Luke Plunkett

Oculus Rift: From Rags To Riches

A timely reminder: This Kickstarter, asking for a measly $250,000, was just two years ago. My, how times (and bank balances) change

Facebook Buys Oculus Rift For $2 Billion

Facebook has just announced that it’s buying Oculus Rift for $2 billion. Seriously. “Mobile is the platform of today, and now we’re also getting ready for the platforms of tomorrow,” Facebook founder and CEO Mark Zuckerberg says. “Oculus has the chance to create the most social platform ever, and change the way we work, play…

Johnny Santos flickin’ like only Gambit can.

I Love It When A Game Gets Brave With History

I can’t believe no other game had already taken the name Betrayer. I’m also glad that Betrayer isn’t set in space, a fantasy kingdom or a rotting near-future metropolis. It’s instead set in the earliest days of the English colonization of North America, a period very few games – aside from the obvious – have…

Some People Call Him The Space Cowboy

Jake Gumbleton is a concept artist who has worked for companies like Activision, Disney and Ubisoft. You can see more of Jake’s art at his personal site 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 in the…

Oculus Rift Lets You Visit The…Supermarket

Hahaha, and you thought our glorious virtual reality future was going to be just for games. Nope. It’s going to be used to sell you crap as well. This is a pitch for British supermarket giant Tesco, exploring how the Oculus Rift can be used to “change consumer behaviour” and “communicate your brand’s message”. If…

Human Family Transformed Into Mario, Luigi & Friends

The Smith sisters, aka Twiznik cosplay, attended this year’s Anime Matsuri in Houston in Mario costumes. As did their dad. And four younger brothers. That’s awesome, but even more impressive than the final result is seeing the video below of them transforming from human beings into residents of the Mushroom Kingdom via some elaborate facial…

PS3 & Xbox 360 Emulation Is Coming, Whether You Like It Or Not

I have two retail copies of Wind Waker for two Nintendo platforms in my house, but most times, whenever I get the urge to play it, I play it on PC via emulation. Such is the convenience, and added visual firepower, of the personal computer. Yes, the practice is a haven for people playing games…

You Can Cosplay In Secret, Wearing Regular Clothes

Regardless of the personality of the person wearing the outfit, cosplay is an incredibly extroverted pastime by virtue of what it is: a human being walking around dressed as a make-believe character, usually from a fantasy or science-fiction universe. That being the case, it’s certainly not for everyone. At least not all of the time.…

Futurama Ship Looks Like CGI, Is Actually Real Model

Harrison Krix is a guy who we normally post about for his props work, recreating famous video game weapons, but this piece is a little different. He’s recreated the Planet Express ship from Futurama. And has done it in such excruciating detail that the pictures of the final product look more like a CG render…

League of Legends pool party. Photo by Vaxzone, cosplayers listed exhausitvely here

You Can’t Kill Like BioShock, But You Can Shop Like BioShock

The two “real” bottles of BioShock Infinite vigor we posted about last year were nice, but you know what, these two might be even nicer. Their packaging design was the work of Zoe Brookes, formerly of Irrational Games. That Murder of Crows box looks like the swishest bottle of Scotch on Earth…if, you know, it…

New Infamous Game Is Secretly Pretty Funny

Cute, Infamous. Very cute. If you haven’t seen, the rest of the game is pretty great too. If you end up picking it up, be sure to keep an eye on some other signs as well (click “expand” on the one below to read the fine print). inFAMOUS in case of emergency… [Reddit, via Gamefreaks]

Future Batman Glows In The Dark (And Is Really Old)

A community site for game artists is holding their annual fan art challenge for Comic-Con, which means everyone gets to take a break from drawing space marines and draw some superheroes instead. Some of these images are just recreating the existing look/style of a character, while others are getting a little more imaginative. Satoshi Arakawa’s…

The 3DS So Rare Nintendo Only Made One Of Them

Every year, a Pokemon tournament is held in Japan to decide the nation’s best schoolboy player. It’s a competition worth entering, because the prize is one for the ages. The prize for the winner of the latest tournament is this Mega Charizard 3DS XL, which is so rare because it comes with the competition winner’s…

16 Hours Of Gaming + Too Much Energy Drinks = Kidney Failure, Coma

“I was playing Call of Duty”, Norwegian teenager Henrik Eide Dahl told The Local. “Then everything went dark and I passed out.” Dahl, 14, had been playing the shooter on his school’s LAN with friends when, taking a break in the cafeteria, he collapsed. Rushed to hospital, his kidneys failed and he slipped into a…

Classic PC Series Reinvented With Female Lead

I saw a game turn up on Steam today called Heroine’s Quest. That’s funny, I thought, that sounds a lot like Hero’s Quest. Only with a female main character instead of a male. Turns out that’s exactly what it is. Heroine’s Quest is about as perfect a tribute to Sierra’s classic Quest for Glory series…

No Guns, Just Be An Old Dude Walkin’ Around, Exploring Stuff

Well, here’s a welcome change of pace. Spirit is, creator Holden Boyles tells Kotaku, “simply about the experience of walking peacefully through a magical ancient world, as you control an old man who has retired to a remote mountain village and just wants to explore his surroundings.” The game’s got a playable demo you can…

The End Of The World Doesn’t Have To Be Ugly

The Last Of Us’ singleplayer DLC, Left Behind, continued the main game’s legacy of taking place in some beautiful locations. Well, relative to the fact everyone’s dead and everthing’s busted, at least. One of the people to thank for that is artist John Sweeney, whose work on the main game we featured last year. Here…

C.O.S.P.L.A.Y. POWER

Sorry for that headline. I get terrible flashbacks, you see… This was taken at last week’s All-Con. Photographer is Neither Noir, the turtles are Turtle Power Entertainment, Casey Jones is Zander Yurami and Shredder, as he should be, is a mystery.