• Uncategorized

  What’s Tecmo Bringing To E3? Ninja Gaiden Models, For One

  Publisher Tecmo is heading to E3, armed with a septet of games, three of them still currently unannounced. What will Tecmo be bringing, beyond a playable Ninja Gaiden Sigma 2? And “Ninja Gaiden models”? A lineup that’s heavy on the PlayStation, with Quantum for the PlayStation 3 and Undead Knights for the PSP. Quantum, for…

  By Michael McWhertor Published May 15, 2009
• Uncategorized

  Japanese Console War Returns To Normal

  The battle for Japanese hardware supremacy has been in a bit of flux for the past few months, with the once dominant Wii giving ground to the PlayStation 3. Not anymore. Nintendo hardware outsold its Sony (and Microsoft) competition in Japan last week, with the DSi and Wii swapping positions on the Media Create sales…

  By Michael McWhertor Published May 15, 2009
• Uncategorized

  Street Fighter IV Hyper Turbo PC Specs

  Is your computer tough enough to go toe to toe with the world warriors of Street Fighter IV? Capcom’s official recommended PC specs hold the answer. As you can imagine, rendering frantic fighting action isn’t a job for a low-end PC. According to Capcom, you’re going to need at least an Intel Pentium 4 2.0GHz…

  By Mike Fahey Published May 15, 2009
• Uncategorized

  Guitar Hero 5: Four of Anything

  Guitar Hero 5 will let up to four players rock out on the same instrument at the same time. That’s four guitarists or four microphones and yes, even four drummers. The game will also let you mix and match willy nilly what instruments you want to play as a group, so you can set up…

  By Brian Crecente Published May 15, 2009
• Uncategorized

  April NPD-PDs: For Better Arguing

  The experiment continues. In a quest to give people apples-to-apples sales comparisons, here are the Kotaku-coined NPD-PDs for April. That’s NPDs “per day.” Every month, the NPD group releases video game sales figures for the U.S. market, covering the past month. But the “months” that NPD uses vary in length and don’t align with the…

  By Stephen Totilo Published May 15, 2009
• Uncategorized

  Surprise! Team Fortress 2 Spy Class Is Also Getting An Update

  The Sniper class from Team Fortress 2 isn’t the only one getting new tricks. The Spy’s getting some too. And he’s taking over the latest batch of TF2 update news with two new crafty items. As stealthily alluded to in yesterday’s Sniper update, the Spy is coming out of hiding, stabbing the poor headshotting Aussie…

  By Michael McWhertor Published May 15, 2009
• Uncategorized

  Transformers: Revenge Of The Fallen Pre-Order Bonus Is Golden

  Activision, which really needs to learn how to space out its Transformers news, is granting fans who pre-order Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen access to golden versions of Optimus Prime and Megatron. An exclusive pre-order bonus for those who put their money down at GameStop, a special code to unlock the golden versions of the…

  By Mike Fahey Published May 15, 2009
• Uncategorized

  Post-Lawsuit, Old Teams Absent From Next Maddens

  Hall of Famers are playable in the next Madden, but the recent PlayStation 2 inclusion of legacy teams is gone — not because of legal action but in the interest of feature parity, says EA. Last November, retired NFL players won a $28 million judgment against the NFL Players Union in a lawsuit regarding the…

  By Stephen Totilo Published May 15, 2009
• Uncategorized

  What Are You Playing This Weekend?

  This weekend, my Wii will be getting a workout as I jab my way through the rest of the World Circuit in Nintendo’s Punch-Out!! re-whatever we’re calling this game. Is it a remake? Re-imagining? That’s hardly a concern. What is a concern is how terribly I’m performing against Irish stereotype Aran Ryan. Having never really…

  By Michael McWhertor Published May 15, 2009
• Uncategorized

  Unbound Saga PSP Skips UMD Release

  Vogster’s comic-book inspired brawler for the PlayStation Portable will be following Patapon 2’s lead and skipping UMD entirely, releasing directly onto the PlayStation Store this July 16th. Unbound Saga, announced at the New York City Comic Con earlier this year, is a beat-em up game with comic book flair, and now one of the first…

  By Mike Fahey Published May 15, 2009
• Uncategorized

  Luna Online open beta promises dates with gamer girls

  Sure, we’ve all seen screenshots of steamy cyber sessions between MMO players, but Luna Online is the only MMORPG that promises them as a game feature. gPotato’s latest next generation MMORPG has begun open beta, giving even the most socially repugnant MMORPG players a chance to find true love by courting their anime girlfriends in…

  By Chrissie Lamond Published May 15, 2009
• Reviews

  Plants vs Zombies Micro-Review: The Seeds Of Success

  While tower defence games have seemingly been done to death, there’s still room for innovation in the genre. Like the kind that PopCap Games’ Plants vs Zombies provides. Plants vs Zombies is to tower defence what Nintendo’s Advance Wars is to turn-based strategy: a game stripped of everything but the raw tactical essentials, then pumped…

  By Luke Plunkett Published May 15, 2009
• Uncategorized

  XSEED Bringing Ragnarok Online DS Stateside

  XSEED has teamed up with developer GungHo Works to bring the Nintendo DS version of popular 2D online game Ragnarok Online to North America this winter. Losing the massively multiplayer aspects of the PC version but retaining a lot of the look and feel, Ragnarok Online DS is more of a traditional action RPG. The…

  By Mike Fahey Published May 15, 2009
• Uncategorized

  The Club: No Hit, But Constantly Name-Checked

  Bizarre Creations third-person 2008 shooter from Sega was no blockbuster, so why does it keep coming up in conversation? I have not been able to escape The Club — a game I thought no one played. For those who are among that crowd of non-players, all you need to know is that Bizarre Creations created…

  By Stephen Totilo Published May 15, 2009
• Uncategorized

  BioWare’s Mass Effect 2 E3 Prelude

  BioWare lays out their E3 plans for Mass Effect 2 in this E3 prelude video, giving us an early look at the expansive changes coming to the next chapter in their sci-fi epic. I’d simply say that the game seems to be shaping up quite nicely, but I’m afraid I don’t possess that level of…

  By Mike Fahey Published May 15, 2009
• Uncategorized

  Is Microsoft Working on an Answer to the DS, PSP, iPhone?

  Team Xbox is reporting that Microsoft is in the final design stages of a new digital entertainment handheld, one that would feature Live Anywhere and blur the lines between the Xbox 360 and Zune. Reached for comment today, Microsoft reiterated that they have been saying since January that they will have new hardware and software…

  By Brian Crecente Published May 15, 2009
• Uncategorized

  More Than A Million Flock To Free Realms

  Sony Online Entertainment‘s new family-friendly online game Free Realms has exploded out of the gate, with more than one million registered users within 17 days of launch. Free Realms is a free-to-play massively-multiplayer online game that combines puzzle games, pet raising, card dueling, exploration, and combat into one colorful and attractive package. So attractive that…

  By Mike Fahey Published May 15, 2009
• Uncategorized

  E3 Twitter Rumors ‘Uninformed,’ Says Microsoft

  A mystery Twitter feed is spooning out rich details about Microsoft’s Xbox 360 E3 press conference, from GTA info to Forza 3. Leaks? Educated guesses? Kotaku asked around. Is that next GTA episode really called Blood And a Four-Leaf Clover? Is Metal Gear Solid + Oxide about the be unveiled at the Microsoft E3 press…

  By Stephen Totilo Published May 15, 2009
• Uncategorized

  Punch-Out Balance Board Controls Work Like This

  We knew Punch-Out Wii supports the Wii Fit Balance Board, but until opening the game’s instruction manual today, we didn’t know how. Note that the board can only be used in the game’s single-player mode. A case of Nintendo fearing the prospect of two people boxing on boards side-by-side? Perhaps not. A year ago, a…

  By Stephen Totilo Published May 15, 2009
• Uncategorized

  Bionic Commando Launch Trailer Does Its Job Well

  The launch trailer for Capcom’s Bionic Commando does an amazing job of making me forget anything negative I’ve said about the game in the past. I’ve had issues with the controls in the past, and the multiplayer demo wasn’t exactly thrilling, but put together a swinging montage set to some powerful music and I’m suddenly…

  By Mike Fahey Published May 15, 2009