This Is What It Looks Like When Steam Is Down [Update]

No, it’s not just you. It’s everyone. Steam is well and truly down. This is what it looks like when millions of players online suddenly drop to none. No matter how much you want to try the XCOM demo, it looks like you’ll just have to wait. We’ve reached out to Valve to find out…

Dead or Alive 5: The Kotaku Review [Update]

The Dead or Alive series has always felt like it was my fighting franchise. From the moment I first button-mashed my way to my first counter in the 1997 Sega Saturn import, I knew that I had found the fighter for me. I was entranced by the flow of battles, the block and counter, the…

The Fall 2012 Games We’re Most Excited About

Magical assassins. Two-dimensional plumbers. Japanese high schools. Those are just some of the nutty things you’ll see in fall 2012’s crop of eclectic video games. We’ve got big-budget blockbuster shooters, PC strategy games, and even a couple of handheld RPGs. Here at Kotaku, we’ve spent a great deal of time playing and digging for info…

Lucky Battle is a Massively Multiplayer Online Fighting Game, Only Without the Fighting

True to its name, no fighting skill is required to rise through the ranks of Nine Waves’ colorful anime fighter Lucky Battle — blind chance, diligent weapon upgrading and a bit of backstabbing are the keys to success here. Ah, me, once again lured by the cuteness of an icon into an addictive little iPhone…

With Mists of Pandaria, World of Warcraft‘s Age Is Starting To Show

This morning, I got up early and sat down to a freshly-patched World of Warcraft to play a brand-new Pandaren. I still don’t love the WoW art style—I never have, it’s just personal preference really—but even I had to admit that the vivid blue streak in my panda’s pigtails was kind of cute. And if…

Hell Yeah! Wrath of the Dead Rabbit Has Some Really Silly, Sometimes Awkward Killing Moves

Hell Yeah! Wrath of the Dead Rabbit is out today on PSN (tomorrow on XBL and October 3rd for PC). It’s a Metroidvania style game—a 2D game with lots of exploration, killing, and item finding—but with a twist. It’s flat out ridiculous, silly, and a little bit awkward at times. The storyline sets up the…

My Current Facebook Game Obsession: Song Pop

Despite listening almost exclusively to talk radio for the past two decades, I’ve managed to amass an almost encyclopedic knowledge of popular music from the 70s to the present day. Freshplanet’s Song Pop has me testing that knowledge against Facebook friends at a disturbing rate. When I was younger I knew a great many things…

Social networking, I choose you! Pokémon finally has official accounts on Facebook and Twitter. What took so long?

New Amazing Spider-Man DLC Lets You Play as the Wall-Crawler’s Super-Villains

Boy, was the Lizard ever annoying to fight in this summer’s Spider-Man movie tie-in game. You, like me, may have wondered what it might be like to have all that reptilian power at your disposal. New DLC packs will let play as Spider-Man’s arch-villain and his co-creator, too. Four separate packs will hit today, including…

Plants vs. Plumbers vs. LEGO

Illustrator and photographer Chris McVeigh is quite talented with LEGO. He’s got a whole assortment of LEGO pieces photographed and presented all nice and pretty on his Flickr page, but this one might be my favorite. It’s the two famous gaming plumbers—Mario and Luigi—and their infamous pipe-planted piranha plant in a pose reminiscent of Plants…

The Folks Behind Duke Nukem Forever Want Your Money for a “New” Game

For years, 3D Realms toiled on Duke Nukem Forever. After the game languished, another studio (Gearbox Software) came in and finished it. Now, 3D Realms is working on a new game. A game it’s been working on for a while—and it wants your money to finish it. The game is Earth No More, a first-person…

The Latest Bravely Default Trailer Flies Out

Upcoming 3DS role-playing game Bravely Default: Flying Fairy has a goofy title. The game, however, looks just fine. As previously posted, Bravely Default will feature a job system similar to Final Fantasy V. So if you like FFV, you’ll probably like this! Bravely Default will be out this October in Japan. 「ブレイブリーデフォルト」～覚醒篇～ [SquareEnix@YouTube] Kotaku East…

Who Is Bowser Jr.’s Mother? (And Other Burning Mario Questions Answered)

While Nintendo honcho Satoru Iwata already confirmed to Kotaku that Mario doesn’t have a last name, the company’s resident genius, Shigeru Miyamoto, has a crack at other burning questions. Like why Mario and Peach play tennis and race go-karts with Bowser. Like seriously, what’s up with that? In an interview with GameInformer, Mario’s creator dishes…

Final Fantasy XIII‘s Lightning Reborn in a Skyrim Mod

Of course, Skyrim mods are not new—neither is using Skyrim mods to recreate Final Fantasy characters. That doesn’t mean we are totally jaded and impossible to impress. Japanese bulletin board 2ch unearthed a couple screens that apparently show Final Fantasy XIII character Lightning recreated with a “recent” Skyrim mod. Online in Japan, people are saying…

From Chun-Li to Assassin’s Creed, The Fancy Outfits We Unfortunately Missed

If you are planning to visit the Tokyo Game Show next year, be aware that different folks often cosplay on each public day. Meaning? Meaning you should go to both days! Kotaku previously showed the guys and gals who donned colorful costumes on the first day. However, since we were running on fumes by Sunday,…

Yep, It’s Time To Visit a Tokyo Toy Store

What’s better than Japanese toys? Japanese toy stores. And one of the best Japanese toy stores is Kiddyland. Recently, Danny Choo of otaku site DannyChoo.com checked out the renovated Kiddyland flagship store in Harajuku. If you are into this kind of stuff, just imagine how much money you’d go through… More pics over at Danny’s…

Disgaea is headed to Japanese smartphones as a card-based social game.

If You Haven’t Seen this Trailer Yet, You Are Already Dead

Here’s the latest trailer for Fist of the North Star: Ken’s Rage 2. The game is slated for the PS3, the Xbox 360, and Wii U. It’ll be out in Japan by the end of this year. 真・北斗無双 [YouTube] Kotaku East is your slice of Asian internet culture, bringing you the latest talking points from…

Hey Foreigners, You’re a Party Joke in Japan!

Back in 2008, Japanese costume company, JiG Paradise, raised eyebrows with its “Hello Gaijin-san Party Joke”. Now in 2012, that product has gotten slightly revised. The term “gaijin” (外人) is a shortened form of the official term (by “official”, I mean the term that’s used in government documents and on the evening news) “gaikokujin” (外国人).…

It’s the Pokemon MMO I’ve Always Wanted

Somehow this is the first time I’ve gotten my hands on World of Warcraft‘s version of Pokemon. This short video will give you a basic overview of what the next few months of PC gaming hold for me. You can capture them, heal them, eat them should you run out of food (probably not that…