• Culture

  Modern Shooters Can Look Pretty (at Least, Their Concept Art Can)

  It’s a common, and entirely justified complaint that most modern shooters look too drab. They’re too brown, too grey, too dreary. You could counter that, well, since wars are fought in the dirt and ruins that’s how they’re supposed to look, but it’s too nice a day for arguments. Let’s instead just enjoy this concept…

  By Luke Plunkett Published July 17, 2012
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  The Future of PC Graphics Sure Looks Sparkly

  This video is, supposedly, a demo of PC raytracing tech running on an i7 and Radeon 5870, in DirectX 11. In other words, it’s amazing visuals running on a PC that you might actually already own. It was created by PC modder Hayssam Keilany, who does work on tweaks for games like Skyrim and GTAIV.…

  By Luke Plunkett Published July 17, 2012
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  Old Republic’s Got Some Killer New Droids (and a Killer New Trailer)

  If you were at the San Diego Comic-Con, you may have already seen this clip! Since you probably weren’t, though, here’s your first look at the unveiling of killer droid HK-51 in Star Wars: The Old Republic. Note this is HK-51, and not everybody’s favourite meatbag killer HK-47, from classic RPG Knights of the Old…

  By Luke Plunkett Published July 17, 2012
• CultureTotal Recall

  A Tribute to Old Video Game Maps

  What did you do over the weekend? See some friends, go out to dinner, play some games? Me, I sat in front of a monitor, then a printer, and went through this spontaneous collection of old video game maps. Younger readers, accustomed to things like waypoint markers and mini-maps, may not be aware just how…

  By Luke Plunkett Published July 16, 2012
• CultureTotal Recall

  The Private Atari Emails You Weren’t Supposed to See (Until Some Guy Released Them)

  Here’s a rare and fascinating thing: a collection of ten year’s worth of internal Atari Games correspondence from between 1982 and 1992, all stored, public and ready for your voyeuristic consumption. What you’ll find isn’t just boring business talk. There’s all kinds of stuff in here, from high-level corporate discussions to guys making dinner reservations…

  By Luke Plunkett Published July 16, 2012
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  Your Friends, The Video Game Systems

  We spend a lot of time with our video game devices, so it’s easy to start to think of them as family members. Sometimes they are friends, sometimes they fight. Sometimes they’re happy, sometimes they’re sad. Sometimes they talk to us. It’s not weird! It’s normal! NORMAL I SAY. This terrific illustration by DeviantARTist Ry-Spirit…

  By Kirk Hamilton Published July 16, 2012
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  I’ll Never Forget Solving Mysteries With Encyclopedia Brown

  I grew up with Encyclopedia Brown. He was my kind of hero, a kid who beat the bad guys not with brawn or physical skill, but with his mind. When I was around ten years old (I’m approximating), I used to devour every story of Leroy “Encyclopedia” Brown, his partner Sally, his nemesis Bugs Meany…

  By Kirk Hamilton Published July 16, 2012
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  Sexy Mario’s a-Back, Ready To Play Some Sexy Tennis

  Because the world always needs more Sexy Mario, the big man in the overalls is back, this time with some super hawt Tennis shots. I’m not sure this quite outdoes the “mouthing of the tiny question mark cube,” but the one with the balls and racquet is… erm, appealing. I guess. Sexy Mario [Facebook, thanks…

  By Kirk Hamilton Published July 16, 2012
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  Pipe Bomb Attack Blamed on a “Video Game Community”

  An alarming attack on a home in New Jersey, in which several pipe bombs were thrown through windows, has ended with the targeted family blaming the incident on involvement in a “video game community”. Two pipe bombs were thrown into the house in Monroe, NJ, both of which exploded, with a third being tossed inside…

  By Luke Plunkett Published July 16, 2012
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  If Mega Man Were A Smell, What Smell Would He Be?

  I’ve sometimes wondered what video game characters would smell like—I’m not the only one, as regular Kotaku roustabout Tim Rogers explored the question in depth with hideous results Over at Polygon, Brian Crecente has written a fun story about the act of converting video game characters themselves into smells. Sound weird? It is. Crecente spoke…

  By Kirk Hamilton Published July 16, 2012
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  A Moment To Honor The Chrono Trigger Cats

  Oh, little orange kitty with the triangle on your chest, thank you for following me around my house. Your companionship and high-pitched meows are ever brightening my days. One fine morn, I skipped merrily to the Millennial Fair and won the beanbag throw in an attempt to bring you home a cat friend, but now,…

  by Lisa Foiles Published July 16, 2012
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  5 Hilarious Video Game Industry Screw Ups

  When an industry is made-up of almost equal parts society-changing brilliance and playboy man-child syndrome, it’s bound to generate some exceptionally stupid ideas. Case in point: Most of the stupidity flies under the radar and only enrages mothers and religious people for a few days before they move on to an even ridiculous-er topic that…

  by Lisa Foiles Published July 16, 2012
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  Left 4 Dead 2 Will be Valve’s First Official Linux Game

  Valve’s been openly talking about developing on Linux for a while now, but a new blog post on the company’s site today has for the first time given us our first official information on the company’s plan to bring Steam to the platfom. They say they’ll be bringing Steam to Ubuntu, and while Left 4…

  By Luke Plunkett Published July 16, 2012
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  What If Katamari Was Terrifying?

  It’s funny to think that the genre of a video game could change based on point of view. From the Prince’s point-of-view in Katamari, everything is peachy, he’s got a job to do, and everything in his path is nothing more than sweet, sweet points. However, from literally anyone else’s POV in that world, the…

  by Lisa Foiles Published July 16, 2012
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  Check Out Guardians of Middle-Earth‘s G-Men in Action

  Monolith’s console-based MOBA Middle-Earth game would be nothing if it weren’t for the ol’ double-G team.

  By Mike Fahey Published July 16, 2012
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  NASA Made A Game That Lets You Land On Mars. Sounds Cool. Now What?

  Hop on Xbox Live and search for Mars Rover Landing. You’ll find a Kinect game made by NASA and Microsoft that’s meant to simulate the tense experience of landing Curiosity, NASA’s rover that will land on Mars on August 5 after eight and a half months of travel. It’s “seven minutes of terror,” is how…

  By Tina Amini Published July 16, 2012
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  One Great Steam Sale Idea Valve Hasn’t Tried Yet

  The Steam summer sale is underway, and all of our wallets are at risk. Oh hey look, it’s The Legend of Grimrock for six bucks! Oh wow, Civilization V for cheaper than ever! Don’t mind if I do! Never mind the fact that I still have a few games from the last big Steam sale…

  By Kirk Hamilton Published July 16, 2012
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  NCAA Football‘s Cover School Says It Had Nothing to do With Fight Song’s Disappearance

  Baylor University says it demanded no extra money from EA Sports for the use of its fight song in NCAA Football 13 and no one in the university’s administration had anything to do with the song’s exclusion in this year’s version of the game, which released last week with its Heisman Trophy-winning quarterback starring on…

  By Owen Good Published July 16, 2012
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  I Was Looking For a Game That Starred Empathy. I Found it Behind All the Zombies.

  Last spring, I read a novel called The Passage, and I’m re-reading it again now. The book posits a scenario that in its broad strokes should be familiar by now to any gamer: a secret military science program goes horribly wrong and creates a race of man-eating, once-human monsters that more or less doom humanity.…

  By Kate Cox Published July 16, 2012
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  Sometimes You Just Get Tired of Playing Video Games

  In today’s half-hearted edition of Speak Up on Kotaku, commenter Robobrah shares an experience that many of us face during our gaming careers — the game completion slump. After reading this recent article it made me think of something that’s been bothering me for a while, and I’m interested if anyone else has ever experienced…

  By Mike Fahey Published July 16, 2012