It’s Not A Game Developers Conference Without Capoeira

While preparing for the 2011 Game Developers Conference to kick into full gear tomorrow, our Stephen Totilo takes a moment to soak up the not-so-local flavor outside San Francisco’s Moscone Center. McWhertor, Totilo, and Crecente are all getting ready for the non-stop pace of GDC 2011, so I’m left alone in Kotaku Tower, forced to…

Gears of War 3’s Designer On Betas, Bugs & Cheerleader Outfits

Gears of War design director Cliff Bleszinski wants you to play his game’s upcoming beta, not only to extract a “metric fuckton of data” from your playing time, but for you to upload whatever bugs you see to YouTube. Bleszinski, who says the April-due Gears of War 3 beta is as much about weapon and…

The Best Game Design Schools In North America

Looking to embark on a wondrous career in game design? GamePro Media and The Princeton Review have teamed up for a second year to list the 10 best graduate and undergraduate schools for video game design in North America. With video games becoming an increasingly important part of our culture every year, more and more…

Sins Of A Solar Empire Spurs A Rebellious Expansion

The intergalactic war of Ironclad Games’ real-time strategy game Sins of a Solar Empire has gone on too long, prompting the game’s third expansion, Rebellion, packed with new tech and ships capable of destroying entire fleets all by their lonesome. Diplomacy is no longer an option in Sins of a Solar Empire: Rebellion. Sub-factions have…

PlayStation Home Soon To Be Home To First-Person Shooters & Racing Games

This spring, Sony’s social networking platform PlayStation Home will graduate to version 1.5, bringing with it “real-time multiplayer.” That update is designed to make fast-paced video games, racers and first-person shooters, playable in Home. The next big PlayStation Home upgrade will introduce new development tools that include “an improved physics engine, refined animation and graphics,”…

PixelJunk Shooter 2: The Kotaku Review

For one third of PixelJunk Shooter 2, players will command a small spaceship whose guns and thrusters must contend with the small problems of creatures that belch missiles or lava and with the large problem that the caves through which it flies are intestines churned with the processes of digestion. For the remaining two-thirds of…

Thermal Attraction Watches Change Color As Your Body Temp Rises

All in favor of heating up, raise your hands. This spring, show just how much body heat you generate with the new Thermal Attraction watches from Diesel. Their straps register body heat and show the world how hot you are by changing color. All watches come with silver and black dial with digital function. Check…

A Video Game, Violence, And Depression Study That Looks At The Big Picture

Over the past decade countless studies have arisen supposedly proving a causal link between video games, violent behavior, and depression. A new study conducted by Christopher J. Ferguson pinpoints why all of the others may have gotten it wrong. Video games cause violent behavior. Video games don’t cause violent behavior. Video games cause depression. Video…

Bam! Pow! Kinect Can Turn Your Life Into The Batman TV Show

When I punch a man in real life, no cartoon words pop up in front of my fist. But on the 1960s Batman TV show that kind of thing happened when heroes traded fists with villains. Now, thanks to the Xbox 360’s Kinect sensor array and students at Carnegie Mellon University, we can enjoy that…

The Most Surprising Fantasy Game Expansion Pack Ever Created

Yes, the first expansion pack to Arrowhead Studios’ runaway PC role-playing hit Magicka is titled Magicka: Vietnam. It’s okay to be a little speechless here. We’re right there with you. Magicka is an action role-playing game that’s won the hearts of PC gamers around the world with its combination of intelligent action and tongue-in-cheek humor.…

Mod Men Shows You How PC Modding Is Done

Want to enter the magical world of PC modding but have no clue where to start? Mod Men is a new five-episode web series that will show how the experts turn boring old PCs into works of high-performance art. Modder-extraordinaire Bill Owen of Mnpctech stars in Mod Men, a web television series for both PC…

L.A. Noire Examines Death In All of Its Misery

Elizabeth Short was beaten, sliced lips to ears, forced to eat excrement and then cut in half and drained of blood. Her gruesome death on Jan. 15, 1947 was never solved despite the efforts of LA’s best police and worst journalists. Nicknamed The Black Dahlia, her case has been loosely linked to other serial killings…

LA Noire

Kylie Minogue Inspires The Fanciest Kinect Sensor

Australian pop singer and tragic one-shot Doctor Who companion Kylie Minogue’s European tour is sponsored by Microsoft Kinect and Dance Central, and this crystal-studded Kinect sensor is the by-product of that union. Created by PlayBling and studded with more than 6,000 Swarowsky Elements crystals, the Kylie Minogue Kinect is styled after the singer’s latest album,…

Will Video Games Age Gracefully?

Commenter EcksJay22 wonders if video games will hold up as well as the classic films of yesteryear in today’s Speak-Up on Kotaku. I was playing some Splinter Cell yesterday and remembering how jaw-droppingly amazing it’s graphics were at the time. They were still okay, but a lot of the initial wow factor the game had…

The Best iPhone Dungeon Crawler Crawls To The PlayStation 3

Diablo III might be coming to consoles, but it’s still a long ways off. In the meantime, PlayStation 3 owners can satiate their dungeon crawling cravings with Dungeon Hunter: Alliance, coming in April to the PlayStation Network. The Dungeon Hunter series for the iPhone and iPad is quite derivative of Diablo, but if Gameloft’s developers…

Think Fast, Shoot Fast, Kick Ass

In many ways, Playstation 3 first-person shooter Resistance was a return to their roots for the studio behind Ratchet and Clank and Spyro the Dragon. First-person shooters were what got founder Ted Price into the business of making games. The first game Insomniac Games made was shooter Disruptor for the Playstation. “We were working with…

Talk Amongst Yourselves

It’s March and we just can’t stop giving you new installments of Kotaku’s official video game forum, now with new art. This month’s work is Paumgartner Altar from Albrecht Dürer. It comes recommended by reader FiveSpeed who surely must know that the painting may be a bit busy but is surely rich with potential visual…

Cuss Words, Maps And A Big, Red Letter Box

I quite like the design of traditional Japanese letter boxes. We have a whole collection of old piggy banks shaped like them. Are piggy banks still called piggy banks if they are not shaped like…piggies? Nintendo 3DS Allows Racist, Sexist And Vulgar Character Names The 3DS’s “StreetPass” function allows players to automatically trade Mii Avatars…

Fan Favorite Gracious About Uncharted Movie Snub

In the Uncharted movie, Mark Wahlberg will be hero Nathan Drake. Fans, however, had a different actor in mind and even made awkward pleas for their choice. That choice was television star Nathan Fillion. The actor tells The Nerdish podcast that he “would have loved” to be Drake. “Mark Wahlberg, I think that’s a talented…