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Nintendo Fan Is Unhappy With Nintendo’s $200 Answer to His $400 Wii U Problem
Jon is an enthusiastic Nintendo fan. He buys all of Nintendo’s systems. He buys many, many Nintendo games. But he’s gotten himself into a jam that he says has cost him access to more than $400 worth of downloadable games he’s purchased from Nintendo over the several years. How does one lose access to $400…
By Stephen Totilo Published February 8, 2013 -
Watch The Stellar 2013 Sequel To 2010’s Most Provocative Talk About Video Games
In 2010, professor and game designer Jesse Schell gave an amazing talk at the DICE gaming summit that went viral. His topic: the gamification—the adding of points and play systems—to everything imaginable. He imagined a crazy future where we got points for everything from brushing teeth to giving each other high fives. Three years later,…
By Stephen Totilo Published February 8, 2013 -
Warren Spector Doesn’t Think Lollipop Chainsaw Should Have Been Made
Warren Spector, one of the most respected game designers out there and the lead creator of the revered Deus Ex, did something unusual for a game designer today. At a talk at the DICE convention in Las Vegas, he named a name… or at least he let one of his slides name the name of…
By Stephen Totilo Published February 7, 2013 -
Two Quotes That Help Warren Spector Assess Where He’s At Right Now
Legendary game designer Warren Spector was talking at the DICE convention in Las Vegas today, but didn’t want to talk about his departure from Disney and the shuttering of his studio. He wanted to talk about the “graying of gaming” or at least about his journey though gaming. But the elephant is in the room,…
By Stephen Totilo Published February 7, 2013 -
Ouya Will Be Getting Tim Schafer’s Big Kickstarter Game. Other Consoles Won’t, Ouya Boss Says [UPDATE]
Tim Schafer throwback Kickstarter-funded game, Double Fine Adventure, is coming to multiple platforms, but only to one console, the CEO of the upcoming Android mini-console said today during a talk at DICE. It’s coming to hers, the Ouya. Schafer’s game is one of 450 games planned for the system, Ouya boss Julie Uhrman said. She…
By Stephen Totilo Published February 6, 2013 -
Forget Powerpoint. They’ve Got Rayman.
At the DICE convention in Las Vegas, Ubisoft’s Xavier Poix illustrates his talk about Ubisoft’s creation of launch games for new platforms using the Rayman Origins UbiArt game engine to essentially make an interactive slide-show. It’s a side-scroller as Powerpoint, steered with an Xbox 360 controller. And, yes, Media Molecule did this through LittleBigPlanet at…
By Stephen Totilo Published February 6, 2013 -
Nine Ways Video Games Need to Grow Up, From the Guy Who Made Heavy Rain
“These are exciting times for the gaming industry,” game designer David Cage of Quantic Dream (Heavy Rain, Beyond: Two Souls) said as he began a talk here in Las Vegas that seemed set to criticize the modern state of gaming. After all, the talk was called: “The Peter Pan Syndrome: The Industry That Refused to…
By Stephen Totilo Published February 6, 2013 -
ReviewsSly Cooper: Thieves in Time: The Kotaku Review
Sly Cooper: Thieves in Time is a pleasant PlayStation 3 and PlayStation Vita game that feels like it has been plucked out of a time warp. It arrives on the eve of the expected February 20 announcement of the make-or-break PlayStation 4 and yet it calls back to an era of easy dominance by the…
By Stephen Totilo Published February 5, 2013 -
The Next Skylanders Can Be Broken In Half—On Purpose
There’s a new graphics engine… the Skylanders can now jump… and there’s even a new, fancier Portal of Power, but none of those things are the biggest change in the 2013 edition of Activision’s toys-meets-games series. No, the big change in this fall’s Skylanders Swap Force video game is that players will be able to…
By Stephen Totilo Published February 5, 2013 -
The Exceptional Beauty of Dyad‘s Steam Announcement Trailer
Shawn McGrath, creator of psychedelic racing game Dyad, did not expect to announce today that his game is coming to Steam. But folks on the Internet figured it out. What’s a man to do? Whine? Complain? Go radio silent? Not Shawn McGrath. He busted out the webcam and some Windex and crafted the most honest…
By Stephen Totilo Published February 4, 2013 -
Tips & Guides
Tips for Playing Fire Emblem: Awakening
If you have a 3DS, you should play Fire Emblem: Awakening. If you don’t have a 3DS, you should get one to play this game. It’s that good But once you have the game, how can you make the most of it? I’ve had to impart some Fire Emblem tips to some friends and colleagues…
By Stephen Totilo Published February 4, 2013 -
Hundreds of Confused Anti-Gun People Think I’m a Gun Nut—And That This Is My Gun
There are people on both sides of the gun debate who make good points. And then there are people who have absolutely no clue. In that latter camp we might include Senator Lamar Alexander, who thinks that, when it comes to people getting shot to death, “video games are a bigger problem than guns.” We…
By Stephen Totilo Published February 4, 2013 -
Should a Lapsed World of Warcraft Gamer Return to Azeroth?
A reader named Ryan writes: “I’ve got a question that I hoped could be posed to the readers of Kotaku. I’m curious if World of Warcraft is a series to even bother getting back involved with, after I’d spent some time on it (this is prior to the Lich King and Cataclysm releases/updates/mandatory you-must-buy releases).…
By Stephen Totilo Published February 1, 2013 -
ReviewsFire Emblem: Awakening: The Kotaku Review
There are games that I like. And then there are games that I like that I become obsessed with. Fire Emblem: Awakening falls into the second category. What follows, therefore, isn’t just a review. It’s a warning. Play the new Fire Emblem on Nintendo’s 3DS, and all of this could happen to you… Some basics…
By Stephen Totilo Published January 31, 2013 -
Suggestion: Play Leap Day Today When You Should Be Working or Studying
Right now, instead of reading this, you could be playing Leap Day. If you have the Unity plug-in in your browser and your teacher/professor/boss isn’t looking, go do it. Or at least load this up (and then scroll to the amazingness lurking in the upper right of your screen. What you’ll see there is a…
By Stephen Totilo Published January 31, 2013 -
The Most Obvious Thing Anyone Can Say About EA Needs To Be Said Anyway.
“[EA]’s ‘Fewer, Bigger, Better’ strategy for its key packaged goods releases will not work if the games are, in fact, not ‘Better.'” -Analyst Michael Pachter lamenting the oddly low quality and poor sales of Medal of Honor: Warfighter and praising the delay of Fuse. (“Packaged goods” are games sold in stores, not the ever-growing number…
By Stephen Totilo Published January 31, 2013
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