Luke Plunkett

Forever Alone

For all its grandeur and humour, Civilization V can also be strangely tragic at times.

Future Cigarettes Are Immune To Rain, Killer Robots

Freelance artist Daniel Joustra has worked for companies like Guerilla, developers of the Killzone series. You can see more of Daniel’s work at his personal site and ArtStation page To see the larger pics in all their glory (or, if they’re big enough, so you can save them as wallpaper), click on the “expand” button…

“There’s no mention of benefits or wages; nothing about crunch time, that specter haunting the industry; nothing about the sort of material, tangible things that make a difference in how one is employed”. This Paste story on a Blizzard recruitment video says a lot about the games industry in general.

Had A Rough Day? Here’s A Cosplaying Corgi

Everyone, meet Kiba, the cosplaying corgi. Kiba, this is everyone. When not cosplaying, Kiba works as a therapy dog. And also, I’m assuming, a stealer and breaker of hearts. Kiba The Cosplaying Corgi [Facebook, via Cosplay Blog]

Steam Update Saves Precious Mouse-Clicks During Installation

Because so few people ever read all of the notes in a Steam changelog, here’s a neat new feature a lot of people missed in a recent update: you can now opt to install multiple games at once. So next time you binge during a sale, or just want to reinstall a bunch of old…

Forget Everything You Know About Turn-Based Games

Turn-based games are supposed to be about time. Patience. Giving the player the luxury – and comfort – of taking as long as they want to make sure they get their moves just right. Invisible Inc is a turn-based game, but it takes that decades-old assumption and just throws it out the window. Made by…

The World’s Most Expensive Comic Sold For Over $3 Million

A copy of the first issue of Action Comics, released in June 1938, sold this week at auction for $3,207,852.00. Not bad considering it sold for $0.10 when first released. If you’ve never seen or heard of this comic before, and are wondering what the fuss would be, it’s the one where Superman makes his…

Microsoft Digs Up The Corpse Of Age Of Empires

And the grave wasn’t even cold yet! I figured last month that it was “tough seeing where Microsoft will find the will (or developers) to try making another game using the [Age of Empires] brand any time soon”. Silly me, limiting my considerations to actual Age of Empires games. I totally overlooked the potential for…

Why Amazon Bought Twitch

Track: Melody | Artist: Boris | Album: Noise Kotaku Soundtrack is a selection of the stuff we’re listening to – and gaming to – at the moment.

Because Animal Crossing Wasn’t Monstrous Enough, It Seems

Animal Crossing may be a town of horrors, but they are veiled horrors, visible only to those who already know the pain of things like a mortgage. 24 Killers, on the other hand, wears its horrors on its chest. The work of developer Todd Luke, he describes it as “a weird monster life sim with…

Sick Of Dancing, Disney’s Princesses Are Ready For Battle

Photographer William Phan took these shots of Disney’s Battle Princesses at Anime Revolution in Vancouver over the weekend. It’s an idea I feel like I’ve seen before, maybe even with cosplay, but never executed this well. Snow White’s armour design is amazing, while the coat of arms on Cinderella’s shield is a nice touch. The…

My. God. Game. Blouses. (cosplayer is Scumbag Dark Link) Via @BlackCosplayers. Get More: Comedy Central,Funny Videos,Funny TV Shows

Mario & Luigi’s Voice Actor Is A Pretty Funny Guy

Charles Martinet, the voice actor behind Mario, Luigi and Wario, has an Instagram account. And it’s fantastic Over the past week, Martinet has been taking little figures of “his” characters on his travels through Chile, creating sketches like the ones below. Note to Nintendo/Martinet: I would watch an entire series of this. [via Mistle @…

Video Games, 2014

Look, I don’t wanna tell people how to do their jobs, but if I had to choose one part of that sentence to put in ALL CAPS, I’d have gone with something else. Like EXCLUSIVE PANTS. [Image by @LookItsX]

Online Attacks Cripple Sony’s PSN, League Of Legends, Blizzard Games

Three of the biggest gaming services on the planet have been down for parts of the weekend, with DDoS attacks hitting the servers of the PlayStation Network, Riot’s League of Legends and Blizzard’s Battle.net (affecting titles such as World of Warcraft and Hearthstone). A DDoS (distributed denial-of-service) attack is when bots are used to flood…

Keep The Space Games Coming, World, Keep The Space Games Coming

Paradox, you had me at “single-player, real-time strategy title that puts the player in command of a fleet”. Ancient Space is being developed by Creative Forge games, and looks just like the kind of game I would be complaining that nobody is making except, well, someone is making this one. And yes, the narrator of…

Hope You’ve Got Room For More Turn-Based Strategy, PC Gamers

Halfway is a turn-based strategy game set on a huge starship crawling with zombies. Think XCOM, with a dash of Dead Space, only with gorgeous 16-bit-inspired visuals. I grabbed it earlier today and can’t stop playing. Unlike a more traditional turn-based game, this isn’t just a straight tactical exercise; in between combat engagements you and…

Next-Gen Lighting Is Pushing The Limits Of Realism

Resolution and polygons aren’t the only things behind increasingly lifelike 3D worlds. Lighting plays a huge part as well. French artist koolahas shared some truly extraordinary images and footage of his work in Unreal Engine 4, with particular emphasis on the work he’s done with things like lamps and sunlight. If you need some reference…

Tim Tam Slams: The Snacktaku Review

WARNING: Viewers are advised the following clip contains footage of a grown man licking his fingers a lot. Note that I mention s’mores, but mostly in the context of chocolate-y snacks that have melty bits, not that they’re somehow identical or anything (eat one after the other and they’re pretty different). UPDATE: Snacktaku EIC Michael…