The People Who Make Rock Band Want Us To Make More Rock Band Puns

Yesterday I wrote about how Rock Band creator Harmonix is working on a totally new game with combat and stuff. I also threw in some hypothetical game names that probably won’t happen, since it’s a new IP and all. This wasn’t enough for Harmonix’s John Drake, who insisted that I write more. So without further…

The Past is Full of Great Time Travel Games, But I Want Them In My Future

This morning, I received a link to a twenty-year-old video. It’s the first-ever preview of The Journeyman Project, as shown at Macworld in 1992. Perhaps appropriately for a game about time travel, I felt a distinct sense of journeying into the past while I watched it. What once looked so painstakingly rendered now, in the…

You Try to Give Them An Education, and They Steal Your Damn Pokeball

Commenter GiantBoyDetective is going to cry, because little kids can be dicks. In today’s Speak Up on Kotaku he tells the sad story of misplaced trust and children that need a good spanking. Something happend today. Something that made me so angry I almost cried out of frustration in front of my 6th grade class.…

How To Lay People Off in the Video Game Industry

A layoff is a layoff is a layoff, to misquote Gertrude Stein. Surely, they all suck. But they also happen. Some would say they have to happen, capitalism being what it is and such and such. So, all of you big, powerful gaming industry executives who employ people to read Kotaku for them, when you…

What Went Wrong With OnLive?

I remember the first time I saw OnLive demoed for me. Three years ago, I was ushered into a conference room on Manhattan’s Midtown East neighborhood and saw Crysis running of the cloud gaming service’s network. It looked impressive, sure, but there could have been all sorts of tomfoolery going on to make the streaming…

What’s More Fun Than Playing Counter-Strike: Global Offensive? Watching Us Play It.

Counter-Strike: Global Offensive is officially available as of today. But if you haven’t touched the beta or purchased the game retail, feel free to get familiar with some of the old school maps and new(ish) school modes right here. This video gives you a glimpse at what the first-person shooting action in CS: GO is…

Four New Comics You Could Buy This Week, But Just One That You Must

Regular Kotaku comics man Evan Narcisse had to dash off to a meeting and asked me, the guy who has pretty much only been reading all—yes, all—of Brian Michael Bendis’ Avengers run for the past month, to recommend some new comics worth buying this week. Hmm. Let’s see. How about… Dragon Age: Those Who Speak…

Marvel Needs to Get Around to Fixing My Favorite Superhero

The Black Panther is my favorite superhero. So, it really sucks that I hate almost everything about him right now. It’s not just that the Black Panther is a favorite of mine. He’s also one of Stan Lee and Jack Kirby’s best creations, first showing up in a run that’s considered one of the best…

There may be very good games on PlayStation Vita, but sales are wretched—only 2.2 million worldwide, Joystiq confirms

Transformers: Fall of Cybertron: The Kotaku Review

Transformers: Fall of Cybertron tells the story of the last days of a dying planet. It’s the tale of two warring factions reaching out across the cosmos for the sake of survival. To fans of the franchise, this is a historical account of a fixed point in time, the outcome of which is predetermined. We…

50+ layoffs at EA-owned Bejeweled studio PopCap, according to industry Tweets like this one. Update: PopCap comments

How Dota 2 Exposes The Shortcomings Of The Video Game Industry

There’s no question that Defense Of The Ancients (Dota) is big. It’s a big deal. It’s also an immensely complicated game that has evolved over years of intense play, modding, and sprawling evolution. It’s not very much like any other game out there. And for that reason, it could be argued that Dota 2 lays…

Looks Like We’ll Know the Wii U’s American Launch Date and Price by September 13

Nintendo is holding a major Wii U press event in New York City on September 13, hosted by Nintendo of America president Reggie Fils-Aime. An invitation sent to select media outlets today promised a day that will let us learn “more about how the Wii U will change the future of gaming and entertainment.” Sure,…

Report: Nintendo Power Shutting Down

Ars Technica has an article up saying that the long-running Nintendo Power magazine is ceasing publication. Multiple sources at Nintendo Power publisher Future have told Kotaku that Nintendo Power is ending and that the broad factual strokes of the Ars Technica report ring true with what’s been circulating within the company. Nintendo Power was one…

Diablo III Used To Look A Lot More Like An MMORPG

Original design plans for Diablo III involved an MMORPG-like chatroom that would replace the menu-based Battle.net interface, says Diablo co-creator David Brevik. Instead of just scrolling through chatrooms, you’d cross through towns and interact with players by trading and selling items. Speaking to Eurogamer, Brevik outlined the idea: One of things we originally designed for…

It Lives! Here’s 10 Minutes of Gameplay from NBA Live 13 [Update]

After more than two months of nearly total radio silence from EA Sports and the NBA Live team, skeptical sports gamers figured the series’ return was either in trouble, delayed, or even secretly canceled. This video spotted by Operation Sports, which shows 11 minutes of the game from boot-up to the first quarter horn, suggests…

PlayStation Plus Members Can Now Shoot Things Dramatically In The Dust 514 Closed Beta

For those who didn’t purchase access earlier, or get their names drawn from CCP’s hat after signing up on the web, there’s one last way to guarantee access to the Dust 514 closed beta. But it, too, will cost you some cash. From now through September 4, PlayStation Plus members can all jump in to…

Unintimidated By Apple, Nintendo’s Boss Says The World Still Needs Dedicated Gaming Handhelds

Nintendo president Satoru Iwata can tell you when Nintendo would stop making its own handheld systems. He can tell you, hypothetically, when a line of machines that has gone from Game Boy to DS to 3DS would end and Nintendo’s games would appear on the hardware made by other companies instead. Last week in San…

Nearly Thirty Years Old and Lode Runner is Still Kicking My Ass

I first played Douglas Smith’s classic platformer, Lode Runner, on an Apple II computer in 1983. I wasn’t very good, but then I was also only ten. Nearly three decades later Tozai Games has released Lode Runner Classic for Windows Phone 7, with versions coming soon for iOS and Android. The simply running and digging…

Dance Central 3’s Weaponized Dance Moves Make You Shake Your Ass for Justice

You know that feeling when you finally get your hands on the BFG 9000 in Doom or the gravity gun in Half-Life 2? It’s a sensation that you’re about to become nigh-omnipotent, able to blast enemies out of existence withlittle effort. It gives you goosebumps. Harmonix wants you to feel that way about the Macarena…