Report: GameStop’s Black Friday Xbox 360 Bundle Seems Too Good to be True

There will be Black Friday specials everywhere, but for many of you, GameStop’s will likely be the most important. So here, courtesy of discount specialists CheapAssGamer, are what’s reported to be the specialist retailer’s deals. The standout deal is obviously the pair of home console bundles offered on Friday, in particular a 250GB Xbox 360…

Fan Makes His Own Stylish Grand Theft Auto V Trailer

Rockstar sure knows how to make a good clip—loads of gameplay footage sure helps—but for those after something a little more stylish, check out Russian artist Ilya V. Boykov’s custom trailer for Grand Theft Auto V Slicing together and animating GTAV’s official artwork, it doesn’t do the greatest job of selling the actual game, but…

The Haunting, Beautiful Art of Peter La

Canadian Peter La is a former user interface specialist who’s recently shifted over to concept art. He’s done work for mobile games like Sushi Smash and the gorgeous puzzle game Nuculus, but really, saying he’s just a casual games artist is really selling his talents short. Those more ethereal sci-fi pieces below are some of…

Spin the Bottle for the Wii U Makes You Get Close. Sexy Close.

Now this looks neat. Spin the Bottle is a Wii U title from KnapNok Games and Redgrim that looks like the perfect way to show the new system off to friends… if you’re at a party and have had a couple of drinks. It’s a multiplayer game designed to be played with the TV off.…

Get Inside the Nintendo 3DS XL

The New York Times has a great little piece up breaking apart the Nintendo 3DS XL and showing how it—and its 3D technology—work. A Look Inside the Nintendo 3DS XL [New York Times]

Metal Gear’s Stealth is Creepy, Annoying in the Real World

It’s entirely acceptable behaviour in desolate military installations and remote jungles, but busting out Snake’s repertoire of stealth moves in public places is a little less advisable. Metal Gear Solid in Real Life (Public Trolling) FINAL CUT [YouTube]

User Uncovers Dodgy Russian Trading Scheme… in Team Fortress 2

Steamrep forum user base64, having noticed a strange spike in transactions for a rare in-game item, decided to do a little private investigating. And uncovered some very strange happenings. Picking up on a weird increase in trades for “earbuds”, a rare item in the game, his investigations led him to discover a closed Steam group…

Rumor: 2013’s Call of Duty is Another Modern Warfare Game

According to a report on Siliconera, next year’s Call of Duty game will take place in the same universe as Infinity Ward’s Modern Warfare titles. The site’s source, related to the game’s voice acting, is the same one who accurately leaked a ton of Sleeping Dogs info over a year before that game’s release, so…

Kixeye Thinks Zynga is After Its Trade Secrets, Files Cross-Complaint Against Social Gaming’s Minivan

Look at that face. It’s the face of Kixeye chairman and CEO Will Harbin. That is a face that means business. Now imagine it saying “Claiming that (Zynga’s) failed business practices could inform ours further establishes their complete lack of understanding of the gaming business.” And then he orders their execution. Last month Zynga filed…

Behold The Cosmic, Comic Beauty Of The World

I don’t quite know how to describe this alternately beautiful, sad, funny, stupid, and transcendant video, so I’ll just leave it here. Its author, Travis Green, prefaces it on Reddit thusly: “I made this after smoking 3.5 marijuanas. Don’t do drugs.” Yeah, pretty much. Go ahead and give it a watch, if you’re in the…

Unsuccessful Nintendo Counterfeiter Gets Almost Three Years in the Slammer

A counterfeiter who made about £600,000 selling cartridges and discs loaded with pirated Nintendo games will do at least a year of hard time in the U.K. after being sentenced last Friday. Justin Success-Brooks—turns out Success is not his middle name, just part of his hyphenated last name—got a 28-month prison sentence that will likely…

ArenaNet Adds ‘Ascended Gear’ To Guild Wars 2, Upset Players Grab Their Pitchforks

Oh, you like that Exotic weapon you’ve got? Yeah, but is it Ascended? That’s the name of the newest sort of gear in Guild Wars 2, another addition to extend the MMO’s endgame and give hardcore players more to do in the already gigantic game. In a new post at the ArenaNet website, ArenaNet’s Linsey…

The fifth and final episode of Telltale’s The Walking Dead game comes out next week. There will likely be emotions.

What’s Going on With NBA 2K13‘s Roster Update?

The state of NBA 2K13‘s roster update has been uncommonly bad to date. In the most recent episode of the Press Row Podcast, Operation Sports’ normally placid Steve Noah needed bleeping when discussing the slowness and inaccuracy of the update. “There’s been three players added in the latest update,” Steve said, in a podcast recorded…

This Company Will Make Real-Life Miniatures Out Of Your Minecraft World

If you’ve played Minecraft, chances are you’ve built something so cool that you wish you could immortalize it and put it on your mantle. Thankfully, there’s Figureprints, a company who in the past have recreated your Xbox 360 avatars and World of Warcraft characters. Now, you can export you favorite Minecraft creations and they’ll make…

Lucasfilm Wants to Make “Two or Three” Movies a Year. That’s a Lot of Star Wars.

The next Star Wars movie, Episode VII, is just the tip of a money-coloured iceberg Disney plans to harvest in the wake of its takeover of the franchise from George Lucas. Speaking with Entertainment Weekly, Lucas’ anointed successor, Kathleen Kennedy, says that the company wants to produce “two or three films a year”, which aside…

Metacritic Refuses To Pull Negative Review That GameSpot Admits Was Factually Inaccurate

If you head on over to the Metacritic page for Natural Selection 2, you might notice something strange. Of the seven reviews listed, only one is scored below an 80. Also, it doesn’t actually exist. Last week, GameSpot reviews editor Kevin VanOrd pulled his site’s review of Natural Selection 2. The review, scored 60/100 and…

Valve Blocks ‘Slenderman’ Game From Steam Due To Copyright Concerns

See here, the official teaser for Faceless, a game previously known as Slender: Source. It’s got a complicated lineage: inspired by another game which was in turn inspired by an internet meme Despite popularity on Valve’s new Steam “Greenlight” crowdsourced game initiative, Faceless can’t get itself onto Steam. Joystiq takes a look in a new…

Midweek Moneysaver: Call of Duty, Maybe

This Wednesday edition of Kotaku’s The Moneysaver catches all the offers, promotions and bargains that can’t wait until the weekend. The Midweek Moneysaver is brought to you by Dealzon. Software • Yesterday’s release Call of Duty: Black Ops 2 (360, PS3) is $44.99 with $4.99 shipping from Daily Steals. Toys ‘R’ Us is also $50,…

Real Names in Games Mean More Money for the NCAA, Executive Argued

Five years ago, an NCAA executive said EA Sports should be allowed to use actual names of its amateur athletes—commanding a higher licensing fee as a result—because players’ likenesses were “rigged into the games now by illegal means.” Permitting their use would clear up the matter and bring more money to the NCAA, he said.…