The Just Cause 2 multiplayer mod is having another public test—more info on how to get in on the driving, skydiving and general mayhem here. (Via PC Gamer)

Facebook Comment Lands League of Legends Player in Jail

Trash talk during video game play isn’t all uncommon. And, while it’s troubling when the chatter turns sexist, racist, homophobic or extremely threatening, many games and communities have their own remedies: penalties, bans, negative consequences for player reputations. The last thing you’d expect is for someone to wind up in jail. But that’s exactly what…

The Uplifting Story Behind a Digital Revolution

On May 26, two weeks before E3, a man named Pete Dodd started a thread on the message board NeoGAF. Microsoft had just announced their next-gen console, the Xbox One, and with it, customer-unfriendly policies like used game restrictions and a mandatory 24-hour Internet check-in. Meanwhile, Sony was staying quiet about their own possible plans…

Remember that suspicious Korean puzzle in Surgeon Simulator 2013—which people assumed teased a Valve product? The developers say it’s an ARG, but it’s unrelated to Valve or Half-Life

30000×4087 Video Game ‘Screenshot’ Is a Whole Lot to Take In

The people in charge of hyping the new PC game Total War: Rome II keep exploiting our weakness for absurdly large, detailed screenshots—screenshots that could get their game mistaken for the most violent Where’s Waldo ever. Their new shot today is 30000×4087 and weighs in at a mere 80MB. It’s not quite as gargantuan as…

The Twist Makes This The Best Kinect Family Trailer Ever

It starts out like any other live-action, family-centric, Kinect-enabled game trailer. Then it gets brilliant. So, Doodle Jump is out on Xbox Live Arcade today. I’m so pleased with this trailer that I might drop 400 Microsoft points on principle.

Pong and Minecraft Join 14 Classic Games in The Museum of Modern Art

The next time you go to New York City’s Museum of Modern Art to take in, say, a retrospective of Le Corbusier, you’ll be able to get up close and personal with one of the earliest home consoles ever made. And there’ll be Atari classics and a modern indie juggernaut waiting for you, too. MoMA…

Prison Architect continues to have the best alpha updates: “Alpha 11 brings a host of new features, bug fixes and improvements, not least of which is hearses to take away the unfortunately deceased.” Details here. Reasons to play it here. (Warning: Presumably-NSFW cursing at the start of the video.)

Anodyne, the excellent Zelda-like indie that came out on PC earlier this year, is now on iOS

This Indie 8-Bit Platformer Harkens Back To The Castlevanias of Old

Meet Odallus: The Dark Call, currently in development by JoyMasher, the same Brazilian indie group that brought us Oniken last year. It’s an “action exploration platformer” set to come out in 2014. Also, the hero is named “Haggis.” … Huh. Much like the first Castlevania, Odallus will be comprised of separate stages. These stages are…

Demos Are Great For Gamers, Not-So-Great For Game Sales

Giving players a chance to try before they buy is a noble gesture, but it may not be a wise. According to research presented by game designer Jesse Schell at the Gamelab conference in Barcelona today, a demo can cut into a game’s sales by more than 50 percent, CVG reports. The data, gathered by…

Are MOBA Games Too Fast? Go Turn-Based With Arena Of Heroes

The multiplayer online battle arena genre started off as a fast-paced variant of real-time strategy games. This week Sneaky Games dials back the action and ramps up the strategy with Arena of Heroes, a turn-based cross-platform MOBA jam for iPad, PC and Mac. What a difference taking turns makes. It’s MOBA meets chess. Players take…

Civilization V: Brave New World Gets An Excellent Early Launch Trailer

It’s even narrated by Captain Anderson Keith David. Anything that man touches is gold. The newest expansion to Firaxis Games’ turn-based strategy title, Civilization V: Brave New World, will feature nine new civilizations, eight wonders, and introduces several new mechanics to the main game, such as trade routes and the World Congress. Expect it to…

The Best Games of 2013’s Amazing First Six Months

The year could end right now and we could already declare 2013 one of gaming’s greatest years. Have we ever had a first half as stacked as this? Let’s celebrate by having some friendly debates about which games were the best. First, to remind you of how good it’s been, lets marvel at this horn…

The daily Smash Bros. screenshots on Nintendo’s site can easily compete with anything the internet at large has to offer. Take, for example, the one uploaded today. We’ll probably never know what’s going on in the pic between Mario and the Wii Trainer. They are not fighting, that’s for sure.

The Devil is a Part-Timer! is Clever, Witty, and Just Plain Fun

When the spring anime season was reaching its mid-way point five weeks ago, I listed The Devil is a Part-Timer! as one of the five anime you should be watching. And while the second half of the series didn’t quite live up to the quality of the first half, it is still an anime that…

Contrast Gives Us 5 Screenshots Before Stepping Back Into The Shadows

Indie platformer Contrast sure is coming along nicely. We first caught glimpse of the game earlier this year, when we got a taste of the unique shadow-platforming mechanics behind the game. Now, with these screenshots, we get to see the moody, film-noir inspired world in greater detail. Have a look below. Contrast is expected to…

This Is “Tank Sushi”

And it kind looks like a tank. Well, one covered with dead fish. It does. See? The world has already seen battleship sushi (here), and now, here is “sensha sushi” (戦車寿司), or “tank sushi”. As pointed out by Naver, a sushi restaurant called Kurisakiya began offering a tank sushi in honor of Japanese anime Girls…

Ghost in the Shell‘s Product Placement Pisses Me Off

This last weekend marked the Japanese premiere of Ghost in the Shell: Arise border: 1 Ghost Pain. Needless to say, I enjoyed the film. What I didn’t enjoy was the incredibly blatant and distracting product placement surrounding the film—like this three-minute commercial for the Microsoft Surface. The commercial stars the cast of Ghost in the…

20 Great Artists Want To Make An Album Celebrating Video Game Music

“Game audio is still something that’s not really recognised for what it is,” muses Rik Ede, composer for Wipeout HD and organizer of a Kickstarter to fund a brand new album created by some of the biggest names in video game music. The people involved in the project represent a wide variety of genres, be…