Inevitably, The 8-Bit Halo De-Make Lands In January

The de-make craze shows no sign of abating. Pixel Force, following its successes with Left 4 Dead and DJ Hero homages, will reduce Halo to an 8-bit platformer (with top-down Warthog driving) next month. But, erm, about Cortana … Promising all of the action – and extra-curriculars with the cutscenes – of the original Halo,…

Review: The Game Boat Is Not The Inflatable Gaming Raft You’ve Been Waiting For

There are some problems with the year’s most useless video game peripheral, the Game Boat, I can explain with words, others I can depict in video. But there’s one thing you’ll just have to trust me on: it smells bad. The box for the inflatable red Game Boat boasts such gaming-irrelevant features as the fact…

MotorStorm’s Festivus For What’s Left Of Us

Scads of unseen gameplay illustrates this latest MotorStorm: Apocalypse video, which explains how the game’s Festival mode will handle the party in an urban environment beset by disaster. There’ll be more of a story to unify your races. That means what happens in previous races will carry through to the next, which sounds like something…

Flipping Virtual Skirts Should Get You Slapped In Real Life, Too

Here’s an iPhone game to play if you don’t want anyone sitting next to you on the bus: Upskirt. Yes, it’s what you think it is, right down to the skirt-flipping sensei with the panties on his head. The trailer says Upskirt (which looks like it’s based on this flash game) is due Jan. 11,…

A Visual Guide To The Game Boat

Bulletstorm Option Will Allow For Fewer Vulgarities, Expletives, Dicktits

If your sensibilities can tolerate the incineration and impaling of pus-oozing space zombies, but not the profligate use of cuss words, then Bulletstorm is your game. The raucous shooter will feature an option to tone down its notoriously salty language. So says Adrian Chmielarz of the game’s studio, People Can Fly, in this tweet. “Bulletstorm…

The Guts Of The PlayStation 3

Conceptual artist Mads Peitersen finished up his new “PS3 Anatomies” commission for the Official Playstation Magazine UK. It’s so full of life! PS3 Anatomies by Mads Peitersen (Twitter) Need your daily fill of geek eye candy? If so, head over to Justin Page’s Rampaged Reality and get your fix. Republished with permission.

World Of Warcraft: Cataclysm MMO Log Part Two: For The Alliance!

Our second and final MMO Log for World of Warcraft’s Cataclysm expansion begins with a five-year-old Horde character defecting to the Alliance. Kotaku’s MMO reviews are a multi-part process. Rather than deliver day one reviews based on beta gameplay, we play the game for four weeks (or in this case, two) before issuing our final…

Go West, Old Friend, With Dead Rising 2’s DLC

No memes about covering wars, you know, in this new trailer for Dead Rising 2: Case West. Just the return of Dead Rising’s intrepid photog and a hint at the story behind his team-up with the sequel’s motocross-racing protagonist. Dead Rising 2: Case West is exclusive to the Xbox 360 and arrives Dec. 27. It…

I Got This Mask

To: Ash From: Totilo Stories you may have missed from the day shift Call of Duty Publisher’s Accusations Are ‘Deliberate Misdirection,” Rival Says What Ever Happened To The Christmas Video Game? Do Video Games Really Need To Be Immersive? Are Game Companies Doing Enough To Avoid Funding War In the Congo? The Year She Stopped…

The Year She Stopped Arguing Whether Video Games Are Art

What was 2010? Maybe it was the year we got past the “are-games-art” debate. Game developer Kellee Santiago hopes so. She was in the thick of it, as she discovered one very early morning back in the spring. The Santa Monica-based game developer was in Baltimore last April, booked on the first flight out of…

Need A Sure-Fire First Down in Madden? Try “Cougar Cross” [Update]

The folks at Madden NFL 11 put out a list of all plays run by all of its zillion-plus users so far, sorted by average gain. No. 2 is “Cougar Cross,” which sounds like Rex Ryan’s wife’s best-selling video. In fact, I’m not sure where you find it in the playbook. I’ve never seen it…

What’s The Poop On Dirty Diapers?

Keeping a dozen cranky infants happy hardly sounds like a fun time in real life; on the iPhone, it’s the premise of Dirty Diapers, a fast-twitch puzzler just released on the App Store. Dirty Diapers is by Streaming Colour studios, which made 2009’s Dapple, a game I still think highly of. In it, 12 babies…

Are Game Companies Doing Enough To Avoid Funding War In the Congo?

Earlier this year we reported on efforts to urge electronics companies from using conflict materials mined in the Democratic Republic of Congo. The Enough Project has released a report ranking companies’ responses. Where do Microsoft, Nintendo, and Sony rank? The Democratic Republic of Congo is a country torn with strife. Since 1998 the Second Congo…

Super Meat Boy Is Tougher Than N+

Science has not told us whether notoriously hard video game Super Meat Boy is tougher than notoriously hard N+. So we must rely on a second-best method. MTV Multiplayer’s Russ Frushtick has studied the two game’s Xbox Live Arcade statistics for both side-scrolling, curse-inducing games and declared Super Meat Boy as the more rigorous experience.…

Still Need a Stocking Stuffer? Give the Gift of Melee with Assassin’s Creed Brotherhood

Brush up on your crowd-blending stealth, assassination techniques, and melee fighting skills with the new Assassin’s Creed Brotherhood, out now from Ubisoft. And for the first time in the series, you can play in multiplayer mode. Or just go solo with more than 20 hours of singleplayer gameplay in which you can lead and control…

The PSP2 Is No PlayStation Phone

Should you save up for the rumored PlayStation Phone or the equally rumored PSP2? Sony Computer Entertainment boss Kazuo Hirai manages to calm potential consumer confusion without actually confirming anything. What do we know about the PSP2 so far? According to various sources from throughout the gaming industry, it’s a powerful little machine that houses…

Sunday’s Wildest NFL Play Immortalized In Tecmo Bowl

The Philadelphia Eagles beat the New York Giants on Sunday with a play that just should not have happened. It defied logic in real life; it defies logic when it’s recreated in the classic video game Tecmo Bowl. The video game version is here. Tecmo DeSean Jackson even runs along the goal line properly. Well…

It Takes A Wizard To Steal $45,000 Worth Of Magic Cards

A former Wizards of the Coast employee from Burien, Washington stands to lose a lot more than his job as King County prosecutors file felony theft charges over the theft of $45,000 worth of rare Magic: The Gathering cards. Twenty-six-year-old Donald J. Henry has been accused of the massive theft after a fellow employee observed…

The Fallout Neon Sign Goes To….

Four Kotaku readers had tied in our Fallout New Vegas sign post yesterday. Each submitted all the proper materials at the same minute. So we voted. There could only be one winner of our neon sign ipottersmith, you win! This is ipottersmith’s winning entry that met all the required criteria. Correctly identified my favorite video…