Skip past the blah-blah-pre-order-our-game stuff in the first 110 seconds of the newest official Mass Effect developer video. You’ll find a surprisingly encouraging glimpse at Mass Effect 3‘s combat. Smarter enemies? Class-specific methods for countering those smarter enemies? Both are good improvements from the older games, but I’m partial to the display of class-specific melee…
Welcome back to another December (it’s not your first, is it?) and to another edition of our official forum about video games. Go on and talk about games all you want in the comments below. But! Before you do, cast your eyes again at our lovely December art. It is called “Hens and Rooster” and…
He said he meant it as a joke. Just a silly line. But when critic Tom Bissell wrote that adult women probably haven’t heard of The Elder Scrolls, he struck a nerve. This is what he wrote in his review of The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim for the website Grantland: “If you have no idea…
If the person you are buying a gift for already has a Kindle Fire, they really don’t need a gift from you. They’ve got the hot new thing this Christmas. Or maybe the richer person in your family has vowed to get them the Fire, so you’re just going to be the person getting them…
Did you ever wonder what it would be like if the Xbox 360 went to a nightclub and started breakdancing? How would the laptops and the controllers react? Actually, how would the other Xbox react? In the so-bad-it’s-good or so good-it’s-bad category, I submit this video that popped up on Vimeo from one Jared Caudillo.…
This is a slow week for new comic books. There are fewer new ones to get excited about. Don’t fret. There are some, and they don’t all involve Archie and Jughead hanging out with members of KISS. Here are my and Evan Narcisse’s recommendations: Comics You Should Consider Buying (from comics shops) Archie #627 This…
What have you accomplished in Skyrim? You’ve probably not finished it and it’s even less likely you’ve reached Level 50 or gotten married. Millions of people have played this year’s biggest role-playing game. Millions have gotten pleasantly lost in its numerous quests and expansive landscape. Along the way, those people have achieved many things, much…
This is Modern Warfare breaking another law of physics. Keep your eye on the care package as it drops from the sky. Feature? Glitch? Or, as the person who posted this on YouTube, suggests, “straight up magic?” Straight Up Magic [YouTube]
We end November’s Talk Amongst Yourselves with a Time Bandits reference (Crecente had to explain it to me.) Goodbye, November. Wish it farewell by talking here about video games. And let’s welcome December with a new image. Drop in your submissions for December’s artwork. As always, it needs to be a horizontally-aligned public domain piece…
We hear from some quarters that video games that are not played with some use of a button do not count. Wrong. The proof is on the iPad on my desk. A year ago those buttons-or-bust gamers missed one of the iPad’s best games, Infinity Blade. It was a medieval fantasy riff on a button-pushing…
Video games as cinematic blockbusters? Sure. Video games as texts? I’ve heard that one too. Video games as vacations? That one was new to me, but that’s the concept Nintendo’s Yoshiaki Koizumi had when he was telling me (quoted above in postcard format) about his team’s approach to making a Super Mario game for a…
Where will the next Assassin’s Creed take place? When will it take place? You could guess off a survey, or you could consider the theories of Kotaku‘s biggest AC fans, one of whom claims to have seen Assassin’s Creed III in action. You will find below a bunch of theories our readers have made about…
The Legend of Zelda: Skyward Sword excels at many things. It has great art direction, inspiring level design and so many other good qualities. But it’s fall-through-the-floor glitch is just not as good as the one in Assassin’s Creed or the one Rage or the one in Batman: Arkham City (I included the others above,…
The back of the Mario Kart 7 box encourages shoppers to “take racing to new heights with the all-new glider.” That’s cool. The back of the box for Namco Bandai’s Active Life: Magical Carnival urges gamers to “ride magic carpets, flying brooms & learn magical tricks!” That sounds great! And then there’s the back of…
The game of Skyrim isn’t just what’s on the disc. It’s not just questing through the woods, killing dragons and saving villagers. The game of Skyrim is also the game of changing Skyrim, of transforming its graphics, adding more dragons or playing as a midget. The game of Skyrim is figuring out how to make…
This is a letter from the Call of Duty modern warfront by a gamer named Woody to his lady back home, Jackie. Plus, a response from her. Woody also wrote a few letters from the Black Ops war front. Check them out, too. Not an original idea, but a fine one nevertheless. Letters from MW3…
One of the most popular video games on Facebook will be re-named this week. The game formerly known as Adventure World will be re-named for George Lucas and Steven Spielberg’s renowned hero Indiana Jones as game company Zynga adds the most extraordinary character to one of its games since FarmVille got a visit from Lady…
Throughout the year, we here at Kotaku have covered most of the biggest video games on any machine that will play video games. From Arkham City to Zelda: Skyward Sword, from Dungeon Raid to Superbrothers Sword & Sworcery, we covered the biggest and best of them. As the holidays approach and shopping season kicks in,…
If you’ve ever played a Zelda game or a Mario game, you’ve played a game made by a bunch of people in Japan. Most likely, they were far away from you. But that doesn’t mean they didn’t think about you. They do think about you. A lot. In an unusual and interesting way. I recently…
It’s the day before Thanksgiving, so, if you’re in America, you should be heading somewhere to start your Thanksgiving festivities. But stop by the comic shop first, or at least check out the new comics you can get for download. There’s new stuff out. As always, I have recommendations: Comics You Should Consider Buying (from…
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