Luke Plunkett

The Work Of A Capcom Concept Art Legend

Naru Omori is a veteran video game artist who has spent pretty much his entire career at Capcom, both in the company’s Japanese and North American studios. In that time, he’s contributed to series like Resident Evil, Dead Rising and Devil May Cry. For such an accomplished artist in the field, he actually hasa pretty…

Cute Dog Cosplays As Link, Professor Layton (!)

Reader PKGINGOhas a Shiba Inu, Menchi, and last year the pooch dressed as Link for Halloween. This year? Professor Layton. This is the coolest dog I have never met.

The Best Cosplay From London Film and Comic Con Winter 2014

Worth a watch, if only for the fact a pair went as Russell and Mr. Frederickson from Up.

VR Project Makes You Watch As A Man Is Beaten To Death

Based on actual footage recorded on mobile phones, Use of Force drops you into a crowd witnessing the last moments of Mexican migrant Anastasio Hernandez Rojas, who in 2010 was tasered and beaten to death by US border patrol agents. You can’t intervene, you can’t influence events, you’re just sent into virtual reality to watch…

New Civ Game Could Do With Some Old (And New!) Religions

The latest Civ title, Beyond Earth,is pretty good, even if parts of the game are a little more pedestrian than others. Maybe there’s a reason for that. Maybe all the game needed was a little more faith. MetagamingAtLasthas been poking through the game’s files, and found a few mentions of a religion mechanic. Religion and…

Far Cry 2, You Deserved Better

I saw this at a local department store on the weekend, and teared up, just a little. Not at the price – that’s a steal for such a classic – but for the company it was now forced to keep. Below is the full picture, in case your body can take even more sadness. Because…

Track: Oh My Darling Don’t Cry | Artist: Run The Jewels | Album: Run The Jewels 2 Kotaku Soundtrack is a selection of the stuff we’re listening to – and gaming to – at the moment.

Some Of The Best LEGO Uses More Than Just Bricks

We posta lot of LEGO stuff here on Kotaku, but most of it is variations of the garden variety, the kind you played with as a kid. We don’t post nearly as much of the more advanced Lego Technic stuff, which is a bit of a shame considering how good some of it is. Never…

DigiPen is a school famous for feeding fresh meat into the grinder that is the games industry. In this terrific story on Motherboard, Jagger Gravning takes a look at what the school’s massive gender gap (it’s 80% dudes) means for the student’s social lives.

Hack, Love, Relax, Drink Coffee, Whatever

Else Heartbreak is an upcoming adventure game for the PC Else Heartbreak is an adventure game set in the peculiar city of Dorisburg, a place where bits have replaced atoms. Follow the daily lives of its citizens, fall madly in love, and learn how to modify reality through programming. Those delicious visuals? Programming? Adventure gaming?…

You Probably Don’t Know Him, But You’ve Seen Maxx’s Art Everywhere

Maxx Burman is a matte painter and visual effects supervisor based out of Los Angeles, California. He works across pretty much every field, from movies to games to TV to commercials, and in just the past year has contributed to Destiny, Godzilla, The Walking Dead, Dark Souls 2 and Iron Man 3. What you’re seeing…

And YOU Thought It Was Hard To Get To Blizzcon

Getting tickets to Blizzard’s annual fan convention is hard enough when you’re an American who lives relatively nearby. So spare a thought for Andrey “Trolden” Nolden, one of the biggest Hearthstone personalities on YouTube, who can’t even get into the country, let alone the show. Nolden, who is Russian and applied for a visa to…

You Can Play Dark Souls II In First-Person, If You Want

Someone did it for the first Dark Souls on PC, so of course it was going to happen for Dark Souls II. What you’re seeing here is a hack that “tells the game’s camera to permanently stay zoomed in, giving you a first person perspective”. Technically, aside from a few little glitches, it works just…

Civilization: Beyond Earth: The Kotaku Review

Whatever you do, no matter how tempted you are by the sci-fi setting and purple landscape, don’t think of this as a brand new video game. As novel as Civilization: Beyond Earth sounds, as fresh as it looks, and in spite of some pretty big changes it makes in a few key areas, you’re much…

Where The Word “Cosplay” Actually Comes From

‘Cosplay did not suddenly appear,’ says Nobuyuki Takahashi. He should know: Takahashi helped invent the word itself. The following is an excerpt from Cosplay World, a new book written by Kotaku’s Brian Ashcraft and, well, me.It’s available now on Amazon and other online (and physical) book stores. In the 1970s, Japanese college students began dressing…

Track: Shotgun Boogie | Artist: Church Of Misery | Album: Houses of the Unholy Kotaku Soundtrack is a selection of the stuff we’re listening to – and gaming to – at the moment.

Damn straight this is Heavenly Sword cosplay. Rainer-T is Nariko, photo by Vaxzone

This counts as roundabout Julie Andrews cosplay in my books, which makes it awesome. It’s Matsu-Sotome as Shrek 2’s Fairy Godmother. Photo by Pugoffka-sama.

Bayonetta 2’s Concept Art Is Just The Best

Continuing herseries of posts outlining how the game’s characters were designed, Platinum’s Mari Shimazaki has shared more artwork from the development of the excellentBayonetta 2. While the images are great, it’s also worth heading toPlatinum’s site to read some of Mari’s thoughts behind the art, since that’s normally the kind of insight you have to…

In Your Dreams, There’s A Pokemon x Adventure Time Crossover

These Pokemon are the work of designer and illustrator Daniel Mackey. If your first thought is that they look like something Finn would take a swing at, you’re not alone, that’s exactly what I was thinking as well. I like how they take a series that’s primarily about cute animals, drawn from a Japanese perspective,…