Stephen Totilo

This is the First Trailer for Scrolls, Not for The Elder Scrolls

Minecraft mastermind Markus “Notch” Persson had a surprise for Kotaku today. He literally handed me the first trailer for his next game. The game, announced several months back, is Scrolls. It’s recently been in the news because it sent the lawyers behind The Elder Scrolls series (think: Oblivion, Skyrim) into a trademark-protecting tizzy. But I…

Look What They’re Selling in the Halo Store and Who’s Helping to Sell It

In the middle of Halofest here in Seattle there stands a Halo. They call it the Halo Commissary, and, well, look who shows up to sell us on all these Halo goods. You can contact Stephen Totilo, the author of this post, at [email protected]. You can also find him on Twitter, Facebook, and lurking around…

The Skyrim Team Has a Better Plan for Squashing Bugs this Time

As much as people love the expansive video games of Bethesda Softworks, they loathe the bugs—and the surprising preponderance of them that appear with the launch of new Elder Scrolls or Fallout games. This time, as Bethesda prepares to put out the massive Skyrim, they’ve got a plan to do better. With Skyrim, Bethesda will…

The Sights, Sounds and Costumed Brute of Halofest

We got into Halofest a day early for a press preview event and tried to soak in all the Halo that we could. There was a lot! As you can see in this gallery of photos and videos. Enjoy…

There Are Halo 4 Teases on this Wall

There is so much Halo stuff at the big Halofest event this weekend at the Penny Arcade Expo that it would be easy to miss the final massive panel on the rear of a wall that commemorates the release and achievements of each Halo game. But if you find that last panel, back in a…

The Halo 4 Warthog Will Debut in Forza 4, But You Can’t Drive It

One of the biggest surprises of this weekend’s Halofest celebration of all things Halo here in Seattle is the news that Halo 4‘s Warthog will make its interactive debut this year, in a non-Halo game. The new Warthog will appear in the interactive car-ogling garage mode of this fall’s Forza 4. The series’ lead creator,…

An Hour with Counter-Strike: GO

I’ve played Counter-Strike: Global Offensive and can now say it’s for me, too. On the eve of the public debut of its newest game, Valve Software let me into their ever-expanding offices in Bellevue, Washington to give me a sampling of four classic Counter-Strike maps as they’ve been remade for 2012’s Counter-Strike: GO This was,…

The Coolest Things in Nintendo’s American Headquarters (And One Uncool Thing)

Let’s get the one uncool thing about Nintendo of America’s headquarters out of the way first: They won’t let visitors take pictures of the best parts of the building. You can’t snap photos of the mural that shows the progression of the Mario, Donkey Kong, Link and Samus characters. You can’t photograph the row of…

Get Ready for Super Monday Night Combat, a Very DotA Shooter That is Free to Play

One of the surprise hits of 2010, Monday Night Combat is getting a sequel that its creators don’t exactly call a sequel. They call it Super Monday Night Combat, an evolution of the third-person shooter they launched on Xbox Live Arcade in 2010. The game has changed. It is intended, this time around, to be…

Three New MNC Faces and One Familiar One

Combatgirl, new to Super Monday Night Combat Gunsinger, also new to Super Monday Night Combat But the Tank, we’ve seen him before. He’s back from the first game. The Veteran, however… he’s new.

The First Screenshots for Super Monday Night Combat

I’m on the Right, Predicting Nintendo will Never make an iPhone Game

Watch me, Stephen Totilo, chatting with Times Techland‘s Evan Narcisse about the future fate of Nintendo. This is a half-hour chat done in video splitscreen, so you can watch me do my best to be a talking head. (I was sporting my telemarketer look; Evan was doing the Lobot.) I couldn’t get the embed to…

Practice is the Brainy Gaming Event New York Deserves

Those of us who live in New York City are guilty, daily, of thinking that our city is terrific and deserves terrific things. But we in New York City don’t have any awesome big gaming expos nor any whip-smart game design gatherings to make the rest of the world envious, at least not until we…

This is Why Some People Call El Shaddai a Visual Masterpiece

In a little over five minutes, I can show you why people who play the strangely-named video game El Shaddai: Ascension of the Metatron rave about its graphics. I knew this game was going be a visual feast. I knew it was our video game Fantasia (and an odd, interactive quasi-religious text). But until I…

Kanye West Preparing a Big Call of Duty Concert

One of the world’s most popular musicians will close the first official fan convention for one of the world’s most famous games. No, Lady Gaga is not rocking a Computer Solitaire con. Kanye West, however, is performing on day two of Call of Duty XP, the big Call of Duty fan convention in Los Angeles…

Virtua Fighter 5 Returns Next Summer as the Final Showdown

Sega wants in on the Street Fighter IV-led fighting game resurgence. Their entrant? A new version of 2006’s Virtua Fighter 5, Virtua Fighter 5: Final Showdown, scheduled for a downloadable release on the Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3 next summer. Final Showdown is supposed to include “a full overhaul of Virtua Fighter 5‘s mechanics, balance…

The Most Unexpected Dragon Age Cosplay

This dog is an entrant in a character costume contest being run by the people at BioWare, makers of Mass Effect, Knights of the Old Republic and other video games that include terrific characters. The dog, however, is cosplaying as a Mabari from the Dragon Age games. Winner? Or simply just another breed of dog…

Go Home, Dinosaurs is the Name of a New PAX Video Game

My co-favorite video game of the 2010 PAX East in Boston was an odd but joyous multiplayer tower-building/battling game called SlamBolt Scrappers. The people who made that, Fire Hose Games, are showing their next game at the Penny Arcade Expo in Seattle this weekend. The new game is called Go Home, Dinosaurs. They describe it…

Lefty or Righty: Human Evolution

Fake Lefty | Deus Ex: Human Revolution is left-handed on the game box, but not in the game, according to people who have played the game. The horror! (Photo: Stephen Totilo) When GLaDOS Asks You To Marry Someone, You Say Yes Gary Hudston commissioned three spectacular custom-built Portal 2 levels complete with fresh dialog from…

Portal Turrets Invade Bastion

The kid started a New Game+ mode in the celebrated summer indie game Bastion. He bought himself the Gel Canister and spawned some mean turrets from Aperture Science. He told himself he was only seeing this because he was now in the Steam version of the game, the one that came out last week, the…