Kotaku ‘Shop Contest: The Kitchen Sink Winners

A grab bag of images last week served you everything from NBA superstars to prom couples and hovercrafts. There’s no real unified theme here, except for the funny. We’ve got all the finalists above, plus overall winner kaploy9! Zombie-Hunter (19) came through with the strong execution of a picture a lot of people were expecting…

The 2012 Saxxy Awards should get plenty of entries thanks to Source Filmmaker. Any Valve game may be used. Details here.

Someone’s resumé says something completely unsurprising: Black Ops 2 will release a Wii U version.

Trust No One in DayZ—Especially Those With a Helicopter

It’s tempting. You’re in an ultra-realistic, post-apocalyptic fight for survival, and some helpful human players show up in a goddamn helicopter of all things, blow away the zombie menacing you, and invite you aboard. And why wouldn’t you join them? It’s great to have friends with aircraft. Except these aren’t your friends. If you’re playing…

Weak Traffic, Low Subscribers Meant Something Had to Happen—but OnLive Employees Didn’t Expect the End

All of OnLive’s 200 employees worked daily with the cloud gaming service’s traffic numbers, and knew that something big had to happen for the company around this time of the year. That’s not to say everyone expected to lose their jobs together on the same day, no severance, no benefits, no nothing. That’s according to…

Borderlands 2‘s Official Rating Description is Outstanding

Back at E3 I was dismayed to learn that, thanks to prudes overseas, Borderlands 2‘s darkly humorous death animations would have to be toned down from the original’s, which included eyeball-exploding electrocutions. Well, if the official ratings description handed down by the ESRB is any indication, I needn’t have worried. Borderlands 2 went to gold…

This Week in the Business: ‘Sony Will Drop Its Hardware Prices This Autumn, Because It Must.’

What’s happened in the business of video games this past week … QUOTE | “Sony will drop its hardware prices this autumn, because it must.”—Rob Fahey, veteran game journalist, talking about why Sony needs to cut the price of both the PS3 and Vita in order to boost sales QUOTE | “If you make a…

The only game with the UEFA Champions League is Pro Evolution Soccer 2013. Konami and UEFA renewed their pact yesterday.

The Moneysaver: War for Cyberdeals

A combo pairing Transformers: Fall of Cybertron with its predecessor leads our list of 60 bargains, 35 of them digital downloads and, as usual, most of them available from online retailers. NCAA Football 13 is down to $40 about a month after its release, and the PlayStation Move game Sorcery is just $14.99. Appropriately enough…

The Best Of Kotaku, This Week

Welcome to the Best of Kotaku, where Tina I round up all of this week’s best content. Tina’s off this week, so I’m going to make fun of/pay tribute to her by running this image of her amazing parking job in Sleeping Dogs. Parked vertical on the wall, like a boss. And before anyone else…

A Persian Legend of Zelda? Sure, Why Not.

Artist Lenqi imagines a classic Persian take on The Legend of Zelda. It deserves a round of applause. Not just for shaking up the setting (which to be fair, has in recent years gone both “pirate” and “cowboy”), but for how well it fits. I’m getting visions of a Zelda game with the visuals from…

And Now, Annie From Community Will Gasp Over And Over And Over

It’s been a banner week for TV supercuts, so let’s close it out with this montage of Annie from Community doing her “oh!” gasp over and over and over again. The clip, first seen at The A.V. Club, does a great job of showing how this show both gives its characters signature moves and then…

Doing Battle with Fall of Cybertron‘s Bruticus Figure

Back in February when Hasbro announced it would be making a toy of the Transformers: Fall of Cybertron version of Decepticon gestalt team Bruticus, I was absolutely ecstatic. Now that I’ve got the San Diego Comic-Con variant of the toy in my hot giant hands? Still pretty ecstatic, though that doesn’t mean I can’t be…

In the Background of Video Games’ Exclusive Deals, There’s More Than Meets The Eye

They are the heroes of our childhoods. The glory of their times. Their video game comes out later this month. For the entirety of the current console generation, just one mega-publisher has solely controlled the exclusive right to immortalize their triumphs. It’s a deal that has reaped gobs of cash, and the latest edition of…

Video Game Makers Aren’t Your Friends. But If They Were …

Today, Dorkly broke down the major players of the video gaming industry into commonly understood archetypes: Your friends. Doesn’t make them any more tolerable, but it does make them more understandable. Still, I would have figured Activision for your gun-obsessed weightlifter friend who drives a 1989 Celica and listens to the Iron Eagle soundtrack, and…

OnLive Assets Acquired by ‘Newly Formed Company,’ Vows to Continue Service [Corrected]

Bad news always slides under the door at the end of Friday, and today’s was a rumor of some kind of quasi -bankruptcy for the cloud gaming service OnLive and, more importantly, mass layoffs of its employees. After a series of officious no-comments to reporters, OnLive has issued a statement confirming that its sale to…

Playing Again, as Sam, in Splinter Cell: Blacklist

Splinter Cell: Blacklist is next year’s update of the venerable Tom Clancy series from Ubisoft, promising new weapons and classic method, if not the classic Sam Fisher voice actor. Nonetheless, you can catch 12 minutes slam full of gameplay in this annotated developer video. Using the “killing-in-motion” bullet-time feature, watch Sam cut like a hot…

Wondering Just What Darksiders II Is All About? Here’s a Video Overview!

We’ve given you the review, talked about some port problems, and shown you the art. But how does Darksiders II really look? And what’s it all about? Kotaku‘s own Chris Person has created this video overview for those of us who might not have caught the franchise’s first entry. Just what is Death wandering through…

Get Ready for Madden‘s “Connected Careers” With This 175-Page Guide

Madden NFL 13 this year merges its Franchise, Online Franchise and Superstar modes into a single suite, called “Connected Careers.” We’ve done our best to explain what it is, but in a nutshell, gamers controlling a single player will be able to play in the same league against gamers controlling a single player (edit: and…

Darksiders II And Sleeping Dogs: A Tale Of Two Very Different PC Ports

I played two PC ports of two big, exciting new games this week. One of them worked. One of them didn’t. The two big games in question were Square Enix and United Front’s Hong Kong crime game Sleeping Dogs and THQ and Vigil’s comic-booky fantasy game Darksiders II. Both games came out on Tuesday, both…