Watch John Carmack’s QuakeCon Keynote Live, Right Here

QuakeCon 2013 officially begins today in Dallas, TX. You won’t want to miss legendary developer John Carmack kicking things off on stage. His previous appearances have always been educational. Hell, we might even hear some more about Doom 4! His opening speech begins at 4:30 central time, but this Twitch stream will be your home…

Blizzard’s Next Subscription MMO Is No Longer A Subscription MMO

The project code-named Titan is changing direction completely, Blizzard said on today’s Activision earnings call. It used to be a subscription-based massively multiplayer online game. No more. “We’re in the process of selecting a new direction,” Blizzard president Mike Morhaime said on the call. Titan, which has been under development for quite some time now,…

“Video Games Are The Next Big Religion”

How do you feel about the idea of gaming as religion? I wouldn’t blame anyone for feeling skeptical, and yet it’s difficult to disagree with many of the points Andy Robertson makes in this talk that compares gaming and religion. These things have a lot more in common than you’d think! I’m not sure I’m…

Job Interviews at Resident’ Evil’s Umbrella Corporation Would Be Weird

Oh, it’s not called Umberella but anyone who’s been around video games for the last 20 17 years knows where this job interview is happening. Sparsely scattered bullets? Illegal genetic experiments? Parasol, indeed. If you’ve played Resident Evil—or, really, any other survival horror game—the jokes in here will make you laugh. You’ll also think that…

Taco Bell is debuting a new Doritos Locos Taco flavor on August 22. They’ve done Nacho Cheese and Cool Ranch. What could it be? I’m hoping plain.

Watch Us Play… Pikmin 3 And Try To Do This Thing Called ‘Teamwork’

Pikmin 3‘s timed missions are tough, even in co-op. Here’s one of the early ones. Kotaku‘s Steve Marinconz and I had just seven minutes to slay a mighty monster. Could we do it? We recorded the video a couple of days ago, if that matters to you. For more impressions of the Wii U’s first…

The new Wolfenstein game has been delayed to 2014, Bethesda confirmed to Kotaku today. “We felt the game deserved some additional time for polish,” a spokesperson said. [h/t Polygon]

The Drowning Changes The Way Mobile First-Person Shooters Are Played

Last year former DICE Sweden creative director Ben Cousins promised to revolutionize touch screen controls for mobile first-person shooters. He’s kept that promise with The Drowning, but the game’s free-to-play structure is dragging it down. It really is a joy to play The Drowning with its default, two-fingered control scheme, so much so that trying…

Moneysaver: Lost Planet 3, Tropical Freeze, XCOM iOS, Buffy

August is the cheapest month. Welcome to another Moneysaver, featuring pre-orders on Donkey Kong Country: Tropical Freeze, Wii Fit U, and Lost Planet 3, along with a nice discount on XCOM: Enemy Unknown for iOS. Most importantly, don’t miss out on the even-better-than-usual free trial for Amazon Prime. Here’s our coverage of all the QuakeCon…

Take on Mars, the sim that lets you take control of a Mars rover and explore the Red Planet, is now available on Steam Early Access.

The Burliest Adventure Time Cosplayer Goes On A Badass Journey

A ton of people love to cosplay Adventure Time’s Finn, but I’m sure we can agree that Future Finn—or, as many know him, Bearded Finn—may be one of the beefiest. And as much fun as it’s been to see the man at cons or reblogged on Tumblr, given that he’s a Finn cosplayer, you’ve gotta…

QuakeCon 2013 begins today in Dallas, TX. John Carmack will be back on stage with a keynote presentation at 5:30pm eastern time that we’ll have streaming live on Kotaku for you. Hang tight.

Don’t Count On A New Super Mario RPG Any Time Soon

Today, Nintendo’s iconic plumber stars in two big RPG series—Paper Mario and Mario & Luigi. But longtime fans will remember that Mario’s first experiments with role-playing came through a wonderful collaboration with Squaresoft called Super Mario RPG Super Mario RPG, released for the SNES way back in 1996, is remembered fondly today not just for…

Watch Us Play Rise of the Triad, A Throwback To 1995

The re-imagining of Rise of the Triad is here and unafraid to let you loose with nothing to guide you other than your intuition. Too bad my intuition is rubbish. I get myself lost on the way to the shops. But it’s safe to say Rise of the Triad is as gore-filled and over the…

This Love Story About A Psychic Is Like A Heartbreaking Video Game

When you really love someone, nothing will stand in your way — particularly not when your girlfriend has psychic powers. That’s the case in Controller, a short science fiction film by Saman Kesh. It’s a gorgeous, minimalist love story that wonderfully plays with the tropes of empowerment and control, like some kind of heartwarming Akira…

$99 Unlocks A Ton Of Stuff In The Free-to-Play DC Universe MOBA

Quickly becoming the standard for free-to-play PC games, Founders’ packs give players a chance to forego post-launch nickle-and-dime content into one massive down payment. What does $100 get you in the DC Comics take on League of Legends? For starters (pun mildly intended), anyone that buys one of the three Founders’ packs — basic, standard,…

Good news: that Tomb Raider sequel—outed by Kotaku during Comic-Con—is already in the works. In a post on the company’s corporate blog, Square Enix CEO Phil Rogers says that they’re “well into development” on a “next-generation” sequel.

Whoops! Target Advertises Wii As Wii U

Brand confusion has long been an issue for the Wii U. Thanks to the confusing name and the similarities between the look of Nintendo’s newest console and their last one, some have mistaken the Wii U for a Wii accessory. This certainly can’t help. As spotted by Twitterer @Shane1323, Target’s most recent ad for the…

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Ken Levine Is Still Trying to Bring a BioShock Game to the Vita

It took more than two years for BioShock Infinite to go from announcement to release. That’s a pretty long time. But it might be even longer to get Irrational Games’ successful first-person series onto the PlayStation Vita. Why? Studio head Ken Levine says, “I can’t personally greenlight the thing myself.” Some people expected that Monday’s…