Kirk Hamilton

I Had To Play Animal Crossing ‘Wrong’ To Get It Right

For a good long while, I couldn’t get into Animal Crossing: New Leaf Oh, I got it, sure. I saw the appeal. I watched as almost every single person in my Twitter feed freaked right the hell out about the game, chronicling their every move, joking about crushing on Reese and trash-taking during the first…

Up for a lengthy, design-oriented review of The Last of Us? Game designer and sometime Kotaku contributor Tim Rogers has got you covered, with a terrific, meaty write-up over at ActionButton.net

The Lannisters Host The World’s Most Awkward Dinner Party

Those Lannisters. When they’re not scheming to take over Westeros, they have a hard time being comfortable around one another. Though they never have this hard a time. This video, edited together from that amazing late season-three small council meeting and posted by Towerofthehand, cracked me up. I like the part where Varys nods. For…

Music fans rejoice: Vaunted composer/songwriter Jim Guthrie has got his own Humble Bundle. That means a ton of his various albums and video-game soundtracks are on sale for whatever you want to pay, from the amazing Sworcery soundtrack to his backing tracks from Indie Game: The Movie. Beat the average and you’ll also get a…

Assassin’s Creed IV Might Finally Avoid An Annoying Ending

Assassin’s Creed games are known for a lot of things: Historical shenanigans, stabbing, inconsistent controls, carts of hay. They’re also known for having unsatisfying, bewildering, even downright annoying endings. Today, Assassin’s Creed IV lead writer Darby McDevitt took to Twitter to answer fan questions via the official Assassin’s Creed Twitter account. He was very sure…

Here’s a new gameplay trailer for Take on Mars, a nifty-looking game in which you control a Mars rover. The game looks neat, despite a notable lack of aliens and/or Arnold Schwarzenegger. You can see a full E3 demo of the game here. (via RPS)

Capcom Resurrects Long-Dead Strider Series

Today at Comic-Con, Capcom announced a new entry in their long-dormant Strider series. They’ve got more information up at the Capcom blog: The game will just be called Strider and is being developed by Double Helix, the studio behind Silent Hill Homecoming and Battleship. Capcom describes the game’s environments as vast and interconnected, and notes…

Bastion Makers Tell Fans To Go Ahead And Stream Their Games

Supergiant Games, makers of Bastion and the upcoming Transistor, would like you to know that they’re totally cool with you streaming “Let’s Play” videos of their games. The concept of the Let’s Play has come under a bit of fire lately, as Nintendo began forcing ads onto popular Let’s Plays of their classic games, though…

As revealed at today’s Comic-Con panel, Batman’s slither-y adversary Copperhead will be a woman in the upcoming game Batman: Arkham Origins. Here’s a new reveal trailer, in which she shows The Bat what for.

There’s A Pirate Ship Firing Cannons At Comic-Con

Ubisoft has brought a pirate ship to Comic-Con. It’s probably a promotional stunt for their upcoming pirate game Assassin’s Creed IV, but who knows? Maybe it’s just because they agree that pirate ships are cool. Also cool? Cannons. As they demonstrated, by firing cannons: Touchdown! Whooyeah! Comic-on! Boom, baby! There are some other cool shots…

8-Bit G.I. Joe Movie Almost Surely Better Than Actual G.I. Joe Movie

It may not be Super Time Force, but I’d totally play this 8-bit version of this year’s G.I. Joe: Retaliation, as imagined by CineFix (Via Laughing Squid)

Indie Game: The Movie To Receive Downloadable Expansion Pack

It seems appropriate that the first major documentary about video-game makers should get a downloadable expansion, doesn’t it? And so it shall be: Indie Game: The Movie will be getting a new “Special Edition” on July 24 that will contain all manner of short-film and commentary, as well as epilogues for the stories contained in…

This Game Series Came A Long Way In Just Two Short Years

Ah, the early 2000s. It was a time of great upheaval and revolution, particularly for PC graphics. Almost all at once, game designers could assume players had access to much more powerful 3D rendering technology, and game characters went from looking like weird, half-animated finger puppets to less-weird, more fully-animated finger puppets with faces Case…

We’re On The Ground At San Diego Comic-Con

Our own Mike Fahey is on the ground at Comic-Con this week. Through Friday, he’ll be bringing you all the best toys, games, comics and costumery the San Diego convention center has to offer. For now, though, he brings you this picture.

Play As A Spy In Your Very Own Interactive Radio-Drama

Now here’s an idea I’m glad someone had: An iPhone game where you’re the star of a branching interactive spy radio-drama, complete with sound effects and voice acting. That’s the idea behind Codename Cygnus, an in-development game from Reactive Studios that’ll let players act out the part of the main character in an episodic spy…

Michel Ancel Sure Is Saying Some Stuff About Beyond Good & Evil 2

Okay, okay. This is one of those times where there’s kinda no real “news,” and yet it’s still worth mentioning because, well, Beyond Good & Evil 2 The sequel to the beloved 2003 action-adventure game has been one of this generation’s great pieces of vaporware. The series has been missing in action for a decade,…

The time-traveling Contra-like Super Time Force is looking fun and chaotic as always. Here’s a new gameplay trailer that gives a sense of how the looping, time-hopping gunplay will work. “Jean Rambois,” indeed.

If you’ve got a PC and a few free minutes, check out the lovely music game Shrug Song. It’s a free appetizer for a bigger, in-development adventure game called Shrug Island, with standout art from Alina Constantin. You can learn more at the game’s website. (Via Indie Statik/RPS)

No One Lives Forever Had TWO Of Gaming’s Best Surprise Villains

We’ve already established that the 2000 spy game No One Lives Forever starred gaming’s great unsung heroine. But as I finished it last weekend, I was struck anew by the excellent bad-guy fakeouts and surprise reveals at the end. Spoilers, if you care, coming up for the entire ending of the first No One Lives…

Neither of the two Pacific Rim games were much to write home about. But how could someone make a good Pacific Rim game? Reader Temperance10 sounds off on Kinja with a bunch of ideas, from co-op play to Kinect. Because of course, Kinect.