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…

Square Enix’s Galaxy Dungeon is a new iOS/Android card battle game that features female mecha.

Evangelion 3nd Impact is (Not) Quite the Music Game You’ve Been Hoping For

Even over a decade and a half after the release of the anime that started it all, the Evangelion franchise is one of Japan’s most lucrative properties. Each year, it floods the market with accessories, spin-off manga, and action figures—and I mean tons and tons of action figures. On top of this, a year can…

How Louis Vuitton Just Screwed Up Japan’s Biggest Virtual Idol

This is apparently virtual idol Hatsune Miku. Other than the pony tails and blue eyes, the drawing looks nothing like Hatsune Miku. It does look like Louis Vuitton’s 2013 spring collection, though. At least they got that right! Hatsune Miku originally debuted as a character for Vocaloid software, but has since gone on to become…

It’s Final Fantasy XIII, But with Drunken Sex Talk

Binge drinking. Jerking off. Squids. It’s just another wild night in the world of Final Fantasy That’s because someone, let’s call that person a genius, decided to combine screenshots from Japanese role-playing games Final Fanatasy XIII and Final Fantasy XIII-2 with Texts from Last Night. Texts from Last Night, of course, is a website that…

Level-5’s Boss Makes One Handsome Manga Dude

Akihiro Hino, the guy who runs game maker Level-5, usually looks like he does in this Game Watch Impress photo. Or sometimes, he looks like complete hell. That’s why Hino was quick to jokingly ask for forgiveness because his manga counterpoint looks “way too handsome”. He also added that he was “a little happy” about…

See the Evangelion Music Game in Action

When you think of Evangelion, what comes to mind? Giant robots? Angsty teens? Massive amounts of religious imagery? A complete mind-fuck ending? But what about the soundtrack, does that leap to the forefront of your mind? Well apparently it did for Grasshopper Manufacture—the creators of No More Heroes, Shadows of the Damned and Lollipop Chainsaw—when…

Beautiful Manga Artist Sounds Truly Ugly

This is Mimei Sakamoto. She’s a manga artist, a model, an author, a singer, and an awful-sounding person. Sakamoto, best known for her Rapunzel manga, is opinionated. Back in 2006, she blasted otaku for idolizing young girls. It was a fair argument to make, and one worth making. Her latest rant, however, seems insensitive and…

In Japan, Thugs Sit Like They’re Taking a Crap

In years past, you’d always see them outside convenience stores and in parking lots, coping a squat next to their Subarus and Hondas, smoking cigarettes. They were tough looking. They were thugs. And they’d sit like they’re squeezing out turds. In Japan, there’s a style of squatting called “yanki zuwari” (ヤンキー座り) or “Yankee sitting”. Here,…

PS Vita Gets Its Big 2.0 System Update

PS Vita’s 2.0 System Update hit, adding PC style email, PlayStation Plus, WiFi transfers with a PC, better browser functions, weather for Maps, and easier usability, among other features. Above is a Japanese promotional clip for the update, which should be hitting all Vitas. PS Vitaシステムソフトウェア2.00アップデート [YouTube] Kotaku East is your slice of Asian internet…