The Real World Reflected In The Vanishing Of Ethan Carter

Video games often strive to appear “realistic” in one way or another, but the new indie horror game The Vanishing of Ethan Carter took things a step further verisimilitude-wise: creating many of its levels by pulling from real-world photographs. Using a nifty technique known as “photogrammetry,” Ethan Carter developer The Astronauts built the game’s spooky…

‘Don’t kill me! I would die from that!’

Thank you to Reddit user Halefire for capturing this Shadow of Mordor orc “Skoth the Dumb” really living up to his namesake… via Reddit

Today’s selection of articles from Kotaku‘s reader-run community: 199X: An Earthbound Odyssey • Video Games and the Fine Art of Subversion • Hidden Treats in… Luigi’s Mansion • The Curious Case of Handheld Smash TAY Classic—TAY Open Forum—Beginner’s Guide To TAY Follow them here.

That Awesome Car Crashing Game Finally Gets A Real Name

We’ve been writing about Bugbear Entertainment’s single-player vehicular carnage simulator, Next Car Game, since January. No longer. From now on we’ll be writing about Bugbear Entertainment’s multiplayer vehicular carnage simulator, Wreckfest. Yeah, I buried the lead there a bit. What’s important about this news is that the $30 Steam Early Access game that’s provided lonely…

Tiny Handheld Console Actually Plays Games

Everything about this is small: the screen’s less than an inch across, the resolution’s 96 by 64 pixels and it costs $75. The whole thing’s so cute if it was a dog it would wear a dress and live in a handbag. This post originally appeared on Kotaku UK This tiny gaming system is actually…

From StarCraft Pros to TV Stars

Pro-gaming is hard. You gotta be good. You gotta train hard. But, like for any sport, it doesn’t last forever. A handful of StarCraft pros have taken a rather unusual post pro-gaming career path in South Korea: The entertainment industry. For years now, StarCraft has been incredibly popular in the region—not just playing it, but…

Report: Microsoft Sells 100,000 Xbox Ones in China

The Xbox One, the first official video game console to launch in China in 14 years, has started its console life in the middle kingdom with a bang! According to Chinese news sources, the Xbox One sold over 100,000 units within the first week of sales. According to Chinese video games news site 17173, during…

This year’s Tokyo Game Show had the second-highest attendance in its history, with 251,832 visitors over the four-day show. The highest TGS attendance was in 2013, with 270,197 visitors. I thought this year’s TGS was really good. You?

Want to know more about all those graphics options PC games have? PC Gamer has posted a comprehensive multi-page guide which explains everything from anti-aliasing types to anisotropic filtering and texture quality, with plenty of example images and even some benchmark statistics. Head over here to check it out

Saturday Night Live Sketch Skewers the Gap Between Gameplay and Story

You’ve probably noticed it called out in some Grand Theft Auto, Uncharted and BioShock games: those moments where the emotions being presented to you in cutscenes or dialogue don’t match up with what the player’s being told to do. And while that issue has been a point of contention for many years, I wasn’t ever…

The Week In Games: Surely You Heard That

Did you hear that? Oh god, tell me you didn’t hear that. That gurgling, chittering sound? Surely it was my imagination, as is the heavy scuttling in the air ducts overhead. Still, could you folkss go check for me? I’ll wait here. Folks? Anything there? All I can see is the light from that flashlight…

A Fan Album As Epic As Smash Bros. Itself

Were it possible, I’d replace every piece of music in my copy of Smash Bros. 3DS with one of the 101 tracks in Shinesparkers’ “Harmony of Heroes”, an amazing 101 track Super Smash Bros. fan arrangement album, now available for free download. Some 60 or so artists contributed to this massive undertaking, announced last year…