Chicken For Thanksgiving, Courtesy of Castle Crashers

The mascot of The Behemoth, the studio behind the PS3 and Xbox 360 downloadable hit Castle Crashers, is a giant chicken. Fittingly, it’s pledging gifts of livestock to needy families in developing countries through the end of November. You may contribute too, the catch is they’re tying the donations to follows on Twitter or likes…

Call Of Duty: Black Ops Fever Comes To Japan

The bestselling game in Japan this past week was an American-made game, with Treyarch’s Call of Duty: Black Ops nabbing the first place spot on the country’s sales charts. Just how well did Black Ops do? The PlayStation 3 version came out on top, finding 129,000 Black Ops fans in Japan. The Xbox 360 version…

Review: The UnderGarden Is A Relaxing Dip In The Ocean

I’m almost out of pollen. A nearby creature strums the guitar as I float about. I’ll just hang here for a few more seconds before bringing life to some undersea flowers and restocking on pollen. Right now, I float. Recalling games like Electroplankton and Flower, The UnderGarden is a puzzle platformer in which players explore…

Pop Stars Move Kinect In Japan

Microsoft doesn’t view Kinect simply as just some peripheral. It’s as important as a console. That’s why the company poured millions into launching Kinect. And as expected, Xbox 360 sales saw a spike in Japan. Xbox 360 sales actually tripled. But that wasn’t big enough for the console to overtake the DSi. Or the DSi…

GT5 Online Woes Screw Up Your Singleplayer Games, Too

If you’re trying to play Gran Turismo 5 at the moment and wondering why everything is stalling and running so slowly – even in your singleplayer games – you can thank “extreme online traffic congestion”. While that’s a common and understandable thing to be affecting the multiplayer side of a major game so close to…

PlayStation Boss To Become Sony President?

According to a report on Bloomberg, Sony is looking at taking the job of company president away from current CEO Sir Howard Stringer, with one of the possible candidates for that role being PlayStation boss Kaz Hirai. While Stringer, who took the job as president in 2009 (having been with Sony since 1997) will retain…

A Motorcycle To The Skull? Hell, Why Not

Long a tough sell to Western gamers, Sega may actually have found a way to market the Yakuza series of crime games outside Japan: package its trailers like the hammy movies the games so dearly want to be. Yakuza 4, the latest game in the series, was released in Japan in March, but won’t be…

Borderlands Writers Play A Bloody Game Of Catan

That’s Mikey Neumann, writer on Gearbox’s megahit Borderlands, smashing up living room furniture for the debut episode of “Anthony Saves The World.” His mom did not actually give him that table. It’s from IKEA – it’s got cardboard in it. But they are in fact filming in Mikey’s home. “Anthony” is Anthony Burch, another Gearbox…

Competitive Eating For Amateurs

Who’s ready to gorge themselves on conversation? If you’ve got a buffet of things to say that aren’t just video game related, we’ve set the table in this post for all your open thread needs. Personally, I can’t wait to get my Thanksgiving dinner on, ingesting thousands upon thousands of calories worth of turkey, stuffing,…

EA Says GT5 Is “Sterile”; Codemasters Says It’s “Boring”

Can’t have a major release date without competitors taking a crap all over it. In this case, Electronic Arts and Codemasters. We love it when people talk trash about other folks’ products. Let’s you and him fight! Need For Speed is a different experience from GT5, of course, and Patrick Soderlund, a senior vice president…

We Might Have A New Black Ops Tomahawk Kill Champ

Cry foul all you want, Call of Duty: Black Ops tomahawk haters, but this particular axe to the knee deserves credit for its triple-banked, finely threaded toss. Lucky shot? Of course it is. But it’s still fun to watch.

Monday Night Combat’s Angels Among Us

Pitgirl and Assassin bear on a banner that would illuminate any manuscript. By Jason Rainville, a regular contributor on the MNC forums.

Kotaku’s 2010 Windows Phone 7 Gift Guide

We’re down to the last day or so before the peak of consumerism kicks off, it’s probably a good time to start thinking about what sorts of gifts you want to give and get this year during the holidays. And don’t think that digital platforms like the Windows Phone 7 doesn’t warrant game gift giving…

Here’s What The Hell The Canadian Military Wanted With $25K In Video Games

Previously on Weird News from Canada: A garrison outside of Montreal opened a requisition for $25,000 worth of video games, an order a headquarters spokeswoman called “strange.” Turns out they’re gifts for soldiers stationed in Afghanistan. Whoops. Canada’s Defense (sigh, Defence) Ministry followed up with the Canadian Press, which first reported the story, to verify…

Activision’s Half Million Dollar Indie Contest Delayed, But Still Alive

The deadline to announce the winners for Activision’s $500,000 independent game development contest came and went… a month ago without word of any winners. What happened? Have no worries, Activision tells Kotaku, the contest finalists have been selected and notified, but the process is taking a bit longer than they expected. “We’ve concluded the first…

LittleBigPlanet 2’s ‘Controlinator’ Makes Driving Bunnies & Camels So Easy

More controlerifous than LittleBigPlanet 2’s ‘Creatinator,’ with smoother handling than its ‘Grabinator,’ Sackboy’s newest tool—the ‘Controlinator’—makes piloting and steering anything in the PlayStation 3 sequel so much simpler. We doubt you’ll miss the roundabout ways you used to make things controllable in the original LittleBigPlanet after experiencing the wonders of the Controlinator, which as this…

Mario Vs. Donkey Kong Gallery

Philandering Point Guard’s Ratings Get A Timely Adjustment In NBA 2K11

San Antonio Spurs all-star Tony Parker and Eva Longoria got dee-vorced last week, around the time it was discovered that Parker was doing some dribble-drive penetration with a former teammate’s wife. NBA 2K11’s latest roster update factors in the breakup. Parker’s now rated “not loyal” for player management purposes (the background calculation went from an…

Turkey Day

To: Ash From: Crecente Tomorrow’s Thanksgiving! The day after? Black Friday! Crazy!! I can’t believe how quickly this year has been zipping buy. While we’re going to be running on skeleton staff tomorrow, we’ll still have some interesting stories coming, including at least one review and our Black Friday Survival guide. Exciting! Off to ponder…

Assassin’s Creed Brotherhood Gives You ‘Animus Project’ For Free

Ubisoft is giving the gift of downloadable content to Assassin’s Creed Brotherhood owners a little early, handing out the “Animus Project Update 1.0” for free on December 14. What do you get for your precious time and bandwidth? A new game mode, “Advanced Alliance,” for one. It’s a spin on the original Alliance Mode with…