Kirk Hamilton

If Grand Theft Auto Took Place In Breaking Bad‘s Albuquerque

I have a good time picturing a Breaking Bad video game: Basically, nothing would go according to plan and you’d keep losing more, and more, and more. So how would a GTA-style game built around Breaking Bad work? Surely we’ve all been thinking it over the last week. After all, GTA V and Breaking Bad…

The Handwritten Blueprint For A Musical Masterpiece

Before music becomes music—before it’s played by musicians—it’s just ink on a page. Some compositions require a great deal of ink and a lot of pages, hundreds of carefully-drawn notes bound into massive tomes of score-paper. And yet it’s worth remembering that some of the greatest compositions of all time were born of simple ideas…

He Forged The Meteor Sword From Avatar. Then, He Cut Stuff With It.

For a long time, young Sokka was the Xander Harris of Avatar: The Last Airbender. He didn’t have any sweet bending powers and he wasn’t the Avatar; he didn’t have a great, noble destiny. He was just a dude with a boomerang. Then, he got the meteor sword. More precisely, he met Fire Nation swordmaster…

Rockstar Warns GTA V Players To Avoid Using Garages Until Bug is Fixed

This past weekend in GTA V, my buddy Franklin finally made some real money on a heist. The guy loves to drive, so I decided to buy him a nice new sports car. But when he got back to his house and checked the garage, the car was nowhere to be found. Had master car-thief…

A Lovecraft-Inspired Game That’s Sillier, Smarter Than It Is Scary

With both Amnesia: A Machine for Pigs and Outlast released so recently, it might seem as though there wouldn’t be room for another horror game. But the free browser horror game Catachresis fits neatly in between them. Developed by Cameron Kunzelman, Catachresis is a sort of linear story-game-non-game thing that combines the verbose, too-big-and-awful-to-actually-contain monsters…

A New Jaws Game With A Text Adventure Twist

You’ve probably seen Steven Spielberg’s epoch-shifting 1975 blockbuster Jaws, and if you grew up playing games, you’ve probably played a video game based on the film. But you probably haven’t played a video game version quite like this. The new, free browser game Jaws: The Text Adventure takes classic scenes from the film and cleverly…

So Stylish When They Stab: Here’s a music-video look at the multiplayer for the upcoming Assassin’s Creed IV: Black Flag. Looks like a grudge match between a bunch of Joker’s clown-gang, if you ask me. But if past AC games are anything to go by, it’ll be a fun, stabby grudge match.

Retro chic: If you’re into retro game art or vintage games, check out this fantastic (high-tech!) feature over at The Verge, all about classic Atari box art.

The Game That “Won” Our Classic PC Games List (If It Had A Winner)

A couple of weeks ago, I headed up a massive, crowdsourced list of the best PC games of all time. This week, we added what will probably be our final update. I didn’t expect that the list become as massive as it did, nor did I expect that a couple of games would emerge as…

Sweet, State of Decay Is Coming To PC Tomorrow

It’s not quite the finished version of the game, but if PC gamers want to get in on the sprawling, weird, generally very enjoyable open-world zombie game State of Decay on their platform of choice, they can do so tomorrow. The game will be launching on Steam Early Access, meaning that for $20 you’ll get…

That’s a lot of classic PC games. We’ve added a fourth and probably final update to our crowdsourced directory of the Classic PC Games You Must Play. It’s an amazing, damn-near-definitive list—great globs of gooey nostalgia spread over hundreds of entries. Thanks to all who contributed.

Do Not Underestimate The Offensive Capabilities Of The Trombone

Well, this has got to be the best video game weapon I’ve seen in a while. Everyone loves Saints Row IV‘sDubstep Gun, but a more reserved, tweedpunk game like Sir, You Are Being Hunted needs a musical weapon a bit more… refined. Something traditional, with a hint of goofiness… something like a trombone! In this…

Tomb Raider‘s abandoned, darker ending: I knew the first of Lore‘s Tomb Raider “fast facts,” but did not know the other two. I’m intrigued by the idea of a Tomb Raider with a darker ending. I think I would’ve been okay with that.

Breaking Bad‘s Jesse Was Great On The Price is Right, Yo

I can’t… I don’t… I can’t even. Here’s a clip of Breaking Bad‘s breakout star Aaron Paul making a surprise appearance on The Price is Right waaay back in the year 2000. He was psyched to be there. Back in 2000, Paul was going by his actual last name, “Sturtevant.” He’s just so friggin excited…

The Best* GTA V Review Is Now A Catchy Song

There are plenty of serious, lengthy, thorough reviews of Grand Theft Auto V. But one review stands apart—probably because the person who wrote it didn’t even play the game. That person was critic, journalist and sometime Kotaku contributor Leigh Alexander, who wrote a sight-unseen “review” on her website satirizing some of the discussion and controversy…

Pay Attention, GTA V‘s Cell Phones Are Great

Grand Theft Auto V is an incredibly detailed game. How detailed? Well, it features three protagonists: Three men with different lives, different outlooks, different incomes… and different cell phones. Up top, we’ve got a shot of all three phones. At left there’s Michael, the retired bank robber with cash to burn. He owns an iFruit,…

Dance, and fight, for the crowd. Here’s the launch trailer for Foul Play, the theatrical brawler set in Victorian England. Owen liked what he saw of the game, and I gotta say, I’m interested in playing it, too. It’s out today on Xbox Live and Steam.

When GTA V Dreams Become All Too Real

If you play enough Grand Theft Auto, you might start to have dreams about it. Dreams that may turn out to be… all too real. This super-slick fan film from GrittyReboots imagines Grand Theft Auto V as a sort of twisted psychological thriller, complete with bloody ultraviolence and some unexpected narrative twists.

A New Riddick Game Is Coming To iOS

It’s no secret that Vin Diesel, the gravely-voiced star of Pitch Black and the new film Riddick, likes video games. So it makes sense that there have been two solid Riddick games already—and now we’re getting a new one. The game, which will be on the Apple App store for iOS devices on Friday September…

You Can Play GTA V As Breaking Bad‘s Heisenberg, Basically

When it comes to pop culture, this week people are mostly talking about two things: Breaking Bad and Grand Theft Auto V. So, like clockwork, someone has figured out how to make one of the characters in GTA V look just like Walter White from Breaking Bad. Of course they have. This comes to us…