Nintendo Fan Is Unhappy With Nintendo’s $200 Answer to His $400 Wii U Problem

Jon is an enthusiastic Nintendo fan. He buys all of Nintendo’s systems. He buys many, many Nintendo games. But he’s gotten himself into a jam that he says has cost him access to more than $400 worth of downloadable games he’s purchased from Nintendo over the several years. How does one lose access to $400…

The Warm and Wonderfully Squishy World of the Week in Gaming Apps

Welcome back to the Week in Gaming Apps, a place where one moment you’re running over zombies with a train and the next you’re enjoying a motherly embrace with a globular pink alien. Thank you, mobile gaming. One of the joys of covering the mobile scene for Kotaku is the sheer absurdity of the games…

The Battle for Steam-Powered Tower Defense Supremacy Begins on Facebook

Why aren’t there more tower defense games on Facebook? Is it because they tend to be more difficult than the normal Facebook fare, or because they aren’t particularly social? Arcadelia challenges both of those notions with Apoteos: Steam Wars, a competitive multiplayer tower defense and attack game aimed squarely at the hardcore audience. With its…

These Video Games Let You Play As Insects

Controlling a cockroach or an entire ant colony is pretty unusual, even for a video game. So we can say games featuring these ideas resulted in rather unique and underrated titles—and that’s absolutely not a problem. We collected some of the most interesting ones below. SimAnt: The Electronic Ant Colony source: Killerratte’s LP Battle Of…

Apparently, The Story Behind Epic’s Dazzling 2011 Tech Demo Is A ‘Doozy’

At the Game Developers Conference in 2011, Epic Games showed off a new demo of their widely-used Unreal graphics technology. The Unreal Engine drives a ton of popular games, from Gears of War and BioShock to Borderlands and Arkham City. The demo Epic showed was a violent, action-packed piece of work called ‘Samaritan,” and it…

Dead Space 1 Writer Says Dead Space 3‘s Action Focus Was A ‘Necessary Evil’

Some would contest whether or not Dead Space was ever a scary franchise, but most will agree that Dead Space 3 focuses more on being an action title. In a recent NowGamer interview, Dead Space 1 writer Antony Johnston explained why he thinks the added action emphasis occurred. While admitting that the newer Dead Space…

After Just Six Months, Epic Closes the Studio Built on the Ashes of Big Huge Games

Following last year’s Kingdoms of Amalur financial disaster that resulted in the closure of both Curt Schilling’s 38 Studios and Maryland’s Big Huge Games, Epic Games swooped in and rescued a group of Big Huge refugees, forming Epic Baltimore, eventually renamed Impossible Studios. Today Epic founder Tim Sweeney announced the studio’s closure. “When former members…

A List Of Characters I Accidentally Killed In Fire Emblem: Awakening

Last week, as you might recall, I promised to play Fire Emblem: Awakening with permadeath on. I also promised to continue battling no matter what happened: in other words, if any of my party members died in combat, they’d be dead for good. This was a mistake. I want to tell you a little bit…

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The new teaser trailer for Grid 2 has got some seriously squealing tires and some seriously flaring lenses.

ChefVille ‘Temping Truffle Cook Station’ Quests: Everything You Need to Know

Remember when the Exotic Cook Station quests were released to a random group of players in ChefVille? Well, Zynga has once again rolled out a new event to a “random” assortment of players, with no time table for when the rest of us will get to play along. We’ve learned that this process could take…

Watch The Stellar 2013 Sequel To 2010’s Most Provocative Talk About Video Games

In 2010, professor and game designer Jesse Schell gave an amazing talk at the DICE gaming summit that went viral. His topic: the gamification—the adding of points and play systems—to everything imaginable. He imagined a crazy future where we got points for everything from brushing teeth to giving each other high fives. Three years later,…

Stellar tower attack games Anomaly: Warzone Earth and Anomaly: Korea are 50 percent off on iOS and Android right now.

Conan O’Brien Also Thinks Halo 4‘s Cortana Is Pretty Hot

Watching someone who isn’t too familiar with video games try their hand at Halo 4 can be pretty hilarious. But when it’s Conan O’Brien testing out 343’s first entry in the series, it’s that much funnier. Even if he does roll his eyes a little too much at the storyline. I mean, I get it.…

Check Out This Gorgeous 2D God Game That Lets You Command Giants

Take a look at Reus. It’s a 2D god game where you control different types of giants and, naturally, dictate the lives of puny humans. The developers walk you through some of the basic gameplay in the footage above. Interesting to think you can’t make things too good for the humans, because then they ask…

Oh, Come On: 67% of Polled Republican Voters Say Video Games Are a ‘Bigger Threat to Safety’ Than Guns [UPDATE]

Want proof that the maddening campaign to make video games a scapegoat for gun violence is working? Just check out these poll results where the vast majority of people essentially say that video games are scarier than guns. At first blush, the latest press release from Raleigh-based firm Public Policy Polling seems like a typical…

Mobile Gaming’s Platforming Hero Returns — One Part Mario, One Part Sonic

In 2011 SilverTree Media introduced Cordy, a robotic platforming hero for the smartphone age. While other developers struggled with implementing traditional games using touchscreen controls, Cordy played as perfectly as the best console platformers, with more personality than most. Now Cordy 2 has arrived, and it’s easily twice as good as the original. Cordy is…

What People Used To Say About The Sega Dreamcast

Today, we’ve got Nintendo, Microsoft and Sony vying for control of the console market. But there was a time when Sega was also a contender. Their last home console, the Dreamcast, is still getting games (sort of) despite being fourteen years old. But what was it about the Dreamcast that inspired such devotion? Let’s take…

Daylight, the first third-party game on Unreal Engine 4, is a randomly-generated horror game coming to Steam this year.

Square Enix Is Teasing Something Murderous [UPDATE: It’s A Game Called Murdered: Soul Suspect]

I have no idea what Square Enix is teasing, but it’s certainly piqued my interest. A few minutes ago, I got a strange e-mail via a Square Enix press list: from: [email protected] via kotaku.com reply-to: [email protected] to: [email protected] date: Fri, Feb 8, 2013 at 10:27 AM subject: What is the hardest case to solve? mailed-by:…