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“Video Game Conventions Let Down The Super-Hero Genre”
Batman notwithstanding, most super-heroes are too powerful to fit well in standard video games, so say some veteran gaming reporters, following a discussion hatched at nearby urinals. During the latest installment of the Listen Up podcast, host Garnett Lee tore into a design decision made in the recent Wolverine game that strips the hero of…
By Stephen Totilo Published May 18, 2009 -
How About A Bonus Character For Each Wii Peripheral?
Capcom’s Spyborgs producer sees something else his team could do to their game to possibly support Wii MotionPlus, something no other developer has pondered publicly yet. Developers are adding MotionPlus controls to their Wii games as you read this. They’re making their controls more responsive thanks to Nintendo’s add-on. But what if they went another…
By Stephen Totilo Published May 18, 2009 -
April NPD-PDs: For Better Arguing
The experiment continues. In a quest to give people apples-to-apples sales comparisons, here are the Kotaku-coined NPD-PDs for April. That’s NPDs “per day.” Every month, the NPD group releases video game sales figures for the U.S. market, covering the past month. But the “months” that NPD uses vary in length and don’t align with the…
By Stephen Totilo Published May 15, 2009 -
Post-Lawsuit, Old Teams Absent From Next Maddens
Hall of Famers are playable in the next Madden, but the recent PlayStation 2 inclusion of legacy teams is gone — not because of legal action but in the interest of feature parity, says EA. Last November, retired NFL players won a $28 million judgment against the NFL Players Union in a lawsuit regarding the…
By Stephen Totilo Published May 15, 2009 -
The Club: No Hit, But Constantly Name-Checked
Bizarre Creations third-person 2008 shooter from Sega was no blockbuster, so why does it keep coming up in conversation? I have not been able to escape The Club — a game I thought no one played. For those who are among that crowd of non-players, all you need to know is that Bizarre Creations created…
By Stephen Totilo Published May 15, 2009 -
E3 Twitter Rumors ‘Uninformed,’ Says Microsoft
A mystery Twitter feed is spooning out rich details about Microsoft’s Xbox 360 E3 press conference, from GTA info to Forza 3. Leaks? Educated guesses? Kotaku asked around. Is that next GTA episode really called Blood And a Four-Leaf Clover? Is Metal Gear Solid + Oxide about the be unveiled at the Microsoft E3 press…
By Stephen Totilo Published May 15, 2009 -
Punch-Out Balance Board Controls Work Like This
We knew Punch-Out Wii supports the Wii Fit Balance Board, but until opening the game’s instruction manual today, we didn’t know how. Note that the board can only be used in the game’s single-player mode. A case of Nintendo fearing the prospect of two people boxing on boards side-by-side? Perhaps not. A year ago, a…
By Stephen Totilo Published May 15, 2009 -
Talk Amongst Yourselves
On a Friday like today you are so close to spending the entire weekend shut indoors playing games. Close your eyes and imagine that. Then open them and start some gaming conversations below. Confused about commenting on Kotaku? Read our FAQ.
By Stephen Totilo Published May 15, 2009 -
NPD Instant Analysis: Things You Should Note
The case of the missing T games, a possible Wii Play stumble, the absence of Ninja Blade and more April NPD observations await you below. Chew on the following: Missing T’s: Of the top 10 games listed in the April NPD software charts, six are on Nintendo platforms and rated E. Of the remaining four…
By Stephen Totilo Published May 14, 2009 -
A Reporter’s Memories Of Factor 5
The closing of Factor 5 today is sure to affect many developers and gamers. With the studio shuttered, I’d like to share my experiences with it as a gamer and reporter. Ambition is what drew me to Factor 5. As a gamer I came to the studio’s work a little late. I missed their Turrican…
By Stephen Totilo Published May 14, 2009 -
Introducing The NPD-PDs, Our New Experimental Stat
For those who love arguing about gaming sales stats, we hope we’ve devised a way for you to argue better. Later today the NPD group will release the monthly hardware and software top 10 lists for the month of April. Console owners will debate them. Companies will seem pleased. But many people will be comparing…
By Stephen Totilo Published May 14, 2009 -
inFamous Is Definitely Done, A Little Early
Kotaku is confident to report that PS3 open-world super-hero game inFamous is done because, well, we have a copy in Kotaku’s NYC office. (Hey, that’s my hand!) We’re talking finished, in a box, on a disc, slapped with the logo of development studio Sucker Punch. There’s even an instruction manual that includes a penultimate-page tease…
By Stephen Totilo Published May 14, 2009 -
About That Possible Fable 3 Tease…
Warning: our spoiler reporting about the future of the Fable series, as glimpsed in this week’s DLC, and what Microsoft has to say about it, lurks below. We’ve known that this week’s See the Future DLC for Fable II would tease the next phase of the Fable series. Now we’ve seen it and started asking…
By Stephen Totilo Published May 13, 2009 -
‘Madden’ PC Plans Remain Shrouded In Mystery
It’s the eve of E3 – sort of – and EA still isn’t talking about what will become of Madden football on our personal computers. It was way back in April of last year that EA Sports chief Peter Moore leveled with gamers and said that the mighty Madden franchise wouldn’t be coming to PC.…
By Stephen Totilo Published May 13, 2009 -
Dark Void Devs Wary Of Jetpack Neglect
Airtight Games still has time to wrestle with an apparently common problem: gamers not using all of their abilities in a game. One of the themes of my day yesterday was the idea that gamers often ignore or under-utilize the abilities that games give them. This is common. Or at least it seemed so yesterday.…
By Stephen Totilo Published May 13, 2009 -
“Zombie Saturation” Has Not Yet Been Achieved
A Call of Duty developer sees life in the undead genre. Dead Rising. Left4 Dead. Nazi zombie mode in Call of Duty: World at War. More Nazi zombies in the first World at War map pack. And next, in June, Imperial Japanese zombies in a swamp shamble through he second map pack for World at…
By Stephen Totilo Published May 13, 2009 -
Take-Two, Circus Defend Against PETA Game Criticism
Allegations about elephant mistreatment do not appear to have shaken corporate support for an upcoming Wii Ringling Brothers circus game. Earlier today, we reported that the People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals organization is calling for the cancellation of Take-Two’s upcoming game based on the Ringling Brothers and Barnum & Bailey Circus (the so-called…
By Stephen Totilo Published May 13, 2009 -
Upcoming Racing Game Repeatedly Compared To A Shooter
Activision’s CEO already said Blur could be the Call of Duty of racing games, but it’s the four varied references to shooters in Edge magazine‘s cover story on the game that drive that home. From a “business perspective” it’s not hard to see why Activision would hope that the first racing game Bizarre Creations makes…
By Stephen Totilo Published May 13, 2009
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