The Latest Legendary Pokémon Transforms Into a One-of-a-Kind Creature

Meet Meloetta. She’s special. Coming to Pokémon Black and White and Black and White 2 as part of a distribution campaign throughout GameStop stores for three weeks starting March 4, Meloetta is the first combination Normal and Fighting-type creature to grace the series, as long as you take her out to the right bar. It…

Tomb Raider: The Kotaku Review

I never wanted to have sex with Lara Croft. And I didn’t want to protect her either. In the early Tomb Raider games that I played and loved, the relationship was simple. The lethal, archly snippy adventurer was me and I was her. I wanted what she wanted: to unearth the relics of antiquity. To…

The Infamy Shows Assassin’s Creed III Still Has A Little Room For Experimentation

Assassin’s Creed III was, for me, an agonising paradox. It’s both one of the best games of last year and also one of the most frustrating, one where a strong foundation of combat and exploration was undone by poor pacing and mission design. You’d hope, then, that new singleplayer content for the game—released months after…

Street Fighter X Sanrio Arcade Fightstick Pro: The Kotaku Review

How many times can one website review the same fighting game controller with different graphics on it? Let’s see, one, two, three… three times. There is nothing else to say about the hardware itself. It’s lovely, certainly worth the $159.99 asking price to a hardcore PlayStation 3 or Xbox 360 fighting game player. So the…

The Kingdom Hearts ‘Remix’ Is Coming To North America This Fall As A PS3 Exclusive

For PlayStation 3 only, Kingdom Hearts HD 1.5 Remix—yes, that’s the full name—will be coming to the U.S. this fall, Square Enix said today. From Square: Fully remastered in HD, KINGDOM HEARTS HD 1.5 ReMIX is a compilation of the critically acclaimed KINGDOM HEARTS FINAL MIX, previously exclusive to the Japanese market, and KINGDOM HEARTS…

Development Costs Mean Next-Gen Leap ‘Won’t Be As Obvious’ as the Last, Says BioWare’s Art Director

If you’re accustomed to a new console generation delivering a big leap forward in technology, particularly visual fidelity, BioWare’s art director suggests you temper your expectations. The PS4 and whatever Microsoft is cooking up will be “a big leap, but it won’t be as obvious,” Neil Thompson told Official Xbox Magazine. Noting that the transition…

Shigeru Miyamoto Link Cosplay Portraits Are A Wii U Exclusive

I thought giant Majora’s Mask illustrations were good. And, hey, they are. But enormous portraits of Shigeru Miyamoto in Link cosplay are even better. [via AndrewNK]

Valve’s Gabe Newell will be awarded an Academy Fellowship at the 2013 BAFTA Games Awards. Congrats, Gabe!

Special Effects Team To Blame For Asura’s Wrath Plagiarism, Say People Blamed for Plagiarism

Stephen Chow’s latest box office offering, Journey to the West: Conquering the Demons, is slated by the Chinese press to rake in billions of yuan by the time its run is over. However one thing is still causing problems for Chow: the allegations that his movie stole assets from a video game. Chow, the director,…

Is Final Fantasy XIV Coming to the PS4? Somebody Asked That Question.

Final Fantasy XIV‘s road to the PS3 has been rough. But now that the game is finally coming to the PlayStation 3, Square Enix’s Yoichi Wada was asked whether or not the game is headed to the PS4. “Basically,” said Wada, “I want to offer it through any means possible, but only after we’ve nailed…

Voice Actress Invents a Thong That Turns into a Wristband. (No, Really.)

Dubbed the “Wristunder” (geddit? GEDDIT?), the special panties were invented by Chiaki Takahashi, the voice actress who brings life to video characters in The Idolmaster, BlazBlue and many more. Takahashi is dubbed a “sexy voice actress”, and it often seems like she tries really hard. Probably too hard. But, hey, she tries. There’s always trying.…

Chinese MMO Adds Crane Riding and Space Ships, Ruins The Movie It Was Based On

Video game adaptations of movies are a dime a dozen—you’ve got Transformers the Movie the game, E.T. the game. No matter the subject matter, very few of the games turn out as well-received as the films—not everyone can be a GoldenEye—oftentimes these “tie-in” games are just a repeat of the movie but with some interactive…

Learn How To Make Swords, Guns, and Other Weapons from Japanese Video Games

Usually, when there’s a geek event in Japan, cosplayers show up in droves. Somewhere between the folks in skimpy outfits, there are always cosplayers carrying enormous swords and guns. They’re not real weapons, of course, but they can really help complete the cosplay. Want to learn how to make those awesome custom weapons? Like, yourself?…

It’s the year of the snake, and this snake drawing will blow your mind. Promise.

Chinese Gamer Almost Dies After Gaming Marathon

Long gaming sessions are excruciatingly hard and tiring. They often require a superhuman constitution to endure, but gamers beware, all that stress can lead to terrible things. One gamer in Fuzhou, China had a gaming marathon during the Chinese New Year and is now in the hospital. Thirty-six year old IT administrator Xu Yi spent…

One Way Sony Could Fight Piracy: Load Times

Piracy is bad news! That is, if you are a big game company. If you are a pirate, then, I’m sure, it’s all gravy. But big game companies like Sony are hoping to put an end to that freeloading gravy train. A Sony Computer Entertainment patent from August 2011 that was published this month and…

Pikachu Used To Be Way Cuter (and Fatter)

Pikachu, the iconic Pokémon from Pocket Monsters, looks slightly different these days. Adorable, sure, but not nearly as adorable as in 1997, back when the Pokémon anime first debuted. Not nearly as fat, either. Over the weekend, a thread called “Pikachu in the early days was way too cute” (初期のピカチュウかわいすぎ) appeared on 2ch, Japan’s largest…

This Japanese Popstar Has Truly Insane Gaming Hours

If someone played a video game, any video game, for a couple hundred hours, you’d say, wow, that person must really like that game. If someone played a video game, any video game, for a couple thousand hours, you’d say, woah, that person is hardcore. How about seven thousand hours? Popstar Maki Goto is taking…

Japan Lists Its Favorite Studio Ghibli Flicks from Hayao Miyazaki

Do you have a favorite Studio Ghibli film? You know, the anime house behind such wonderful movies as Princess Mononoke, My Neighbor Totoro, and Castle in the Sky. In Japan, kids and adults alike love Ghibli films. But is there one Ghibli film—rather, Hayao Miyazaki-helmed Ghibli film—that the country likes best? According to Shunkan News,…

One Of The Most Underrated Racing Games Of Our Time Might Be Making A Comeback

Both the series and the studio kinda lost their way eventually, but for a while there, Bugbear’s FlatOut—which combined ugly racing with brutal damage—was the most interesting thing in racing games. So it’s nice to see them returning to their roots. With what, exactly, I have no idea, this is just a teaser trailer, but…