Westerado, You’ve Made Me Come To My Senses

Continuing their fine tradition of releasing awesome games for absolutely nothing, Adult Swim has put out Westerado, a game that’s a little bit RPG, a little bit action and a whole lot of Western revenge tale. Other designers, please take note. Not just of the game’s fantastic art style, but of the way the use…

A Moving Tribute To The Fallen Heroes Of World Of Warcraft

FlameofWesternesse has made this terrific short film, which catalogues some of the memorials placed throughout Azeroth in honour of World of Warcraft players who have passed away during the game’s tenure. Maybe you’ve seen them and wondered what they were for, maybe like me you’ve barely played the game and had no idea it could…

The Xbox Team Just Hired A Very Classy Designer

Andrew Kim turned a lot of heads last year with a bold redesign of Microsoft’s corporate branding, a vision and set of logos far braver (and classier) than what Microsoft eventually came up with for products like Windows 8 and Surface. It was all unofficial “fan” work, of course, but things just got a little…

Crazy Russians Show Mirror’s Edge Is A Terrifying Thing In Real Life

All that first-person climbing and running and rolling is awesome in Mirror’s Edge, but Mirror’s Edge is a video game. Seeing grown men do much the same thing on a skyscraper in Russia is as amazing as it is gut-wrenching. This is the first episode of Show Yourself, a series “about street underground culture, travels,…

More League of Legends Players Banned For “Toxic Behaviour”

Continuing a recent crackdown on the kind of behaviour that gives the game a bad rap (at least amongst those who don’t play it religiously), League of Legends developers Riot have permanently banned two prominent eSports players for their “toxic behavior in-game”. Ilyas Hartsema, aka enVision, whose “peak harassment score placed the account among the…

Cheap Glory and a Fake Girlfriend, This Video Game Let You Be Manti Te’o Eight Years Ago

As I’ve said before, whenever news happens in sports, my first thoughts turn to how I can recreate it in a video game. It was no different when, like millions, I read that Manti Te’o’s dead girlfriend, whose tragedy underlined his world-beating performances in Notre Dame’s undefeated regular season this past year, was proven to…

The Week in Games: Ni No Kuni Comes West

Ni No Kuni: Wrath of the White Witch has the entire week to itself, as far as console releases are concerned. In fact, it’s the only console release of note on the horizon. DmC: Devil May Cry also comes to the PC. Monday • Murder, She Wrote 2: Return to Cabot Cove (PC download) Tuesday…

Blizzard Boss Defends Former Diablo III Director: ‘I was Ultimately Responsible for the Game’

Earlier this week, Jay Wilson, the director of Diablo III, said he was leaving the title while still remaining at its publisher, Blizzard. There was a lot of cheering in the game’s official forums, because video games are not that different from sports, where fans openly root for people to lose their jobs after a…

Kotaku ‘Shop Contest: Torso Distortion

Well, we had our swing at it, now it’s time for you to step up to the plate. Yep, it pretty much was a lead-pipe lock that when Deep Silver excreted this bad idea earlier in the week, it was going to get the ‘Shop Contest treatment. You don’t have to create severed torsos of…

Super Hexagon, one of our Game of the Year nominees, now is available on Android. It’s a buck (for a limited time.)

EA Exec Says Blaming Sexism is a ‘Cop Out,’ and Doesn’t Explain Why Women Aren’t in More Gaming Jobs

Gabrielle Toledano, Electronic Arts’ chief talent officer, says sexism isn’t what keeps women out of the games industry. “The video game industry is being painted as more sexist than other male-dominated workforces,” she writes in a guest editorial on Forbes.com, “but the issue isn’t just in video games. And it’s not what’s holding us back.”…

Sunday Comics: Prime Service

Welcome to your Sunday read of the week’s best in web comics. Make sure to click on the expand button in the bottom right to enlarge each comic. Brentalfloss the Comic by Brent Black, Andrew Dobson and Dan Roth. Published Jan. 15. Read more of Brentalfloss the Comic Penny Arcade by Jerry Holkins and Mike…

Get in the God of War: Ascension Multiplayer Beta Now, Because It Ends Tomorrow

Wait, God of War: Ascension is having an open multiplayer beta? Holy smokes, no one told me until now. But it’s for real, it’s open to all PlayStation Network users (Plus and otherwise) in North and South America, and will last through tomorrow (3 a.m. Tuesday EST, as the beta closes midnight PST.) Go get…

Kotaku ‘Shop Contest: Googly Eyes: The Winners

Life is more funny with googly eyeballs attached. So are video games. Proving this corollary are the 20 ‘Shop Contest finalists for this week, led by the outstanding retrofan! See them all inside. arniejolt AttorneyAtMusic BernKastel docherty HarveyBent LolMunnchy Odrakir Pan_1da7 ParamedicFoetus pkThunder Psyborg retrofan Shiryu SmacQ Stuky ThatGuyFromTV TheAlmightyZeus theonlyboom toolsoldier xule.outtervoid

They Said Alan Wake Couldn’t Be Modded; Hello Kitty Says They Were Wrong…

When it released for PC in February 2012, Alan Wake came with no mod tools. Developer Remedy Entertainment said tools wouldn’t be released because of their complexity, and their dependence on third-party tools which would presumably require permissions or licenses. That hasn’t stopped Alan Wake‘s community from hurling itself at the task, which, to change…

Street Fighter X Mega Man version 2 is out, offering a buffed M. Bison—and a new (secret) challenger.

Too Human Wiped From Existence on Xbox Live

In November, a federal judge made the breathtaking order that all copies of Too Human had to be destroyed by its creator, Silicon Knights, as part of a $4 million judgment awarded to Epic Games in a nasty six-year suit-and-countersuit court battle between the two. We now see that this extended also to digital copies…

This Week in the Business: ‘Nintendo will be Forced to Prematurely Lower the Wii U Price’

What’s happened in the business of video games this past week … QUOTE | “Nintendo will be forced to prematurely lower the Wii U price.”—Colin Sebastian of RW Baird, talking with other analysts about Nintendo’s lackluster performance in 2012 and whether the company should go platform-agnostic with its games QUOTE | “You can’t have 18-34…

Go listen to Jason Schreier talk violent video games over at On The Media, an NPR-syndicated radio show.

Earl Weaver, the John Madden of baseball in the early days of sports video gaming, has died.