This Week’s Top Five Hotter-than-Hades Stories

It’s Friday and it’s time for the top 5 hottest Kotaku stories of the week. Warning: reading them may scorch eyebrows, eyelashes, and/or facial hair. Brought to you by Dante’s Inferno. In stores NOW. Read ’em and burn after the jump. 1. Want The Heavy Rain Demo Right Now? Here’s How… [Update] – 168,184 views…

Uncharted 2 Gets New Multiplayer Maps, Skins & Trophies On Feb. 25

Naughty Dog’s PlayStation 3 action adventure Uncharted 2: Among Thieves is about to get some fresh multiplayer content in the form of two new maps, six new player skins and all-new PlayStation Trophies and in-game medals. So why are you looking at a screen shot of Uncharted: Drake’s Fortune? Well, according to word from IGN,…

Is A Driver Not Entitled To The Hood Of His Own Car?

No, says the man in Daytona, it belongs to BioShock 2. By way of GameStop. Joey Logano’s gonna run real good in the No. 20 GameStop BioShock 2 Toyota in tomorrow’s Nationwide Series race. Logano and the rest of the Nationwide Series racers kick off the 2010 season tomorrow in the DRIVE4COPD 300, and I…

Europe Gets Two Final Fantasy XIII Xbox Bundles

While North American Final Fantasy XIII fans ponder forking out $400 for a special Xbox 360 bundle, European fans are getting two different models to choose from – the Special Edition and the Elite Bundle. What’s the difference? Europe’s Special Edition Final Fantasy XIII Xbox 360 bundle is very much like the one we are…

Is Dead Or Alive: Paradise “Creepy”? Tecmo Says You Be The Judge

It’s not often that the ESRB describes a video game with such vigor as the ratings board did with Tecmo’s Dead or Alive: Paradise. It’s equally rare for a publisher to thank the ESRB for calling its game “creepy.” But that’s how Tecmo Koei America is promoting the mini-game-filled, jiggle-packed Dead or Alive spin-off. “Thank…

Demon’s Souls Goes Black & White For Valentine’s Day

If you have a date with a random Blue Phantom this Valentine’s Day weekend in Demon’s Souls, a Kotaku game of the year contender, make sure you’re up to speed with what’s happening in the game during the holiday. Last week, Atlus asked players to decide whether the normally red and pink holiday should be…

Bioshock 2’s Jordan Thomas Fielded Your Calls, Pro And Con – Podcast Now Ready For Download

Bioshock 2’s creative director managed to not only talk about his game to many of you today, but worked in the words “stochastic” and “un-mother.” Good job, Jordan! Lots of good stuff in this one, ready for you to download. On today’s episode of our live audio podcast, Kotaku Talk Radio, Jordan Thomas fielded the…

Japanese Gamers Hungry For God Eater

Namco Bandai’s God Eater for the PSP is off to a good start in Japan, giving 295,000 PlayStation Portable owners another taste of Monster Hunter-like hack and slash action. God Eater’s number one debut pushes last week’s software winner, Dragon Quest VI: Maboroshi no Daichi for the Nintendo DS to second place, beating out the…

Marcus, Dom, And Wesker Party In Lost Planet 2

Here’s a group of guys you probably never expected to see in the same game, much less fighting side-by-side. By the time Capcom and MIcrosoft got around to announcing the cameo appearances by Gears of War’s dynamic duo Marcus and Dom in Lost Planet 2, I had completely forgotten about the GameStop preorder skin of…

Review Round-Up: Heavy Bioshock Vs Capcom… In Hell

You would have thought it was Christmas or something. We sure did review a lot of big games this week. We said they were mostly good, but you didn’t all believe us. Doodle Jump Micro-Review: Boing! In which Brian Ashcraft does one of those all-blue reviews that seem to drive some of you crazy. Downloadable…

What Are You Playing This Weekend?

After getting through much of my obligation gaming for the week, I’ll finally get a chance to crack open that still-sealed copy of Mass Effect 2 and try my hand at some intergalactic adventure and interspecies mating. If a copy of Aliens Vs. Predator somehow bursts forth upon my doorstep in the next few hours—unlikely,…

Darkest Of Days To Become Darkest Of Movies

Proving once again that game review scores don’t matter to movie producers, a movie version of 8monkey Labs’ time travel shooter Darkest of Days is being shopped around, with the writers of The Rock attached to craft the screenplay. With a Game Rankings index of 47.80%, Darkest of Days didn’t exactly set the video game…

Perfect Dark XBLA Could Get More New Maps, Weapons

The Xbox Live Arcade remake of classic Nintendo 64 shooter Perfect Dark sings on the Xbox 360, mixing the game’s original geometry with high-definition graphics and a silky frame rate without tinkering with the unique controls. And that was the goal, said Kenn Lobb, creative director for Microsoft Game Studios, and executive producer for Perfect…

Super Street Fighter IV Girls Gone Wild

Capcom celebrates Valentine’s Day with a new trailer featuring Chun-Li, Cammy, and Juri from Super Street Fighter IV, beating the living daylights out of each other. I’d like to make it perfectly clear here that it was Capcom that presented this as a Valentine’s Day tie-in, and not me. I personally don’t find women beating…

Sins Of A Solar Empire: Diplomacy Micro-Review: Talk Is Cheap

Developer Ironclad doesn’t call Diplomacy, the second add-on to its popular PC space strategy title Sins of a Solar Empire, an expansion. It’s called, fittingly, a “micro-expansion.” Rather than add a host of things that “clip on” to the existing title – new races, etc. – Sins Of A Solar Empire: Diplomacy instead seeks to…

Dead or Alive Paradise – Screens

Microsoft: This Will be the Biggest Year In The History of Xbox

Microsoft’s robust X10 video game showcase this week in San Francisco was just the tip of the iceberg for the Xbox 360’s 2010 offerings, Microsoft’s Aaron Greenberg told Kotaku. “To be this early in the year and able to have an E3-quality line-up with triple-A blockbuster titles, that really speaks to how big a year…

Frankenreview: Heavy Rain

Would Quantic Dream’s cast of characters be depressed over the results of our Heavy Rain Frankenreview? We’ve been entranced with Heavy Rain since the very first screenshots Quantic Dream shuffled our way, and as the meaning behind those rain-dappled faces become clearer, so did our fascination. Now the game is about to be released, the…

Talk Live To Bioshock 2’s Jordan Thomas Right Now On Kotaku Talk Radio

Join us live today on CBS Radio for our latest episode of Kotaku Talk Radio. It is time to talk Bioshock 2, with the main man who made it. Call in now to talk to 2K Marin creative director Jordan Thomas. The show kicks off at 11 a.m. MT, 1 p.m. ET. Want to be…

Star Wars: The Old Republic Will Always Have Taris

It’s civilization annihilated by Sith Lord Darth Malak during the Jedi Civil War, the planet Taris is a symbol of hope for the Republic, and the latest planet revealed for BioWare’s upcoming MMO. You may remember Taris as the first planet you visit in Knights of the Old Republic after escaping from the Endar Spire.…