The Game Release Calendar, Nostromo Edition

Alien: Isolation finally lands this week. Grab it here on PC for 20% off with code VBHGBM-JS2VN9-0J5OFM, or here for the other versions, and be sure to check out the Kotaku Review . Personally, I’ll be playing the long-awaited PS4 edition of Minecraft Over on the Movie and TV side of things, we’ve got the…

Chlamydia And Slutty Clowns: The ESRB Rates This Fall’s Big Games

We normally think of game ratings as little more than a useful marker of where we’ll be able to buy a game, or whether or not it’s suitable for children. But oh, let me tell you: ESRB literature can be so, so much more than that. The Entertainment Software Ratings Board’s website provides detailed rundowns…

Someone Actually Managed To Kill The Reaper In The Sims 4

How does one kill death itself? By getting your hands dirty, of course. PrettyGrumpyBearGame did an experiment that tested whether or not killing the reaper himself in The Sims 4 is possible. Turns out, under normal circumstances, it isn’t possible—the reaper is pretty much immortal. He can’t burn to death, he can’t starve, and he…

Darth Revan Gets His Own Star Wars: The Old Republic Expansion

The hero/villain/it’s complicated who launched Star Wars’ distant past setting in 2003’s Knights of the Old Republic gets another shot at the spotlight in Shadow of Revan, a digital expansion for MMO Star Wars: The Old Republic, launching in December. In retrospect, Star Wars: the Old Republic might have done a lot better at launch…

Save on a Great Plasma Screen While You Still Can, and More Deals

The TV industry is a transitional period, and as such, we haven’t had a lot of deals to get really psyched about in a while. Here are two: Samsung 60-Inch 4K Ultra HD 120Hz 3D Smart LED HDTV ($2598) | Amazon Samsung 51-Inch 1080p 600Hz 3D Smart Plasma HDTV($1398) | Amazon | The Wirecutter’s favorite…

Mountain Dew Game Fuel Once Again Heeds The Call Of Duty

It’s time for the annual running of the bladder, as Mountain Dew once again teams up with a major fall video game release to market alien flavors of its citrus-like carbonated beverage. Now with lemonade flavor! For the blissfully unaware, Game Fuel is the label Mountain Dew uses to market limited edition flavors to the…

Assassin’s Creed Unity Is Looking Very French

Ubisoft just releasee a snazzy new trailer for Assassin’s Creed Unity that emphasizes the game’s story. Without spoiling anything, I think it’s safe to say the game is looking very French. That’s a good thing, in my book. I mean: who doesn’t want to try and kill Robespierre, am I right? Ok, I’m not actually…

Driveclub‘s Box Has Some Questionable Grammar

Box art grammar flubs are the best kind of grammar flubs. And while the back of Driveclub doesn’t quite compare to Capcpom‘s Resident Evil Revelaitons, this one is pretty great too. See the line on top there? “Race in hundreds of online & offline players”? That does not make sense. You cannot race inside of…

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