Blonde Twins Playing The Elder Scrolls Theme On Harps While Standing In A Forest

From the people who brought you Blonde Twins Playing A Metallica Cover On Harps While Standing In The Desert comes this brave new experience in weird nature-set harp covers. As with the first time around, sometimes a headline is what it is. Sometimes you get exactly what you clicked on.

The Simpsons are Just the Cursed Topping on One Amazing Week in Gaming Apps

When an official video game based on the most successful mature animated series in the history of television is one of the least exciting items on the list, you know you’re in for one hell of a Week in Gaming Apps. What’s better than Homer Simpson? How about the experiemental music toy-meets-tower defense with a…

The Weird Way Reporters Like Me See Video Games

Every so often, I get to go behind closed doors and preview games early. Well, not before signing a non-disclosure agreement and sometimes giving proof that yes, this scrappy looking kid is in fact writing for [insert name of publication.] I got my start on paid writing work with previews, but it wasn’t until recently…

Give Me More World Maps In My RPGs

Here’s to the world map. Here’s to those goofy, disproportionate, inelegant pieces of virtual parchment that we’ve been exploring for the past three decades. Let’s bring’em back. A world map, for those of you who might not be familiar with the concept, is the video game term for the strangely-scaled pieces of geography that string…

Source: OnLive Filing for a Form of Bankruptcy, New Company to Take Its Place [UPDATES]

OnLive, the pioneers of cloud gaming, are in dire straits and are preparing to file for a form of bankruptcy, a source inside the company told Kotaku today. An OnLive spokesperson maintains that the OnLive service, which enables people to stream games to their computers and tablets without the need for dedicated hardware, will continue.…

Woman Hopes PlayStation Game About Her Abusive Dad Can Help Others

Magadly Caballero knew that her brother Vander was making a game about their alcoholic father. She’d lived through his scary rages alongside Vander. But she still wasn’t ready for how Papo & Yo would make her feel. Vander Caballero’s sister hasn’t been able to play Papo & Yo yet—Kotaku‘s review is here—but she’s seen videos…

The Devil’s Cartel Gives the Army of Two Franchise a Leg Up

Army of Two is a polarizing franchise. It had the one thing the original developer EA Montreal set out to create: exceptional cooperative gameplay. Everything else, with the exception of the over-the-top bromance comedy between the two private military contractors, fell to the wayside. Now with Dead Space developer Visceral Games at the helm, the…

Steam’s “Big Picture” Mode May Reshape the Big Picture of What PC Gaming Really Means

Yesterday, Valve announced that their Big Picture service will be entering a beta phase soon. The Big Picture is a version of Steam optimized for television screens and controllers. Plug your PC into your 50″ TV, and you can kick back on the sofa with a version of Steam that’s designed to be readable from…

Nintendo Chief: Mario Is Part Of Gamers’ DNA

The line of games that started with Super Mario Bros and extends to this week’s New Super Mario Bros. 2 have an unusual, innate appeal, according to the president of Nintendo, Satoru Iwata. “Sidescrolling Mario has a special existence in that it really is part of the fundamental DNA of gamers,” a cheerful Iwata said…

Watch The Fable: The Journey Team Tell A Story About Telling the Story, Then Play the Demo in September

The dev team at Lionhead Studios have shared a behind-the-scenes look at the story of their upcoming Kinect title Fable: The Journey. While early demonstrations of the game didn’t go very well, by this year’s E3 Kotaku‘s own Stephen Totilo found the demo to be a good experience If you want to try a demo…

Want Proof That Mobile Games are Catching Up to Consoles? Play Horn.

With The Dark Meadow, Phosphor Games Studio proved it could make a game that looked as good as a console title, but the sinister shooter’s limited on-rails gameplay was strictly mobile-grade. This week, in conjunction with Zynga, Phosphor released its latest Unreal Engine 3 powered mobile game, Horn, and it’s every bit as rich and…

One Film Critic Voted That Awful Hitman Movie as One of the Best of All Time. Seriously.

Every ten years, the British Film Institute’s Sight & Sound magazine runs a poll that asks film critics and directors to vote for the films that they think are the examples of cinematic excellence. It’s a storied tradition that goes back 50 years and is highly regarded by filmmakers and journalists alike, with classics like…

Capcom’s Great-Looking Current-Gen Sci-Fi Game Will Set The Stage For Great-Looking Next-Gen Sci-Fi Games

By now you must have seen this great footage for Remember Me, an awesome-looking open-world game that Capcom showed off this week at Gamescom. Believe it or not, this great-looking game is for current-gen consoles: Capcom has it slated for May 2013 release on Xbox 360, PC, and PlayStation 3. This is unusual. We should…

There’s a New Marvel Comics Game Coming to Phones

This is a teaser for a new mobile game starring, at the very least, Marvel’s The Avengers. I’d love to tell you more, but they call it a “teaser”, and not an “explains everything in 40 seconds”, for a reason.

Real Weapon Sellers Will Be So Jealous of These Borderlands 2 Videos

The same week EA pulls links to weapon and gear manufacturers from its Medal of Honor: Warfighter website, the arms crafters (ArmsCrafters – ready in about an hour) of Borderlands 2 get not one but three separate full-blown video ads. Some days it just doesn’t pay to be real. If I were to slip into…

Oh, the Meat Bun Horror. The Cute Meat Bun Horror.

You are looking at a meat bun of virtual idol Hatsune Miku. This isn’t the horror part. The horror has not yet started. Oh no. This gets worse—much worse. The above photo (taken by Otalab) shows a fresh Hatsune Miku meat bun. But what happens when the Miku buns are left in their Family Mart…

Team Ninja wants to make another Metroid for Nintendo. You listening, Nintendo?

Large Internet Outcry Over Jumbo Chinese Statue

This summer, Japan isn’t the only country with enormous ladies. China is getting in on the act in a big way. The reaction in China, however, has been a huge letdown. The above sculpture, which went up in Xinjiang province, depicts an Aspara, a celestial maiden for the clouds and water in Buddhism and Hinduism.…

Assassin’s Creed 3 Director Says Japanese Games Get a Free Pass

Alex Hutchinson, the creative director of Assassin’s Creed 3, thinks he knows why Nintendo can get away with releasing new versions of old franchises. It might not be the answer you expect. After Hutchinson compared AC to other well known franchises, Mario and Resident Evil, website CVG asked the creative director why Nintendo can release…

Counter-Strike: GO‘s First Mod Wants Braaaiiins!

When shooter Counter-Strike: Global Offensive launches next week, it will have a Zombie Mod from the folks over at plaguefest.com. “It was important to us as we developed CS:GO to make sure it was as moddable and extensible as any CS game,” wrote Valve on its Counter-Strike blog. “So this is just one of many…