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  Why StarCraft II Still Doesn’t Support Local Multiplayer

  In StarCraft, you could play multiplayer games with your friends on local area network connections. In StarCraft II, you can’t. It’s online or bust. This is a decision that has driven some fans crazy, and over the past couple of years, developer Blizzard has received no shortage of flack from infuriated gamers. Sometimes they don’t…

  By Jason Schreier Published June 20, 2012
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  Brand-New Indie Game Resonance is the Best 1990s Adventure Game I’ve Played in Years

  I am a big fan of adventure games. They’ve been my favorite genre for decades. I like them quite a lot. Enough to have named my cat Guybrush. I have sampled and enjoyed many indie adventure games, both old and new, this year. And I mention all of this so that you will realize the…

  By Kate Cox Published June 20, 2012
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  Divinity: Original Sin Turns a Single-Player Killfest Into Turn-Based, Group Combat. And Succeeds.

  Larian Studios’ Divinity franchise has had an uneven past. The first game, Divine Divinity, was very good, but others have been more mixed. At E3 this year, Larian showed off two games set in the Divinity universe. One, Dragon Commander, is a real-time strategy game focusing on the dragon knight idea introduced in Divinity II.…

  By Kate Cox Published June 20, 2012
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  Any MMO Can Take You to Hell. The Secret World Takes You to an Amusement Park

  My first guided tour of Funcom’s upcoming paranormal MMO The Secret World saw me descending into the depths of hell. Many massively multiplayer online role-playing games go there; it’s a popular spot. But only The Secret World follows up hell with a visit to a demented theme park. Funcom’s Craig Morrison escorted a group of…

  By Mike Fahey Published June 20, 2012
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  The End of Chivalry, Cheesy Action Movies, and Fascist Elves: A Chat With the Man Who Runs Paradox

  The first morning of E3, I sat down to talk with Fredrik Wester, CEO of Paradox Interactive. Paradox has, in the past, generally specialized in careful, strategic games with historical settings. But their upcoming titles all deviate from that scheme in some way. While The War of the Roses is historical, it’s anything but a…

  By Kate Cox Published June 20, 2012
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  PC Gaming Lives, Live!

  It’s time for PC Gaming Lives! Which you may have noticed begins an hour later than it used to. Rumors of its death are highly exaggerated.

  By Kate Cox Published June 20, 2012
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  Watch 20 Minutes of Resident Evil 6 in Action

  At E3, the press got to see a whole bunch of Resident Evil 6 in action. Evan noted how much more action-packed the game is than even past Resident Evil games. Now, you can see it in action for yourselves. The video above is actually part 2 of the two videos that have been posted,…

  By Kirk Hamilton Published June 20, 2012
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  It’s Almost Impossible to Solo World of Warcraft Monopoly

  After months of teasing us with reveals of colorful money, plastic towers and murloc-infested cards, World of Warcraft Monopoly is finally available ready for public consumption. Want to see what’s inside? I’ve been sitting on an advance copy of World of Warcraft Monopoly for weeks now, eager to rip open the game and get my…

  By Mike Fahey Published June 20, 2012
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  Watch These Guys Beat Diablo III on its Hardest, Most Unforgiving Difficulty Setting

  You may think that you play Diablo III, clicking on enemies and looting bodies, but there’s a good chance you’re actually playing a kiddie version of the game. At the game’s higher difficulty levels, it opens up into something far more difficult and engaging than its borderline Facebook-game-level normal difficulty. And at Inferno, Diablo III‘s…

  By Kirk Hamilton Published June 20, 2012
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  This Is The Best Minecraft Short Film I’ve Ever Seen

  Check out this awesome Minecraft fan film, courtesy the folks at Corridor Digital. The special effects are excellent. Kinda cheesy. But mostly excellent.

  By Jason Schreier Published June 20, 2012
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  A Terrific Riff On Magic: The Gathering, Starring Video Gaming’s Real Heroes

  The Kotaku guest appearance on one of Giant Bomb’s marathon E3 podcasts a couple of weeks ago appears to have wrought two things: The world’s best Hawkman-inspired Kotaku -esque site A very cool prototype for a video game industry version of Magic: The Gathering, featuring some of the coolest (mostly)-creative people in gaming. The first…

  By Stephen Totilo Published June 20, 2012
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  Ascend: New Gods Has a Case of The Demon’s Souls. This is a Good Thing.

  It usually takes a couple of years for good ideas from one game to seep into another. It appears that late 2009’s Demon’s Souls has spilled some into Ascend: New Gods, one of the wilder games I saw at E3 earlier this month. Demon’s Souls popularized—or re-popularized—a style of single-player gaming that is perpetually affected…

  By Stephen Totilo Published June 20, 2012
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  I Really Hope This Action-RPG Comes To The U.S.

  Japanese gaming magazine Famitsu has some screenshots for the newest Ys game, Ys Celceta: Sea Of Trees—a remake of Ys IV that is slated for PlayStation Vita in Japan this September. Looks pretty, no? Hopefully U.S. localization house XSEED brings it over to U.S. shores. They’ve brought over some of the other Ys games (including…

  By Jason Schreier Published June 20, 2012
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  The 2012 Gawker Media Census Results Are In

  You might have noticed that over the past few weeks we’ve been bugging you to take the 2012 Gawker Media Census. Well, try not to cry too hard, but the most exciting survey on the whole World Wide Web has come to a close. We learned all sorts of fun facts about the 2,647 Kotaku…

  Sponsored post Published June 20, 2012
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  Valve Gives Away Portal 2 for Free to Teachers with ‘Steam for Schools’

  If you’ve played games like Team Fortress 2 or the Portal titles, you know that Valve loves making players learn. The company’s already got a foothold in bringing their games into the educational space and that commitment’s going to get bigger. Today, at the Games for Change conference, Valve’s Leslie Redd and Yasser Malaika announced…

  By Evan Narcisse Published June 20, 2012
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  Reviews

  Pokémon Conquest: The Kotaku Review

  Since the release of the first Pokémon role-playing game in 1996, Nintendo and The Pokémon Company have attempted to capitalize on the success of the core series by overlaying its colorful cartoon characters on other genres. Thanks in no small part to the power of the brand, Pokémon pinball, puzzle, turn-based dungeon crawlers and more…

  By Mike Fahey Published June 20, 2012
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  Thanks, Split! For Letting Me Team Up with My Own Smarty-Pants Self

  It’s a shooter that doesn’t let you shoot. A puzzle game without any blocks. It’s Split! and it’s surprisingly sharp. Touchy Interactive’s retro-styled iOS games has you controlling two soldier types who bust out of some kind of imprisonment. Red Dude and Blue Dude need to make their way through various levels of an enemy…

  By Evan Narcisse Published June 20, 2012
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  ‘So What if I’m a Woman. Let Me Play the Game’ – A Follow-Up

  Addressing criticisms of her piece about PR sexism at E3, writer Katie Williams has posted a sharp, well-reasoned follow-up on her blog. Go read it! [Alive Tiny World]

  By Jason Schreier Published June 20, 2012
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  E3’s Cutest Booth Babe?

  I was going through the final unused pieces of my E3 reporting and realized I never posted this video. It’s nothing big, but it was one of my favorite sights at E3. Just a person in a giant LittleBigPlanet Sackboy costume. Later, I happened to walk by a rest area outside the PlayStation area. Sackboy’s…

  By Stephen Totilo Published June 20, 2012
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  Talk Amongst Yourselves

  Welcome to Kotaku’s official forum, known affectionately as Talk Amongst Yourselves. This is the place where we gather on a daily basis to discuss all things video game and existential. Want to talk about new games, old games, games that aren’t even out yet? Knock yourselves out! Is this painting a representation of the Gods?…

  By Tina Amini Published June 20, 2012