MIT’s OpenRelativity engine, designed to model Einstein’s special theory of relativity in a video game, now is being released as an open-source toolset. It is available for download here.

Oh Man, You Are Not Gonna Believe What You Can Do in Watch_Dogs

We may be coming to the twilight of the current console generation but these old dogs can still learn some new tricks, as this making-of video for Watch_Dogs shows. That’s right, hero Aiden Pearce will be able to walk with his hands in his pockets. This is actual gameplay, folks, NOT PRE-RENDER. Skip ahead to…

Intel Haswell Makes Its Debut: Core i7-4770K Review

Regular TechSpot readers will have no doubt spotted several mentions of Haswell on our front page this year. In the past few months we have covered everything from model names to performance and battery life claims. A key focus has been Haswell’s graphics, with rumors suggesting its performance is set to be 2 to 3…

Trivialize an Anti-Gay Riot With This Bizarre Facebook Game

Two weeks ago, priests in Georgia (the former Russian state independent republic, not the US state) led a mob that attacked about 50 gay rights demonstrators, hurling rocks and, ifthis YouTube video is an indication, swinging furniture. Someone’s cooked up a nearly unplayable side-scroller lampooning the chaos. This is Call of Taburetka, the latter word…

Joining last year’s miracle Half-Life 3 onion ring, @joshpav just found this Borderlands logo/Vault symbol in his meal. (As retweeted by Gearbox Software president and CEO Randy Pitchford.)

Someone’s Going to Dig Up Atari’s Infamous New Mexico Landfill

Alamogordo’s city council has granted an excavation permit for the infamous landfill said to hold thousands of copies of E.T. and Pac-Man for the Atari 2600—two titles blamed for the mid-1980s crash of console gaming—and yes, the permit-holder is digging out the site specifically to find those games’ remains. The story is well known to…

Tales of Symphonia is Coming to the PS3

In celebration of its 10th anniversary, Tales of Symphonia is getting re-released on the PlayStation 3. Titled Tales of Symphonia Unisonant Pack, the game will include both Tales of Symphonia and its sequel, Tales of Symphonia: Dawn of the New World Tales producer Hideo Baba made the announcement today to a cheering crowd of 12,000…

This Week in the Business: A Billion-Dollar Underestimate

What’s happened in the business of video games this past week … QUOTE | “I think, candidly, people are way, way under-indexing how hard we’re punching.”—Don Mattrick, head of Microsoft’s Entertainment Division, talking about how Microsoft is ready to invest $1 billion in exclusive Xbox One titles QUOTE | “The optimistic part of me is…

The Best Of Kotaku, The Week Of May 27

Welcome to the weekend, Kotaku. Which means I’ve got a round-up of all our best content on Kotaku Selects. While Microsoft and Sony still aren’t talking about the online and other details for their newest consoles, others are talking. So while we wait for news from E3 in roughly a week (oh god one more…

Oculus Rift Developer Killed, Was A Bystander During a Police Chase

Andrew Scott Reisse, an accomplished developer at Oculus VR, the company behind the virtual-reality Oculus Rift headset, was killed in Santa Ana, California on Thursday. He was an innocent victim of a police chase gone horribly wrong. Reisse was apparently out for a walk when an alleged gang member, fleeing the police in a Dodge…

So, These Are The People Who Post On NeoGAF!

A teaser video for the upcoming GameTrailers.com documentary about the popular gaming message board NeoGAF finally puts some faces to the screen-names. These people don’t look anything like their avatars! I quite like the GIF-generating, news-aggregating, secret-finding, incessant-games-journalism-analyzing NeoGAF. I even post there from time to time. But I’ve not met many other people who…

More Game of Thrones Characters As Bad 90’s Stereotypes

Last time around, we showed you what some Game of Thrones stars would look like in stereotypical 90’s fashion. The artist, Mike Wrobel, has returned with some more characters in this style. Excellent. Of course I would think this is excellent, since this batch includes two of my favorite characters. But, c’mon, Brienne as a…

This Portal-Themed Bedroom Is Outrageous And I Want To Live In It

Have you ever wanted to live like an Aperture Labs test subject? You have? Well then, you might want to consider living in a ridiculously cool custom-made bedroom like this one. The room, designed by a gamer/interior-decorator/accountant/wizard named Lauren, has been a labor of love, and man, does it show. She details her work at…

Gamasutra’s got a fascinating article about how the developers behind Japanese games like Paladin’s Quest create worlds and characters. Go check it out.

The Week In Gaming Apps Is Sorry It Tried To Kill You

Look, we all make mistakes. None of us are infallible. Sometimes I forget to pay my cable bill until after the due date, Stephen Totilo thinks Majora’s Mask is one of the best Zelda games ever, and the Week in Gaming Apps plotted your demise. Let’s all just make up and move on. Look, Week…

This Tank Can Barrel Roll And Other Popular GIFs From This Week

Whether it’s StarCraft II, Grand Theft Auto IV, or Battlefield 3, seems like the possibilities for something unexpected and funny to happen in games are unlimited. And one of the best ways to share that moment is through an animated GIF. Just like we did last week, it’s time to sort and collect some of…

I Wish America Had Local Game Coverage Like This

I end up watching a lot of news in my line of work, and one thing that is frequently hammered home is this: mainstream American media doesn’t know what they’re doing with games. Across the board what you see on television (with the exception of business reporting) is at best marginally competent and at worst…

A Game Where Keeping Your Date Alive Is Surprisingly Difficult

Save the Date is one of the more clever games I’ve played in recent memory. It’s a visual novel with a simple premise: go out to dinner with someone. Well, it should be simple, except every time you try it, the dinners turn into scenarios that would be right at home in the Final Destination…

How To Get Out Of Work You Hate…And Other Advice

Welcome to another week of Ask Kotaku, where people are fed up with their jobs and responsibilities. You need a way out, and I can offer some hope for you (hopefully). **If you want advice on anything at all, send me an email at Tina at Kotaku dot com for next week’s column.** Regarding Work…

If WarioWare Were An Epic Fantasy Adventure, It’d Be This Game

Welcome to another one of those app reviews where I spend all day planning on reviewing a specific title but then get so caught up in something unexpected and new that I go completely off-track until I’m peeing on a brush fire. Peeing on a brush fire is just one of many activities in G.O.L.…