Acoustic Piano Meets Chiptunes, And It’s Freakin’ Lovely

Chiptune music is all well and good, but I like to give my ear something to hold onto along with all the bleeps and bloops. So I very much enjoy Aivi & Surasshu’s new album “The Black Box,” which mixes the keyboard chops of pianist Aivi Tran and the chiptune stylings of Surasshu. It helps,…

The Only Way to Get Past This Tomb Raider Glitch Is By Using Another Glitch

There’s a moment in Tomb Raider where you get a crucial piece of gear required to finish the game. But a bug that can screw things up the first time you try to use the Rope Ascender is stopping some people from progressing through Tomb Raider. Lara needs to get that crate to slam through…

SimCity Needs An ‘Undo’ Button

No, I’m not making a joke about how SimCity‘s makers doubtless wish they could hit “undo” on last week’s embarrassing, disastrous launch. (Though I don’t doubt that’s the case.) I’m saying I think SimCity actually needs an undo button. You know, Control+Z. A shake of the smartphone. A little button with a backwards-curving arrow on…

In A World Filled With Cheesy Credits Music, StarCraft II Stands Apart

Last night, after years and years of putting it off, I finally played the final couple of missions in Starcraft II: Wings of Liberty. (Yeah, I know. Hey, I like the game and everything, but I got sidetracked!) It was a kick to finish the story the day before the sequel, Heart of the Swarm,…

Five Things That Make For A Good Power Weapon

Competition demands dominion. Dominion begets power. And, if you’re serious about keeping that power, chances are power weapons come into the picture. Power weapons are tools that allow us to deal immense damage. Think stuff like sniper rifles, or even vehicles like tanks. These can dictate the entire flow of the match, so it’s not…

How To Play StarCraft II: Heart of the Swarm Right Now

StarCraft II: Heart of the Swarm doesn’t officially go live until tonight at midnight Pacific time, but if you’ve got the new StarCraft II expansion installed already, you can play it right now. To prepare for the launch, Blizzard has disabled Global Play, the feature that lets you switch between servers on the online network…

49ers Strike Gold in Madden NFL 25‘s All-Star Cover Contest

Three San Francisco 49ers, including Hall-of-Fame teammates Joe Montana and Jerry Rice, are No. 1 seeds in the third edition of Madden NFL‘s tournament style cover vote. Current Niner quarterback Colin Kaepernick is the other top seed, as this year’s vote will celebrate the series’ 25th anniversary by pitting 32 current stars against 32 all-time…

Straight from Your Dreams (or Nightmares), It’s the PSWiiU60 Combo Console

Ben Heckendorn is a wizard, one who makes modern electronics into magical creations. The master modder has turned out several varieties of Xbox 360 laptops, another Xbox 360 with Atari 2600 styling and a Bill Paxton pinball machine. But his new creation might be his most ambitious feat of technomancy yet. This time, he’s created…

Marshmallow Peeps: The Snacktaku Review

I believe it was the bard Rayvon, performing in the poet Shaggy’s seminal work, who said “Closer than my Peeps you are to me, baby.” While this writer still hopes to provoke a resurgence of popularity for that classic piece, future generations will condemn “Angel” for that single, unfortunate line. Nothing can be closer than…

Behold Studios’ fantastic table-top RPG simulator Knights of Pen and Paper is free today on iOS. (Thanks, Saulo!)

This Game Uses Alcoholism As A Gameplay Mechanic

Spate is a platformer that, judging by visual aesthetic alone, looks crazy. There’s a reason for that. The game, according to Rock, Paper, Shotgun, follows a man who has to deal with the death of his daughter. The loss is so painful, the man resorts to drinking absinthe as a means of coping. “At the…

Pandora’s Tower Will Be Out This April. Here’s The First U.S. Trailer.

Wii action-RPG Pandora’s Tower will be out in North America this April, publisher Xseed said today. You can check out the first U.S. trailer above. With Nintendo focusing on their newly-launched Wii U and third-party publishers sticking with game consoles that can output in high-definition, this may very well be the Wii’s swan song. Farewell,…

Borderlands, Assassin’s Creed and Tons More Coming to Minecraft‘s Next Xbox 360 Skin Pack

Minecraft Xbox 360 Edition is pouring on the fan service with this week’s release of Skin Pack 4—providing delightfully low-res interpretations of Claptrap from Borderlands, Klei’s Mark of the Ninja and The Behemoth’s Castle Crashers, plus a whole lot more. Images of all 28 skins can be seen at this link. Here’s what you’ll get…

Tomb Raider Gets Better After You’ve Beaten It

Tomb Raider gave me the worst kind of quiet at first. The game’s silences were ones filled with tension and dread, interludes where my worries about getting Lara through the experience would fester. All throughout Crystal Dynamics’ reboot of the archeological adventure series, players are left to wonder how the awful mythology of its fictional…

Game of Thrones Set As A 90s High School Comedy

High school can be a cutthroat place, a den of sex, lies, deceit and backstabbing. Relationships are forged for political purposes and torn asunder under dark, mysterious circumstances. Power resides where students believe it resides. And always, a warning: Prom Night is coming. Welcome to School of Thrones, which re-imagines George R.R. Martin’s dark fantasy…

Here’s a trailer for the next Halo 4 map pack, Castle, which releases April 8.

Hacker Likes Using The Sims 3 Torrents To Acquire Women “Slaves”

Over the weekend, Ars Technica wrote a great feature on hackers who abuse remote administration tools (RAT) in order to gain access to the computers of strangers. The purpose of using a RAT in this case is to gain control of computers featuring webcams—these allow the hackers to spy on their targets, which they call…

Leaked Star Wars Game Is ‘Predecessor’ To Battlefront III, Source Says

Last October, we saw a listing for Star Wars: First Assault, an unannounced Xbox Live Arcade game developed by LucasArts. Today, Kotaku can reveal that Star Wars: First Assault is a downloadable multiplayer shooter that was originally slated for release this spring. The game supports up to 16 players—one eight-person team of rebels and one…

Nikola Tesla’s Finest Creation Gets His Own Mobile Game

Created by Brian Clevinger’s Nikola Tesla in 1923, Atomic Robo is a robotic member of a think-tank of Action Scientists, probing the shadowy outskirts of science. In Second Fiction’s Atomic Robo: Violent Science, now available for iOS and coming soon to Windows 8 and Android, he does that too, only gamier. Atomic Robo is the…

The Boy Scouts Add ‘Games Design’ to Their Merit Badge Program

Two years ago, the Cub Scouts offered their version of a merit badge for video gaming. This week, the Boy Scouts of America added the 131st merit badge to its active list: Games Design. The BSA’s program doesn’t mean just video games design either, though that is a part of it. (And, this post by…