Kirk Hamilton

Lightning Returns Final Fantasy XIII, Literally

Oh come on, you know you were thinking it “I kept waiting for it to get good, but it never did. I guess I’ll take store credit.”

A Closer Look At Borderlands 2‘s Spritely Robot-Summoner, The Mechromancer

At PAX 2012, attendees who braved the massive line at the Borderlands 2 booth were treated to a first look at the fifth character class for the game, the Mechromancer, which will now be given free to everyone who pre-orders the game. The character is a trendy, pixie-looking girl in metal armor who summons a…

The Cosplay Of PAX: Day One

The Seattle Convention Center was covered in video game characters today for the first day of the Penny Arcade Expo. We saw all manner of costumes—the elaborate, the humble, the humorous, the bizarre. Tina, Jason and I captured as many as we could for our first gallery. Up top, three ladies re-create three famous Zelda…

The Joy of Jumping: Why ArenaNet Lets You Hop In Guild Wars 2

If you’ve been playing Guild Wars 2 at all, then you’ve probably seen people talking about jumping. Dancing is cool too, and actually, standing in one place is pretty neat as well, but the thing people love to do most is jump. That’s partly because jumping was impossible in Guild Wars 1. I visited Guild…

Ron Gilbert’s Cave Is Deeper Than I Thought

What? It is. There’s a special type of anxiety that arises when you have to solve one of Ron Gilbert’s puzzles in front of him. This is the guy who made Maniac Mansion and The Secret of Monkey Island, for gosh’s sake. And here I am, poking and prodding at a new puzzle he made,…

Everything Breaks Bad In The Darkest, Strongest Episode Of The Walking Dead Yet

If there’s anything Telltale’s The Walking Dead game has taught me about myself, it’s that come the post-apocalypse, I’d be of no use to anyone. We like to think that all our time spent scoring video game headshots in Left 4 Dead and Dead Rising, or yelling advice at the protagonists of 28 Days Later…

No Kotaku Melodic Tonight

Sorry, music fans—due to me being in Seattle at PAX, there will be no Kotaku Melodic this week. We’ve been posting a lot of good musical stuff lately, so do go browse the archive and give it a listen. Also, for any Melodic readers who will be at PAX this weekend, two panels worth checking…

Double Fine’s Next Game Is For iPhone, And It’s About Superheroes

Being a superhero is exciting, no doubt about it. You get to wear a cool costume, use cool powers, and fight crime! But what about the nitty gritty bureaucratic aspects of being a superhero—the paperwork, the scheduling, all the stuff behind the scenes? Surely someone’s got to take care of that, as well. Enter Middle…

Hooray, Darksiders II‘s Janky PC Version Is Now Substantially Less Janky

Good news: true to their word, Vigil has issued the first update for the PC version of Darksiders II, addressing a number of problems players have had with that version of the game. Among the fixes: easier key-mapping, in-game crashes, and crucially, the broken v-sync, which resulted in unfixable screen-tearing for some (but not all)…

Five Networked Computers. Six Players. One Hell Of A Starship Simulator

Long have I dreamed of sitting in the captain’s chair of a Federation Starship, a talented (and likely very attractive) crew at my beck and call, ready to power up the warp drive and take us into battle. It’s not just because my name is Kirk—it’s because the bridge of a starship is an awesome…

Zelda‘s Windfall Island Recreated in Skyrim

Man, it has been a day for cool Skyrim stuff. The latest is this re-creation of Windfall Island from The Legend of Zelda: Wind Waker entirely in Skyrim So okay, yeah, as one commenter points out, “It’s like you took the Wind Waker and sucked all the joy out :’D” All the same, this is a…

The Worst Internet Trolls Might Be Mentally Ill

So, this billy goat goes trip-trapping across a bridge. As he clops along, he hears a voice from down below: “Roar! I am a troll! If you cross this bridge, I’ll gobble you up!” The goat is kinda freaked out, since, you know, god only knows what’s down there in the dark. “Er, why would…

Street Fighter‘s Ryu and Mortal Kombat‘s Scorpion Settle This Thing Once And For All

Street Fighter or Mortal Kombat? The debate has been going on for as long as I can remember, and it may never reach a resolution. (I’m a Mortal Kombat man myself.) This nifty live-action video shows two of the most popular characters from each game, Scorpion and Ryu, throwing down in a… lovely pine forest?…

A Fresh Look At The Long-Awaited Half-Life Remake

We’ve been waiting for Black Mesa for a long, loooong while now—the hugely ambitious fan-made mod has an uncertain fate, but eight years after beginning work, the team is still working on the game. The folks behind Black Mesa have released these images to Facebook to coincide with a new interview over at Polygon, where…

The Bridge Of The USS Enterprise Is Torn Apart And Tossed Aside, Depressing Everyone

The bridge of the Starship Enterprise D is hallowed ground, man. It is one of the most iconic spaces in all of TV geekdom, a place where magic happened, where some of the most memorable moments of Star Trek: The Next Generation went down. And now, it’s been junked. A recreation of the set built…

Dude Makes A Wicked Skyrim Helmet From Real Steel

There have been plenty of cool cloth and papercraft Skyrim props over the past several months. Kotaku reader and crafter Shannon Clawson looked at those and said, “P’shaw! Amateur hour!” Well, he probably didn’t say that. But he did get inspired to make this Nord helmet out of real steel, and he sent us some…

The Kid was happy to hear that the lovely Bastion is coming to iPad on August 30

This New Far Cry 3 Video Features The Best Tiger Attacks Yet

Man, I still don’t know if I’ll like Far Cry 3 as much as I like Far Cry 2, but if there’s one thing Ubisoft’s marketing campaign has convinced me of, it’s that the tiger attacks will be delightful

Check Out The First-Edition Covers Of Some Of The Greatest Novels Of All Time

Hey, it’s another book-themed off-topic! This time around we’ve got something particularly musty, and particularly cool. Flavorwire has assembled images of the first-edition covers of 25 of the most famous classic books of all time. Man, look at Lord of the Rings! And Brave New World! I feel like I’m not alone in that when…

A Show-Stopping Contender For ‘Most Ambitious Video Game Wedding’

Video games don’t just make for great wedding-proposal material, they can also make their way into the wedding itself. We’ve run pictures from a lot of cool video game weddings over the years, and this latest one, sent in by Marvel Sutantio and his bride Christy, is surely up there with the most ambitious of…