Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic II is now available on Steam. It’s great! But get this first

Achievements Tip Off NBA 2K13‘s New Features

Historic teams and an online streetballing blacktop mode are hinted at in the list of NBA 2K13 achievements

Vigil Promises Fixes For Janky PC Darksiders II In ‘The Weeks To Come’

Sad but true: The PC version of Darksiders II is bare-bones and has some serious graphical problems. Non-functional vertical-sync, strange controls, minimal options for graphical tweaking; it’s a drag. I’ve been cooling my heels after playing about an hour of the game, waiting on its developer, Vigil, to release some patches. I’ve been waiting for…

If You’ve Ever Wanted To Climb Around Inside A Beck Song, This Game’s For You

Sound Shapes has been out for a couple of weeks now, and I think it’s finally time I wrote something about it here on Kotaku Melodic. It’s been a bit tough to get the average gamer interested in the game for some reason, even though it’s one of the most clever, musical games I’ve played…

It’s A Video Game Controller! It’s A Keytar! It’s… Pianocade!

Well this is pretty much unlike anything I’ve seen before. There are a lot of different video game controllers that are musical in nature, but I’ve never seen one that so weirdly combines MIDI controls with video buttons and a joystick. But that’s what Portmanteau Devices’ “Pianocade” device does. All I know is that if…

Please God, Make This Mortifying Linkin Park/Medal of Honor Promotional Campaign End

Are You there, God? It’s me, Kirk. Hi. How are You. Good? Cool. Me? Oh, I’m good. Though actually… okay. Look, I can put up with a lot of promotional bullcrap. I write about video games for a living! Half of my job is putting up with promotional bullcrap. But this whole Linkin Park/Medal of…

Apparently You Can Murder People In The New Madden

The next Madden will have all the usual features: tackling, audibles, hot routes, in-depth playbooks, canoe pursuits, and slow-motion chain kills. Just ask Best Buy: And people say Madden never changes. (Thanks, Holden!)

The Most Pointless Twitter Feud Happened Today Among Sega and a Bunch of Sonic Roleplayers

Are you role-playing a Sonic the Hedgehog character—even an extremely minor one—on Twitter? You better tell everyone your account isn’t official, otherwise Sega is going to call you out, and turn your colleagues on you, requiring a lot of double-parenthetical out-of-character tweets. And nobody wants that. The most insane foofaraw involving Sega’s official Twitter and…

This is Why You Need to Play Papo & Yo Right Now

Warning: The above video contains minor spoilers. If you are the kind of person that likes to go into a game blind, here’s your notice. It’s a rare thing to find a game you truly love and rarer still to find one that moves you emotionally. For me, Papo & Yo was that kind of…

Mass Effect‘s Normandy Crashing Into Skyrim Might Be The Least Weird Thing In This Picture

This appeared today in Reddit’s Skyrim community. It’s the mod “Normandy,” which adds a crash site of the Mass Effect ship into the game. It’s located outside of Whiterun, so really, you can probably fast travel to this thing no matter where you are in your character’s progression. Still, what the hell else did this…

Not the Best Game Ever:Earthbound

As the stagnant Speak Up forum begins to fade and TAY rises to power, Speak Up on Kotaku will soon be Speak Up Among Yourselves, or whatever name you guys pick for it. In the meantime, commenter HerpDerpDerp doesn’t think the classic RPG Earthbound is as good as people say. I think Earthbound is overrated,…

At long last, Psychonauts is coming to the PlayStation Network’s PS2 Classics channel. It’ll be available on Tuesday.

Dance Central 3 Designer: Kinect Developers Need to Do Better Than “Oh, It Works”

Last week, I talked to the people who make the best Kinect games. The topic of discussion? One of the worst Kinect games I chatted with Dance Central 3 project lead Matt Boch what he thought about the state of Kinect game development, starting off with the mind-numbingly wretched Steel Battalion. Back when Capcom’s bungle…

Stories From the Future, Racing Squirrels, And Bopping Your Friends On The Head All Featured In This Year’s IndieCade Nominees

IndieCade 2012, an annual festival celebrating independent games development, will be taking place in Culver City, California this October. The festival showcases a shortlist of nominated games, a number of which we saw at E3 this year. The festival also hosts an award gala. Last year, Fez and Johann Sebastian Joust were big winners. This…

What Makes A Good Knife Kill In First-Person Shooters

What’s the big deal about Counter-Strike? Wasn’t it just a Half-Life mod? Well that Half-Life mod was so popular that Valve developed it into a standalone, multiplayer first-person shooter. People lost hours of their lives playing version 1.6 of the game. And then when Valve released Counter-Strike: Source, an update to 1.6 that ran on…

Never Share an Elevator With Lisa and Helena From Dead or Alive 5

You’re late for your job at the secret underwater lab. Dashing through the lobby you see two women step into the facility’s sole elevator: the beautiful blonde heiress to the DOATEC fortune and that dark and mysterious scientist you’ve always expected has a hidden wild side. Do not get in that elevator. The two latest…

I Really Wish These Zelda And Ico Movie Posters Were Real

Designed by Kotaku reader Marinko Milosevski, these fake movie posters make me want to watch a film based on Shadow of the Colossus. And Majora’s Mask. And Super Metroid. And Ocarina of Time. And Ico. And Wind Waker (Click to expand them.)

Angry Birds Space’s Curiosity-Themed Update Pig-Jacks the Mars Rover

NASA is sending animals into space again. Well, the pigs and birds of Rovio’s mobile hit aren’t actually real. But they’ve become officially sanctioned astronauts anyway. The latest update to Angry Birds Space features a suite of levels set on Mars where the warring species take turns sitting on top of the $2.5 billion space…

The Bad Guys In Sleeping Dogs Aren’t Very Good At Fleeing

Sometimes, in Sleeping Dogs, you kick so many asses that your still-standing foes give up and run away. This usually happens when you’re clearing out the “drug bust” zones, which begin with a fight and end with some sweet, delicious camera-hacking. For some reason, after you’ve kicked all the asses, the fleeing guys kinda… lose…

A Whopping 40% Of Registered Voters On Xbox Live Can’t Decide Who To Vote For

Four out of every ten Xbox Live users who are registered to vote don’t know whether they plan to pick Barack Obama or Mitt Romney in the next presidential election, a Microsoft survey says. That’s quite the percentage. According to recent Gallup polls, only 8% of the country’s voters are undecided. If you’re counting at…