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Ring Blade Welcomes You to Shuriken Hell
After a seven-level warmup with Ring Blade, a bullet-hell shooter with a twist, I found my right index finger getting that weird burning-inside/cold-to-the-touch feeling. It’s a good thing, I think. Ring Blade, from MindTrip Studios, is a mobile game right in the sweet spot of any shooter fan with an iPhone. It sticks to a…
By Owen Good -
Guess What, Horse Armor Still Sells
Buying The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion’s Horse Armor. It’s like listening to Barry Manilow, eating at the Olive Garden or ordering Spectravision. No one will admit to doing it, but still enough do so keep it in business. Bethesda Softworks’ Pete Hines said, scouts’ honor, that this still happens. “I don’t have the report in…
By Owen Good -
Just 5 Percent of Games Were Rated M Last Year, Says ESRB
Just five percent of all games rated by the ESRB and published in 2010 were classified as M, a marginal decline from 2009 when they accounted for 6 percent, the board said in a news release today. The smallest portion of the 1,638 ratings the ESRB doled out last year belongs to EC which, safe…
By Owen Good -
Oh, Awesome, Soon You May Perform “Bed Intruder” in Rock Band
Antoine Dodson went full meme in late July; his local-news anti-crime rant was autotuned into “Bed Intruder” in early August. The Blue and Gold Marching Machine of North Carolina A&T State University performed it at halftime about a month later, and then Rock Band 3 arrived two months after that. Why has it taken so…
By Owen Good -
ReviewsThe Waiver-Wire Prospects of MLB 2K11
I’m thinking of a famous, very touching monologue by Earl Weaver, the Hall of Fame manager of the Baltimore Orioles, talking about cutting players during spring training. “You call ’em in and say, ‘It’s the consensus among us that we’re going to let you go back home.’ Some of them cry, some get mad, but…
By Owen Good -
Baseball, PAX and an Artsy-Fartsy Video
Spring does not arrive until a week from tomorrow, but for me, it gets here when daylight saving time arrives, which was this morning. Here is my college sophomore video editing project attempting to capture the seasons changing here, in the beautifully verdant setting of my dumpy apartment. And here are the headline highlights from…
By Owen Good -
ReviewsMLB 11 The Show is Still The Finest in the Field
I’ve seen the big leagues, son. I’ve squinted at the lights at Fenway as the sun makes a cotton candy sky behind the Citgo sign in left. But I ain’t there right now. I’m down here chewing on grass, pitching in my third game in as many days, deep in the well of the low…
By Owen Good -
A Longtime Holdout Joins Madden This Year
Soldier Field, one of the more storied venues of the National Football League, has never appeared in the Madden NFL series, or any other NFL series. It’s always been a generic venue under the name “Chicago Stadium,” or “Chicago Field.” That’s because the Chicago Park District has never licensed the name for use. Apparently they…
By Owen Good -
The War Comes Home
Retail shelves welcome our new Korean leaders with Homefront, the much-discussed urban guerrilla shooter starring irregular American troops. Plenty of other big drops this Tuesday also, including Okamiden and Yakuza 4’s North American debuts. Tuesday (March 1) Homefront (Xbox 360, PS3, PC) – THQ’s long-awaited shooter pits a ragtag American resistance against a Korean occupational…
By Owen Good -
Top 5 of 10: Cheerleader Bayonetta
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 Most Stylin’ Alternate Costumes [UGO] Twenty-five of the best alternate outfits, from Dairy Bastard Kratos to Tuxedo Snake to Haggar Zangief, who’s number one.…
By Owen Good -
Here’s an iPad Game Running on a 50-inch HDTV
Infinity Blade, for the iPhone and iPad, has won strong praise as an uncommonly good mobile title with impressive visuals and console-style gameplay. To really gain an appreciation of it, you should see it on a 50-inch HDTV. An iPad 2 will let you do that, outputting to an HDTV with an HDMI adapter for…
By Owen Good -
Chinatown Fair’s Spiritual Descendant Will be a Different Type of Arcade
The beloved New York City arcade Chinatown Fair closed last month after three decades; its owner, Henry Cen, will open a new arcade, but it will be in a different location, with a different focus, and evidently with fewer games. The New York Times, in a profile in today’s edition, says Cen will open “Next…
By Owen Good -
Kotaku ‘Shop Contest: Milo Edition
This week’s challenge is another no-brainer. Develop unearthed some storyboards for Milo, the presumed-dead game by Lionhead Studios that was one of the first proofs of concept for what is now known as Kinect. Now, we value good games development and are very respectful of others’ property, always. But not when we’ve got our mitts…
By Owen Good -
Power Concerns After Japan Quake Take Down Multiplayer Servers [Updated]
At 6 p.m. EST/3 p.m. PST, servers for Final Fantasy XIV and Final Fantasy XI will be taken offline for at least one week as Square-Enix cooperates with a Japanese power company’s request to conserve power while it restores services severely damaged by Thursday’s monster earthquake. [Update] Servers for Metal Gear Online also have been…
By Owen Good -
Pokémon Company Squashes Twitter Rumor of Creator’s Death [Update]
A spokesman for the Pokémon Company said all employees, including Pokémon creator Satoshi Tajiri, are alive and safe following Thursday’s tremendous earthquake in Japan, specifically rebutting a widespread rumor that Tajiri had died in the disaster. “False. Everyone at the Pokemon Company and Gamefreak is fine,” spokesman J.C. Smith told Kotaku. He said that power…
By Owen Good -
Weekend Talk Amongst Yourselves
Welcome back to Kotaku’s Official Forum. Feel free to talk about anything on your minds, but make it fast. We’ve got one less hour in the day thanks to daylight saving time today. Today’s image is by pistelho. Read this thread for directions on how to do a TAYpic.
By Owen Good -
Culture
Sunday Comics
Welcome to your Sunday read of the week’s best in web comics. Make sure to click on the expand button in the bottom right to enlarge each comic. Awkward Zombie by Katie Tiedrich published March 7 – Read more of Awkward Zombie Nerf NOW!! by Josué Pereira published March 11 – Read more of Nerf…
By Owen Good -
Kotaku ‘Shop Contest: History’s Greatest Villains Winners
Last week, we asked you to take some of the most revered, most admired and least threatening figures of history and swap them out for the most dreadful and frightening adversaries in video games – as if John Adams were, for example, a Triceratops. Here’s what we got. Krakenstein (12), who inspired our contest, added…
By Owen Good -
Resistance, Ratchet & Clank Creators Push Into Facebook with Insomniac Click
Insomniac Games, the makers of the Resistance and Ratchet and Clank series, will push into mobile and Web-based games development with a new division – Insomniac Click – that the studio unveiled on Saturday. Going public with their plans at a social gaming panel at the South by Southwest interactive festival in Austin, Texas, Insomniac…
By Owen Good -
Nickels, Dimes, Pennants, Pennies or Points, Sports Gamers Still Get Value
>It didn’t take long after MLB 11 The Show’s release for everyone to notice its microtransactions menu and give it a good public flogging. While I don’t claim that these things are in anyone’s interest other than the publisher’s, gamers do a fantastic job of making this out to be a more odious threat than…
By Owen Good
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