Luke Plunkett

If BioShock’s Rapture Was An Extreme Tourism Destination…

French artist Laure-Marie Torre has come up with just about the best BioShock-related idea I’ve ever seen. She’s imagined that Rapture still exists, but that alongside the crazies, there are still regular folks down there alive as well. Instead of fighting over the place and killing everybody, she figured, wouldn’t they instead just want to…

Batman Is Teaching The US Army Safety (Hilariously)

Somehow, the US Army is getting away with these official, amazing training videos for personnel serving on active duty in Afghanistan. Bagram Batman is ever vigilant for violations of protocol, and when he sees somebody screwing around, he is a man with little time for excuses. Bagram Batman Educates Soldiers in Series of U.S. Army…

The Works Of NCSoft Artist Park Jong Won

Park Jong Won is a Korean concept artist who currently works for NCSoft, the MMO giant behind games like Lineage, Aion and Guild Wars. The art you’ll see below are my favourite pieces from his portfolio, because to me, they’re the covers to books I’ve never read, but if I saw them staring back at…

Nintendo’s Wii U Advertising Reaches For The Panic Button

These are so terrible I’d tell you not to watch them, but screw it, if I had to, you have to as well. If time travel is invented anytime soon, giving us the chance to atone for past mistakes, I like to think the first person in line will be the man who signed off…

Screw Maps, Let’s Play An RTS Across An Entire Planet

Because it’s being made by guys who made Supreme Commander and Total Annihilation, you expect a sense of scale from upcoming RTS Planetary Annihilation. And that’s exactly what we’re getting here in this very first look at gameplay from the Kickstarter success story. Who needs levels or maps when you can get an entire planet…

Here’s Skyrim Running On The Oculus Rift VR Headset

Reader Chris has one of the early development releases of the Oculus Rift virtual reality headset. He has done what the people want, and recorded himself playing Skyrim on the thing. I’m trying to think of a better way to spend a rainy day, and I’m finding it hard. Skyrim on Oculus Rift [YouTube]

World of Tanks Has Been Hacked, Hide Yo’ Wife, Hide Yo’ Passwords

User accounts for World of Tanks, one of the biggest games in the world, have been comprised following what the game’s publisher calls a “security incident”. While stating “no financial information was accessed“, operators Wargaming does say “some password hashes and email addresses may have been affected by the compromise”, and as a result is…

The remixed Fez soundtrack is now out. Get it here. At $5, you’d be crazy not to, especially since it features tracks by the composers behind games like Minecraft, Mirror’s Edge and…Fez.

A Terrific Week In Cosplay Pays Tribute To Games Both Old And New

‘Twas a strange week in cosplay. We’ve got your expected tributes, yeah, like Mass Effect. But I can’t say I’ve ever seen someone from the West dress up as a character from Zangeki no Reginleiv, a Wii RPG that was never released outside of Japan. Also featuring this week is some Watch Dogs cosplay, always…

What Final Fantasy VII Would Look Like If It Was Made In France.

TBT: The Black Tower is an unashamed tribute to the late-1990s, when Final Fantasy games weren’t afraid to toss polygonal characters on static backgrounds and your text backgrounds were a very rich blue Imagine Final Fantasy VII, then – or, on second look, maybe Final Fantasy VIII – made for the PC and developed in…

Someone Now Owns Homeworld. But Who?

Last week, the rights to Homeworld, a beloved old RTS series by Relic, went under the hammer as part of an auction following the closure of former publisher THQ. A winner was found. They now have the opportunity to create new entries in a series that’s lain dormant for a decade. It’s just…we don’t know…

Terrible Video Game Gets A “Sequel”, And Not Everyone’s Happy About It

Orion: Dino Beatdown was, according to almost every critic who played it, one of the worst video games of 2012. What sounded great on paper – using fancy weapons to fight waves of giant dinosaurs with your friends – collapsed into a broken mess of a thing that left a lot of paying customers very…

Razer Accidentally Offers 90% Discount Coupon, Will Honor Most Purchases

Earlier this week, a coupon “generated by a third party to test our shopping cart” was made available on peripheral company Razer’s UK store. That coupon offered 90% off products at the store. As you can guess, people swooped on it. Because the coupon was – according to Razer USA boss Min-Liang Tan – “NOT…

The Girl Scouts Might Be Getting A Gaming Badge As Well

Only a month after the Boy Scouts brought in a badge for “Games Design”, the Girl Scouts are offering one for “Games Development”. The difference is more than semantics; the guys only have to design a game.The girls, well, they’ll have to use software and actually make one. The badge is currently only available for…

A new version of Modern Combat has been released. It’s a mod that turns WW2 Company of Heroes into 2013 Company of Heroes. It’s really, really good. Get it here

Building You A Retro Adventure, One Level (And Awesome Song) At A Time

This is Rogue Legacy, a game which looks tough as nails, but seems to have a heart of gold. Billed not as rogue-like (which are normally brutal) but as a rogue-lite (there’s still permadeath, but “with each passing your lineage grows and becomes stronger”), it looks great. And sounds great too, courtesy of a soundtrack…

A New Trailer For The Best Star Wars Movie George Lucas Never Made

Star Wars Uncut, the fan-made project that saw scenes from Episode IV recreated however the hell people wanted to then smooshed into a complete film, is back with a sequel. Empire Strikes Back Uncut isn’t done yet, but the trailer above shows good progress is being made. Very good progress. Empire Strikes Back Uncut [Site,…

This League of Legends Artist’s Work Is A…Riot (I’m So Sorry)

Katie De Sousa is a concept artist who currently works at League of Legends developers Riot Games. She’s been there since 2012, and has been responsible for many of the awesome splash images you see for the game’s heroes. She also worked on the very pretty indie game Paper Moon You can see more of…

Dammit, Mario, Can’t You Let Luigi Have His Moment Of Glory?

Japan is getting a very pretty Luigi 3DS XL handheld later this year. It’s got little green Luigis all over it, and a special logo for his 30th anniversary, riffing on the Super Mario Bros. 25th anniversary logo we saw a few years back. But wait, what’s that? In the top-right corner, as spotted by…

A Museum That Looks Like Every First-Person Shooter Game Ever Made

This “cultural centre” in Istanbul is called Sintralİstanbul. It was first opened in 1914 as the city’s sole electric power plant, before its current life as Turkey’s Museum of Energy. I share these photos by a pair of travellers here, and not on my personal travel blog nomorecleanundies.tumblr.com, because just look at these pictures By…