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Kotaku Resolutions
To: Ash From: Crecente Re: Oh, 2009, Hi Despite not being a big celebrator of New Year’s Day, I still make resolutions. The thing is, when kept private, resolutions are rarely kept, at least by me. So here are my Kotaku resolutions: Roll out the new format for previews Bring critiques back Update our Work…
By Brian Crecente Published December 31, 2008 - Uncategorized
Reminder: Blizzard Customer Support Still Not A Teen Suicide Hotline
Teenage suicide? Don’t do it. And don’t threaten that you’re going to kill yourself to Blizzard Entertainment customer support representatives via online chat, because that will land your ass in jail. (Pro tip!) Unfortunately, one 17-year old doofus from Middletown, Ohio hadn’t learned that lesson in time, making a phony threat while chatting in-game with…
By Michael McWhertor Published December 31, 2008 - Uncategorized
Way of the Samurai Finds Path To Xbox 360
Former PlayStation exclusive series Way of the Samurai is making the platform jump. Publisher Spike announced its intentions to bring Way of the Samurai 3 to the Xbox 360 in February. Originally released on the PlayStation 3 in November, Way of the Samurai 3 (aka Samurai Dou 3) debuted in Japan with 81,000 units sold.…
By Michael McWhertor Published December 31, 2008 - Reviews
Meteos Wars Micro-Review: Make It Rain
Q Entertainment has given its Nintendo DS puzzler Meteos new life on Xbox Live Arcade with Meteos Wars. Why the “Wars” distinction? It’s certainly no bloodier than the standard Meteos (or even Meteos Disney Magic.) In fact, Meteos Wars doesn’t do much to distinguish itself from the 2005 game it’s based upon. The color-matching block…
By Michael McWhertor Published December 31, 2008 - Uncategorized
Play Pinball, Learn About Farts
I’ve seen plenty of edumacational games and I’m always delighted to explore how they surreptitiously teach people as they play a game. But this is the first time I’ve played a edu-pinbal game. Early on in the touring Grossology exhibit there are two Gas Attack Pinball machines. The game appears to be a standard pinball…
By Brian Crecente Published December 31, 2008 - Uncategorized
Wall Street Journal: Playing The Fool
An article from the Wall Street Journal highlights some eyebrow-raising stories from the new book “The Race for a New Game Machine,” written by designers who worked closely on the Cell and 360 processors. The book details the entire roller coaster ride of development, including when Microsoft contacted IBM to have the 360 chipset designed…
By Jim Reilly Published December 31, 2008 - Uncategorized
Resident Evil: Degeneration A Lackluster Afterthought
With the latest Resident Evil movie behind us and the next game looming ahead, flick Resident Evil: Degeneration sounds like perfect filler. But at least one critic says it’s little more than a 96-minute cutscene. Not as much fun as the Milla Jovovich movies and not nearly as well-conceived or written as the games, “Degeneration”…
By Brian Crecente Published December 31, 2008 - Uncategorized
The LA Times’ Attempt At Making The Perfect Game
Who said designing video games was hard? All you need to do is steal the best parts from each and combine them into one enormous smorgasbord of all you can eat gaming. The Los Angeles Times went ahead and listed their most valued and defining game qualities from this year in an attempt to form…
By Jim Reilly Published December 31, 2008 - Uncategorized
Podcastalooza: The News You May Have Missed
Many of you, hopefully most of you, sat down and watched our Very Special Kotaku Holiday Podcast. But how many of you caught the director’s uncut of each in-game podcast? Over the past week we’ve been running a new unedited in-game podcast each day. Because I know some of you don’t have the time or…
By Brian Crecente Published December 31, 2008 - Uncategorized
Mega64 Brings It Home
Anthony Funn from Sony tries to re-convince the general public that Playstation Home is indeed very fun. He highlights some of its actives, like waiting in line, beards, and moving stuff. Definitely not the funniest video they’ve done. I would have liked to have seen more running-man dancing and derogatory comments made towards women.
By Jim Reilly Published December 31, 2008 - Uncategorized
New Year’s Resolutions For The Game Industry
It’s the New Year, and that means it’s time for resolutions. You know, drop some weight, quit smoking, get organized – just like you resolve to do every year, right? It’s also a good time to reflect, maybe mull over some things you learned during the year and how you can apply those lessons in…
By Brian Crecente Published December 31, 2008 - Uncategorized
A Year in Review: The Top Game Trailers for 2008
As the year comes to a close let us all stop for a moment and reflect on the wonderful world of hype, marketing, and yes, game trailers. When it comes to launching a successful title, game trailers are proving to be ever so more crucial. Today we honor the most successful trailers in terms of…
By Adam Barenblat Published December 31, 2008 - Uncategorized
Get The Tomb Raider Underworld Soundtrack For Free
Did you know you could download the entire 71-track score to Tomb Raider Underworld online for free via the Tomb Raider Chronicles website? Well you do now. Apparently the massive, 198MB download has been sitting there for quite some time, but nobody bothered to let us know, so we were fully prepared to go into…
By Mike Fahey Published December 31, 2008 - Uncategorized
The Complete List of Halo Wars Achievements
The Red Versus Blue folks over at Rooster Teeth got their hands on the full list of achievements for Halo Wars. As is often the case, the break down of earnable points for the Xbox 360 real-time strategy title gives us a glimpse of the game’s 15 missions as well as some of the things…
By Brian Crecente Published December 31, 2008 - Uncategorized
PlayStation 3 101: Surfing The Web
It really makes me wonder what sorts of people Sony feels purchased the PlayStation 3 system this year when they feel they have to post a video tutorial explaining how to surf the web. While the first couple of tutorials presented as an introduction to new PlayStation 3 owners delivered some information you might not…
By Mike Fahey Published December 31, 2008 - Uncategorized
PotBS Avatar Combat Updated For The New Year
Flying Lab’s MMO Pirates of the Burning Sea sails into the new year with the release of the highly anticipated build 1.11: The Clash Of Steel, which completely revamps avatar combat. While ship-to-ship combat in Pirates of the Burning Sea has been well-received by players since launch, the avatar combat, which sees players taken on…
By Mike Fahey Published December 31, 2008 - Uncategorized
A Year in Review: The Top Features and Reporting Of 2008
It’s been a pretty amazing year for the game’s industry. We’ve seen record sales, major layoffs, the disbarment of Jack Thompson and not a few smaller stories to mull over as well. I combed through the year’s worth of features and original stories that ran on our site this year to find the most read…
By Brian Crecente Published December 31, 2008 - Uncategorized
PlayStation 3 Used To Break SSL
The PlayStation 3 was instrumental in the efforts of an international team of security experts to successfully hack VeriSign’s SSL website security scheme, and it only took 200 consoles to do it. I’ll try not to get too technical here, mainly because I don’t truly understand a great deal of this myself. Using a pool…
By Mike Fahey Published December 31, 2008 - Uncategorized
XBLA Gets First Merv Griffin Game
It’s time for the final Xbox Live Arcade game of 2008, and they’ve saved the best for last, provided you are a big fan of crossword puzzles, game shows, or the works of Merv Griffin. Merv Griffin’s Crosswords is a game based off of a television game show created by Merv Griffin, deceased media mogul…
By Mike Fahey Published December 31, 2008 - Uncategorized
Kotaku’s Game of the Year Finalists
I went through yesterday’s list of nominations for our annual Game of the Year awards and tallied the games to come up with a short list of finalists for us to vote on. Three categories had ties, so I went back and polled Kotaku Tower to select which of those games should make the list.…
By Brian Crecente Published December 31, 2008