Owen Good

Take-Two has lost its bid to retake control of an old Manhunt promotional domain that someone else had turned into a fan site, counting down to the 10th anniversary of the game’s launch on Nov. 18.

Maker of ‘Crude’ Game Trolls Apple with Reverse Striptease [Update]

Apple’s selective prudery when it comes to approving games for the iTunes store is well known. It’s still worth mocking, as one indie developer is doing—pixel by pixel. Hot Mess (pictured) is the upcoming game that Atlanta-based Secret Library can’t get approved. In the game, you play as a “malfunctioning, fire-fighting robot who mistakes the…

The Sun Sets—For Good—on the Blockbuster Night

The last 300 stores owned by rental chain Blockbuster in the U.S. will be closed by January. If the news was as a surprise, it’s only that so many were left. It leaves you with a weird nostalgia—hard to get worked up about a once-monolithic corporation, but still dewy-eyed recalling a trip to bring home…

Burglars Wipe Out Game Store Before Call of Duty Midnight Launch [Update]

About 150 people in Ontario had their Call of Duty Christmas stolen by Grinches who busted down the cement wall of a game store and plundered it for every one of its preorders the day before the game’s launch. The Game MD of Windsor (it’s Detroit’s Canadian, not-bankrupt sibling across the river) was victimized by…

Call of Duty: Ghosts Isn’t the Year’s Biggest Entertainment Launch

In each of the past four years, Activision has followed Call of Duty‘s release date with a triumphal announcement that the latest edition of the game was “the biggest entertainment launch” of the year or in history, comparing it to blockbuster movie franchises since there was no other game to come close. They didn’t say…

The PS4’s Baseball Game Just Saved Thousands of Promising Careers

There’s a ritual dedicated sports gamers go through with each new season. The excitement of peeling the shrinkwrap off the latest edition of NHL or NBA 2K quickly gives way to the realization that, once again, we’re going to throw away our promising careers. With MLB The Show, that will soon come to an end.…

Wrestling Game Or Greatest Super-Hero Game Ever?

One of the WWE series’ longstanding virtues is its deep character creation toolkit, which fans have used to create all sorts of wrestlers who don’t appear in the main game’s roster. Such as Captain America, and Wolverine, and Spider-Man. Touring the Community Creations tab of WWE 2K14‘s online menu I found more than 7,000 custom…

The Story Behind GTA V‘s Michael and Trevor, Summarized In One Minute

Previously … on Grand Theft Auto V … There’s a slow burn as this game gets to the point of why three characters as disparate as Michael, Trevor and Franklin would or should come together to pull off some astounding heists. That’s where the good ol’ Lore in a Minute series comes in to help.…

MLB 14 The Show on PS4 is the Only Next-Gen Baseball Game

Forget about baseball on Xbox One next year, if this image touting MLB 14 The Show is any indication. Sony announced the next edition of MLB The Show for PS4, PS Vita and PS3 tonight at the MLB Players Choice Awards on the MLB Network. But that’s not the real news because it, like baseball,…

WWE 2K14: The Kotaku Review

Twenty-five years ago my best friend and I set up a wrestling ring in my basement—four barstools for the turnbuckles, some old mattresses for the canvas. The actual wrestling we did was hesitant, unplanned and uncompelling. But man, the stuff we did out of the ring makes me smile to this day. My facemask was…

Madden Lawsuit Settlement Mails Out the Checks in Time for Next-Gen

Just in time for the next-gen release of Madden NFL 25, lo and behold, here’s my check from the settlement of the ridiculous Madden ‘monopoly’ lawsuit—for $64.14, which is four cents less than what the game would cost, with tax, at any of the GameStops I frequent. That means, if you filed your claim by…

There’s Keyboard and Mouse, There’s Dual Analogs—and Then There’s This

Freddie Wong is one of our generation’s finest war satirists, showing the idiocy of human conflict if everyone fought the way they did in video games. So when mobile gamepad maker MOGA wanted to commission a film showing how shit-tacular touch-screen controls are, there was really only one guy to go to. “Mobile Squad” is…

Warhammer Online, due for a shutdown in mid-December, has gone free-to-play as a “parting gift” to those who had an account in good standing as of Thursday. “We will be adding new NPCs to the game in order to power up your characters,” Mythic promises.

It Took One Year to Make This Criminally Insane LEGO Arkham Asylum

Not only did Thorsten Bonsch spend a year of his spare time constructing a gloriously macabre LEGO rendering of Arkham Asylum, he also released an 82-page, step-by-step making-of book that you can download for yourself. Let’s be clear though, these are detailed instructions along with a description of the architectural inspirations for the facility—a 115.5…

The Week in Games: A Duty to Perform

Call of Duty: Ghosts is a longstanding first-Tuesday-in-November tradition, scaring off nearly every other big release that has a bunch of marketing behind it. But there are a few others of note, including a Castlevania collection and State of Decay on PC. Here’s the week in video games. Tuesday, Nov. 5 Call of Duty: Ghosts…

A Live-Action Look Back at Dead Island‘s Original Trailer

Remember that haunting first trailer that Dead Island released two years ago? The reverse-time, slow-motion reveal of a zombie child thrown to her death by her father, and the tragedy preceding it all? That thing won an award at Cannes.* Now someone’s gone and shot it in live action. Directed by BJ McConnell, with visual…

Call of Duty‘s original working title was “Medal of Honor Killer,” reports GameSpot. Mission accomplished, I’d say.

Kotaku ‘Shop Contest: One Big-Ass Xbox

Oh man, look at this Xbox One! Man, I don’t think my entertainment center’s gonna hold that sucker when it comes out next month. That is huuuuuuge! Let’s ‘Shop it up. What, you need more instruction from me? Hell, a bunch of people already got started when Jason Schreier spied this image last week. We’ll…

Warcraft Artist Dominates Halloween Contest With Game of Thrones Getup

Everyone, meet René Koiter. Halloween may have been three days ago, but we just caught a glimpse of his virtuoso rendering of Khal Drogo from Game of Thrones, which totally blew the curve for Blizzard’s Halloween costume contest. It’s not just the body paint, the leather bracers or the twin sickle blades. Half of the…

Sunday Comics: Look But Don’t Touch

Welcome to Kotaku‘s Sunday Comics, your weekly roundup of the best webcomics. The images enlarge if you click on the magnifying glass icon. Double XP by M.S. Corley and Josh Crandall. Published Oct. 28. Read more of Double XP Awkward Zombie by Katie Tiedrich. Published Oct. 28. Read more of Awkward Zombie Penny Arcade by…