Gunpoint Has Been A Crashing, Near-Instant Success

Tom Francis’ outstanding stealth/hacking/spy-comedy game hasn’t just been a critical success. It’s selling like hotcakes In a celebratory post at his workblog, Francis (in his usual low-key manner) shares that the game recouped its development costs in 64 seconds. Not hugely surprising, since as he points out, the entire development cost of the game consisted…

The Ray Gun Returns In Black Ops II: Vengeance July 2

Are you Call of Duty: Black Ops II players ready for four all-new strategy-rich maps and an epic new chapter in the Zombies experience, complete with the debut of the Ray Gun Mark. II? Not yet? Well okay, you’ve got until July 2 — longer if you play on PC or PlayStation 3.

Even Infinity Ward Is Split on Killing Call of Duty Dog

Will they? Won’t they? Following the reveal of Riley, Call of Duty: Ghost’s awesome dog, people couldn’t help but wonder about Call of Duty Dog’s fate—especially when it would be so easy, if not cliche, to off the dog in an attempt to make an emotional powerplay. When we polled Kotaku readers on it, most…

In The Miiverse, Only The Villager Can Hear Your Screams

Of the announcements Nintendo made at E3, none were as meme-ready as the inclusion of The Villager from Animal Crossing in Smash Bros. With his terrifying, lifeless eyes, the internet got to work saying exactly what we were all thinking So is it any surprise that the Super Smash Bros. Miiverse community is absolutely packed…

This lovely illustration of Joel and Ellie from The Last of Us by the one and only Olly Moss. Am I the only one who gets freaked out and moves the pallet reeeeally slowly whenever Ellie’s on it? No? Cool, glad it’s not just me.

South Park‘s Main Fight Move Is Appropriately Juvenile

It’s the same old story with a totally South Park twist. The elves versus the humans. Stan and Kyle versus Cartman. While sitting in a demo room on the E3 showfloor last week, I was shown a portion of the upcoming South Park RPG game. The Obsidian developers controlling the demo showed off how combat…

BioShock‘s Ken Levine Takes A Shot At Scripting Logan’s Run

Logan’s Run fans have been clamoring for a remake of the 1976 film adaptation of William F. Nolan and George Clayton Johnson’s classic tale of dystopian ageist science fiction for decades. According to an exclusive report from Deadline Hollywood, Ken Levine’s next big writing gig after BioShock Infinite is penning the latest script for the…

People Flip the Hell Out When the NCAA Football Demo Doesn’t Show Up

Today, one of the year’s most hotly anticipated video game releases was delayed with no word when it will come out. Frustrated gamers spewed anger over social media, some even vowing to cancel their preorders. This afternoon after a whole nine hours, the world finally got the NCAA Football 14 Demo. That’s right, a free,…

The Moneysaver: Free Torchlight, Dishonored $16, Animal Crossing

I know that you can’t pay full price, it ain’t no lie. I wanna see you get these deals baby buy buy buy, BUY BUY. Can’t argue with free Torchlight, or deep discounts on Alan Wake and D&D games, or the lowest price on Dishonored so far. We’ve also got a strong tech section today,…

Hooray: Skulls of the Shogun Is Escaping The Clutches Of Windows 8

To the disappointment of many, the PC version of 17-BIT’s weird and enjoyable RTS Skulls of the Shogun was tethered to Windows 8 upon release. If you wanted to play it on PC, you’d have to upgrade your OS. No one wanted to do that. Thankfully, the game’s finally breaking free. Starting next month, SOTS…

Xbox One’s Awful DRM Drowned Out Some Really Cool Games

If you were in Los Angeles last week, and you happened to stumble into a bar or a restaurant, and you saw a group of people in business-casual attire and/or flannel, you probably overheard something like “Wow, Sony sure won E3.” This, of course, is preposterous. Nobody wins E3. You just survive it. But it…

Nintendo: Saying Next-Gen is Only Sony vs. Microsoft Is So 2006

Reggie Fils-Aime, president of Nintendo of America, is aware of all the Wii U skepticism. He’s certainly aware of mine and the fact that there’s a $400 PlayStation 4 bearing down on his $350 32GB Wii U this fall. Plus an Xbox. What, him worry? The storyline told throughout the halls of E3 was that…

I skipped a week of Ask Kotaku! I’m the worst ever, I know. Send me questions (email info is in this post) and I’ll make it up to you this week with more excellent, top-notch advice. It’s like you don’t even need to pay that therapist. To contact the author of this post, write to…

Usually, Vanity Fair’s features are all about Hollywood movers and shakers, glitzy heiresses, and intrigues at famous fashion houses. But this month, the magazine’s website has a big, in-depth article on the lawsuit between Activision and Jason West and Vince Zampella, the men who re-invigorated the Call of Duty franchise with the first Modern Warfare…

Shigeru Miyamoto’s ‘Bad’ Game

Shigeru Miyamoto, Nintendo’s lead creator of Mario, Zelda and Donkey Kong, was recently showing me Pikmin 3, but there was something he’d just said that I had to follow up on. “I have to ask, Mr. Miyamoto, you said you have made a bad game. What was the bad game you made?” To back up…

Sega Still Says Phantasy Star Online 2 Is ‘Delayed’

Yesterday, we got an e-mail from a Kotaku reader named Jacob. He said he was bummed out. See, he really wants to play Phantasy Star Online 2, the free-to-play online RPG that was released in Japan last year, but he can’t, because it’s not out in the West, and publisher Sega hasn’t told anyone what’s…

Here’s what’s going on Talk Among Yourselves, our reader-written blog: Little Sparowe talks about how an infamous line of trash talk from Microsoft’s E3 presentation made her feel. GiantBoyDetective asks what kind of time investment you expect from a game purchase. And go jump into the conversations happening in Cimeas’ post about this generation’s console…

If You Liked the Text-Only Flash Game Candy Box, Check Out A Dark Room

Candy Box, the quirky, text-only flash game that got a lot of attention last month, now has a rival: A Dark Room, which begins just as simply before unfolding into a much larger game of commerce and intrigue. A Dark Room is made by a one-man outfit called Doublespeak Games, which registered its domain around…

One Developer Sums Up Game Design in a Vulgar Six Seconds

Lots of moving parts and distinct disciplines go into making a single video game. There’s level design and AI programming and physics simulation and art direction and writing and on and on. Messing any one of those things up could turn a game into just another big pile of crap. So, it makes sense that…

So, The Games of E3 2013. When Are They Coming Out Again?

This year, E3 had so many games. So many. But watching demos and reading impressions is one thing; we want to play these games. Sadly, a lot of them won’t be coming out just yet. Lots of E3 games will land this year, no doubt. In fact, one of them is already here—Naughty Dog’s The…