One Piece Creator Hospitalized, Manga on Hiatus for Two Issues

This March, One Piece creator Eiichiro Oda took a week off due to a “sudden illness”. Today, it was announced that Oda has been admitted to the hospital. Moreover, the One Piece manga will be on hiatus for two issues. According to an official Shonen Jump release, Oda has a peritonsillar abscess, which is an…

Saya no Uta — The Song of Saya: The Kotaku Review

Saya no Uta — The Song of Saya is often called the single most fucked-up game ever released—and with good reason. Written by the acclaimed author of Madoka Magica, Psycho Pass, Fate/Zero, and this season’s Gargantia on the Verdurous Planet, The Song of Saya is a visual novel about medical student Fuminori. After a car…

Monster Hunting in Dystopian London: Freedom Wars Hits Vita in 2014

As promised: more about Sony’s recently teased Panopticon, or, as it likes to call itself now, Freedom Wars. And although the trailer up top doesn’t tell us much more of the dystopian monster-infested London we’ve seen before, we now know that Freedom Wars is a multiplayer action game coming to the PS Vita in 2014.

3D Coffee Art Reaches New, Dizzying Heights

Late last year, Kotaku first brought word of coffee artist Kazuki Yamamoto. He makes stunning cappuccino art. In the last few months, Yamamoto has been perfecting his three dimensional creations. He’s gotten even better. From Hello Kitty to Vault Boy from the Fallout games (friggin’ Vault Boy!), Yamamoto whips up pop culture in steamed milk.…

Silas Greaves of Gunslinger Really Loves Shooting Guys in the Face

Case in point: a four-minute (!) launch trailer, consisting of Mr. Greaves shooting people in the face with a wide variety of weapons. While Techland’s latest entry into the Call of Juarez brand of shooters is looking better by the minute, I can’t help but be wary after The Cartel. We’ll see. Call of Juarez:…

For One Dollar, This Man Would Grovel at Your Feet

In Japan, there are different types of bows. Some of them are fairly casual. Others are more formal. But one type of bowing still brings a feeling of shame. And it’s sometimes used when people totally screw up. This style of bowing is called “dogeza” (土下座) and it’s often translated as “kneeling down on the…

Another Huge Metal Gear Toy

Hong Kong based collectible maker ThreeA previously released a jumbo-sized Metal Gear REX figure. And now? Now, it looks like they’re working on a jumbo-sized RAY mecha. In these photos from Metal Gear creator Hideo Kojima, you can see a prototype of the upcoming RAY figure. That’s resident artist Yoji Shinkawa in the pics. As…

Before He Killed Zombies, Leon Kennedy Was A Badass Cop

This short claymation clip by Lee Hardcastle is a Resident Evil prequel/alternate history. Of sorts. Leon Kennedy, a rookie cop, gets a little too eager on a drug bust, and it costs him. Well. At first. For a one-man job, this is mighty impressive. DRUG BUST DOODY [YouTube]

A Video Game That Doesn’t Actually Have Any Video

Video Game Sans Video is a project that satisfies just about all the criteria you need to call something a video game. Except, well, for the actual video. Michael Newman’s game instead plays like a live-action version of LittleBigPlanet, using a giant scrolling sheet of paper as the background while players control a motorised spaceship…

Why Be The Ruler In Civilization, When You Can Be One Of The Peasants

Yes, this is Minecraft. But it’s not a recreation of a pop culture icon/giant penis. It’s using the game for something really interesting. This modification to the game is called CivCraft, and to be crudely simplistic, casts you in the role of one of the poor little peons from a game of Civilization, as you…

Happy Birthday, Love, Oh, The Guys Who Made Journey

This isn’t a big deal. Let’s be clear on that. But it is a nice touch, the kind of nice touch that reminds you there are sometimes real, actual humans involved in the video game supply chain. Reader Kelsey bought a copy of the Journey artbook for his girlfriend’s birthday, and figured he’d try his…

“It’s Like EVE Online, With Guns!”

Jeff Miller is a 3D artist who works for CCP, the developers behind EVE Online and its FPS spinoff, Dust 514. Previous to that, he’s worked at places like Lucasarts and Ensemble, the Age of Empires and Halo Wars studio closed by Microsoft a few years back. Jeff has also done freelance work for stuff…

DOTA 2 Breaks Steam Gaming Record

Over the weekend, Valve’s DOTA 2 broke the record for most concurrent gamers playing on Steam. It surpassed the previous record set by…Valve’s DOTA 2. On Saturday, 328,713 people were playing the company’s still-in-beta MOBA title. At the same time. That’s crazy. Not as crazy as the numbers of its main competitor, League of Legends…

Oh My God, It’s (Probably) A New, Proper Syndicate Game

Don’t get me wrong. I quite enjoyed the Syndicate shooter from last year. But it wasn’t really Syndicate, was it? Now this teaser trailer, for something called Satellite Reign, this appears to be a Syndicate game. At least in spirit. Saying that the mystery project will be the return of a Bullfrog classic from 1996,…

One Person Tried To Put All Those PS4 Pictures Together

Trying to steal a little of Microsoft’s thunder ahead of the next Xbox’s reveal -and to remind us the PS4 is more than just a control pad – Sony teased the design of the PlayStation 4 with a number of small abstract images They’re meant to suggest, not give away the machine’s entire design, but…

These New Console Launches Are Bumming Me Out

From the time the Wii U was first unveiled right through to today, the eve of the new Xbox’s unveiling, I’ve found myself feeling something very strange. In years (and decades) past, the arrival of new hardware was exciting. Exciting because new consoles were the biggest and best, sure, but also because they were the…

Hey. Sega. Yeah, you. We’re still waiting for our Yakuza 5 localisation.

What Did You Think Of Last Night’s Game of Thrones?

Hope you like boobs! Because there sure were a lot of ’em on last night’s focused, largely enjoyable episode of Game of Thrones A strange structure for this episode, no? We spend almost all of our time with a mere three storylines, bookended by short but eventful spurts of time with Arya and Sam. I…

Krieg the psycho is Borderland 2’s new vault hunter. We know what he’s capable of, but here’s Anthony Burch—lead writer on Borderlands 2—on constructing Krieg’s personality. Krieg is a surprisingly complex person!

I Couldn’t See Star Trek This Weekend, So I Built My Own

I love Star Trek. Some of my fondest early memories are of staying up late to watch reruns on the old black-and-white television we had on the third floor of our duplex on Oakwood Avenue in in good-old Norristown, PA. With the exception of Enterprise (It’s been a long…no) I’ve watched it all, but I…