The PS4’s Developer-Friendliness Explained: More Games in Less Time

It’s nearly 2 months until the official release of the PlayStation 4, Sony’s upcoming big black box of dreams and wonders. Sony has focused on creating a high-spec machine that not only offers a plethora of nifty features on the user side, but was designed specifically to be easy to develop for on the creator…

Entertaining Kids Is Effing Hard Work

Children! You have no idea how good you have it. Just wait until you grow up and find yourself dragging your own kids to cartoon events like this. Or worse, performing on stage—especially when you’re not up to it. Here, you can see characters from Anpanman, the beloved children’s anime, at what looks like a…

Honestly, The New Mobile Final Fantasy Looks Pretty Good

It actually looks like a proper modern Final Fantasy game. That’s a start, right? Yesterday, the folks at Square Enix shared a short trailer for the recently revealed Final Fantasy Agito. There’s a little bit of combat, a little bit of scenery, a little bit of dialogue. Check it out above. The free-to-play FF Agito…

What Do Some Japanese Think of the New Godzilla?

Hollywood is making a new Godzilla movie. The last time Hollywood made a Godzilla movie, many in Japan hated how the lead kaiju looked. Make that, many on planet Earth hated it. What about this latest effort? The image above was spotted at an expo in Brazil and as our colleagues at i09 point out,…

You Can Rent Old Men in Japan

In Japanese the word “ossan” (おっさん) is somewhat of a rude word for middle aged-dudes. How would you like to rent an ossan? Well, in Tokyo, you can. Enter Ossan Rental, a middle-aged man rental service that makes older gentlemen available for only 1,000 yen (US$10) an hour. And not just regular old dudes, but…

Sony Explains Why It Changed the PS Vita’s OLED Screen

The new slimmer PS Vita has a new screen. It’s LCD, instead of the OLED screen found in the current model. Sony’s Andrew House explained why. In an interview with Nikkei, House said, “The main reason is that the LCD panel can now realize an image as high quality as that of the OLED panel.”…

The official (numbered) sequel to Where’s My Water is now live on the App Store The free-to-play follow-up to the physics puzzler introduces new challenge modes, a new level type called Duck Rush, and delivers “100+” levels on launch. Trailer’s above, and note that we’ll have more on Where’s My Water 2 later today.

Moneysaver: Get Tomb Raider, Sleeping Dogs, and Hitman For $14

Amazon has another great set of digital game deals lined up, and we’re here to share them with you first. We’ve got three amazingly cheap bundles on tap, and since there’s some overlap between them, we even made sure to get the “OK” to show you the future deals ahead of time- Moneysaver has your…

Think The PS4 Is Expensive? Be Glad You Don’t Live In Argentina

Or, for our Argentinian readers who do live in Argentina…I’m sorry. So sorry. Americans have it made. Gamers in Europe and Australia (and elsewhere!) pay a lot more, comparatively, for games and hardware. But the PAL Tax is nothing on what gamers in other markets, like those in South America, face. Small consumer bases As…

I Know Blood Is Rich In Iron, But This Is Ridiculous

Devon Cady-Lee, who has previously been at places like Tencent, Fantasy Flight and Wizards of the Coast, now works at MMO developers Turbine. You can see more of his work at his blog and CGHub page To see the larger pics in all their glory (or, if they’re big enough, so you can save them…

Dark Souls: The Music Video Is…Certainly Something

There are video game music videos that take themselves a little too seriously. This is not one of those videos. It’s, well, the opposite of those videos. This is another Dark Souls clip by Aussie Max & Sam. If you missed their last one, it too was great. GEEKAPELLA #12 – DARK SOULS ACAPELLA MEDLEY…

Schwarzenegger As Darth Vader Would Totally Have Worked

Not sure why this was only released in September 2013. It seems like it’s pretty much the best videos on the internet* united in a single clip. Darth Vader Voiced By Schwarzenegger [YouTube] * – excepting those featuring cats or nutshots

The Most Popular Names In World Of Warcraft Are…Pretty Lame

Christian Thurau and Anders Drachen have written an academic paper. A very important one. It’s all about the patterns and significance of the names people give to their World of Warcraft characters. Their findings? That there are patterns. And that the most popular names are pretty terrible. Inspired by a theory that there was a…

Forget The iPhone, Let’s Support This Thing

At some point, smartphone ownership can start to feel like a runaround. You buy the phone with the new! best! features! and a year later, Apple (or whoever) reveals a newer phone with the newer! bester! features! and your phone becomes obsolete. Enter Phonebloks, a brilliant modular concept phone. The concept, from designer Dave Hakkens,…

Here’s a cool looking Kickstarter project: Blood Alloy, a dystopian Metroidvania inspired by Dark Souls and Vanquish. They want $50,000.

Killzone: Mercenary: The Kotaku Review

Portable first-person shooters generally suck. The controls are too limited, the screens too small for fine detail, or the stories aren’t more than simple set dressing for an egregious bullet and blood ballet. Killzone: Mercenary does not feel like a portable first-person shooter. I was honestly expecting the worst when I discovered I’d been assigned…

What’s That? Modern-Day Gaming Has Too Many Sequels? Actually…

Whenever you see someone gripe about how uncreative the game industry is, the ‘observation’ almost always seems to carry a hint of nostalgia to it. It’s almost as if people want to suggest ~the good ‘ol days~ were so much better. Gaming used to be so much more original! Right? Hmm. Judging by this picture…

The All-Singing, All-Dancing Meat Of The World. Or, something like that. Here’s They Might Be Giants’ new video for their song “You’re On Fire.” It features Lauren Lapkus, who you might recognize as the kindly prison guard from Orange is the New Black. It’s a weird video! I like it. Related: It reminds me of…

Before Violent Video Games, There Were Just Plain Violent Games

Covering sports video games means I can take a break from the politically motivated and manipulated controversy of What Must We Do About Violent Video Games. Well, gee, thanks PBS. As this discussion argues, it turns out sports were simply society’s first violent games. Wrestling, as host Jamin Warren (of Kill Screen) notes, is basically…

The Moment You Stopped Playing A Game Forever

In my review of Amnesia: A Machine for Pigs, I had a lot of fun identifying the game’s many Nope Moments—the times when a half-open door or a darkened hallway were almost too foreboding. But of course, lots of games have lots of different Nope Moments, and we don’t always overcome them. I thought I’d…