How Kinect Can Ruin Your Marriage

First it was Mass Effect. Then Gears of War. Now Kinect is ruining marriages everywhere. R.I.P. marriage. (Thanks, Andrew!)

Kinect-Supported Cussing is the Hip New Thing in Video Games Now

Well, well, look at this. FIFA 13‘s developers experimented with the concept but found there was no fair way to assess it within the rules of football. NBA 2K13, however, can take advantage of basketball’s technical foul rules to sanction you for cussin’ into the Kinect sensor after a total bullshit call. Basketball allows for…

The Best and Worst of PlayStation All-Stars Battle Royale So Far

The closed beta for PlayStation All-Stars Battle Royale was released earlier this week. While it’s in no way a complete product (it’s a beta, after all) there were some things about it I loved and hated. Watch the video above to find out.

It’s Not A Glitch. It’s A Feature. It’s Art. It’s Beautiful.

We lacked a campfire, but that didn’t stop us from telling tall tales about the incredible—but completely true, I swear!—things that happened to us while we played our favorite games. Forget about title recommendations, or stories of overcoming difficult challenges. That impressed nobody at recess. The gold was in glitches, and we panned endlessly for…

Happy 80th Birthday, LEGO!

On this day all the way back in 1932, a little company we now know as LEGO was born. It’s come a long way; what began as a small outfit building traditional wooden toys has transformed into one of the most popular and iconic brands in the world today, its trademark plastic bricks playing a…

Let’s Hear It For the Mom and Pop Video Game Shops

In today’s slowly fading edition of Speak Up on Kotaku, commenter Professor Rickshaw wonders how many people still have locally-owned, “mom and pop” video game stores (like CC Gaming World in Kennesaw, Georgia, pictured above) in their area, and shares a reason why they are awesome places to shop. Recently (just a few hours ago,…

It Was the Best of Times, It Was the Week in Gaming Apps

This highly educational Week in Gaming Apps is brought to you by the letter T, the number 10,000,000, the sounds of jazz and the culture of Mexico. It’s been the busiest Week in Gaming Apps ever, at least for yours truly. I’ve been steeping myself in Windows Phone 7, Android and iPhone games over the…

Phil Fish told Kotaku a Tweet about Zynga wanting Fez for mobile was “not a joke.” He turned them down.

Another Gamer Testifies To The Awesome Calorie-Burning Power Of His Standing Desk

Earlier this week, I shared my story of falling in love with playing video games (and working) at a standing desk. In this video found via Reddit, YouTuber Happy Jack enthusiastically shows off his standing desk, which he made out of an art easel (nice call!) and actually uses an Ergotron monitor holder (Ergotron makes…

That Guy You Hated in The Walking Dead Game Has Been Punched In the Face 1.4 Million Times

One of the things that makes Telltale’s The Walking Dead video game tick is choice. Players get to make a series of both time-critical and leisurely decisions as the chapters go by. Everything from “who is Lee polite to” to “who gets to live and who dies horribly” is up for grabs, and the game…

Is Valve Teasing a Third, Gray Faction For Team Fortress 2?

There’s a blood-stain on the logo atop the Team Fortress 2 website. A reader at the message board NeoGAF noticed today that it links to a letter. And in that letter is a story, a story that reads like a tease, a tease that seems to be pointing to something new for Team Fortress… a…

Some Americans Think A “Super PAC” Is A Video Game. Most Don’t Know What One Is.

Pac-Man, Ms. Pac-Man, and even Super Pac-Man… all video games. But not Super PAC—despite its similar name, a Super PAC is in no way related to Pac-Man. It’s a term for a controversial type of political action group that’s able to accept an unlimited amount of campaign donations and in so doing get around some…

Bullet Time Isn’t Just A Fictional Badass Move. It’s A Real Thing.

For Neo, moving faster than bullets was a matter of realizing the Matrix’s rules could be bent. For most of our video game heroes, bullet time is a popular mechanic that has appeared on titles like Max Payne, Red Dead Redemption, Vanquish and more. It’s not possible to slow down time and perform amazing feats—not…

Five Reasons I Can’t Stop Playing This New Strategy-RPG

I play a lot of role-playing games. You know this already. You read Random Encounters every week. You understand my fascination with this strange and quirky genre. So hopefully you won’t be too angry when I tell you that my shelves are overflowing with the cartridges of RPGs that I’ve opened, launched, and immediately given…

The New Red Dawn Movie Channels a Little Bit of Homefront

If you played Homefront, the new trailer for the remake of 1984’s Red Dawn is going to seem like déjà vu all over again. When THQ’s ambitious but shallow 2011 first-person shooter first started its hype machine, the comparisons to the 1980s Cold War action movie rampant. Part of that is because the movie and…

That Walking Dead Facebook Game Is Terrible. Here’s What They Should Have Done Instead.

I adore The Walking Dead. So when I heard about this drag of a Facebook game Kate wrote about, I worried. This is a game that represents one of my favorite graphic novels, so I worry that the experience of the franchise will be tarnished for a horde of perhaps non-gaming Facebook users. We can…

XCOM: Enemy Unknown‘s Multiplayer Mode is One Giant, Violent Toybox

Call it beginner’s luck: my first round of XCOM: Enemy Unknown‘s multiplayer was my strongest showing. It came down to a tense showdown at the end. I lost, but could feel proud of how close I had come. Alas, that was my best performance. From there, I got my rear end most thoroughly handed to…

Without Peeking, Can You Name These Five Minecraft-ized Xbox Heroes?

The next batch of skins for the Xbox 360 version of Minecraft include the five shown above. They are all Minecraft versions of characters from games that appeared on the Xbox 360 (though they weren’t all in Xbox-exclusive games). Can you name them? Without peeking? The answers are at the link below. There is no…

Ask One of the People Who Made Sleeping Dogs Some Questions. He’s Answering, Right Here. [Interview’s Over]

Sleeping Dogs is coming out next week. It’s an open-world game set in Hong Kong. You’re an undercover cop. You can use martial arts. You can play it a little like an RPG. And you can even hit people with fish. Really! Perhaps that doesn’t answer all the questions you might have about this PS3,…

Left-leaning Rachel Maddow rips Mitt Romney’s support of for-profit colleges, chiefly, gaming-friendly Full Sail Univ.