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Beautiful Portraits of Video Game Characters
Canadian artist sakimichan specialises in portraits of characters. Beautiful, vibrant portraits of characters that are so pretty you’ll want to hang them on your wall and just stare at them, sighing every once in a while. The bad news is, these are small, and on a computer screen, not a canvas. The good news is…
By Luke Plunkett Published January 19, 2012 - Uncategorized
EA Sports Drafts Two from MIT, Colorado State
Four months ago, EA Sports opened up applications for a four-month fellowship meant to invite former college athletes into video game design careers. Today, the label awarded its first two, to graduates who played football at Colorado State University and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Clint Oldenburg, an offensive lineman at Colorado State and a…
By Owen Good Published January 18, 2012 - Uncategorized
Mass Effect 3’s PC Specs
Mass Effect 3’s PC version is exclusive to Origin. If that doesn’t stop you from buying it – and really, it’s grounds for complaint, not boycott – you’re going to need to know if your PC can run the thing first. Well, of course it can. The underlying tech behind this game is nearly five…
By Luke Plunkett Published January 18, 2012 - Uncategorized
Get Your Ass to Marzipan
Greetings, Kotaku musketeers, and welcome to your mid-week open thread. I realized that I’ve started several of these with Total Recall references, so I thought I’d go ahead and do yet one more. Also, I just took a vote on twitter tonight about Marzipan, and got an equal number of votes for “Marzipan: Heck yes!”…
By Kirk Hamilton Published January 18, 2012 -
CultureTotal RecallWhy Conker Went From Cute to Crass
Rare’s Conker used to be a nice little squirrel. He was cute, he had polite friends, and he was going to be starring in a very Nintendo platformer for a Nintendo console. Yet as you probably know, that’s not how things ended up. In the late 90s, as Rare was following up their success with…
By Luke Plunkett Published January 18, 2012 - Uncategorized
Doom Is Back Up on Xbox Live
Doom, one of the progenitors of the first-person shooter genre, has returned to the Xbox Live Marketplace after a mysterious three-month hiatus. The classic PC title is available for 400 Microsoft Points ($5). The game was removed in October with no explanation from Bethesda Softworks, the current rights-holder to the game (as the parent compabny…
By Owen Good Published January 18, 2012 - Uncategorized
How Activision Reacted to that Giant Modern Warfare 3 Leak
Last year, we blew the lid off Modern Warfare 3 months before it was due for release. It was the biggest leak we’d seen, let alone written about, in almost a decade. It was, in short, one hell of a story. It was also only half the story. The other side, that of how publishers…
By Luke Plunkett Published January 18, 2012 - Uncategorized
Government Affirms Mom’s Right to Confiscate PS3 Until Piano Practice is Finished
The police in Lake Oswego, Ore., a Portland suburb, pride themselves on the motto “no call is too small.” And they took one, yesterday, that comes straight from the Sheriff Andy Taylor manual of community policing. Yesterday, an 11-year-old picked up the phone and dialed 911 to report that his mother had taken away his…
By Owen Good Published January 18, 2012 - Uncategorized
What the Hell is Mutant League Football Doing in NFL Blitz?
Finish off the “Blitz Gauntlet” mode in the recently released NFL Blitz for PS3 and Xbox 360 and you’ll unlock a team full of zombies. And the logo on their jersey isn’t that of the National Football League, but of another league, one from a future of decaying flesh and dismembered bodies. That shot above…
By Owen Good Published January 18, 2012 - Uncategorized
A Bad Day for SOPA and PIPA
Gaming against SOPA | On a day when Wikipedia and Reddit blocked their content to protest two controversial potentially speech-squelching, Internet-mangling bills—and legislators fell over themselves dropping support for those bills—an online guild, the makers of Minecraft and FarmVille giant Zynga all made their hatred of SOPA and PIPA known. Midweek Moneysaver: New Games Galore…
By Stephen Totilo Published January 18, 2012 - Uncategorized
There Is Half-Life Stuff Hiding in Counter-Strike: GO
The people at Valve Software like to tease. They don’t, however, like to confirm the existence of new Half-Life games Kotaku reader ZombieK says he spotted these images in the beta for Valve’s spring-scheduled multiplayer shooter Counter-Strike: GO. Let’s classify them as teases. Or taunts. Or.. Easter Eggs? The shots first appeared on the Steam…
By Stephen Totilo Published January 18, 2012 -
UncategorizedToday’s Best Use of Unauthorized Video Game Footage
Chinese songstress Yang Yuying couldn’t have chosen a better video game to accompany a live performance of her song “I’ll Be Waiting For You In The Spring” than ThatGameCompany’s PlayStation Network masterpiece Flower, though she probably should have asked permission first. Something being bootlegged in China? No way! I can understand why Yang (or more…
By Mike Fahey Published January 18, 2012 -
UncategorizedThe Many Ways to Stay Alive in I Am Alive
Ubisoft’s “Encounters” trailer for I Am Alive has what seems to be the protagonist giving advice on life in a dog-eat-dog world. “People more than dust are the most dangerous thing you’re going to encounter,” and the ways to deal with them are numerous. I Am Alive clearly rewards players for the use of cunning…
By Pierre Bienaimé Published January 18, 2012 - Uncategorized
…And Yet Another Senator Drops Support for PIPA
The rough day for the the Protect IP Act, the Senate’s version of the notorious SOPA, continues. Republican Senator Orrin Hatch of Utah, once a co-sponsor, has pulled his support. He Tweeted: “It is simply not ready for prime time.”
By Stephen Totilo Published January 18, 2012 - Uncategorized
NPR’s Morning Edition Covers MAGfest and Video Game Music
Today, NPR’s Morning Edition dedicated a nice segment to the recent Music and Gaming Festival. They interviewed Final Fantasy composer Nobuo Uematsu, among others, closing out with this epic tune. Well played, NPR.
By Kirk Hamilton Published January 18, 2012 -
UncategorizedThe Lovely, Colorful Platformer ScaryGirl Arrives on XBLA
ScaryGirl, a platformer based on Nathan Jurevicius’s graphic novel, has been released on Xbox Live Arcade, with a PSN release scheduled for next week and a “coming soon” release date for PC. As you can see in the trailer and screens above, it’s looking mighty nice! I had been under the impression that this was…
By Kirk Hamilton Published January 18, 2012 - Uncategorized
Conker’s Bad Fur Day Was Supposed to Include Pokémon and KKK Jokes
The most outrageous game Nintendo ever published could have been more outrageous if Nintendo hadn’t nixed a couple of jokes, the game’s creator, Chris Seavor, said in a recent interview. The game is Conker’s Bad Fur Day, which let Nintendo 64 owners control a foul-mouthed but cute squirrel through a series of adventures—many of them…
By Stephen Totilo Published January 18, 2012 -
UncategorizedStar Wars: The Old Republic Patch 1.1 Breaks High-End PVP
Before Star Wars: The Old Republic‘s 1.1 patch went live early this morning, player-versus-player combat on the level 50 world of Ilum was slightly broken, with more players focusing on completing non-PVP goals than fighting. After patch 1.1 the zone has been transformed into an Imperial PVP wonderland. There are plenty of non PVP-related issues…
By Mike Fahey Published January 18, 2012