No, sports fans are not thoroughly fatigued by social media-driven cover votes. What gives you that crazy idea? So after Madden gives us either Barry Sanders or Adrian Peterson on Wednesday, you can enjoy another monthlong tournament as NHL 14 selects its star.

Maker of 3 of the Best Games Ever: ‘I think everything we do sucks’

Most interviews with game developers are stuffed with predictable hype about how wonderful everything in their game will be. It’s pre-release time. A season for optimism! Here’s something different—something brutal yet refreshing… …from Mark Pacini, former game director of the incredible Metroid Prime games. His studio’s now making a side-scrolling Metroid-style Batman game for the…

It’s a Good Week to Be a JRPG-Loving Android Gamer

Japanese developer Kemco has spent the past couple of years rolling out a steady stream of Japanese role-playing games to the Android market, delivering hours of old school goodness to fans of turn-based pixel battles willing to spend $5.99 – $8.99. Now through April 30,every Kemco game is $.99. I just spent $4.95 to complete…

Boring Tower Defense Game Spices Things Up With Poop

I don’t care for carrots. I don’t enjoy eating carrots. Throughout my lifetime, the few times I would knowingly eat carrots is when I’m consuming bahn mi, curry, or pot pies. Luckily, my disdain for carrots is only in the real world because saving carrots is literally the point of this tower defense game —…

Gawker just got Kinja’d. Expect lots of image-annotating, user-following and comment-starring in their future.

Chinese People Pulling Insane Loads

Alain Delorme’s photo series “Totems” shows an another side of China’s migrant workers. Make that, a truly amazing side. According to Delorme, each worker in the photo looks “like a superhero able to carry around this kind of load.” The photos, however, have a meaning that’s deeper than the sheer spectacle. “It is above all…

From “Penis” to “Horse Salmon”, Foreign Names Can Be Funny in Japanese

You might think your name is normal in your family’s native tongue. Maybe it is. But put it in a different language, and sometimes, all hell can break loose. In Japanese, foreign words and names are written in a writing system called katakana. Unlike most Japanese names, which use kanji characters that have intrinsic meanings,…

Hong Kong Residents Supposedly Can’t Live Without Their Phones

Many people have called the dawn of the smartphone the death of manners and conversation. Some people are often too busy checking their phones to mind their manners. While it’s not really a huge deal, Hong Kong’s Ta Kung Newspaper says otherwise. Ta Kung Pao, a Beijing backed Hong Kong based newspaper, put out a…

Hey Children, Here’s a $20,000 Mecha Just for You!

The mecha wizards at Japan’s Sakakibara Machinery Works are back. Previously, the factory rolled out the Landwalker, a large mecha you could buy. And now? It has a newly revamped mecha for little kids. How sweet. As pointed out by sister site Gizmodo Japan, the Kid’s Walker Cyclops has a claw to grab things and…

Larian Studios teamed up with Let’s Play purveyor quill18 to produce this hour-long walkthrough of Kickstarter-funded RPG Divinity: Original Sin’s pre-alpha. Looks a lot more like a sequel than the actual sequel—a bit like Neverwinter Nights 2 and the original Divinity had a baby. [Thanks, DSOGaming.]

This JRPG Team Is Niche, Even for Japan

Screw the West! This new role-playing brand certainly does not explicitly say that, but you have to admire a tagline that says it’s aiming at a specific type of player in Japan. A niche within niche! The tagline, which you can see in the above image, reads, “An RPG made for ‘Japan’s particular customers.'” Compile…

Famed Japanese Anime Leads to Ridiculous Hamburger

To mark Evangelion: 3.33 You Can (Not) Redo‘s Blu-ray and DVD launch, burger chain Lotteria is unleashing a jumbo hamburger in Japan. It’s called the “Q-Story Cheese Burger”, because, in part, the movie’s Japanese title is Evangelion Shin Gekijouban: Q. It’s also wordplay: The burger has nine patties, and the Japanese word for nine is…

If BioShock’s Rapture Was An Extreme Tourism Destination…

French artist Laure-Marie Torre has come up with just about the best BioShock-related idea I’ve ever seen. She’s imagined that Rapture still exists, but that alongside the crazies, there are still regular folks down there alive as well. Instead of fighting over the place and killing everybody, she figured, wouldn’t they instead just want to…

Batman Is Teaching The US Army Safety (Hilariously)

Somehow, the US Army is getting away with these official, amazing training videos for personnel serving on active duty in Afghanistan. Bagram Batman is ever vigilant for violations of protocol, and when he sees somebody screwing around, he is a man with little time for excuses. Bagram Batman Educates Soldiers in Series of U.S. Army…

The Works Of NCSoft Artist Park Jong Won

Park Jong Won is a Korean concept artist who currently works for NCSoft, the MMO giant behind games like Lineage, Aion and Guild Wars. The art you’ll see below are my favourite pieces from his portfolio, because to me, they’re the covers to books I’ve never read, but if I saw them staring back at…

Nintendo’s Wii U Advertising Reaches For The Panic Button

These are so terrible I’d tell you not to watch them, but screw it, if I had to, you have to as well. If time travel is invented anytime soon, giving us the chance to atone for past mistakes, I like to think the first person in line will be the man who signed off…

Screw Maps, Let’s Play An RTS Across An Entire Planet

Because it’s being made by guys who made Supreme Commander and Total Annihilation, you expect a sense of scale from upcoming RTS Planetary Annihilation. And that’s exactly what we’re getting here in this very first look at gameplay from the Kickstarter success story. Who needs levels or maps when you can get an entire planet…

Here’s Skyrim Running On The Oculus Rift VR Headset

Reader Chris has one of the early development releases of the Oculus Rift virtual reality headset. He has done what the people want, and recorded himself playing Skyrim on the thing. I’m trying to think of a better way to spend a rainy day, and I’m finding it hard. Skyrim on Oculus Rift [YouTube]

World of Tanks Has Been Hacked, Hide Yo’ Wife, Hide Yo’ Passwords

User accounts for World of Tanks, one of the biggest games in the world, have been comprised following what the game’s publisher calls a “security incident”. While stating “no financial information was accessed“, operators Wargaming does say “some password hashes and email addresses may have been affected by the compromise”, and as a result is…

The remixed Fez soundtrack is now out. Get it here. At $5, you’d be crazy not to, especially since it features tracks by the composers behind games like Minecraft, Mirror’s Edge and…Fez.