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Forward-Looking Deals
The Moneysaver returns this weekend with a long look at things to come—such as PC games releasing in August that can be preordered now at a discount. For the here and now, Best Buy is running a combination sale, and Max Payne 3 is down to $40 on the consoles. Software • Best Buy has…
By Owen Good -
PlayStation All Stars Borrows Two Fighters from Street Fighter X Tekken
Billed as a big reveal tonight during the Evolution Championship Series, the next two fighters on the PlayStation All-Stars Battle Royale roster sound a little familiar. That’s because Heihachi Mishima and Toro Inoue were both in the lineup for Street Fighter X Tekken Still, both have long and noteworthy ties to the Sony brand. Heihachi…
By Owen Good -
Backhanded Box Quotes: Zeroes Aren’t Hard to Find
Welcome to “Backhanded Box Quotes,” a collection of super pissed-off user reviews from people just like you! Whoa, whoa, don’t take that personal. Spec Ops: The Line Released: June 26. Critic: hcookie (Metacritic) • “Incredible storyline. The Apocalypse Now for the next generation.” • “Gameplay is fantastic and a great story. “ • “Do not…
By Owen Good -
Piling On: Four Hundred Games I’ll Never Finish, and Counting
Tuesday afternoon I got the Internet connected in my new home. From Wednesday morning until Thursday afternoon, my PlayStation 3 was downloading every free title due to me as a PlayStation Plus subscriber. Since I moved, that console has literally spent more time acquiring games than I will likely spend playing them, or any game…
By Owen Good -
This $1,238,099.99 Video Game Auction Boggles the Mind [Update]
For a minimum bid starting at a more than a million dollars, a collector is offering his entire catalog of video games for Nintendo home systems from the NES/Famicom through the GameCube, plus the full lineup of every game released on any Sega system—all of it in the box with original instructions. Easily numbering more…
By Owen Good -
CultureTreat Yourself to a 1990s NBA Jam Session While We Await Word of 2K’s Major Announcement
2K Sports has told us to keep on the lookout for a huge announcement—biggest ever in the label’s history—and so far we haven’t heard anything. The reveal of details for the “Dynasty Edition” of NBA 2K13 was not it—that much was confirmed by a 2K Sports representative to me, earlier this week. Whatever they have…
By Owen Good -
Trollin’ Up the Score in NCAA Football‘s New Heisman Mode
Hand it to EA Sports, its marketing of the “Heisman Challenge” mode of NCAA Football knows exactly what you’ll do with it. Given the means to put an all time great on any college team, you’re more apt to pervert history than recreate it. Ads have shown Eddie George in Michigan’s winged helmet, Robert Griffin…
By Owen Good -
Culture
Frito-Lay’s Handling the Skylanders Freebie Like It’s 1980 or Something
Thirty-two years ago, Dad came home with what could only be described as the Holy Grail of my childhood—Boba Fett. Dad was the kind of guy who once called Kenner, under the auspices of a local newspaperman, to ask if they were making a Yoda action figure and when it would arrive. In secret, he…
By Owen Good -
EA Sports Practically Begging for South Alabama’s Forgiveness Now
Whoever screwed up—whether EA Sports or some paper-pusher at the NCAA—the University of South Alabama will not be in NCAA Football 13 during the school’s debut year in major college football. While USA is one of 124 schools, and its alumni base is comparatively much, much smaller, this kind of exclusion is terrible PR in…
By Owen Good -
Your Best Bets for Starting a No-Name Dynasty in NCAA 13‘s First Week
There are many reasons to pick up NCAA Football the day it releases, and the next edition arrives on Tuesday. The rosters, however, are not one of them. For hardcore players, the first week is often spent tinkering with secondary modes while waiting for the roster editing community to complete a full and accurate naming…
By Owen Good -
Three of a Kind: NBA 2K13 Sees a Winning Hand in Durant, Rose and Griffin
After a three-year arms race, mostly against themselves, NBA 2K‘s cover kingmakers seem to have de-escalated the situation while still communicating the greatest-ever reputation the game has worked so hard to earn. NBA 2K13, as was rumored, will feature Blake Griffin of the Los Angeles Clippers, Derrick Rose of the Chicago Bulls and Oklahoma City’s…
By Owen Good -
Programming Note
Ordinarily, I don’t like to announce when I’m skipping town for 10 days, as the meth-heads tend to come over and borrow shit. Permanently. However, as all of said shit is in that truck you see above, and I’m going to be in the cab, I don’t have much problem telling you I am on…
By Owen Good -
Culture
Action is His Reward
The adaptation of the new Amazing Spider-Man movie swings onto shelves this week, joined by the brooding military drama Spec Ops: The Line In downloadables, Skyrim‘s first expansion debuts on the Xbox 360. Monday • Penny Arcade’s On the Rain-Slick Precipice of Darkness 3 (360) • Dungeons & Dragons Online: Menace of the Underdark (PC)…
By Owen Good -
Xbox Live Takes Down Fez‘s Game-Breaking Patch
No sooner than they released a patch for Fez, the game’s creators discovered a game-breaking filesave corruption and warned everyone not to accept the title update. Microsoft has now taken the step of removing the patch altogether, meaning people who didn’t get the memo about the patch won’t find their game bricked by it. Polytron,…
By Owen Good -
Longtime Final Fantasy Producer Stepping Down, Health Reasons Cited
Hiromichi Tanaka, one of the earliest members of Square, with producer credits on Final Fantasy XI, Xenogears and Chrono Cross, will be leaving Final Fantasy XI and Square Enix altogether, reports Famitsu. An interview at Vanafest 2012 revealed that Tanaka has a “major illness” (this according to Tanaka himself) and that led him into his…
By Owen Good -
Packing Up the Pantheon
Tomorrow I’m hitting the road for a cross-country move, the sixth time I’ve driven the width of the nation since 2001. As I was boxing up my video games it occurred to me that some of them will have made five of those journeys by the time I reach North Carolina on Friday. All of…
By Owen Good -
An Advocate Who Believed in His Community, not Just the Games They Bought
Seth Killian’s last day at Capcom was Friday. Community managers and PR types become well known to our readers because they’re so frequently quoted, but their departures typically don’t rate a news item because it usually amounts to no more than insider talk. Seth, whose title was “Strategic Marketing Director, Online & Community” wasn’t really…
By Owen Good -
A Postmortem—or an Autopsy—on Steel Battalion‘s Failures
Kirk Hamilton, the Kotaku features editor, appeared with Anthony Carboni on revision3’s New Challenger to discuss the shambling pile of fail that is Steel Battalion: Heavy Armor, why scathing reviews differed so much from optimistic previews, and what this means for core games development on Kinect. The segment is about 10 minutes long. [YouTube]
By Owen Good
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