You may or may not have heard this already, but despite outward appearances, Yager’s third-person military shooter Spec Ops: The Line was a surprisingly artful, even audacious game. It wrestled with big ideas like player complicity in onscreen violence, military slaughter of civilians, post-traumatic stress disorder and insanity. In a new article, Polygon‘s Russ Pitts…
No, it was built over a much longer period of time than that. But hopefully Legacy of Rome will be worth the wait—some of the DLC for the excellent strategy game has been disappointing, and some has been quite good. And let’s not forget that you can also mod CKII into the best Game of…
I love PBS’ “Off-Book” mini-documentary series, don’t you? The latest entry in the now long-running series looks at animation and motion graphics, with interview subjects John Canemaker, Jesse Thomas, Justin Cone and Julia Pott telling us all about their craft, inspirations, and technique. That sounds kind of boring. This video is not boring! It’s just…
You could be forgiven for wondering what all the hubbub is about Sleeping Dogs. “Just another open-world crime game,” you might think. “Been there, done that, yawn.” I’ve seen a few commenters ask why writers at Kotaku keep talking about this game—the simple answer for that is that we write about what we’re playing, and…
No, not the kind of Bill that sits on Capitol Hill. The OTHER kind of Bill. People named Bill. This humorous free game at Newgrounds challenges you to name all of the proper Bills before time runs out. Remember: William and “Will” are fair game, so don’t be surprised to se some goofy versions of…
Characters in Guild Wars 2 are good at lots of things: Fighting, spellcasting, animal-summoning. But they’re also really good at standing still. No, seriously! (Disclaimer: That groaner of a headline is the work of one Mr. S. Totilo. I wash my hands of it. Just kidding, I laughed.) The great standing animations are something that…
Guild Wars 2 has been a long time coming. Years of previews, discussions, developer diaries, demos, betas and a head-start weekend have led to this point: Guild Wars 2 finally unlocks for everyone tonight. You’re all set to play the game. You have some energy drinks/green tea/yerba mate/coffe/other caffinated drink ready. You’ve called in sick…
Aah! Holy crap! Look out Lee! It’s a motorcycle (okay fine) helicopter pilot zombie! Um… mash the “A” button really hard! You’ll be okay I promise! This screenshot was just tweeted by Telltale Games, who are promising that Episode Three of their excellent Walking Dead series will be available “VERY soon.” While you wait, check…
Let’s say there’s a spectrum. On the one end, hunched in a leather jacket and stubbing out a cigarette on its boot heel, is Music. On the other end, peering over its sunglasses at a strobe-lit LCD, sits Video Games. All music games exist somewhere on that spectrum. It has been fascinating, inspiring, and a…
According to a report at MMO Culture, a French gamer named Surfeuze has already hit the Guild Wars 2 level cap of 80. (See the lower-left of the screenshot above.) Yep: Someone has maxed out a character before the game has even been officially released. Surfeuze pulled off this feat largely through crafting, using guild-provided…
Generally the off-topic goes to an interesting story that maybe doesn’t have anything directly to do with games. But this one, about a guy in Nepal biting a snake to death after it bit him, seems sort of video-gamey, no? Guy shows SNAKE who’s BOSS by biting it to DEATH? (Okay the last one is…
File this one under: “What the hell do I even do with this information?” The guys behind Robot Chicken (including Joker himself, Seth Green) are making a new animated show called Star Wars Detours that will mercilessly, if lovingly, mock Star Wars. George Lucas has even given them his stamp of approval. Is this terrible?…
Imagine if a bunch of flight-sim enthusiasts got together and spent years assembling a free, open-source, constantly updated flight simulator. Wait actually, you don’t have to imagine that: It’s a real thing, and it’s called FlightGear. The open-source simulator has been around for years. Now imagine some nefarious do-badders have co-opted the free game and…
One of the hardest things to communicate about ZombiU is the way the Wii U’s new controller is integrated into the game. In the first part of this “making of” documentary from Ubisoft, executive producer Guillaume Brunier walks us through the basic setup of the game (roguelike-like-meets-Demon’s Souls) and show how the touch-screen is used.…
I’ll tell you one thing: we’re not here to talk nonsense to Bob Loblaw. No, we’re here to talk about how the new season of Arrested Development is reportedly coming out next spring. That’s not as far away as it seems! Personally, I am optimistic as heck about the new season of Arrested Development. Most…
Sad but true: The PC version of Darksiders II is bare-bones and has some serious graphical problems. Non-functional vertical-sync, strange controls, minimal options for graphical tweaking; it’s a drag. I’ve been cooling my heels after playing about an hour of the game, waiting on its developer, Vigil, to release some patches. I’ve been waiting for…
Sound Shapes has been out for a couple of weeks now, and I think it’s finally time I wrote something about it here on Kotaku Melodic. It’s been a bit tough to get the average gamer interested in the game for some reason, even though it’s one of the most clever, musical games I’ve played…
Well this is pretty much unlike anything I’ve seen before. There are a lot of different video game controllers that are musical in nature, but I’ve never seen one that so weirdly combines MIDI controls with video buttons and a joystick. But that’s what Portmanteau Devices’ “Pianocade” device does. All I know is that if…
Are You there, God? It’s me, Kirk. Hi. How are You. Good? Cool. Me? Oh, I’m good. Though actually… okay. Look, I can put up with a lot of promotional bullcrap. I write about video games for a living! Half of my job is putting up with promotional bullcrap. But this whole Linkin Park/Medal of…
Sometimes, in Sleeping Dogs, you kick so many asses that your still-standing foes give up and run away. This usually happens when you’re clearing out the “drug bust” zones, which begin with a fight and end with some sweet, delicious camera-hacking. For some reason, after you’ve kicked all the asses, the fleeing guys kinda… lose…
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