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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
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  Mario Looks Pretty Damn Cool Decked Out In Gold

  Check out this official promo art from New Super Mario Bros. 2, which Nintendo will release for 3DS this August. Pretty, no? Everything just seems better in gold. More regal. More… gold. (via TinyCartridge)

  By Jason Schreier Published June 20, 2012
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  Take a Bite from Steel Battalion‘s Most Unsanitary Moment

  Bad enough I got drafted into Steel Battalion’s janky, totally unplayable war, but what made things worse was having to fight alongside a guy with pee-covered hands. Oh, and another guy who apparently likes having unholy relations with Vertical Tanks. The moment captured above happens in Steel Battalion‘s tutorial and it stuck out to me…

  By Evan Narcisse Published June 20, 2012
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  The Strange, Scary, Fascinating, Exciting Future of Video Games, According to A Giant

  You are, presumably, a person who plays video games and probably not a rich executive. Maybe you own an Xbox 360 or play games on your iPhone or maybe both. You have some favorite video games. And there are some series and some types of games that you hate. Maybe you keep up with gaming…

  By Stephen Totilo Published June 20, 2012
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  Lingerie Football League Is Ready to Tackle Video Games

  Those garter wearing gridiron warriors are coming to video games. That’s right, the Lingerie Football League inked a deal with Japanese developer Yuke’s Co. for a line of games destined to hit yet unspecified platforms. “As a leading sports and entertainment focused company, we have to keep a pulse on what is the next big…

  By Brian Ashcraft Published June 20, 2012
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  Attack Ads Come to Game of Thrones and Show How Dirty Politics Are

  As summer heats up, so do the political attack ads. But it’s not only the Presidential campaign that is seeing it fair share of mud slinging. Westeros is, too. Warning: This post might contain spoilers. Here are a handful of commercials created by Super-PACs, like the the Committee to Protect Dragons, that ask very probing…

  By Brian Ashcraft Published June 20, 2012
• Kotaku East

  PSN Store Shutting Down Temporarily in Korea

  In South Korea, the Shutdown Law was created to prevent gamers under sixteen from gaming during a six hour block at night. The law already impacted online gaming services, such as the PlayStation Network. It’s going to impact it some more. According to Sony, the PSN Store is going offline for all players starting on…

  By Brian Ashcraft Published June 20, 2012
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  Kotaku East

  Using an iPhone To Open Beer Bottles

  You’ve been there: You have a beer, but no beer opener. Some folks in China decided to see what happened with they used Chinese smartphone Meizu MX and an iPhone 4S to open some brewskies. What happened? Well, they damaged the iPhone—something I’m sure you didn’t need a video to tell you. The Meizu, however,…

  By Brian Ashcraft Published June 20, 2012
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  2012 Saint’s Row Expansion Cancelled, Shifted into 2013 Saint’s Row 4

  We are no longer getting a standalone $30 expansion to the insane open-world crime game Saint’s Row: The Third this year, as publisher THQ, emboldened by a change in leadership has nixed the project in order to expand it into a full-sized new Saint’s Row next year. Here’s new THQ president Jason Rubin on what…

  By Stephen Totilo Published June 20, 2012