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Borderlands Impressions From Texas
Last month Gearbox let me into their offices to play more Borderlands. I got distracted by a fancy tour of the offices. Then I played with an attack bird at my command. I’d already tried Borderlands in New York earlier this summer, on the second floor in a Brooklyn warehouse where, below, people hired by…
By Stephen Totilo Published September 1, 2009 -
45th Beatles Rock Band Song To Be A Surprise
The world knows of 44 songs that are featured on the The Beatles: Rock Band disc. The world does not know of the 45th. What could it be? It’s a “surprise,” non-spoiling MTV PR tells me. The Beatles Rock Band will be released next week, which puts us in that pre-release timeframe during which secrets…
By Stephen Totilo Published September 1, 2009 -
PlayStation Network’s Typical User Is 28, Male, Educated, Moneyed
Are you the typical PlayStation Network user? It depends on whether you match the criteria shared by U.S. PSN director of operations Eric Lempel to the publication Video Business. Lempel was discussing the PS3 and PSP’s PlayStation Network, which Sony says now has more than 12/5 million users (It’s unclear if the current count includes…
By Stephen Totilo Published September 1, 2009 -
GTA IV: The Ballad Of Gay Tony Trailer Goes Over The Top
Rockstar’s second expansion of Grand Theft Auto IV, The Ballad of Gay Tony goes on sale next month, but first let’s watch the first trailer which, in Rockstar tradition, is named: You’ll Always Be The King Of This Town. The company’s press release that accompanied the trailer promises guns, glitz and glamor and the most…
By Stephen Totilo Published September 1, 2009 -
What Godfather II Did Better Than GTA
This is the first in a series (maybe) of posts labeled “Hindsight” that discuss games you may have thought we were done writing about. Earlier this year, a couple of game developers let me in on one of their secrets: They intentionally play bad games. They play the stuff you or I would avoid not…
By Stephen Totilo Published September 1, 2009 -
Street Fighter Femme Fatale Fighting Sticks At PAX, Plus Us
Barred from discussing secret stuff related to my and Fahey’s PAX planning I can nevertheless report that we’ll be in the same location later this week as 1000 of the new Street Fighter IV sticks pictured here. Our PAX calendar runneth over. And even our pre-PAX calendar does as plans are taking shape for some…
By Stephen Totilo Published August 31, 2009 -
A Better Katamari?
Have you ever really liked a game, tried to convince your friend how good it is and then discovered, as you talk about it, that the game might make less sense the more you talk about it? 1up’s David Ellis put in a heroic effort during last week’s Listen Up podcast trying to describe the…
By Stephen Totilo Published August 31, 2009 -
Lost: One Giant PSP [UPDATE]
There used to be a giant PSP around the corner from Kotaku’s NYC branch office, at the midway point between my chair and Rockstar Games HQ. Now there’s just this H&M billboard. [UPDATE: Sony comments.] This PSP that stood above Houston Street just off of Lafayette Street, was massive, larger even than an Atari Lynx.…
By Stephen Totilo Published August 31, 2009 -
Notebook Dump: The Wii’s Missing Arkham, NBA 2K10, More
There comes a time in the week to reflect on what got into my reporter’s notebook but didn’t turn into Kotaku blog posts. Shall we? Shifting Responsibility: EA was nice enough to stage a game demo of Need For Speed Shift just one block from my office on Thursday. So I went to it, got…
By Stephen Totilo Published August 28, 2009 -
No More Heroes 2 Playable At PAX 09
No More Heroes 2, the sequel to the eccentric Wii game from Grasshopper Manufacture (the only Wii game that has had a sexy lady speak to you through your Wii remote speaker) will be playable for all PAX-goers next week. While booking Penny Arcade Expo appointments with game publishers this week, Mike Fahey and I…
By Stephen Totilo Published August 28, 2009 -
Things A UPS Man Allegedly Stole
The Fort Myers News Press lists nearly 100 items allegedly stolen by a UPS driver in Cape Coral, Florida. It is an extraordinary haul, full of game consoles and a surprising amount of weapons. This is the video game portion of the list, with the prices included as presented by the News Press. Nintendo Wii:…
By Stephen Totilo Published August 28, 2009 -
This Time, The Video Game Announcer Won’t Repeat Himself So Much
During a demo of NBA 2K10 yesterday, I was told that the new basketball game will use a technology that frees its announcers from saying the same things again and again. The development team at 2K Sports is calling their feature Dynamic Voice-over. It re-arranges pre-recorded commentary from the game’s two announcers, real-life NBA commentators…
By Stephen Totilo Published August 28, 2009 -
No Amount Of Puffing Makes This NES Cartridge Play
The Mega Man NES cartridge you see here is actually a… …500 GB hard drive. That’s according to a Russian Doll’s worth of links that point to a company called seller on tech crafts site Etsy which sells hard drives that masquerade as NES cartridges. And they won’t just do fake Mega Man cartridges for…
By Stephen Totilo Published August 27, 2009 -
Old News ’97: Sony Forces Nintendo Game Prices Down
What does every gamer have to thank Sony for? Let’s jump back a dozen years to recall a happy moment when games got cheaper. You are reading Kotaku’s once-weekly (except for QuakeCon weeks and Gamescom weeks – sorry!) journey back to yesteryear. This week, I wanted to find some old price drop news to tie…
By Stephen Totilo Published August 27, 2009 -
Star Wars’ Tatooine DLC Now Available For Two Consoles
Outer-space DLC week continues as Mass Effect’s Pinnacle Station release is followed by the release today of a new mission for Star Wars: The Force Unleashed, playable on the Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3 versions of the game. The game’s new Tatooine mission is the second DLC level offered since last September. The original took…
By Stephen Totilo Published August 27, 2009
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