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Minecraft on Xbox 360 Promises ‘Innovative New Crafting Interface’
You’ve seen Minecraft‘s Xbox 360 trailer, now see a dozen of its screenshots. Two of them showcase what will be “an innovative new crafting interface,” according to a fact sheet from Microsoft. “A streamlined interface opens at the press of a button, and players can choose from several categories of items to create,” says the…
By Owen Good -
Better Red than Dead in Cosmonauts
There was this old hippie at a newspaper I once worked for, a guy who took a great interest in any New York Times obituary of a prominent Russian. He was your basic-as-bread conspiracy theorist, convinced the Soviets put a human—well, a human body, anyway—on the dark side of the moon. “They couldn’t accept not…
By Owen Good -
Hori’s Bringing an Ultimate Marvel vs. Capcom Fight Stick, Don’t Worry
Though the game may have released this week, the official fight stick for Ultimate Marvel vs. Capcom isn’t too far behind, says stickmaker Hori. It reuses some, eh, old MvC art and clocks in at $160, but hey, it’s official, right? It’ll be in stock sometime this month. A BlazBlue: Continuum Shift Extend stick also…
By Owen Good -
GameStop Blames Poor Sales on Broke Customers Reneging on Preorders
Despite the onslaught of desirable, highly anticipated titles, week after week this fall, GameStop’s sales are “lower than expected,” the dominant games retailer told investors, simply because there were too many good games out there for customers to buy, especially in a poor economy. “The quarter presented some challenges in topline, due to a cash-strapped…
By Owen Good -
Torchlight II Asks, Don’t You Have Enough Games to Play This Year?
Give it up for Runic Games. Asked to account for why its repeatedly delayed Torchlight II isn’t going to release this year, the studio’s president just pointed at the other entrees on the holiday gaming buffet and said, hey, with all this great stuff here, you can wait, right? “You’re all playing Skyrim right now…
By Owen Good -
Modern Warfare 3 Developer Pleads for Better Metascores, Discovers That’s a Stupid Idea
Why someone from Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 3 developer Sledgehammer would consider its fan-voted Metacritic score worth a get-out-the-vote tweet is utterly beyond me. It is by far the most polarizing title among gaming’s annual releases, so a user score of 1.7 is probably to be expected, given how much gaming’s snobs cognoscenti despise…
By Owen Good -
See Barry Allen Become The Flash in DC Universe Online‘s Next Extension
Tour Central City, the home turf of The Flash, and go back in time to the moment Barry Allen became the Scarlet Speedster with “Lightning Strikes,” the second downloadable content extension for DC Universe Online. The package also delivers new Electricity Powers, the game’s eighth power set, for your character creation/re-spec. “Lightning Strikes” does not…
By Owen Good -
Guillermo del Toro Says His Video Game is Still ‘Two-and-a-Half or Three Years Away’
Director Guillermo del Toro vows that production on his video game trilogy inSane continues apace even with the attention required for Pacific Rim, his next big cinematic effort. “Up until the end of pre-production on Pacific Rim, we were still going up to Chicago, to Champaign, Illinois, to work with the developer,” Del Toro tells…
By Owen Good -
WWE 12 Delivers Fanfare for the Macho Man
Randy “Macho Man” Savage died in a car wreck in May, two months after ending an estrangement with the WWE/F by appearing in THQ’s WWE Superstars. Savage, one of the greatest superstars in professional wrestling history, will also appear in the series’ flagship video game WWE 12 when it releases its Legends stable of wrestlers…
By Owen Good -
Jilted Boyfriend Hocks Engagement Ring for Halo Armor
When his fiancée suddenly dumped him, Eric Smith of Geekadelphia decided that simply selling off the engagement ring he bought her wasn’t good enough. The cash from that transaction also had to be expurgated as well. Thus Smith used it to acquire a suit of badass Spartan MJOLNIR armor to shield his heart from the…
By Owen Good -
Black Ops Finally Surrenders Top Slot on Xbox Live—to Modern Warfare 3
Fending off challenges from Gears of War 3 and Battlefield 3 during their launch weeks, Call of Duty: Black Ops at last met its match this past week—in its successor, Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 3 Xbox Live’s Major Nelson reports Modern Warfare 3 was the console service’s most popular game for the past week,…
By Owen Good -
Reviews
Super Mario 3D Land: The Kotaku Review
When resourceful fans discovered an exploit showing how to rack up hundreds of extra lives in Super Mario 3DS, some laughed, thinking the game they had seen was too simple for that to be necessary. Let me assure you: Those lives will come in handy—when you least expect it. The easiest trope in the save-the-princess…
By Owen Good -
Kids Still Play Outside After All
Two kids enjoy playing their stickered-up DSes outside on a sunny day in Japan. (Image by Miki Yoshihito; seen via Tiny Cartridge) Resistance Site, Forums are Down; Hacking Alleged Visitors to MyResistance.net, the official site for the Resistance franchise of PS3 games, say the site was serving up malware yesterday. One of them alerted Insomniac…
By Owen Good -
EA Smashes Battlefield‘s Banhammer With Relish
Possibly in response to the XP exploit discovered last week, Electronic Arts has touted the hundreds of summary bannings it has handed out in Battlefield 3 and said it has nooooo problem handing out more. You want to boost for XP repairing an EOD robot, you little shits? I’ve got your ass for the rest…
By Owen Good -
Culture
Living by a New Creed
Assassin’s Creed: Revelations headlines the final big blowout week of releases for video games in the pre-holiday runup. Other notable titles this week: Super Mario 3D Land, out today; the Halo: Anniversary HD re-release; new entries in the Need for Speed and Rayman franchises; Ultimate Marvel vs. Capcom and the romping good-time Saints Row: The…
By Owen Good -
After Wrapping Arkham City Rocksteady Went to Stately Wayne Manor and Played With the Bat-Signal
Wrapping up work on their epic Batman: Arkham City, the developers at U.K.-based Rocksteady Studios set out to party hardy. First up was a 250-lap go-kart race. Then they went to Wayne Manor’s real-life stand-in and turned on the Bat-Signal. That estate is Wollaton Hall in Nottingham, which is where the Wayne Manor scenes were…
By Owen Good -
The Stages of Griefing
Each week throws off several new video game lists ranging from the humorous to the trivial. What’s better? A list of those. Here’s a roundup of the rundowns out there. • The 13 Greatest Moments in Video Game Griefing History [Ranker] More or less covers all the ways you sap, sabotage and undermine your teammates…
By Owen Good -
Pimp Out Team Fortress 2 with some Saints Row Preorder Bling
If you’d like a free insane costume for the Heavy in Team Fortress 2, you have about two days to pick it up. It also helps if you want Saints Row: The Third on PC, as that’s what you have to preorder to grab it. The game, which is $49.99 comes with three pieces of…
By Owen Good -
Q*Bert Record Still Standing After Third Marathon Attempt to Topple It
The all-time high score of 33 million set 28 years ago on Q*Bert has this year proved to be one of the most unassailable marks in video game history. Last night, Rob Gerhardt’s record, set in 1983, survived a third assault this year when iron-man gamer Rick Carter—who in August racked up a billion-point world…
By Owen Good -
Shoppin’ Macy’s
Sonic is back in the Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade this year. Let’s hope he has a better time of it than in 1993, when he was blown into a lamppost and popped. Not that I’m insinuating you should pull anything mischievous in our latest ‘Shop Contest. You may recall that 1993 was not only the…
By Owen Good
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