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  Behold the Awesome Power of Final Fantasy XIII-2‘s Moogle

  They’re not just about floating about saying “Kupo” anymore. In Final Fantasy XIII-2, many of the game’s most important mechanics are Moogle-powered. I’m not a picky Final Fantasy fan. All I want is a lengthy adventure of some sort and an adorable little floating critter by my side at all times. So I think I’m…

  By Mike Fahey Published January 5, 2012
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  2K Wants to Have their XCom and Eat it Too

  Maybe you’re a fan of the original X-Com and met today’s news of the upcoming XCom: Enemy Unknown strategy title with great joy. Maybe you don’t know anything about the X-Com legacy and don’t know what the hubbub about either game is about. Which XCom is for you, then? 2K Games says both of them.…

  By Evan Narcisse Published January 5, 2012
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  How I Managed to Write about Super Mario Every Day Last Year

  I spent 2011 documenting the life of one of the most important people in the media world. His name is invoked when referring to the European debt crisis, Medicaid reform, soccer stars, and even bioplastics. PETA protested him, coasting off his reflected fame. I spent the year blogging about Super Mario. While researching my book…

  Jeff Ryan Published January 5, 2012
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  Did You Notice When Noby Noby Boy Touched Uranus Last Week?

  Noby Noby Boy‘s Latest Achievement Comes From Reaching Uranus Keita Takahashi’s Noby Noby Boy was weird. The 2009 PS3 release from the creator of Katamari Damacy involved an elastic quadroped quadruped character that players could floppily stretch along the game’s environment. All the elongation of the game’s players gets aggregated to help Girl, Boy’s counterpart…

  By Evan Narcisse Published January 5, 2012
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  9/11 Changed Grand Theft Auto III, But Only a Tiny Bit

  It’s long been a subject of fan speculation as to how much Rockstar Games changed Grand Theft Auto III in the aftermath of the 9/11 attacks. In the decade-plus since GTA III came out, rumors have abounded: cut sequences where planes hit buildings, a supposedly removed pair of Twin Towers-style skyscrapers and the erasure of…

  By Evan Narcisse Published January 5, 2012
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  Sony Finds Twelve More Freaky People That Want to Compete for a Crap PlayStation Job

  Season 3 of the show so outrageously specific it only airs on a video game console kicks off next month. Let’s see what sort of quality folks Sony’s dredged together for the third season of The Tester As you may recall, we’ve gotten into the horrible habit of live blogging watching episodes of Sony’s reality…

  By Mike Fahey Published January 5, 2012
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  Last Year’s Best, New(ish) Video Game Ideas

  2011 was yet another good year for video games, but on its face it was a little predictable. Even a casual fan could have called the year’s top 10 in June and been mostly correct. The year was in a climate of highly-anticipated launches and loads of 2s and 3s in titles. That’s the product…

  Leigh Alexander Published January 5, 2012
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  This Week’s Nintendo Download is Colorful, If Nothing Else

  Four games I’ve never heard of form a giant robot of borderline apathy in this week’s exciting episode of the Nintendo Download. Having done the Nintendo Download post for nearly five years now I’ve learned that sometimes Nintendo just has to throw some random crap out into the interwebs to make room for fresh new…

  By Mike Fahey Published January 5, 2012
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  The Rift Mobile App is Packed With In-Game Items and Chatty Guildmembers

  Massively multiplayer gamers that haven’t taken a break from Trion World’s Rift to go play The Old Republic are a special sort of people. Now you can stay in touch with them via Rift Mobile, a free iOS app that allows players to chat with their friends and win fabulous prizes on the go. Rift…

  By Mike Fahey Published January 5, 2012
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  X-Com Returns to Turn-Based Strategy with Enemy Unknown

  Legion of old-school X-Com fans groaned in frustration when 2K Games revealed that their upcoming re-imagination of the beloved strategy game would be a first-person shooter. But now, the publisher’s revealed a second title that goes back to the franchise’s roots. Per Game Informer, X-Com: Enemy Unknown will be a turn-based strategy game developed by…

  By Evan Narcisse Published January 5, 2012
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  Batman? Cole Phelps? Bah! Give Us a Real Detective Game

  While games like L.A. Noire and Batman: Arkham Asylum put on a good detective show, are we really detecting anything? Commenter Soleyu describes what a true detective game should be like in today’s elementary edition of Speak Up on Kotaku. I just read about the Sherlock Holmes Series and I’m reminded about my greatest gripe…

  By Mike Fahey Published January 5, 2012
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  GameFly Says People Wanted Batman More than Modern Warfare 3 or Skyrim

  Picking the best games of the year always boils down to opinion, which always leads to dissension over subjectivity and bias. So, while Kotaku‘s staffers rallied around Portal 2 as the site’s GOTY, readers held their own damn awards and anointed Skyrim as their standout title for 2011. Gamefly subscribers, however, came down differently than…

  By Evan Narcisse Published January 5, 2012
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  Talk Amongst Yourselves

  Welcome back to Kotaku‘s official forum, the place for you to chat about video games. Let’s also stand and applaud today’s superb TAYpic, submitted by reader Benevolence. Bravo! Join in the fun and submit your own TAYpic. Please do your best—or your worst—and share your own riffs on our January image to our #TAYpics thread.…

  By Stephen Totilo Published January 5, 2012
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  This is the Non-Boring Version of Bejeweled That I Can’t Stop Playing

  Bejeweled is an eye-roller. It’s The Da Vinci Code of video games or the Lady Gaga or whatever your favorite example is of something that far too many people are into. To like Bejeweled is to be common. To play it is to be as daring in taste as a person who drinks tap water.…

  By Stephen Totilo Published January 5, 2012
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  The Creators of Gears of War Don’t Like Pirates or SOPA

  Epic Games, the people who make Gears of War, Bulletstorm and the Unreal graphics engine has weighed in on the controversial Stop Online Piracy Act. A spokesperson writes: “Epic Games supports efforts that would stop overseas websites profiting from pirating our games, but we have to do that in a way that’s compatible with freedom…

  By Stephen Totilo Published January 5, 2012
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  You Found New Music! Nintendo Add More Tunes and Tour Dates to Legend of Zelda Concert Series

  It’s 2012, which means that it’s not even The Legend of Zelda‘s 25th Anniversary any more. But that’s not stopping Nintendo from extending the tour that celebrates the music of their long-lived adventure RPG franchise. Eleven more dates have been added in the U.S. and Canada for The Legend of Zelda concert series and audiences…

  By Evan Narcisse Published January 5, 2012
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  Confirmed: Lego Batman 2 Will Assemble a MiniFig Justice League This Summer

  The World’s Finest team-up that’s been rumored and then teased in advertising for months finally gets announced as Warner Bros. Interactive reveals Lego Batman 2: DC Super Heroes today. Aside from Batman, Robin and Superman, the game will also feature Wonder Woman and Green Lantern. The miniature Superfriends gather together to stop Lex Luthor and…

  By Evan Narcisse Published January 5, 2012
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  House of the Dead Arcade Games Coming to the PS3

  Sega announced this morning that both House of the Dead 3 and House of the Dead 4 will be coming to the PS3 as downloadable titles on the PlayStation Network. Both will include Move support. While Sega says both games “have been updated with HD graphics”, don’t go expecting a big HD overhaul. They’ve just…

  By Luke Plunkett Published January 5, 2012
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  A Japanese Street, Circa 1986

  Cityscape | How I like to imagine Japan actually looked in the 1980s. Like a giant Famicom game. Via noirlac When Video Games Come to Life, Emilio Estevez Must Die When it comes to old video game movies, you’ve probably seen, or at least heard of, stuff like The Last Starfighter. Or Joysticks. Or adaptations…

  By Luke Plunkett Published January 5, 2012
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  Bullet Bill Will Destroy This Man’s Kitchen

  The aspiring baker at the wonderfully-named Bake With a Vengeance got just about the best Christmas present ever for someone who loves video games and who wants to bake stuff: a Bullet Bill blender. It was made by taking a black KitchenAid Pro mixer and getting some custom decals sent over. After that, the mixer’s…

  By Luke Plunkett Published January 5, 2012