Stephen Totilo

Assassin’s Creed Unity‘s Dead Kings DLC Is Disappointing And Glitchy

I may not have liked Assassin’s Creed Unity very much, but I was still excited about its free expansion Dead Kings, which then went and failed on me twice in its first two missions. Damn. I had been really excited to download this thing… If something that is more than 7GB can be called a…

Nintendo’s got a new free-to-play downloadable 3DS Pokémon puzzle game (with microtransaction support, it sounds like) coming this February. It’s called Pokémon Shuffle and might remind you of Pokémon Trozei. It was announced in this morning’s Nintendo Direct by Nintendo boss Satoru Iwata. Here’s some footage from the Direct, capped by Gamexplain….

Apparently, Nicole Kidman went to Jimmy Fallon’s house to seduce him but he just wanted to play video games? That’s how explained it on the Tonight Show, at least. I think Gawker has a clip…can we get this queued up?

Intel has announced a $300 million fund to get more women and minorities working in tech and gaming. The company was partially motivated by debates last fall surrounding its short-lived removal of ads from gaming trade site Gamasutra amid a swirl of controversies in the video game community, according to a New York Times report.

Delayed Assassin’s Creed Unity DLC Out Mid-January

Dead Kings, the formerly for-pay expansion to Assassin’s Creed Unity, will be released for free for all ACU players on January 13, according to a new trailer from publisher Ubisoft. But… the YouTube description initially mentioned a December 16. Hmm. Was December 16 the original release date? Ubisoft did seem to put the brakes on…

I Finished These 26 Video Games in 2014

Here we go again. For the ninth year in a row (since 2006!), I’ve counted up how many video games I either started or finished in the past 12 months. Let’s see how I did. As always, some notes: I only list games I played on my own, outside of any shows like E3 where…

Kotaku‘s 100 Most Popular Posts Of 2014*

In 2014, we shared the stories from game developers who have been laid off. We followed the ups and downs of the Mario Kart 8 scene. We wrote about Gamergate a bunch, too. We ran thousands of posts this year, but which ones were the most popular? According to Google Analytics, the 100 posts listed…

Kirk Helps Stephen Figure Out What’s Good About Danganronpa

A couple of Kotaku staffers love Danganronpa, the weirdly named Japanese visual novels/murder mysteries released on the Vita in the U.S. this year. I figured I should try one by year’s end. I knew going in that I was in for a rough time. WARNING: This post contains major spoilers about what happens in Dangonronpa‘s…

Christmas Will Last Longer In GTA Online, Due To Xbox Live, PSN Outages

Rockstar Games has changed its plans and decided to continue to give out Christmas gifts in Grand Theft Auto Online at least a day after Christmas, since so many players were unable to grab them on the 25th. The studio just announced this on Twitter following a day full of questions (including from us) about…

SimCity Purists Are Understandably Upset About The Newest SimCity

The new SimCity game for iOS and Android may have a four-star user-review rating on the iTunes app store, but a glance at those reviews—and some time playing the game—make it clear that this city’s got some problems. I know, I know: “Oh, it’s Kotaku harumphing about a new SimCity game again.” But, well… have…

Hundreds of Star Wars Comics Are On Sale…Before They Disappear

Dark Horse Comics, publisher of Star Wars comics since the early 1990s, won’t be allowed to sell any more after New Year’s Eve when Marvel takes over the franchise. So they’re putting all of them on sale. That’s half-price per issue or, if you prefer, $300 for the full 28,353 pages’ worth. Our friends at…

Day After Christmas Outage, Xbox Live Back, PSN Down For Maintenance 

Xbox Live is working across the Xbox One and Xbox 360 platforms this morning, a day after the service was down for many. But the PlayStation Network was down for “maintenance” on the PlayStation 4, according to a system message. Xbox Live appeared to come back to something close to normal functionality late Christmas night,…

Xbox Live And PlayStation Network Knocked Offline For Much Of Christmas [Update 3]

We hope you weren’t planning to play many games online on Christmas. Xbox users in North America and Europe are having difficulties logging into Xbox Live today, and PlayStation owners are suffering similar problems. Some Internet troublemakers are claiming they knocked both offline. Bah humbug to this. While most of our team are away from…

The Best Games To Get For Your New Gaming System, Phone Or Tablet 

Get a new gaming system for Christmas today? Or a new phone or tablet that plays games? We’ve got some recommendations for you so you can play some games (and maybe ignore your more annoying relatives in the process). Below, you’ll find lists to our 12 favorite games for every major game-playing device. The vast…

Merry Christmas, everyone! (Or, if you don’t celebrate the holiday: Have a terrific Thursday!) We hope you all have a great day.

Sony’s The Interview Now On Xbox Store, Coming To PlayStation Network [UPDATE]

Sony Pictures’ controversial comedy The Interview, pulled from theatrical release last week in the fallout of a massive hack of the studio, is now officially viewable in a variety of places, among them, on Microsoft’s Xbox consoles. Above is a screencap of Microsoft’s Xbox Video service on the Xbox One, where you can watch the…

Learning To Like (Some) Video Game Chores

I was skeptical about the new(ish) 3DS game Fantasy Life back when our own Jason Schreier praised it as “the best to-do list I’ve ever played.” Too many games feel over-stuffed with too many chores as is—too many-no-fun-fetch-quests, too many collectibles, etc. But I’ve come around with this game. I explain my change of heart…

Assassin’s Creed Initiates, the semi-reliable web-based service used to track players’ progress in Assassin’s Creed games, will be down for extended maintenance over the holidays according to Ubisoft, which is making—good news—all those Initiates-tied gold treasure chests accessible to all players with online connections. (The chests usually require players to be at certain Initiates ranks…

Our 2014 Gamers of the Year: You!

In 2006, when I was writing for MTV News, I suggested what seemed like a novelty: that gamers had enough sway in gaming that one should be able to make a list of elite gamers, not just high score kings and queens but gamers who had made an impact on gaming. I wrote: Gaming is…

Listen to some Halo 5 music, if you’d like. We captured it from the upcoming game’s multiplayer beta, which just started for some Xbox One gamers and will launch wider later this month.