The industry- and design-focused publication Gamasutra has released their list of the top ten games of the year, with Valve’s Portal 2 coming in at the top. “All that extra ‘stuff’ isn’t just superfluous,” writes editor-in-chief Kris Graft, “every new addition has a purpose, and has a meaning. They made Portal 2 better than the…
We’ve done a lot of big-budget games so far in our Best Video Game Music of 2011 series, but there were some great indie soundtracks released, as well. One of the very best of those was Danny Baranowsky’s dangerous, dark, synthy work on the Zelda-esque roguelike The Binding of Isaac Described by our own Stephen…
Believe it or not, Skyrim was not necessarily a shoo-in for our list of the best video game music of 2011. Epic first-person open world games can get into murky territory with their music, especially if the music plays too often. The musical cues in Skyrim‘s open world can get as wonky as in any…
You may have already read Leigh Alexander’s damn-near definitive recounting of Ian Bogost’s satirical Facebook game Cow Clicker right here at Kotaku. But all the same, the world could use another piece about the man and his work, especially if that piece is as clever as the one that Wired just ran. Titled “The Curse…
The Holidays are upon us; Chanukah is underway, Christmas is almost here, and it’s time to get those last-minute gifts. We’ve given you ideas for people who already have all the games they want, for people who like science and other thinky pursuits, and for your teenage son who seems pretty normal but who you…
This week on the PlayStation store, we’ve got a bunch of new stuff—the gut-check approved Trine 2 is available as a download, as is the venerable Sonic CD and a digital version of the popular party game Apples to Apples. L.A. Noire joins a hefty list of full-game downloads, along with a ton of updates…
Look, if there’s one game that merits a massively multiplayer online experience, it’s The Grateful Dead. This has been on our radars for a little while, and it’s unclear whether it’ll be a proper MMO, a Facebook game, or what. Things become marginally clearer in this new video, called “The Epic Tour,” that has been…
Did that headline get your attention? Good, because you should go and read this super-cool piece by Kill Screen‘s Lana Polansky about mechanics, practice, saxophone, jazz, and Street Fighter. (It also features the amazing illustration above, drawn by Daniel Purvis.) “Hey,” you may be thinking. “Doesn’t Kirk write about that sort of thing too, sometimes…
Happily, the newest official patch for Skyrim will allow the game to make use of up to 4 Gigabytes of RAM, as opposed to its previous ceiling of 2GB. This had previously been accomplished via the Large Address Aware hack, but that method had been blocked by a previous patch from Bethesda.
The new Humble Indie Bundle is terrific. For a price of your own choosing, you can get indie gems Super Meat Boy, Bit. Trip Runner, Jamestown, Shank and Nightsky, as well as Cave Story + and Gratuitous Space Battles for paying more than the average selling price. Today, the folks behind the bundle announced that…
I don’t like most Christmas music. “Jingle Bell Rock,” “Baby It’s Cold Outside,” “Have a Holly Jolly Christmas”… they can all pretty much bite me. I saw this band called Foxtails Brigade last night in San Francisco and was majorly impressed. So, I am sharing their brand-new (and wonderfully depressing) Christmas song “I’m Not Really…
Greetings all, and welcome to another Kotaku open thread. The stockings are getting hung by the chimney with care, and all the blog readers will soon be chatting. Isn’t that the way the poem goes? Something like that. Below are your usual assortment of conversation-starters and miscellaneous junk from around the ‘net. Glark has posted…
“What is Kotaku‘s game of the year?” you may be asking yourself. Well, I’m certainly not going to spoil the surprise. But in the meantime, we’re sharing the GOTY winners from other sites around the web. Over at MMORPG.com, they’ve named Trion Worlds’ color-splosional Rift as the best massively multiplayer online game of the year,…
I liked a whole lot of things about Deus Ex: Human Revolution, chief among them the way it felt like a loving tribute to so many different games that I love. It successfully combined a ton of familiar mechanics— Metal Gear-style stealth, Mass Effect-style dialogue, Deus Ex-style open levels, and even L.A. Noire-style interrogations. But…
The annual holiday sale on the Steam store is officially underway. It is massive and… surprisingly involved. Just about every single publisher is offering reduced prices and a ton of bundle packs, as well as a bunch of “Pack Deals” that bundle together every game from each major publisher. If that wasn’t enough gaming for…
Greetings, Kotaku cadets, and welcome to your Friday evening open thread. I hope you’ve had a pleasant week, and are prepared for an even pleasant-er weekend. Here are some random things from the internet, conversation starters and other things you might enjoy. Do you miss “Community” already? Watch this. – Aw, man. I even think…
As a game, LittleBigPlanet 2 was all about motion and physics. It was a Rube Goldbergian dream diorama, a series of flipping levers, bouncing springs, swinging doorways and tumbling blocks. The game had a heavy thunkiness to it that unfortunately was its undoing in the gameplay department—it was so dependent on its physics engine that…
Last week, I was so happy to publish a feature about the incredible screenshots of DeadEndThrills, a.k.a. Duncan Harris. Duncan is regularly cranking out so many terrific shots over on his site that I thought it would be fun to share some highlights from each week, as well as a few classics from his many…
The idea of user-generated content is nothing new, and success at implementing the concept has ranged from the niche (inFamous 2) to the wildly successful (Minecraft). Just this week, game designer/Carnegie Mellon professor/all around interesting and smart guy Jesse Schell launched a kickstarter campaign to support the latest project from his studio Schell Games (geddit?)…
Over at the CBS/Gamespot offices they’ve been having a lot of fun with post-its, putting together this lovely window-spanning mural of classic 8-bit video game characters. The video above depicts them working through the night in what must have been a very enjoyable reason to forgo sleep. The whole thing is reminiscent of the great…
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