We Didn’t Always Love Steam

We love Steam almost as much as we love sales. Perhaps your wallet (or, hey, let’s not forget about purses) has combusted due to overuse. Over the years we’ve come to trust Steam, but that wasn’t always the case as my video above shows. Music: Atlantean Twilight Kevin MacLeod (incompetech.com) Have words you want to…

Moneysaver: Steam Sale Day 6 Breakdown [Updated Wednesday 9:45am]

Dealcano. About the Moneysaver The Steam Summer Sale is without a doubt the year’s most well-known series of discounts on games, but at Kotaku we know you want gaming deals every day. Brought to you by the Commerce Team, the Kotaku Moneysaver posts every day at 2:15pm ET*, bringing you the best, most complete, and…

Navigating a Maze of Real Lasers is Harder Than You’d Think

Look — We all love lasers. And we all agree that mazes made out of lasers, a la the movie Entrapment, are awesome. What you may not realize is that navigating a laser maze in real life is harder than you’d think. It was raining, and yet dozens of people came out to try their…

Hey Guys, I Found Our New Review Format

Hot Pepper Game Reviews? Brilliant. Jared Rosen is a fearless pioneer of video game criticism. We should all learn by his example. Mostly I’m glad he’s done this first, so if someone suggest I do this I can point to Jared’s video and shake my head with faux sadness.

Nine Minutes With One Of The PS3’s Most Interesting New Games

This is Puppeteer, out for the PS3 on September 10 (September 11 in Europe). It’s really neat. Watch me play it alongside creative director Gavin Moore.

Possibly-Profound Gaming Lesson: Don’t Shoot, And You’ll Heal

The person who is playing the upcoming video game Luftrausers in the GIF here understands a basic rule of the game: don’t shoot, and your ship will heal. Games are made of simple rules like these. Occasionally, those rules can feel profound. I’m not saying that Luftrausers is a deep message game. It is, more…

Capsized Tries A Little Of Everything, But Only Some Of It Works

Capsized starts out like a metroidvania game, but you soon find yourself swarmed by hordes of enemies, looking for levers while being carried away by a hot air balloon with teeth. You know what, it’s hard to explain, you should just watch the video. Capsized is available now on Xbox Live Arcade for 800 MS…

Slavery Gives Me a Weird Personal Connection to Assassin’s Creed IV

I wouldn’t exist if not for the ugly historical fact of slavery. Somewhere along my family tree, ancestors of mine were traded into bondage, most likely from somewhere in West Africa. And then other forebears wound up on the island of Ayiti—known today as Haiti—where slaves fought for their freedom in the 18th Century. I…

Now that Dota 2 is officially out in the wild, check out our report from last year’s Dota 2 International, where people gathered from around the world to compete over $1.6 million.

A Hoarder of Trees

There’s seriously not an inch of my friend’s town that doesn’t look like this. I’m not sure how I even managed to walk through it.

Here’s what’s going on Talk Among Yourselves, our reader-written blog: Ellen Miller digs up her memories about Sega Master System. Sir Trey’s been imagining what would go into a video game Criterion Collection and considers whether the first Deus Ex belongs in there. And PyramidHeadcrab wants to know what the best game you’ve gotten in…

Madden NFL 25 Pimps GMC’s Rides

After the Super Bowl, the MVP is usually presented with some car and if he’s a pitchman for another auto maker, it can be kind of awkwardly funny. But in Madden NFL 25, your quarterback will go up there and graciously accept that GMC truck, dammit. GMC is the official vehicle of the NFL, and…

Look! Yuna came to visit me!

I love love love love Final Fantasy X. Like, seriously love it. So this is pretty much perfect and I need it.

The Epic Dishonored Saga Comes To A Close August 13

It all comes to a head August 13, when the final downloadable content for Dishonored hits the PlayStation 3, PC and Xbox 360. Picking up where The Knife of Dunwall DLC left off, Dishonored: The Brigmore Witches continues the adventure of legendary assassin Daud, as he hunts down a coven of powerful witches and finally…

Why Didn’t Think I of This?

The villagers in Animal Crossing have the most random and amazing suggestions to give you. I hope you guys will add your favorite quotes to the comments, but here are some of mine:

Dress Up as the Most Evil Spider-Man This August in Marvel Heroes

Sure, there are already lots of alt-outfits for Spider-Man in Gazillion Entertainment’s click-battle MMO. But this one is Superior. All those wall-crawling suits in Marvel Heroes are basically Peter Parker get-ups. (Ok, yes, Spider-clone Ben Reilly is represented, too.) But, if you like your web-slinger a bit more malevolent and haughty than the original model,…

Guys, Police Quest Is (Basically) Back

It may not have the official name (that’s lost somewhere in Activision’s archives), but upcoming PC adventure game Precinct is, from the designer down to the fundamentals, trying to be something fans of the classic Sierra series will be very interested in. Police Quest founder and designer Jim Walls is leading development on the project,…

DualShock 4 vs. DualShock 3

Just how similar is the new PlayStation 4 controller to the one that PlayStation 3 gamers have been using for nearly seven years? At a PlayStation event in New York City yesterday, we were able to put a model of the DualShock 4 up against a DualShock 3. The biggest difference between the controllers is…

League of Legends As A Pokémon Game Is One Big Headache

xChinnNin takes the gameplay mechanics of Pokémon and blends them with some intense MOBA action to form what looks to be a nerve-wracking nightmare. Interesting concept though, since both League of Legends and Pokémon are about summoning creatures to fight against others — just in a slightly different way. If League of Legends was a…

There’s no rule against using ladders as weapons in wrestling, but that’s not how you do it! Climbing it might also be problematic, even if it’s just WWE ’13 and not reality. Dayshot is an image-based feature that runs every morning, showcasing some of the prettiest,funniest game-related screenshots and art that we can find. Send…