Protect Your Desk With This Adorable USB Portal Turret

Well, file this USB Portal turret under “Things you can get me for Christmas that I’ll only use once but will still totally love.” You can buy one for the Portal fan in your life (or for yourself) for $40 at Thinkgeek (Via John Davison)

You Might Be Able To Download the Wii U’s Firmware Update in the Background

You might be able to download the Wii U’s large, slow-downloading day-one firmware update while playing games, according to online reports from Wii U owners on Reddit and GoNintendo. It seems that there’s a secret background-downloading option. Good to know! We can’t test it on our already-updated Wii Us, but those of you who are…

The Last Story Sold Super Well, And Now It’s Only $30

Remember how Nintendo wasn’t going to release The Last Story in the United States, even though it’s an awesome role-playing game and the Wii was barren for two whole years? Remember how XSEED came in and scored a publishing deal just by asking for the game late last year? Well it looks like XSEED made…

Adventure Time: Hey Ice King! Why’d You Steal Our Garbage?!: The Kotaku Review

There are plenty of shows that apparently only certain groups of people can appreciate. Adventure Time? Scoff! That’s a kid’s show! Definitely heard that one before. Adventure Time—created by the lovable and witty Pen Ward—is a cartoon show on Cartoon Network. It features two adventurers, Jake and Finn, who are the best of friends. They…

FarmVille ‘Mistletoe Lane Chapter 3’ Goals: Everything You Need to Know

Today marks the free launch of Mistletoe Lane in FarmVille for those players that didn’t pay Farm Cash to get to the game’s newest Christmas farm early. Waiting for all players when they arrive is a new chapter of goals to complete in the game’s storyline, with the six new Chapter 3 goals being available…

The Final Episode of The Walking Dead Asks You To Make The Hardest Decisions Yet

[The Walking Dead is a difficult series to write about. I want you to experience the game for yourself. After all, your game will likely play out entirely different from mine, given how dependent on player choice it is. But I still want to give you an idea of what it was like to experience…

Holiday Gift Guide: What Do You Get The Person Who Doesn’t Game?

Just cause someone doesn’t play games as regularly as you do doesn’t mean they wouldn’t be up for a friendly introduction. So what do you get that one friend, cousin, sibling, aunt? Watch out for our editors chiming in down below, but share your ideas with everyone, too! We’re open to ideas that run the…

Steam’s Autumn Sale Starts Tomorrow, According To One Developer

Get your wallets ready. There’s a Steam sale starting tomorrow and running until November 27, according to Tamás Bakó, CEO of the team behind Secret of the Magic Crystals The winter sale, Bakó says, will run from December 20 to January 4. Just in case you don’t spend enough money on holiday gifts and Steam…

The Sweetest Game of Tetris You’ll Ever Un-Play

For decades now the world has been obsessed with the stacking of tetrominos, passionately rotating and placing odd geometric shapes in a never-ending quest for the perfectly-packed screen. We have to learn to let go. Dream of Pixels can help. Dawn of Play’s Dream of Pixels is an ingenious take on the classic Tetris formula.…

PlayStation All-Stars Battle Royale: The Kotaku Review

If you think about every major video game publisher whose games you ever played, certain staple characters may come to mind. Recalling those characters might even bring a smile to your face, and remind you of the fond memories you had playing as each of them. So let’s take all those memories and all those…

This Week’s iPhone Charts: Battle of the Facebook Ports

In an odd bit of unintentional coordination last week, Zynga and King.com both launched mobile versions of their hit Facebook games on iOS on the very same day. This gives us a chance to answer a question with this week’s charts: Who’s players are more into mobile, Ruby Blast‘s or Candy Crush‘s? Judging by the…

The State of the Wii U, Just Three Days In

Nintendo’s new console is just three days old and already one of the most controversial creations the company has ever produced. The Wii U is better than you may have heard, but it’s in some ways worse. It’s also changing. Constantly. And mostly for the better. Just as new issues are being discovered some of…

When The Wii U Crashes, It Sounds Like A Vuvuzela

BZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZ. This is horrible. Kotaku reader vipeness sent in this video, which shows his Wii U hard-locking and crashing during a game of Nintendo Land It seems to be happening to a bunch of other people too Vipeness isn’t too dismayed, though: “Booted the system right up and tried it again and it worked just…

GoG’s Black Friday sale is on, with 20 indie games taking part in a pick-five-pay-$10 promotion. Pretty damn good value.

The Writer on the Tomb Raider Reboot Talks About How Video Game Writing Should Work

Rhianna Pratchett has made a name for herself with the video game writing she’s done. Her contributions to Overlord, Heavenly Sword and Mirror’s Edge added tonality and humor that helped make those titles stand out. And in a recent interview with Gamasutra, she explains how she and the team at Crystal Dynamics are trying to…

One of the Greatest Mobile Music Games Goes Free-to-Play

Experimenting with new ways to make folks pay for their iOS games, Square Enix releases Groove Coaster Zero, injecting new songs and adapting a free-to-play model to Reisuke Ishida’s original musical masterpiece Groove Coaster Zero takes the fine selection of tracks from the original game, drops in a selection of new free and premium tunes…

Skylanders Battlegrounds and the Best iPad Peripheral a Collector Can Have

Since the release of Skylanders Cloud Patrol for iOS last year, fans of Activision’s toys-meet-games franchise have been clamoring for a more direct way to interact with their precious plastic playmates than entering in a cold, impersonal numeric code. Tomorrow’s release of Skylanders Battlegrounds finally gets a Bluetooth summoning portal into players hands, along with…

Fan Outrage Brings the Nuketown 2025 Map Back to Call of Duty: Black Ops II Multiplayer

After suddenly pulling a popular pre-order multiplayer map from Black Ops II online play yesterday, Activision added it back to a new playlist called Chaos Moshpit. Game design director David Vonderhaar from dev studio Treyarch—who delivered the bad news—made it seem possible that the map could come back in a tweet late yesterday: That was…

The Banner Saga is the Most Beautiful (Digital) Board Game I’ve Ever Played

I’ve spent the day playing a very early beta build of The Banner Saga, an upcoming indie turn-based strategy game. Obviously plenty of the game wasn’t working, but I can tell you about the bits that were. In terms of presentation and design, it’s a very simple game. So simple that you should consider it…

Borderlands 2: Mr. Torgue’s Campaign of Carnage: The Kotaku Review

The newest Borderlands 2 DLC is an arena-based battle. It’s also a set of questlines in a campaign mission to become the biggest, baddest badass of the Badass Crater of Badassery. Still with me? Mr. Torgue’s Campaign of Carnage is all about proving you’re the baddest dude or dudette in Pandora, because only the baddliest…