I arrived home after a weekend away to find a long cardboard box waiting for me, and within it was the PS3 collector’s edition of Lord of the Rings: War in the North. It’s a long and skinny box, a different shape than the large, square statue-holders from other games. I opened ‘er up and…
Fryee-day! Fryee-day! Hope you’re excited that it’s Friday! For my part, I can’t even figure out which seat I should take. I’m heading to New Jersey this weekend for a big wedding. It’s going to be awesome, though there is that small part of me that says, “Screw having friends and seeing the people you…
Are you ready for Halloween? Have you gotten scared by anything recently? Perhaps a little creeped out that somewhere in the dark corners of your neighborhood, there sits a silent stalker in a white, blank mask, waiting… waiting… waiting for you to be alone? I think about what used to scare me as a kid…
There’s a moment near the start of Cormac McCarthy’s gripping post-apocalyptic novel The Road when a father holds up a gun to protect his son. Their lives hang by a thread—their assailant is alone, but his friends are near, and if the man pulls the trigger, he and his son will doubtless be discovered. And…
Hello all, and welcome to the Thursday edition of the Kotaku open thread. I trust your weeks are winding down nicely, and that you’re getting ready for a rockin’ Halloween weekend. What are you dressing up as? Anyone got any good video game-themed costumes? I wonder, do cosplayers get to reuse their costumes from PAX…
Another game shown at Ubisoft’s Digital Day event was Haste, a 3D ATV racing game in which players coast, carom, and ramp over a variety of racetracks. One of the images has a guy on an ATV ramping through a flaming hoop, which strikes me as a bit “over the top” and “xtreme.” It should…
Imagine you live in a future ruled by robots. It’s not that hard—between Milo, Siri, and their pet AIBO, we’re about halfway there already. So here you are, going about your afternoon break from work at the cyber-mill, and you stop by the “Museum of Rock And Roll.” It’s an imposing metallic building, much like…
Ubisoft’s upcoming downlodable side-scroller Shoot Many Robots is another game in what’s becoming a trend towards clear video game names (e.g. Kill All Orcs, Destory All Humans!). And as you’d expect, the game revolves around running around and shooting many robots, and doing so with a lovely cel-shaded art style. (Of course, much of its…
We’re all familiar with the biblical story of the Tower of Babel, right? Ubisoft’s upcoming Babel Rising is a Kinect- and PS Move-enabled tower-defense take on the parable, pitting players against a group of Babylonians who are trying to build a tower all the way up to God’s front door. Such hubris! The role of…
Happy Wednesday, and welcome to another evening open thread. I hope your week is going swimmingly, and that you’re kicking back and getting ready to ride the post-humpday slide into the weekend. I finally finished A Dance With Dragons recently, and now I get to share the pain of all George RR Martin fans and…
For a relaxing time, sit back and watch this terrific PBS short documentary on the artistic merits of video games. The video runs only about 7 minutes, and features NYU’s Eric Zimmerman, game designer and researcher Jesper Juul, Kotaku contributor and secret nerdcore superstar Leigh Alexander, and Babycastles curator and designer Syed Salahuddin. “Even though…
TwitchTV, the eSports Web TV network, has released an iOS app with complete streaming and chat functionality. Now, you can get all your pro Starcraft watching done on the go
It’s easy to buy a book. It’s easy to be someone who buys books. Go to the store, pay some cash, walk out with the book. Or go online, punch in your credit card info and the book comes to your door. Or maybe you just turn on your Kindle and the book is yours…
So here we are, at the start of another evening’s open thread. How was your day? Good, I hope. Mine was nice, it was gorgeous in San Francisco and I typed a lot of words. Speaking of typing words, your own words are welcome here in off-topic town. Here are a few conversation starters, and…
I’ve noticed a bit of an internet scuffle breaking out over Simon Parkin’s 8/10 review of Uncharted 3 for Eurogamer. “Uncharted 3 is the most exciting game in the world,” he writes, “but only until you deviate from the script.” Parkin’s criticisms focus mainly on his opinion that the Uncharted games are overly cinema-focused and…
One of the things that’s always a challenge in superhero games is giving the character new powers as they go. Infamous 2 got to bypass Cole McGrath’s origin story, and as a result introduced new powers while presenting a faster-moving, more enjoyable story than the first game. That said, it’s always a good thing to…
I’m hard-pressed to think of a game that has a more ridiculous character-creation setup than Volition’s upcoming Saints Row: The Third. From street thugs to superheroes, it’s possible to create just about anything. For those who can’t wait for the game’s release in a couple weeks, players with an access code can access the character…
The two big releases this week on the PlayStation store are Infamous 2‘s bloodsucking “standalone add-on” Festival of Blood and the highly-anticipated-by-Stephen-Totilo Pixeljunk Sidescroller But if you’re not looking for new games, you’re still covered—players catching up with the times can download Call of Duty: Black Ops, MX vs. ATV Alive, and Homefront, the latter…
With Rockstar about to announce the release of Grand Theft Auto V, we’re all abuzz theorizing, postulating, and prognosticating about things that the game will or won’t have. Totilo’s looked at what systems the game might be on, Crecente guessed about possible settings. And then, Stephen got a tip that the game will indeed be…
Call of Duty‘s online social hub (dubbed “Elite”) revolves around three main features. “Connect” allows players to network with one another in a number of different ways, and provides a social network for players to communicate. “Compete” lets players set up their own brackets and tournaments, or compete for prizes in Activision-sponsored official events. And…
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