The Wonderful Surprise Hiding in the Wii U Launch Line-Up

Some facts hide in plain sight. You don’t notice them until you move them around a bit. Then suddenly, like some unscrambled Scrabble letters, there’s clarity. Un-jumble the launch line-up for the Wii U and here’s the fact that emerges: This fall, the Wii U is actually going to be a good console for… downloadable…

Pocket God‘s Latest Update Will Be There For You, When the Plague Starts to Fall

Only Pocket God creators Bolt Creative could work the Friends theme song into a trailer for a game update about spreading a plague and burning the corpses of pygmies. Pocket God Episode 46: Germs of Endearment is now live, giving the players’ pygmies access to the Plague Room, an incredibly ill-advised playroom containing a fountain…

I Would Not Ever Really Expect Space Invaders On The Ocean Floor

Artist Invader has a theme: Space Invaders. His homages to the little 8-bit enemies show up all over the world, on art and loose in wild, showing up in all manner of places where one might not ordinarily expect them. In this case, he went to the Bay of Cancun, where sculptor Jason Taylor deCaires…

This Keyboard Tries So Hard To Be Great That I Actually Feel Sorry For How Terrible It Is

The kindest thing I can say about the Imperator Pro, a gaming keyboard from Taiwanese company Genius, is that it works exactly as advertised. Keys, both standard and programmable, function as intended and do what a user would expect them to. That’s a big plus, in a keyboard. Sadly, there are also a number of…

Hasbro’s CityVille, FarmVille, Words with Friends and Draw Something Games Launch October 1

Come Monday, October 1 the agreement between toy maker Hasbro and game maker Zynga finally bears fruit (and vegetables), as physical games based on digital favorites hit store shelves. Who’s up for some Hungry Hungry Farmville? If anything can pry your Zynga game-loving friends and family off the computer, it’s Hasbro’s line of games and…

Guild Wars 2: The Kotaku Review

The true heart and essence of Guild Wars 2 lies in its map. It took me three weeks of playing and a chat with my colleague Kirk to realize and articulate how much magic lies in that seemingly simple function. The map of Tyria isn’t just utilitarian; it’s beautiful. Even mired in the fog of…

This Diabolical Dragon Breeding Game Has Kept Me Playing for Over a Year

You want to know how a free-to-play iPhone game keeps a guy that barely has time to play new releases engrossed for more than 365 days? I have one day left to breed a Solstice dragon, and three days to breed a Sapphire. Curse you, Dragonvale I first wrote about Backflip Studios’ Dragonvale in December…

The Flood Return In Halo 4

Halo Waypoint released a massive amount of new Halo 4 screenshots for us to feast our eyes on. These include campaign shots (beware that spoilers might follow in several of those in reference to the Dawn and Infinity missions), multiplayer mode War Games and cooperative mode Spartan Ops. War Games includes a Flood “simulation,” where…

Is Bad Piggies The New Angry Birds? Watch Closely.

Pigs might fly in the new game from the creators of Angry Birds. But only if you build them a helicopter, a plane or whatever you call a crate that’s tied to a balloon and propelled by a house fan. I’ve been playing Rovio’s new game on my iPad on and off for the past…

These Are The Most Unexpected (and Horrifying) Diablo III Errors You’ve Ever Seen

Error 37 and Error 3003 might have been the popular ones in Diablo III‘s first burst of popularity, but the Mega64 folks have found quite a few other…”interesting” ones. I rarely shield my eyes from anything, especially not from a silly YouTube video, but Error 5 really horrified me. I guarantee you haven’t seen Error…

Google Play Celebrates 25 Billion Android App Downloads with $.25 Apps

With an impressive 15 billion apps and games downloaded in the past year alone, Google has every reason to celebrate reaching the 25 billion apps milestone. And so do Android gamers, as a celebratory sale delivers titles like Angry Birds Space Premium and NFL Kicker 2013 for a quarter of a dollar. With more than…

The New Zombies Mode In Call of Duty: Black Ops II Is Pretty Much Its Own, Massive Crazy Game

The fan-favorite co-op zombies mode is back in this year’s Call of Duty: Black Ops II and the first trailer for it makes it look… ambitious. First of all, there’s not a whiff of hint in this trailer that Blops II‘s Zombies mode has any connection to the sequel’s near-future-America-under-high-tech-attack story. Instead, it looks like,…

Amazing Cosplay Videos Played To The Music From Drive Make Me Grin

This DragonCon 2012 cosplay compliation video by beatdownboogie is absolutely fantastic. Besides the fun cuts, in-the-moment poses/character acting and perfect music, I really enjoy the hundreds of impressive cosplayers featured above. And they’re all having so much fun. You can catch some awkward, hilarious moments that make me feel like I was a part of…

The Fall 2012 Games We’re Most Worried About

Cartoon mice and sci-fi shooters, vicious zombies and half-Native American assassins. There are a ton of cool-looking video games hitting store shelves this fall. Hopefully none of them suck. We’ve already shared the fall 2012 games we’re most excited about. Now it’s time for trepidation. Each Kotaku staffer has picked a couple of games that…

Wall-E Meets Limbo Is Great For Wallpaper, Not So Great For Smiling

This might be the saddest combination of characters/worlds ever. Thanks, z0h3, for making me go “aww” and then promptly “aww.” They were two totally different “aww”s, I swear. Check out the full size for all your wallpaper needs below: Wall-E [z0h3 via Samara Lex]

Obsidian’s Project Eternity has just hit $2,000,000 on Kickstarter.

Mass Effect Trilogy Compilation Brings All Three Games to Xbox 360, PC This Fall; PS3 Version Coming Later [Update]

EA has announced all three Mass Effect games will be available for the price of one when EA releases the Mass Effect Trilogy compilation on November 6th, 2012 for Xbox 360 and PC. The collection marks the first time that the original Mass Effect—which was released as an Xbox 360 exclusive—will be playable on the…

LEGO Gandalf Actually Talks, While Moving Through Movie Landscapes, In LEGO Lord of the Rings

The upcoming LEGO Lord of the Rings video game does, indeed, look to be absolutely adorable. But the Lord of the Rings films were more sweeping and epic than they were cute and cuddly. (Certain Hobbit and Shire moments aside, of course.) Can the game re-create that same sense? The developers certainly seem to think…

15 Simple Rules for Making a Successful Free-to-Play Game

Free-to-play is the driving force in today’s mobile and social games — we start playing them because there is no cost to do so. Whether or not we keep playing them may well depend on the 15 rules of free-to-play outlined by Gamesbrief‘s Nicholas Lovell earlier today at the F2P Summit in London. Edge‘s Nathan…

The First Look at Total War: Rome II ’s Gameplay Has Freakin’ Battle Elephants.

By the gods, this first glimpse of the the battles between the ancient empire of Rome and Carthage looks amazing. The video above is purportedly cut from in-game footage and this clip—coupled with the screens we saw during the summer—sure make it seem like Creative Assembly’s next strategy opus is going to be a visual…