Hitman: Absolution Joins the List of Games Screwing You Over With Pre-order Weapons

Square Enix today announced the fancy version of Agent 47’s continuing stealth saga Hitman: Absolution, called the Professional Edition. The Professional Edition and standard edition are both now available for pre-order at multiple outlets, but with a small catch. Like so many other publishers and game releases before it, Square Enix is offering different pre-order…

Quantum Conundrum Could Be a Wonderful Spiritual Successor to Portal

Everything’s in first-person. Your silent hero is equipped with a high-tech gadget that can manipulate chunks of the environment. You progress through a series of rooms, each stuffed to the brim with quirky crate-and-button-based puzzles that need solving. And an omniscient voice is talking to you the whole time. Stop me if you’ve heard this…

What Good is a Mass Effect/Jeff Foxworthy Joke If No One Ever Sees It?

Why allow players to give their multiplayer characters custom names if the game never actually displays them? That’s commenter ChrisPBacon’s question in today’s Speak Up on Kotaku I unlocked Geth Foxworthy in the new Mass Effect 3 multiplayer stuff. What exactly is the point of naming multilayer characters? Batmantarian, Alan Turian, Krognan the Barbarian, nobody…

The Science Fact Animating Assassin’s Creed‘s Animus

When it comes to creating a rich storyline, Ubisoft’s Assassins Creed has never fallen short in its ability to weave its plot with historical accuracy. One of Its major selling points that sets itself apart from others in the sandbox genre stems from the players’ ability to explore both renaissance and medieval eras. In this…

Have $3,500 Handy? I Know Exactly What You Should Buy.

A fully functional Nintendo controller coffee table. Wait, let me repeat that. It’s a fully functional Nintendo controller coffee table. But it’s also $3,500 on Etsy. That’s the price you’ll have to pay for all that sweet, sweet mahogany gaming. We’ve featured coffee tables resembling the NES system before, as well as the controller itself,…

You Could (And Should) Be Playing AirMech Right Now

In AirMech, you play as a robot that transforms into a plane. You play from a top-down view. You can shoot stuff up, treating it like an arcade game, but it’s a real-time strategy game. You can watch the five-minute video here to listen to the game’s creative director, James Green, explain AirMech while he…

Tekken Tag Tournament 2 Punches and Kicks Its Way to A September Release

The sequel to one of the most popular PS2 games will be arriving on the Xbox 360 and PS3 this fall. Tekken Tag Tournament 2 re-assembles Jin, Xiaoyu and the other brawlers of the King of Iron Fist tournament for a nother go-round, with a few new special features. You’ll still be able to play…

Tips and Tricks for the Newly Free-to-Play Aion

Today NCsoft launches Aion: Ascension, the free-to-play rebirth of its faltering MMO, complete with eagerly anticipated update 3.0 content like player housing, mounts, new zones and a raised level cap. To celebrate the impeding influx of freeloaders, producer Adam Christensen has written up a tips and tricks guide to surviving and thriving in Aion: Ascension.…

This Curvy Beauty Sprang From a Solid Chunk of Aluminium

I know, I know; a home theater PC barely counts as a gaming PC, but in the case of HardOCP forum member Achron’s sexy metal creation I’m willing to make an exception. Warning: machining porn inside. Achron’s “Acronym” project began some three years ago, when the then master’s student tried to find a front-end media…

Everything You Need to Know About Intel’s Ivy Bridge

Intel is set to roll out its latest generation of processors this spring despite a minor setback affecting ultra low-voltage models — the ones destined for super slim notebooks. By normal standards, the launch should mark a new “tick” in the company’s product roadmap, but Intel is going beyond just shrinking the current 32nm Sandy…

The Secret World Reveals Deep Mysteries, Intuitive Play, and Deadly Zombies

Norwegian game designer Ragnar Tørnquist is perhaps most associated with the classic PC adventure game The Longest Journey and its sequel, Dreamfall. The two posit that our world is really only half of the world-that-is, and that our Earth as we know it has remained sundered from its more magical, mystical half for ages. In…

At Its Most Primitive Aztez is Still More Fun Than Most Beat-em Ups

I’m playing an April 2011 build of a game due out in 2013. It only has one level, one hero and only six enemies to dispatch. I’ve played through it a dozen times since last night. The stark and striking black and white visuals of Ben Ruiz and Matthew Wegner’s Aztez are what initially drew…

Dark Souls ‘Prepare To Die’ Edition Coming to PC On August 24

The action-role-playing game Dark Souls will be available on August 24 for PC, publisher Namco Bandai said today at a Las Vegas event. It will feature new content and use the much-maligned Games for Window Live platform. Rumors have suggested that it will also have new bosses. As our lovely commenters point out, you can…

Would I Rather Command Marines or Bite Them In Half? Hmmm.

Wow, did Charlie Cleveland ever surprise me at PAX East. I don’t know the guy, and I didn’t pay much attention to the game his studio was showing off at the big show in Boston. Not at first. Charlie’s game looked, at a glance, like just another team-based shooter. I walked by a row of…

PC Gaming Lives!

Of course PC Gaming Lives! It’s just a little more lively on Kotaku during the next two hours.

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The Curse of Nordic Cove Lets You Smack Viking Ghosts With Golf Clubs

Okay, so The Curse of Nordic Cove kind of looks like a rejected Nintendo 64 game. And the hit detection seems a little off. But hey, at least this golf-simulator-slash-action-adventure title thinks outside the box. I saw it on the PAX East show floor last weekend and thought it was so bizarre, I had to…

Forget 3D, I’m Ready To Play This 4D Video Game

Miegakure is a video game set in four spatial dimensions: specifically, the dimension that goes out to the sides, like your keyboard; the one that goes up, like a tree; the one that goes out deep, like a dog fetching a stick… and that other dimension, the one you can’t point to unless you’ve got…

Jack Lumber Is The Argument That Fruit Ninja Really Needed Logs

Please check out our game, the developer of Jack Lumber asked me, as I walked through the indie booth. My reply, because I was in a hurry: Can you pitch me the game in 10 seconds? In fewer than 10 seconds, the developer told me that the game is about a man whose grandmother was…

Classic RPG The Legend of Dragoon Is Coming to PSN

The excellent old role-playing game The Legend of Dragoon will be out as a PS1 Classic for the PlayStation Network on May 1. Dragons! [PlayStation Blog]