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First Look at Thursday’s Hunger Games Video Game In Action… Briefly
You’ll be able to play a Hunger Games video game this Thursday, if you’ve got an iOS device. The free game is based on the book and upcoming movie that depict an annual televised competition for survival between boys and girls in huge arenas in a ruined North America. The game is a prequel to…
By Stephen Totilo Published March 19, 2012 -
We Like Kid Icarus: Uprising So Far, Because It’s Weird.
Kid Icarus: Uprising is Nintendo’s big 3DS game of early 2012. Hyped since the early days of the 3DS as one of the major titles for the system, we’ve now been able to play the finished game. It’s fun. It’s weird. No, it’s very weird. We’re not ready to review it just yet. We want…
Kirk Hamilton & Stephen Totilo Published March 19, 2012 -
Here’s Infinity Blade II Running on an iPad 2 and an iPad 3
We’ve seen what top iPad game Infinity Blade II looks like on the new super-high-res iPad 3. But we’re been looking for a comparison. Enter Kotaku reader Alsandair, who has the new iPad and sent us two shots of essentially the same scene. There isn’t a dramatic difference, possibly because all the IB2 developers have…
By Stephen Totilo Published March 16, 2012 -
Is Tic-Tac-Toe a Great Game? I Battled Some of the World’s Best Video Game Creators To Find Out.
Only one award-winning video game developer got violent when I played Tic-Tac-Toe with him last week. A few of them were simply convinced I was trying to trick them. I was not trying to trick anyone. I just wanted them to share some wisdom about one of the most popular games in the history of…
By Stephen Totilo Published March 16, 2012 -
Only 1 Out of 5 Mass Effect Gamers Plays As A Woman
Dear 82% of Mass Effect gamers, I’m tempted to tell you that you’re doing it wrong. According to The Final Hours of Mass Effect 3, the superb iPad app from journalist Geoff Keighley, the people who make Mass Effect say that only 18% of gamers play as a female Commander Shepard. And that’s not even…
By Stephen Totilo Published March 16, 2012 -
Pretend You Have the New iPad By Looking At This Screenshot
The makers of hit iOS game Infinity Blade II say this is what their game looks like when it runs on the new iPad. We asked for a direct comparison shot, but they had none to offer. If you can render one from the same scene, off of an iPad or iPad 2, share it…
By Stephen Totilo Published March 16, 2012 -
How To Win the War On Internet Trolls
Are you an Internet troll? Or maybe you’ve just encountered one. No. You’ve encountered more than one. What can be done about these people? Surely, they can be defeated? Video game designer Mike Drach thinks some of the Internet’s biggest trolls just need a hug, but that is not his sole means of dealing with…
By Stephen Totilo Published March 16, 2012 -
New Ratchet & Clank Collection Thankfully Omits The Bad One.
You’ll be able to buy a Ratchet & Clank Collection for PlayStation 3 this fall. It collects the first three games in the series, all wonderful, all from the PS2. It omits the fourth PS2 Ratchet, the armored-hero multilplayer-centric, more badass Deadlocked. We would like to commend Sony and Ratchet creators Insomniac for their good…
By Stephen Totilo Published March 15, 2012 -
There Was Going to Be A Mass Effect First Person Shooter
BioWare’s Montreal studio was developing a competitive first-person shooter called Mass Effect Team Assault in 2010 before transforming that effort into the third-person multiplayer mode in Mass Effect 3, according to a new behind-the-scenes iPad app created by gaming journalist Geoff Keighley. “The goal was simple,” Keighley reports in The Final Hours of Mass Effect…
By Stephen Totilo Published March 15, 2012 -
If Air Force One Crashed In Southern California, It Might Look Like This
No bodies. Just wreckage. This is Air Force One, crashed in Southern California as seen in this week’s new Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 3 map Black Box. Playable on Xbox 360 and, eventually, PlayStation 3 and PC.
By Stephen Totilo Published March 15, 2012 -
Superman Might Be The Best Part of Lego Batman 2
There will be voice-acting in the Lego Batman 2: DC Super-Heroes. That will sound strange if you’ve ever enjoyed the silly warbling that passes for talking in the man hit Lego video games. Stranger still is the possibility that Superman might be the coolest part of Traveller’s Tales ambitious, biggest-ever Lego game. The game starts…
By Stephen Totilo Published March 15, 2012 -
Battlefield 3‘s Biggest Map Is Guaranteed, A Great Multiplayer Tutorial Is Not
On an evening in San Francisco when the people behind Battlefield 3 showed off the June expansion to their big war shooter, I asked them about the future beyond that future.. and about a missing element from their past. After June’s Close Quarters indoor-infantry-combat-centric pack comes the fall’s Armored Kill expansion. The latter is all…
By Stephen Totilo Published March 14, 2012 -
Christian Allen Wants Your Money To Make A Great, Old-School Shooter That Publishers Don’t Think You Want
Christian Allen has a video game Kickstarter, too. And he hopes he isn’t doing it wrong. Tim Schafer did it right. That guy just raised a few million for an old-school adventure game on Kickstarter. But Christian Allen knows he is no Tim Schafer, no big-name game developer with legions of fans who love him.…
By Stephen Totilo Published March 14, 2012 -
The Hip Hop Gamer Raps About Prototype 2 For Prototype 2 [UPDATE]
If you were a video game reporter in New York, you’d know who the Hip Hop Gamer is. He’s the guy who walks around with a WWE Championship belt—except, he makes his interviewees wear the belt while he’s talking to them. (Hey, I’ve done it! I’ve just declined his offers to rap with him!) The…
By Stephen Totilo Published March 14, 2012 -
The Future of Mirror’s Edge Is Still Frustratingly Vague
What’s the future of Mirror’s Edge, that flawed but beautiful cult-favorite of a first-person parkour game? That question is nearly mandatory for any interview with a person of power at Electronic Arts and its development studio DICE, so of course I asked it last week when I was supposed to be interviewing studio manager Karl…
By Stephen Totilo Published March 14, 2012 -
If M.C Escher and Isaac Newton Made a Video Game…
The Bridge is an unfinished indie game that’s making the rounds. I saw it from afar at the DICE summit in February. I shot video of someone playing it at the Game Developers Conference last week, where it was part of the Independent Games Festival showcase. The Bridge winds up at these events, because it’s…
By Stephen Totilo Published March 13, 2012 -
Ask a Video Game Developer Anything … Call for Questions
Starting next week, game developer Jeremiah Slaczka will answer your questions here on Kotaku He just needs your questions, which you should ask him in comments section below. Here is his official bio, so you know who you’re talking to: “Best known for his multi-million unit selling franchises, Scribblenauts and Drawn to Life, Jeremiah focuses…
By Stephen Totilo Published March 13, 2012 -
Maybe Video Game Reviewers Are Con Men. Maybe.
He starts with a statement that is as true or false as you want it to be: “Nobody is seriously accusing any website or writer of accepting money from publishers in direct exchange for positive reviews.” He ends with quotes from Metal Gear Solid And, in between, in a post tagged with such words as…
By Stephen Totilo Published March 13, 2012 -
The Best 26-Minute Argument that Game Consoles Are Dying
Ben Cousins, who works for a company called ngmoco that makes video games mostly for cell phones and tablets, has a vested interest in telling you that PlayStations, Xboxes and Nintendo Whatevers are a few pistons away from horse-and-buggy obsolescence. It would be so easy to dismiss him, because game consoles are such impressive and…
By Stephen Totilo Published March 13, 2012 -
Modern What? No, Look at this Battlefield 3 Expansion Trailer. Over Here.
By sheer coincidence, total accident and obvious happenstance, today, on the day that three new maps are made available for Modern Warfare 3‘s Xbox 360 Elite subscribers, we’ve been given a trailer to show you for some new Battlefield 3 DLC. It’s just amazing how this happens. It’s like, no sooner do we tell you…
By Stephen Totilo Published March 13, 2012
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