Star Trek Online Free-to-Play Now Open To Everyone

Set your phasers on stupid Trek reference, as Cryptic’s Star Trek Online opens its free-to-play docking bay and invites the world inside following a brief subscriber-only period. To see what players get for free, hit up the official Star Trek Online web page

Katy Perry Is Now Making Video Games

Do you ever feel like a plastic bag, drifting through the wind, wanting to start again? Do you ever feel like you wish you could just, I don’t know, deck out your Sims sim in Katy Perry gear, start a sim-music career, and go on tour? Well, now you can. EA has announced that the…

Epic’s Bleszinski to Host the Game Developers Choice Awards

The Game Developers Conference has announced that Epic Games head Cliff Bleszinski will be hosting the Game Developers Choice awards, which take place the week of GDC.

NBA Jam: On Fire Edition Will Get Roster Updates, EA Sports Says

EA Sports has confirmed to Kotaku that NBA Jam: On Fire Edition will be getting a roster update. The publisher’s preceding silence on the subject had led some to believe it had abandoned post-release support for the 2-on-2 arcade basketball game. Responding to a Kotaku request for comment, an EA Sports spokeswoman said that’s not…

Six New Challengers Appear for Street Fighter X Tekken, Plus a Vita Version Surprise

With Street Fighter X Tekken due out in early March, now is not the time for a tight trickle of new character reveals. That’s why Capcom has dropped six new fighters on us today, three from their team and three from the opposition. Has your favorite character been confirmed? Well that all depends, now doesn’t…

SFT Gallery

Watch the Creepy Live-Action Japanese Horror Movie Made for the 3DS’ Friday the 13th Video Game

On Friday, April 13, Nintendo will start selling Spirit Camera: The Cursed Memoir for the Nintendo 3DS. It’s a horror game that uses the 3DS’ cameras to haunt the area you’re playing in with various apparitions. The game comes with a 16-page book that is full of augmented reality markers. Point the 3DS at the…

Action-Driven MMO Tera Hits North America on the Best Day of the Year

After a couple years of teasing screenshots and videos, En Masse Entertainment is finally ready to unleash its massively multiplayer online action role-playing game Tera on a lovely day in May. May 1, to be exact, the same day that several decades ago saw my heroic escape from the clutches of my mother’s womb. While…

Get Your Hands on the Original Syndicate This Week, Thanks to Good Old Games

If you’ve never played Bullfrog’s acclaimed cyberpunk masterpiece—you know, the one that EA’s re-animating as a FPS—you’ll get you chance this week. Retro PC Gaming retailer Good Old Games will be making the classic available for $6 starting on Thursday

Wield the Power of the Dragonborn With Voice-Activated Skyrim Shouts

It’s time to stop imagining you have the power to knock folks over with your voice and start putting it to practice. From modders DeadlyAzuril and PsychoHamster comes Thu’uMic, a completely free standalone mod for the PC version of Skyrim Voice control for Skyrim isn’t exactly something new. There was the whole Skyrim Kinect thing,…

You Can Get Your Prestige Re-Up On in Gears of War 3 Today with the Fenix Rising DLC

A while back, we’d detailed the new experience system that the latest Gears of War 3 DLC will be introducing. Well, the Fenix Rising add-on goes live today, so you can start your journey to 3x Gold icons in the new maps of Epic Games’ threequel. Let’s see how fast it’ll take the first Gears…

PS3-Exclusive Starhawk Drops on May 8

The PlayStation 3-only Starhawk, a game about large-scale futuristic combat that lets players drop buildings from the sky to support them—will be out on May 8, says Sony. The public beta starts today. We’re excited about this one

Let’s Figure Out How to Make the Perfect Superman Video Game

With assets recently surfacing from a sadly cancelled Superman game, commenter Uncle Jesse wonders how anyone could make a game that does justice to the Man of Steel. Let’s figure it out in today’s Speak Up on Kotaku. How do you even make a Superman game? The last Superman game I enjoyed was The Death…

Xbox Live Gold Members Can Demo The Darkness II Right Now

2K Games has unleashed a playable demo for The Darkness II, aka the further adventures of Jackie Estacado, exclusively for Xbox Live Gold subscribers. PlayStation 3 and PC players will get a taste come January 24.

Just Talk Amongst Yourselves

What’s the name of this club? Oh yeah, the official Kotaku forum. Just talk amongst yourselves, it’ll be okay. Just talk about video games, baby. Thanks to lemonmanlemonman for today’s colorful TAYpic, proving once more that everyone that is anyone is playing Just Dance, dammit. Join in the fun and submit your own TAYpic. Please…

CNN Thought Gamer Chopped Off His Arm, Missed ‘Joke’

“Boy Severs Arms After Playing Video Game” read the headline of a story that ran on CNN‘s iReport site earlier this morning. It’s the stuff of nightmares for video game advocates, another chance for those who demonize games’ effects on human behavior to crucify the medium. But, here’s the problem with unscreened crowd-sourced news, which…

Little Empire is a Massively Multiplayer Backstabbing Simulator

Camel Games’ high-polished “massively multiplayer online” empire building game Little Empires neatly demonstrates why we should never open ourselves up to the inevitable pain that friendship brings. Pretty heavy for a game with cartoon elves, right? While it may be one of the cutest little empire building games I’ve come across on my Android phone,…

New Prototype 2 Digital Comics from Dark Horse Explain Why New York’s Such a Hellhole

At the end of the first Prototype, the island of Manhattan suffered tons of property damage after hoodie-wearing protagonist Alex Mercer completed his quest to dish out viral justice. From what we’ve seen of Prototype 2, the city’s become NYZ, a massive hot zone seething with poor, Blacklight virus-infected citizens that new hero James Heller…

Nintendo’s Creepy 3DS Fatal Frame Spin-Off Gets an Equally Creepy April Release Date

If you thought the Fatal Frame series was terrifying, wait until you hold it in the palm of your hand. You’ll get your chance on April 13, when Nintendo releases the augmented reality-powered Spirit Camera: The Cursed Memoir for the Nintendo 3DS. Spirit Camera takes all the creepiness of Tecmo Koei’s terrifying horror series and…

When the PSP Was a Fashion Statement

Portable | LOS ANGELES: A “Pret a PSP” fashion show marked the console’s 2005 launch. (Photo: Chris Pizzello | AP) More Triangles in Games! Love-Triangles, That Is I was disappointed with Uncharted 3 for a number of reasons. Certainly one of those reasons was that the game had bizarre difficulty spikes and could be kind…