DayZ isn’t really a conventionally beautiful game, but it does have an austere quality that I find appealing. That quality is on full display in the latest shots from Duncan Harris at Dead End Thrills, who has been running the game in offline mode to capture the cleanest images. Call me crazy, but I’d love…
Update: Apologies, but the gift count here is just for Team Fortress 2, not Steam. We apologize for the confusion. Sure, you’ve probably given a gift or two on Steam. Maybe you saw a game you really wanted your friend to play on sale, and you picked it up and gifted it. But unless you’ve…
Double Fine’s Broken Age may be an “old-school adventure game,” but it’s decidedly new-school in a lot of ways. The most immediate of those is the game’s gorgeous, high-res art. Perhaps you’d like to play something a bit more… pixellated? Double Fine’s got you covered. The video above from The Phawx demonstrates how to activate…
Have you ever heard the story behind The Who’s “Tommy” or Deep Purple’s “Smoke on the Water”? Did you know that Caroline of “Sweet Caroline” was actually a young Caroline Kennedy? Or that Michael Jackson wrote “Billie Jean” while (allegedly) driving a car that was on fire? This week on Mental Floss, the musical group…
Have you ever wanted to play a game that quickly switches from Mario-style platformer to Ninja Gaiden-style fighting/platformer to Pac-Man-style dot eating to Final Fantasy-style turn-based combat? If so, the upcoming PC game Concursion may be the thing for you. I like the idea here, as developer Puuba Games seems to be saying, “Hey, we…
There’s a lot to like in the latest video from How It Should Have Ended, which tackles The Hobbit: The Desolation of Smaug. But the best bit is at the very start, since it re-raises a question that’s been lingering for a while now. Why doesn’t Gandalf call in the eagles all the time? I…
The top-down murder-death-kill simulator Hotline Miami had already earned the distinction of having one of 2012’s top video game soundtracks. But these mash-ups from Jessica “NNXT” Gore take the whole thing to another level. NNXT mixes Kanye, Missy Elliott, Snoop Dogg and Katy Perry up with original tracks from Hotline, and it is pretty great.…
A moment to appreciate the excellent music of Assassin’s Creed IV: Freedom Cry. I liked the soundtrack for AC IV: Black Flag just fine, but I really like Olivier Deriviere’s work on Freedom Cry, which blends orchestral arrangements with traditional Haitian folk songs for a distinctive, evocative flavor.
Books are art, you know? Sometimes literally. This paper-sculpture is the work of Danish artist Victoria, known on DeviantART as FarTooManyIdeas. She crafted it before the most recent Hobbit movie came out, “after watching the trailer many many times.” I’ve heard of words that “jump off the page” before, but this is taking it to…
Babies: They do the darndest things! Especially when they’re the animatronic spawn of fake Satan. If you see an unattended baby stroller on a busy city street, you probably walk up to make sure everything’s okay. And then… well, if you’re lucky, you just may be attacked by a screaming, vomiting, remote-controlled demon baby. Likethe…
Sometimes when I’m watching Sherlock, I find myself wishing that Watson and Holmes would just drop the pretense and burst into song. This new mini-musical from AVbyte (makers of that goofy console wars musical) gives a good sense of what a Sherlock musical might look and sound like; they even worked that kicky Sherlock theme…
At the end of the month, Xbox One and PS4 owners will get to play Tomb Raider: Definitive Edition, a graphically enhanced version of last year’s excellent Tomb Raider reboot. But how definitive will the next-gen version really be? IGN‘s posted a new video with a side-by-side comparison between the PS4 and PS3 versions of…
It would be a real shame to forget about Cate Archer. Over the past week, I’ve been replaying the spy game No One Lives Forever for the first time since it came out in 2000. I’m struck not only by how well the first-person espionage-fest holds up all these years later, but how audacious it…
Not only is master gamer Sinister1 playing Mike Tyson’s Punch-Out!! while blindfolded and crushing it, he’s moving through the game as quickly as possible. I’m speechless. Part one is up top, and here’s the rest of the run, where things get hairy: Sinister1’s full-run attempt happened today during Awesome Games Done Quick 2014, a speedrunning…
January is an interesting time for video games—we’re just coming off of a landslide of new releases, but there aren’t too many games on the horizon. Finally, some breathing room! So… what are you playing? I’ll go first: The Room Two (iPad): After finally listening to my boss Stephen Totilo’s enthusiastic endorsement, I started playing…
Being re-imagined as a wee chibi characterisn’t close to enough to make Persona 3’s Mitsuru Kirijo any less of a badass, as evidenced by this new character trailer for the 3DS crossover game Persona Q: Shadow of the Labyrinth Miiiiight be time to finally replay Persona 3 Portable as a girl protagonist. I’ve been meaning…
Metal Gear Rising: Revengeance‘s always-online PC problems have been fixed, according to a couple of tweets this morning from Kojima Productions’ Steve Key. A Konami representative also confirmed to Kotaku that the issue has been resolved. New downloads should work fine, though already-affected users will probably have to re-download the game and Konami now says…
“Because, Boobs,” a short cartoon from artist Nate Ziller, is mostly just for laughs, but it also makes an emphatic point. Why do female characters tend to have such huge breasts? Because a bunch of dudes in a boardroom decided they should. [Via Laughing Squid]
“Karate? The Dane Cook of martial arts?” I am… awfully psyched that Archer is coming back for a new season. Maybe not as psyched as Mike, but still, pretty psyched. This outstanding supercut of Sterling Archer one-liners, courtesy of Uproxx video, has got me even more psyched. “Fuck you, Switzerland.” [via Previously.tv]
Gone Home sure does provoke some good criticism. This time, the critic in question is noted interactive fiction designer (and Versu co-creator) Emily Short, who has written a lengthy, thoughtful essay about how Gone Home overly relied on backstory—as opposed to active story—and as a result fell short of its potential.
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