Luke Plunkett

The Joker Will Not Abide a Zelda Gangnam Style parody

Seven days down. Eleven of the best pieces of cosplay in the world. One terrific Master Chief. One amazing Wonder Woman. One regrettable popular culture parody. Hats off to the lady in the Monster Hunter 3 outfit, too, for cosplaying as, well, someone from Monster Hunter 3. It’s always nice to see people skip the…

This is an Ada Wong Action Figure, Not a Doll, OK?

Next year, Hot Toys will be releasing a Resident Evil figure based on the assassin Ada Wong. Like other pieces from the company, when there’s that much skin on display the figures tend to look more like a little kid’s doll than a grown person’s expensive collectible, but also like other pieces from Hot Toys,…

Battlefield 3’s Best “Moments”, Captured on Film

Battlefield 3, unlike pretty much any other big multiplayer shooter on the market, is all about the moments when the scale of its maps and the variety of its killling machines come together to make something crazy happen. Or brutal. Or hilarious. Or all three at once. This machinima video, titled “Moments”, is all about…

The Mystery of XCOM’s Random Shooting Percentages Explained

Even though the game is nice enough to tell you the odds every time you squeeze the trigger in XCOM, there’s still an underlying feeling of “how the hell does this work”, or sometimes “WHY THE HELL DID THAT JUST MISS”. The answer lies in numbers, and those numbers were last week very helpfully explained…

New York, You’re About to Get Hurricaned

New York, Kotaku HQ included, is in for a wild start to the week when Hurricane Sandy touches down. Shame about the name, since we all know the real cause of hurricanes. Hurricane Warning [Brother Brain]

They Pirated His Game, But This Developer is Giving Tech Support Anyway

Jonatan Soderstrom, one of the duo behind the fantastic Hotline Miami, should be the last person on Earth giving advice to people pirating his games. So it’s weird/nice to see him actually being one of the first. On the game’s thread at torrent site The Pirate Bay (and spotted by PC Gamer), Soderstrom has dropped…

Forget Wallpaper, This Art Deserves a Good Frame and a Spot on Your Wall

It’s all just so…beautiful. Where most game artists have a palette that starts at “violent” and ends at “dark”, Theo Prins’ work here has a warmth and colour to it that’s as refreshing as it is a pleasure to look at. Theo works at Guild Wars 2 developers ArenaNet, on whose site you can read…

Hey Samsung, Don’t Drag Video Games Into Your Apple Pissing Match

In case you’ve been living under a rock for the past 12 months, the epic legal battle between Apple and Samsung has been one of the biggest tech stories of the year. It’s a bitter fued, with billions at stake, so it’s sad to see poor little ol’ video games dragged into the fight in…

Square Enix is Spying on You (But It’s To Make Better Games)

When you blindly click “agree” on Square Enix’s online terms & conditions, you probably didn’t notice that you’re saying you agree to allow the publisher to record the way you play a game. While this sounds nefarious, it’s actually part of an operation run from an office in London—and detailed in this MCV report—whose job…

We Are One Step (And Short Jump) Closer To Real Metal Gears

Terrifying robot watch update: in the video above, a Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) robot called “Pet-Proto” is locked in a corridor and presented with two obstacles. The first is a step it must climb onto. The second is a gap it must inch across. It’s like a video game tutorial. Only instead of…

16 Years Later, Super Mario 64 Gets Co-op

Just when you thought one of the world’s greatest ever video games couldn’t get more perfect, along comes modder Skelux to pile more icing on top of the cake. Super Mario 64, for 16 years a singleplayer adventure (well, DS version excepted), has been modified to include a co-op mode. You can see it in…

Paris, You Don’t Look so Good…

Paris, you used to be the city of romance, and beauty! Then Remember Me’s brutally dystopian sci-fi future came along and ruined everything. This piece is by Paul Chadeisson, who we’ve featured on Kotaku previously. Bonus shots below. Passage parisien [Paul Chadeisson]

Watch Nine Minutes of the Mass Effect Anime, Right Here

It’s totally understandable to be wary of the upcoming Mass Effect anime. The track record for these kind of adaptations is…spotty at best. So it’s awful nice of FUNimation to share this nine-minute clip, giving us an extended look at how the flick is shaping up. It’s…well, it’s not as bad as I thought it…

Portal’s Still Alive, Performed Live On…CBS News

Not a headline you were probably expecting to see in 2012, since the song wore out its welcome just as 2008 was coming around, but the world is an amazing place. Jonathan Coulton performs “Still Alive” [CBS]

Fighting game site Shoryuken has used funds from livestreamed matches to pay for two $10,000 college scholarships

One Child’s Dream Day Inside Nintendo’s Japanese Headquarters

Nintendo is notoriously guarded when it comes to corporate visits. While companies like Namco Bandai and Sony are only too happy to throw open their studio doors to the press, getting inside Nintendo’s Kyoto headquarters when you don’t work there is almost impossible Oh, unless you’re Gareth Bailey, a British kid who in 1994 won…

New Castlevania Web Series Looks Pretty Good For Something “Fan Made”

A new Castlevania web series debuted yesterday on Start, IGN’s video channel. It’s had a bit of money put behind it, and while I don’t really dig Castlevania, thought that for what it was, it was OK. You can check it out above. Castlevania: Hymn of Blood [Live-Action Fan Series] – Episode 1 [YouTube]

XCOM Could Have Let The Aliens Win

Did you like that XCOM art we posted yesterday? Well, one of the artists behind it was Piero Macgowan, and tonight we’re going to taking a closer look at his work. Mexican-born Macgowan works at Civilization and (duh) XCOM studio Firaxis as a Senior Concept Artist, which means in addition to the alien-fighting pics you’ll…

Finally, a Hobbit Gets Set on Fire

Following on from the terrific “pissed off Cave Troll” video, Brotherhood Workshop have released a second LEGO / Lord of the Rings clip which is just as good. This time Halloween descends on the Shire, and while the Hobbits are right into the spirit of things, Aragorn could do with lightening up a little. LEGO…

If Sega Made a Smash Bros. Game, I Would Die a Happy Man

A criticism levelled at Sony’s upcoming PlayStation All-Stars Battle Royale (aside from the name) is the fact that the brand is lacking in the star power of Nintendo’s Smash Bros. series. Which it is, no question. Nobody can match Nintendo for the number of famous mascots it has under its wing. But if one company…