
By Kate Cox -
The Future Does Not Look Like Fun for Retail Chain GAME
Trouble first appeared to be brewing for major games retailer GAME in February, when pre-orders of Mass Effect 3 were suddenly canceled. All other new EA titles followed suit, and reports began to surface outlining the company’s troubled financial state. GAME’s prospects have (perhaps unsurprisingly) failed to turn around as March progresses, MCV reports. The…
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Move Carefully or Get Caught In The Act
Fresh from this year’s Game Developers Conference, we have video from Kotaku‘s Stephen Totilo showing upcoming iOS title The Act The lush, cinematically animated 2D game is a comic cartoon in which players control Edgar, a hapless window washer in pursuit of Sylvia, the woman of his dreams. As the video demonstrates better than a…
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Software Designs Its Own Video Games For Humans to Play
Prototype game Space Station Invaders doesn’t look like anything special. It’s blocky, a bit clumsy, and derivative. Far from groundbreaking to look at or to play. However, its design is anything but ordinary. The point of Space Station Invaders isn’t so much the game itself, but its designer: an AI program called Angelina The New…
By Kate Cox -
First Angry Birds Space Gameplay Footage Debuts from Orbit
The newest entry into the Angry Birds franchise really, really means it about being in space. The launch announcement for Angry Birds Space came today from the International Space Station, in orbit above Earth. In the video above, NASA astronaut Don Petit explains some of the physics of how angry birds can launch an assault…
By Kate Cox -
Nearly 6 Million Years of World of Warcraft Healthy for Players’ Brains
A number of recent research studies conducted on games and gamers have found a generally positive trend in the effect that gaming has on players’ brains, the Wall Street Journal reports. Not only is World of Warcraft good for senior citizens brain function, it’s good for a lot of other groups as well. Some of…
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Heavy Rain Maker Shows off Incredible Demo of Kara
Developer David Cage, of Quantic Dream, has just unveiled a demo of their new motion capture tech at this year’s Game Developer Conference, called “Kara.” “Kara” is not a new game, but is more akin to The Casting video that Quantic Dream released several years ago, prior to Heavy Rain. The demo features a scanned…
By Kate Cox -
Prototype Motion-Sensing Interface Makes You the Screen
Many of the advances in game-related tech we’ve seen in the past few years have come in the area of control. Touch screens and motion control have become the order of the day on our handheld devices as well as on our home consoles. A researcher at Carnegie Mellon University has designed a prototype system,…
By Kate Cox -
Nuke Any Game With This Microwave Mod
It’s a little funny sometimes when you encounter a thing made to look like a different thing. You get a moment of cognitive dissonance that never quite goes away. Part of your brain always expects a cake shaped like a pizza to taste cheesier and less sweet than it does. So, too, with this older…
By Kate Cox -
iPhone, iPad Darling Flight Control Gets a Sci-Fi Sequel
In the midst of all today’s iPad news, we’re also hearing about a number of iOS games. Hit game Flight Control is getting a sequel this month. In Flight Control Rocket, rather than coaxing airplanes onto airstrips, players will be docking spaceships. In space. The player will use many of the same techniques and tactics…
By Kate Cox -
Sometimes it Can Be Hard to Make College Kids Play Video Games
Gaming has a substantial history now, 40 years after Pong first went out into the wide world. Even the Smithsonian is running a detailed exhibit on the art and history of video games, opening later this month. Game studies is growing and maturing rapidly as a research and education field, and game development programs are…
By Kate Cox -
Thief Allegedly Steals Xbox 360, But Replaces It With His Own PS3
Sadly, it’s not uncommon to read about an Xbox stolen for drug money. Even used and resold under less-than-legal circumstances, the popular console is worth some cash. It is, however, uncommon to read about an Xbox and Wii stolen… and then replaced with a PlayStation 3. A young man in Michigan this week apparently did…
By Kate Cox -
Epic Mickey 2 Rumors Likely to Become Facts This Month
Disney fans have been waiting for news regarding still-rumored title Epic Mickey 2 since news first slipped around the first of the year. At that time, a Disney newsletter was sent out — and then immediately edited — that initially leaked information about the still-unannounced game. The newsletter claimed that Epic Mickey 2 would be…
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Tips & Guides
Before You Start… Tips for Playing Mass Effect 3 The Best Way
Mass Effect 3 has finally arrived (and with it, the reaper invasion). While the concluding chapter in the three-game space opera can be played in a number of ways —player choice is, after all, one of its driving forces — the reality is that some approaches are going to be more effective than others. So…
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LulzSec Leaders No Longer Anonymous After Arrests Worldwide
Hacker collective LulzSec spent much of last year causing chaos for gamers and video game companies. Among other exploits, they targeted BioWare, Sony, Nintendo, EVE Online, and Minecraft LulzSec effectively stopped operations in the summer of 2011, after perhaps drawing a little too much attention to themselves from government authorities. According to the FBI, the…
By Kate Cox -
ReviewsMass Effect 3: The Kotaku Review
The first time I started to tear up a bit, I’d only been playing for two hours. Because of the vagaries of the review process and pre-release games, I was playing a newly-created Commander, rather than importing the adventure of the Shepard I played in Mass Effect and Mass Effect 2 About two hours in,…
By Kate Cox -
Fun, Pointless Things To Do With a Portal Gun and a Plumber
We recently reported that Mari0, the Super Mario Brothers-meets-Portal mash-up-game, had launched. Does Mario need a Portal gun? Well, no. Not really. He managed just fine in his 1985 adventure with only basic jumps and fireballs at his disposal. He can squash goombas and rescue princesses just fine without Aperture Science’s latest, greatest device. But…
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Roger Ebert Not-So-Subtly Reminds Us What He Thinks of Video Games
Roger Ebert is a very smart man and a very sharp and entertaining writer who just happens to think very, very poorly of video games. Sometimes our gamer discussions leak out into the mainstream, as recently happened with Michael Thomsen’s piece in Slate. In his article, as we reported, Thomsen challenged the idea that a…
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Motorstorm RC Races Onto North American Vitas for Free
Games are a commercial endeavor, complete with cross-promotional marketing. Sometimes the messages have questionable ties, but other times, the match is too good to miss. So it is with Scion’s (a Toyota company) promotion of the Vita version of Motorstorm RC. According to an announcement on the PlayStation blog, not only is Motorstorm RC launching…
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Joe Danger: The Movie Takes Stuntman Action to a Whole New Level
The coolest part of an action movie is, well, the action. Carefully choreographed and filmed stunts and effects make the impossible seem downright easy, when splashed on the big screen. Joe Danger: The Movie, slated for release on Xbox Live Arcade later this year, is all about the action. First seen at last summer’s PAX,…
By Kate Cox
Kate Cox
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