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…

A Gentleman’s Reading Collection Should Always Begin With Duke Nukem

That up there isn’t some joke image someone tossed up on Tumblr. It’s a real photo, taken from the Library of Congress’ video game collection, and it features vintage strategy guides, rebound and preserved for the ages. The image was taken from a recent in-house interview held on the Library’s site, which goes into detail…

You Can Now Play Windows’ Famous Solitaire Anywhere. The Train. The Bathroom. Wherever.

And you don’t even need a Windows tablet, phone or laptop to do it. Designer Evan Roth has made this deck of cards called Solitaire.exe, which recreate the famous Windows 98 deck of cards for use in the real world. The cards should recreate everything short of the chaotic victory screen, but then, you can…

It’s a Dark, Lonely Frontier In Assassin’s Creed III

William Wu is a concept artist, formerly of Ubisoft, who spent two years of his life drawing fantastic images of colonial America for the just-released Assassin’s Creed III Prior to his work at Ubisoft, Wu was employed at Intel, where he was involved in the ill-fated Project Offset. If you like what you see, you…

But What Does a Stripper Think About Hitman’s Stripper Nuns?

Hitman: Absolution’s “Saints”, a troupe of stripper nuns, aren’t actually in the game for long, but they’ll forever live in infamy for their appearance in a rather silly pre-release trailer for the game But hey, who were gamers to criticise the clip, when so few of us were actually strippers! For all we know, it…

You Might Get Grand Theft Auto V On PC (And Wii U)

Grand Theft Auto IV was released on PC, but when Grand Theft Auto V was announced, a personal computer version was nowhere to be seen. It’s still nowhere to be seen, but Rockstar is at least talking about it, Dan Houser telling IGN that “Everything else is up for consideration. That’s all I can give…

Nintendo Says Yesterday’s Miiverse “Hack” Was a “Mock Up”

Yesterday, a user on NeoGAF had a weird experience when he was able to access what looked like a debug menu for Nintendo’s new Miiverse service. Completely by accident. As he poked around and found he couldn’t do much of anything, theories arose that he’d simply accessed a dummy or shell menu, which have been…

Microsoft’s New Xbox Game Charges By The Hour

Microsoft very quietly announced a new Xbox Live Arcade game today called Karaoke. On the surface, it sounds rather harmless; partnering with The Karaoke Channel, it lets users stream around 8000 songs from a central library, and you can use SmartGlass to queue up tracks and save a favourites list. The weirdness comes in when…

The Wii U Isn’t Sold Out. Here Are Some Retailers Still Selling Them.

The pre-release hype from outlets like GameStop led most people to believe that the Wii U was a launch-day sellout. And hey, for some retailers, it probably was. But that doesn’t mean the new console is sold out At time of posting, late on Monday night, there are nationwide retailers in the United States with…

Crazy Man Plays Call of Duty For 122 Hours Straight*

Okan Kaya, an Australian sales manager from Sydney, has set a new world record for the longest consecutive gaming session, racking up 122 hours playing the recently-released Black Ops II It’s a feat with a disclaimer, though: as Wired reports, he didn’t really play for 122 hours in a row. Because the human body would,…