Xbox Live is Free This Weekend in Europe [Corrected]

On the heels of the new dashboard rollout this week, Xbox Live’s Gold level services are free to all this weekend. In addition to multiplayer gaming, features like Video Kinect are also available to Silver (free) subscribers. The weekend includes free previews and discounts on downloadable films (like The Hangover) as well. Enjoy. [Correction] I…

Oh, Good. More Duke Nukem DLC Coming Next Week

Can’t get enough Duke Nukem? (That’s—I say, that’s a rhetorical question, son, you’re not supposed to answer it.) Well, good. Gearbox done whomped up even more DLC for the game. Give the devils their due, despite a withering, almost universal critical rejection of Duke Nukem, Gearbox Software and 2K are earnest in their post-release support,…

Minecraft’s Blocky Water Made Wondrous, Shimmering, Natural

I’m a HUGE Minecraft fan. Sure, it could use a bit more hand-holding, but in general I’m a big fan of the game and how much it coaxes creativity out of everyone who plays it. I even like the way the game looks. So when Luke detailed how to pretty up the game, I pretty…

The Daily Show Gleefully Rips Into Free-To-Play Gaming

On Monday’s episode of The Daily Show with Jon Stewart, shouty correspondent Aasif Mandvi took on free-to-play iOS games like GameView’s Tapfish In the game, which is entirely free to download, players maintain an aquarium full of virtual fish. There’s a catch, of course—at some point your fish will probably die, and if you’d like,…

From Skyrim Meme to Lady’s Flesh

Skyrim‘s “Arrow in the Knee” meme didn’t only inspire an epic dubstep anthem. It also inspired this tattoo. As pointed out on Reddit, guards in the game often say, “I used to be an adventurer like you, until I took an arrow to the knee.” Tattoo artist Nikkisny originally uploaded the tattoo to website FunnyJunk,…

The Rookies Arrive This Weekend in NBA 2K12

With the NBA set to get back to work on Christmas, NBA 2K12 can start bringing in rookies who were drafted in June but went unsigned throughout the league’s lockout. Series producer Erick Boenisch told Kotaku last week that the game will drop in signings, trades and free agent moves as they happen, rather than…

What Are You Playing This Weekend?

This week I rediscovered my love for DC Universe Online thanks to its “Lightning Strikes” DLC, to the point I was up at 1 am last night and swearing at the television when I couldn’t connect to the server. MMOs are a helluva drug. I don’t know how I fell in with this one, probably…

Here is What a Kotaku Meet Up is Like

Every so often we at Kotaku try to throw meet up parties for our readers. Ever wonder what it’s like? Check out the video, and try to come to our next one! Like the music that’s playing? It’s by our own Kirk Hamilton, and you can listen to and download his whole album from bandcamp

This Week in the Business: ‘Nintendo has been Left for Dead’

What’s happened in the business of video games this past week … QUOTE | “Nintendo has been left for dead.”—Asif Khan, CEO of Panoptic Management Consultants talks about investors’ stance on Nintendo and whether Miyamoto leaving Nintendo would affect the stock. QUOTE | “Our games industry is shockingly immature.”—Epic Games president Mike Capps, referring to…

The Man Behind The World’s Best Video Game Screenshots

Most photographers ply their trade by capturing snapshots of reality and preserving them on film. Through careful framing, posing, and a bit of luck, they seek to distill the essence of foreign lands, exotic vistas, war zones, and even distant planets. But what about the places we visit in video games? Games contain striking panoramas,…

If You’re Going to Add a Penis to a Game, Do it the Battlefield 3 Way

Few things confirm the ingenuity of gamers as effectively as the lengths they’ll go to add penises to video games that don’t include penises. Battlefield 3 may be a war video game full of phallic symbols, but it didn’t ship with drawings of genitalia. But the gamer in the clip here added one in the…

What is FXAA?

Fast Approximate Anti-Aliasing may not be known by its name to many gamers, but they certainly do recognize its good looks, being used in such visually luxurious games as The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim, Batman: Arkham City and Battlefield 3 But what is it, really? It’s an improvement above three earlier iterations of anti-aliasing, rendering…

Kotaku Meat Up

More like Meat-Up, AmIRite?? | Last night’s Kotaku reader meet-up at the Gizmodo Gallery was great. I loved seeing all of you. But what I loved most were those gi-normous crocodile-sized subs down in the basement. So glorious. I’m on Board. The PlayStation Vita is Going to Launch with a Bang. The PlayStation Vita is…

The Skyrim Theme Becomes Elevator Music

Courtesy of the fine folks at Reddit, we’ve got a video of YouTube user (and pianist) live4divin, who performs a jazz reharmonization of Jeremy Soule’s main theme from Skyrim. For non-musicos, reharmonization is when you take an established melody (say, “All The Things You Are“) and write new chords to go underneath it. It can…

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You May Need a Finance Degree to Understand Fortune Street

The Wii’s new virtual board game Fortune Street threatens to overwhelm you at first, but don’t let that stop you from becoming part of the 1 percent in this Monopoly-esque game. The only problem I had with Fortune Street was with its pacing. It feels slow at times, and if you’re playing alone it can…

The Most Spectacular Battlefield 3 Jet Takedown You’ll See Today (Or Ever)

Technically speaking this isn’t a kill made with a jet. But it is made by a gamer who was recently in a jet. We’ve seen some amazing things in Battlefield 3, but I’ve never seen a video that shows someone jumping out of a jet in mid-dogfight, twisting in the air to shoot the aggressor…

The Sith Inquisitor’s Inquisitiveness Pays Off in the Long Run

With only four days left before the launch of the early start program for Star Wars: The Old Republic, BioWare gives hopeful Sith Inquisitors some rather fetching outfits and tactics to look forward to. The Sith Inquisitor isn’t all Force Lightning and stoic standing in The Old Republic. During my brief spin in the role…

Here’s Why You Need to Stop Dismissing OnLive’s Tablet Gaming

For much of the past week, I’ve been test driving OnLive’s new app and controller pairing. The tech on display impressed me with the response time and the simple fact that, all of a sudden, the gaming options on an iPad are approaching parity with what you can get on a PC. Let’s get one…

Figuring Out Rainbows Could Lead to Prettier Video Game Graphics

Better visuals in the coming generation of games may come courtesy of Mother Nature. Computer graphics researchers at the University of California San Diego were looking for way to create better animation and their work took them into the colorfully iconic rainy-day phenomenon. The results reveal exactly how rainbows manifest and includes new findings on…