Kirk Hamilton

This Amazing Harmonica Player Gets The Halo Composer’s Endorsement

It’s always fun to hear composers talk about their favorite musicians. This past weekend at PAX, I sat down with a group of the biggest names in AAA video game music to talk about all things musical and video games. Fresh from their panel at PAX, I chatted with Dragon Age composer Inon Zur, Assassin’s…

A Game Design Legend, Still Chasing The Video Game Musical Of His Dreams

Someday, somewhere, someone will make a video game musical. Legendary game designer Warren Spector hopes it will be him. His latest game, Epic Mickey 2, is something of a video game musical, but it’s still not a realization of Spector’s musical ambitions. I sat down with Spector last weekend in Seattle to talk about Epic…

How To Play FarmVille 2 Without Pissing Off Your Friends

Nobody likes a Facebook spammer. You know, those people who you went to high school with but haven’t talked to in ten years who seem to do nothing but water their FarmVille crops and maintain their CityVille cities. They’re the worst! Zynga’s newest game, FarmVille 2, launched yesterday. I may not be totally sold on…

David Byrne + St. Vincent + Saxophones. Oh, Yeah.

This new video from Talking Heads frontman David Byrne and wicked good looper/singer/music-maven St. Vincent is my jam. I mean… two of my favorite singers and a whole full-on sax-section groove. It’s like they’re trying to kill me with awesomeness. Best of all, you can preview the whole album, “Love This Giant” over at NPR.…

Would You Kindly Let Me Play With This Awesome BioShock Nerf Gun

Dead serious: I would pay real money to own a Nerf gun that looked like this. The gun, made by DeviantARTist AjlDesign, uses a modified Nerf Maverick to channel the awesome might of a Big Daddy. As you can see in the video above, it’s a heck of a little thing. AJDesign has put up…

Zynga Thinks You’ll Like FarmVille 2. I’m Not So Sure.

“What does a re-imagination of virtual farming look like?” Something of a silly question on its face, and yet one that Zynga vice president of games Tim LeTourneau is fond of asking. Then again, what does a re-imagination of virtual farming look like? Do you farm on the moon? Must you plant crops while defending…

Zelda Violinist Rocks The Game of Thrones Theme

Violinist Lindsey Stirling has gained a ton of well-earned renown for (among other things) her truly epic rendition of the Legend of Zelda music, a performance immortalized when Olympic gymnast Elsa Garcia Rodriguez Blancas used it during her floor routine Now, Stirling has teamed up with vocalist Peter Hollens (with whom she recently collaborated on…

FarmVille 2 Launches Today. Here’s What’s New.

FarmVille 2 will launch today on Facebook and adds a number of new wrinkles to the tried-and-true social game’s formula. Here’s what’s new in FarmVille 2: 3D Camera – Thanks to the power of Flash 11, Farmville 2 is in 3D. It’s still an isometric game, and you can’t manipulate the camera, but it looks…

Yes, It’s About A Farting Cat. It’s Also The Funniest Game Trailer I’ve Seen In Ages

It can’t be easy to drum up excitement for your super-simple, cat-fart-oriented casual game. And yet the folks behind Fart Cat have done just that with this trailer, which is easily the funniest game trailer I’ve seen since the last funniest trailer ever, the one for Super Time Force Just watch it, already. I hope…

Girls’ Tongues Smell Bad, And Other Hilarious Bad Lip-Readings Of Twilight

This guy, I swear. I don’t know how he does it. Get a load of the latest “Bad Lip-Reading” from the genius who brought you Mitt Romney saying “Cray Cray” and Michael Bublé singing about shooting a Russian Unicorn. Yes, it’s Twilight . But even if you’ve never read a book or seen a movie,…

In This Cool Free Game, You’ll Hunt A Deadly Beast In The Black Of Night

No, that’s not just a screenshot of a black screen. That’s Nyctohylophobia, a new free indie game by Sarper Sohelr, Onur Samli, Oguzhan Kukuil. (Nyctohylophobia, apparently, is the fear of being in a dark forest at night. Better known as fear of slenderman.) In the game, it’s dark. And why wouldn’t it be? It’s nighttime,…

Warren Spector Explains How Epic Mickey Is Like Deus Ex

A cybernetically enhanced secret agent with a sniper rifle. A mouse with a paintbrush. You’d think those two things couldn’t have less in common. But Warren Spector, who has now created games starring both of those characters, would tell you that they’re more similar than you may realize. This past weekend at PAX, I sat…

An Erotic Wrestling Game That You Play With Two Trampolines. Yep.

You ever get that feeling that you’ve seen everything? I’ve learned by now what to do when I get that feeling: laugh, and pat it on the head, tell it it’s cute, and send it off to get us all some coffee. Because shortly afterwards, someone always sends a video of something like Get On…

Guild Wars 2 Trading Post Is Online, Grouping Still Troubled

Although Guild Wars 2 has mostly avoided catastrophic launch problems, the online game has been plagued by a number of small nuisances. Among them, that the “Trading Post,” which is ArenaNet’s term for its auction house, hasn’t been available, and perhaps more problematically, that it’s been difficult to keep a group of players together. The…

Steam’s new community features are now live. An overview can be found here

This Insane Donkey Kong A Capella Makes Me Laugh And Feel Afraid

What the… I don’t… why? Who? You’ll ask all those questions and more as you watch Max and Sam’s “Geekapella” performance of an iconic track from Donkey Kong Country. Why is the guy making claws over his nipples? What’s with the wig? Did someone slip me some drugs this morning? Wow. Props, guys. Your video…

Valve’s Erik Wolpaw On How DayZ And Minecraft Fulfill ‘The Promise Of Games’

Among the many highlights from the Erik Wolpaw/Tim Schafer panel at PAX this past weekend was a brief exchange where an audience member asked what Wolpaw thought about the disconnect between authored single-player games and games that allowed truly personal stories to emerge, like Notch’s Minecraft and Dean Hall’s DayZ “It’s not [about] single-player vs…

Valve Almost Let You Kill Cave Johnson

At PAX Prime in Seattle, Double Fine’s Tim Schafer and Valve’s Erik Wolpaw gave a panel called “Plot vs. Play” in which they discussed the ongoing debate about gameplay and story. The panel was co-hosted by Kotaku‘s own Jason Schreier. The whole thing was as much fun as you’d imagine. At one point Wolpaw, who…

Notch Is Showing Off Bethesda’s Legal Threats

At PAX Prime in Seattle, Markus “Notch” Persson and his studio Mojang have built a neat “Minecraft Museum” where they’re displaying memorabilia and art from their hit PC game. But they’ve also got something a bit feistier on display. In a humorous bit of nose-thumbing, Persson and co. have framed and put on display what…

The Cosplay Of PAX: Day Two

Saturday is usually when all of the best PAX cosplay comes out, and this year didn’t disappoint. We had steampunk Mario, the entire cast of Phoenix Wright, and a certain hero of Canton, the man they call Jayne. Check out all the best cosplay below (and the best stuff from yesterday here), and if you’ve…