Luke Plunkett

Beautiful Nintendo Games That Deserve To Actually Exist

It’s May, which means it’s time for Japanese game store Meteor to hold its annual Famicase exhibition, an event where artists from all over the world come together to design fake Nintendo games. (Top design by Matthew Kenyon) One day, I’ll actually make the trip and see them in the flesh (there’s a cool little…

Not A Good Day’s Hunting, Then

Yuri Shwedoff is an artist who works for Game Insight, a studio based in Moscow. Don’t look at this stuff if you want to feel warm and fuzzy and happy like you’ve just lay down in a box of puppies beneath two rainbows. Do look at it if you want to see great art. You…

Project CARS Is A Lot Of Fun

I was going to review Project CARS. Ten minutes into staring at the car setup screen, googling terms that I—even as a guy with a casual interest in cars—had never heard of, I thought maybe that wasn’t the best idea. Instead, then, here are some thoughts on Project CARS It’s a pretty video game. You…

A Book On Building Armor

I got my copy of Foamsmith today, a book from Bill Doran that’s all about building armour and costumes out of, well, foam. It’s a good read! Mostly because it’s full of pictures and tips showing every step of the process, but also because of the puns. It’s $30, and you can grab it from…

Civ V’s 44-Player War Has Overrun The Planet, Prepares For Doomsday

After some technical woes, the enormous 44-player, AI-only Civ V battle has resumed, and the rivers of the world are running red. Here’s how everything stands as of turn 318, with a map showing not just Civ borders but the cities of the world as well: Image by SylonL & LacsiraxAriscal With over 300 turns…

Kojima’s PT Eradicated From PSN; Can’t Even Be Re-Downloaded

The mess at Konami keeps getting messier, and weirder, with the discovery today that PT—a playable teaser for an upcoming Silent Hill game that has since been cancelled—has been completely removed from Sony’s PSN servers, even for people who had downloaded it while it was still available. Normally, when a game, demo, beta, whatever is…

X-Wing, Crysis Devs Want To Make A New Space Shooter

The creators of STARFIGHTER INC say their game is “a hardcore team-based PvP multiplayer space shooter in the vein of X-Wing vs. Tie-Fighter”. And they should know. One of the co-founders of developer Impeller Studios, David Wessman, worked at Lucasarts’ on the X-Wing series, first as a mission designer, then as gameplay and story lead…

Crowfall is an upcoming MMO that I am not interested in because it’s an upcoming MMO. I do wish, however, that this sub-game thing where you design your own fantasy kingdom could be broken off and turned into its own game. It looks great!

Half-Life 3: Fake Concept Art For A Game That Will Never Exist

Concept artist Shane Baxley knows. He knows deep down, like your or I do, that Half-Life 3 is never coming. Only instead of letting it hurt him, he got to work drawing. Dreaming. Baxley—who just finished work on Black Ops III, and has also done stuff for Subaru, Disney and MLB—figured Dog was in need…

Witcher Cosplay Bends Genders

What is it with these Witcher cosplayers, being so relentlessly professional and amazing and stuff? This gender-bent Geralt (with some bonus shots as Ciri), by Aelirenn, is just incredible. That’s real chainmail, pieced together by a blacksmith, and as you’ll see in other pics below, the make-up work on the scars is also super impressive.

Track: Neon Beams | Artist: Take | Album: Only Mountains Kotaku Soundtrack is a selection of the stuff we’re listening to – and gaming to – at the moment

PC Game Delayed In Australia Because…All The Boxes Got Wet

Australia. Land of open spaces, beautiful beaches, dangerous animals and…storms that flood warehouses containing boxed copies of major upcoming video game releases. As Kotaku Australia reports, severe storms in Sydney recently caused flooding in some areas, and one of those areas happened to contain the warehouse where Namco Bandai has their PC copies of Project…

All Hail Hypnoskull

Weston Reid is a concept artist who has worked for companies like CCP and Tripwire. He’s currently helping out at Hi-Rez Studios on Smite. You can see more of Weston’s work at his ArtStation page To see the larger pics in all their glory (or, if they’re big enough, so you can save them as…

GTA V + Gravity Gun = Tomfoolery

Grand Theft Auto V, meet Half-Life 2. Half-Life 2, this is Grand Theft Auto V. You two should get along just fine This gravity gun mod for GTA V still needs a little work—it’s a bit twitchy in parts, especially with pedestrians—but what’s there is still pretty impressive. Hopefully it works as well with whales…

Make Your 3DS Region-Free, The Easy Way

One of the best things about the DS was the fact it was region-free. One of the worst things about the 3DS is the fact it isn’t. Or, at least, it wasn’t A simple workaround has been developed by DS superstar smeathat lets anyone regardless of where they’re at play any 3DS game, regardless of…

Doom’s Creators Wanted To Pay Modders…In 1995

Last month, Valve and Bethesda pissed a lot of people off with plans to charge for mods. One of the reasons both companies gave for the move was so that mod creators could get paid; a novel idea, but not a new one, since id Software had been planning something similar twenty years ago. In…

Floyd Mayweather’s Win Is Just As Disappointing In Punch-Out!

Floyd Mayweather—who is a coward—nevertheless won his big fight on the weekend. If you missed it, and need to be up to speed for workplace/lunchroom discussions on Monday morning, this recreation by Noober Goober Gaming of the match in Punch-Out! pretty much nails it.

Remember, Stick ‘Em With The Pointy End

Based in San Francisco, KJ Yu is Studio Art Director at Concept Art House, a team that specialises in all kinds of art for the video game business. CAH has worked on games for companies like Blizzard, Electronic Arts, Epic, Riot and Wizards of the Coast. You can see more of Yu’s work at his…

GTA Recreated Perfectly In Real Life

Recreating Grand Theft Auto V would have been too easy. Here, some mad fans use a drone (!) and some very skilled choreography to recreate the top-down Grand Theft Auto 2 instead. And it’s awesome Hats off to the actors and drivers, but I hope everyone bought the drone pilot a drink when it was…