Stephen Totilo

Roger Ebert, R.I.P.

Legendary film critic Roger Ebert has passed away at the age of 70 after a long battle with cancer. Ebert wasn’t just a film critic; a liberal activist, a loving husband, a tech enthusiast, he also made headlines in the gaming press late in his life by sparring with gamers about the worth of the…

The Next Xbox Will Require an Internet Connection To Start Games, Sources Say

Two Kotaku sources have added more credence to the rumor that the next Xbox, expected to battle the PlayStation 4 in late 2013 or early 2014, will be an always-online system, though it will be able to tolerate dropped connections. “Unless something has changed recently,” one of the sources told us over email, “Durango consumer…

Duck Retro Hunt Developer Charmingly Denies Rip-Off Claims In His Very Own ‘Retro Reply’

Yesterday I was snarking at Asier Marzo, the developer of the apparent Android Duck Hunt rip-off Duck Retro Hunt. But the guy is winning me over. Here’s what I sent him, after running an item about his studio Infinity K and their seeming interest in making games that look like other people’s games or at…

Tim Schafer, One of the Most Celebrated Game Creators in LucasArts History, Pays Tribute

The man led the creation of Grim Fandango and Full Throttle and helped make other beloved LucasArts games including The Secret of Monkey Island. Today, LucasArts is all but no more, shuttered as a development studio by its new owners at Disney and turned into a licensing house. Tim Schafer, now running things at Double…

Tip: To Avoid Seeming Sketchy, Put ‘Retro’ In The Name of the Game That Inspired Yours.

I can’t vouch for the quality of the Android game Duck Retro Hunt, but I can vouch for the brazenness of the game’s name. Why, next thing you know, someone will add cutting edge technology to that beloved Pac-Man game and try to sell us Pac-Retro-Man. I’m holding out for Call of Retro Duty, myself.…

The Next Xbox and Its Controller Are Currently Covered In Crazy Stripes

Controllers for the next Xbox as well as prototype versions of both Microsoft’s new, powerful console and the machine’s new, mandatory Kinect sensor have been in the hands of game creators since last month. But that’s not much of a surprise. What is a surprise is that all of that gear is covered in criss-crossing,…

The Rock Stars In The Worst Infinity Blade Rip-Off I’ve Ever Seen

‘Tis the week of Wrestlemania and therefore the week that World Wrestling Entertainment is trying to sell its fans anything and everything. That anything and everything includes the latest terrible video game starring The Rock. Finally… we have a game called Rockpocalpyse in which the beefy Hollywood actor/WWE champion tries to save the world by…

It’s hard to tell, this being April Fool’s Day, but it appears that the Prime Minister of Egypt made some progress in Smurfs’ Village today. He’s been roundly mocked for perhaps not making the best use of his time.

Our pals at io9 recapped the premiere of HBO’s Game of Thrones. Check it out on their site. Any predictions on whether historians will deem GoT or Metal Gear the series most in need of some plot pruning? Or does that honor go to Kingdom Hearts?

“It’s been fifteen years, nine games, and an enormous blast to undertake. If it were my choice, I would do this role forever. To hear anyone else’s voice coming from Snake’s battered throat, makes me a little ill, to be honest.” – David Hayter, talking movingly today in a must-read Twitter message about not playing…

I’d Rather Be Playing Prison Architect, a Most Uncomfortable Game

The most interesting decision a video game has given me the opportunity to make this year involved the interior decoration of a prison. The choice, which I was presented just yesterday: Did I want to put a window in the cell of a man on death row? Or save the money? Either way, he was…

‘What We Want to Do is Scare the S–t Out of Players. So We’ll do Whatever Is Necessary To Achieve That Goal.’

This is Outlast, a first-person, combat-free horror game about investigating an asylum. It’s coming to PC (Steam) at the end of the summer by new development studio Red Barrels. We saw the game at PAX East last weekend. Supposedly one of the people who tried the game at PAX was so freaked out that he…

Here’s Shovel Knight, A Surprise For Folks Who Miss the SNES

Shovel Knight is one of the many indie games that caught my eye at last weekend’s PAX East. It’s the only one that had me thinking Zelda II, though the retro-loving developers at Yacht Club Games also cite DuckTales and Mega Man as influences. Before I could even find Kotaku editor Chris Person, I had…

Tomb Raider: The New York Times review. (By your Kotaku editor-in-chief.)

The ‘GDC Fedora’ Really Got Around

There was a very special fedora at this week’s Game Developers Conference. It was placed on the heads of numerous top game creators, such as PopCap Games co-founder John Vechey (left) and Metal Gear mastermind Hideo Kojima (right). This one hat capped some other great craniums as well. To see them all, check out the…

This Is Running on a PlayStation 4 in Real Time, According to Epic

You may have seen this graphics demo before. It shows off the Unreal Engine 4, the next-gen graphics tech from the company behind Gears of War, Infinity Blade and the graphics engine that runs a lot of modern PC and console games. But if you saw it before, you saw it running on a PC.…

Impressive Unreal Engine 4 Graphics Demo ‘Infiltrator’ Leaks Early. This Is Next-Gen?

This is a tech demo called Infiltrator that the people at Epic Games have been showing to reporters and developers all week at the Game Developers Conference this week in San Francisco. Is it a game? Or just a way to show off what the Unreal Engine can do for next-gen video game graphics? I’m…

The Game That Amazed Us The Most At PAX East: Quadrilateral Cowboy

Kotaku video editor Chris Person and I are not thieves, but if there was one game we’d like to have absconded with last weekend at the PAX East show in Boston, it was Quadrilateral Cowboy. Watch the video, and you too might be considering a brief flirtation with crime. Quadrilateral Cowboy creator Brendon Chung describes…

This Might Be the Most High-Tech Tabletop RPG Ever

I was running out of PAX East last Saturday. I had to catch a bus. But I wanted to check one last cranny of the show floor to make sure I wasn’t missing anything. I’m so glad I did, because I nearly missed Eon Altar. What, you’ve never heard of it? Eon Altar is a…

What Will Bungie Say About Their Next Game, Destiny? Watch Live.

Straight from the Game Developers Conference in San Francisco, hosted by Twitch TV and GameSpot