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  The Ripping Yarn of the “Xbox Paedophile Predators”

  I’m usually loathe to post “hey mainstream tabloids are crazy” stories here, but a piece on the front page of the latest Metro, a free newspaper handed out on public transport in Britain, is too good to ignore. The headline? “Xbox paedophile predators ‘move in on prey within two minutes of contact'” There’s of course…

  By Luke Plunkett Published April 18, 2012
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  This Real Metal Gear Can Now Climb Stairs

  We first told you about this project last year, but DARPA’s new FastRunner – which bears an unsettling resemblance to something from the Metal Gear universe – has come on in leaps and bounds since then. Quite literally. In this clip, you can see the robot take off up a bunch of stairs, its muscular…

  By Luke Plunkett Published April 18, 2012
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  Please, Buy These Beautiful Pokémon Comics, OK?

  Maré Odomo’s series of Pokémon comics, called Letters To An Absent Father, are some of the best video game comics you will ever read. And it’s not because they’re funny. No, the comics – penned as trainer Ash writing letters to his father – are often equal parts innocent and brutal, dealing with the more…

  By Luke Plunkett Published April 18, 2012
• Culture

  The Men, Women & Puffy Shirts of The Witcher 2

  Polish artist Marcin Blaszczak is one of the men to thank for bringing the world of The Witcher 2 to life. A 3D modeller, Blaszczak has worked on both games in the series. In this gallery, you’ll see some of his work from The Witcher 2, which this week gets a welcome re-release on the…

  By Luke Plunkett Published April 18, 2012
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  Sean Bean Arrives on Set for Game of Thrones: Season Two

  If you haven’t seen the first series of Game of Thrones, or read the first book, you may not want to go any further. If you have, well, enjoy! Poor Sean Bean. You wonder whether he just has bad luck, or simply enjoys ducking off from a shoot early to catch up with friends and…

  By Luke Plunkett Published April 18, 2012
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  And You Thought Cel-Shading Couldn’t Get Any Prettier

  If you think cel-shading is only something done in cartoons, or a few video games (and mostly then to stilted effect), check out what’s possible when you put a little thought into the process. The clip is sadly silent. May I be so bold as to make a recommendation More info, and a download link…

  By Luke Plunkett Published April 18, 2012
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  The Most Boring Part of SimCity…Still Looks Pretty Boring

  For everything right the SimCity series has done over the years, there’s one thing I will never forgive them for: water. I hate it. It’s boring, it’s a pain in the ass, and while it might be “realistic” to expect “cities” to need “water”, it was never fun laying all those pipes. This clip shows…

  By Luke Plunkett Published April 18, 2012
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  Man Sues Ubisoft, Claims he Came up With Assassin’s Creed First

  John Beiswenger, author of the novel Link (first published in 2003), has sued Ubisoft, claiming that the historical/sci-fi series infringes on a number of his copyrights. Basically, he alleges that because his book involved a system which could access ancestral memories, then the fact Assassin’s Creed also uses that as a cornerstone of its plot…

  By Luke Plunkett Published April 18, 2012
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  Britney Spears, a Dancing Game and a $20,000 Bra

  I’ve been waiting for years to put a link at the bottom of a Kotaku story to the fabulous What Would Tyler Durden Do. Today, I get that chance. It’s the kind of news item you don’t get emailed in the video games press business, but you certainly do in the tawdry celebrity press business:…

  By Luke Plunkett Published April 18, 2012
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  Here’s What 6.5 Million Video Game Bullets Look Like

  Valve has been keeping track of the people currently playing the beta for Counter Strike: Global Offensive. Not just who’s winning and who’s losing, but really interesting stuff, like where everyone is standing when they pull the trigger. The result of that kind of data-tracking is this glorious map (of de_train), showing exactly where players…

  By Luke Plunkett Published April 18, 2012
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  New Prometheus Trailer: The Origins of Alien’s Androids are Just a Little Bit Creepy

  This new trailer for Prometheus, Ridley Scott’s Alien prequel, sits us down with David, an earlier model of the androids which populate later movies in the series. If you think he’s a little creepy, well, he should be! Most people remember Bishop from Aliens, the “good” robot, but man, Ash from Alien was bananas

  By Luke Plunkett Published April 17, 2012
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  CultureTotal Recall

  Every Nintendo 64 Game, in One Giant Video

  There were 296 games released for the Nintendo 64 in North America. Which is hardly any, I know. But it’ll still seem like a lot when you sit down and watch this movie which collects footage from every single one of them. I always forget StarCraft came out on the N64. Man, those were the…

  By Luke Plunkett Published April 17, 2012
• CultureTotal Recall

  The Giant Alien Dick Machines of Space Invaders Pinball

  In 1980, Bally released a pinball machine called Space Invaders. It was about as shameless a rip-off as you could hope for, as despite the opportunity to lift iconic imagery from Taito’s arcade classic of the same name, it instead stole designs from Ridley Scott’s 1979 movie Alien Given that was over thirty years ago,…

  By Luke Plunkett Published April 17, 2012
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  Watch Lovely New Footage of Halo 4, All 9 Seconds Of It

  We won’t make you watch all nine minutes of today’s not-that-funny Conan O’Brien skit about Halo 4. We’re cutting to the chase. Specifically: a little bit of multiplayer with much better lighting than we’ve usually seen in the Halo games. In the sketch, Conan and sidekick Andy Richter goof around in a voice booth, recording…

  By Stephen Totilo Published April 17, 2012
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  Well… A Voice of A Generation

  Hello Kotaku, and welcome to Tuesday’s open thread! I’ve been off for a couple days, so I hope that my fellow writers have been keeping you entertained in my absence. Here, gathered from around the internet, are some things you may wish to read and/or discuss. Six rules for dining out – these are very…

  By Kirk Hamilton Published April 17, 2012
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  I Don’t Usually Like ‘Guy With Instruments Playing Video Game Music’ Videos, But This Shit Is Amazing

  I think we’ve all seen our fair share of “guy with instruments playing video game music” videos on YouTube. This one is different. No, seriously. Multi-instrumentalist FreddeGredde (who in the past has made triumphant sitcom and cartoon medleys, and whose name I cannot seem to spell right for the life of me) goes on a…

  By Kirk Hamilton Published April 17, 2012
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  In the Future, we Will Play Holographic Video Games on the Toilet

  Bravest Warriors is an upcoming animated series from the creator of Adventure Time, Pendleton Ward. It’s about some kids being heroes in space. It’s also got the most awesome video game system I have ever seen Yes, Adventure Time fans, more awesome than Beemo. Sorry. In this test footage from the series (so excuse the…

  By Luke Plunkett Published April 17, 2012
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  This Persona 3 Aigis Figure is Ready to Clean House (and Tidy Up Your Wallet)

  The only thing better than the sexy autonomous anti-shadow weapon from Atlus’ Persona 3 is that same sexy autonomous anti-shadow weapon in a maid outfit. I sat this not because I have a thing for maids, but rather because my home is incredibly cluttered, and I figure an android could fix that. In this case…

  By Mike Fahey Published April 17, 2012
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  Dead Rising 2 Expansion, Disgaea 3 New This Week on the PlayStation Store

  There’s some fair-to-decent stuff to be found this week on the PlayStation Store, several involving zombies. Find the full list over at the PlayStation blog

  By Kirk Hamilton Published April 17, 2012
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  Watch That Cool-Looking Skyrim Tower-Defense Mod In Action

  A couple weeks ago, I posted about a tower-defense mod for Skyrim that looked surprisingly cool. You know, given how often grafting tower defense onto a non-tower-defense game… y’know… sucks. This new video from the mod’s creator (YouTube: ATittyKitty, heh) shows some in-order gameplay that supports my belief that this mod is going to be…

  By Kirk Hamilton Published April 17, 2012