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ReviewsTera: The Kotaku Review
The latest big-name Korean import to hit the North American massively-multiplayer online role-playing scene, Tera does little to differentiate itself from countless other fantasy MMO titles we’ve been slowly growing bored with over the past decade. Sometimes a little is all you need. In a world formed via the dreams of two slumbering titans, the…
By Mike Fahey Published June 13, 2012 -
ReviewsLollipop Chainsaw: The Kotaku Review
You could pick Suda51’s work—like Killer7 or the more recent No More Heroes and Shadows of the Damned—out of a line-up. The art style is cartoonish, as are the characters. Memorable protagonists like the vulgar-mouthed tough guy Garcia “Fucking” Hotspur or the lascivious Travis Touchdown turned juvenile humor into compelling, tongue-in-cheek delight. And the combat…
By Tina Amini Published June 12, 2012 -
Reviews
McDonald’s Snack Wraps: The Snacktaku Review
A few years back the international nutrition conspiracy struck a powerful blow against the forces of eating, launching one of the most effective smear campaigns since cream cheese met bagels. The message was simple” Bread will kill you; eat tortillas instead. It’s a completely ridiculous idea that was immediately embraced by the people of the…
By Mike Fahey Published June 11, 2012 -
ReviewsGravity Rush : The Kotaku Review
I used to have extremely vivid dreams of flying in my teen years. They were accompanied by powerful physical sensations, where it’d feel like a locus of energy around my forehead made me able to defy gravity. Sometimes I could control that energy and other times it would pull me along. If I close my…
By Evan Narcisse Published June 1, 2012 -
ReviewsResistance: Burning Skies: The Kotaku Review
The PlayStation Vita has two analog sticks and can run some of the same games that are on the PlayStation 3. That’s good news for Sony’s wonderful handheld hardware and bad news for Resistance: Burning Skies a mediocre new first-person shooter that has no excuses for underachieving. Burning Skies is the fifth game in a…
By Stephen Totilo Published May 29, 2012 -
ReviewsThe All-Female Phoenix Wright Musical is Better Than the Game
Phoenix Wright: Ace Attorney is quite a powerhouse franchise in Japan. There have been no less than six games (selling millions of copies in Japan alone) and even a feature film. But back in 2009, Capcom and the Takarazuka Revue took the series into another medium with a musical based on this game series. The…
By Richard Eisenbeis Published May 25, 2012 -
ReviewsThe Origin EON-11s is an Impressive Gaming Machine Masquerading as a Netbook
The bigger the gaming laptop is, the more powerful it is. At least that’s been the experience I’ve had in my gaming laptop-reviewing career. A bigger chassis means more bells and whistles, better heat management, and a larger, more vivid display. I’ve equated smaller size with sacrifice, so when Origin PC first unveiled the EON-11s,…
By Mike Fahey Published May 23, 2012 -
ReviewsDragon’s Dogma: The Kotaku Review
Reading about Dragon’s Dogma, Capcom’s latest title that ventures into open-world fantasy territory, is like viewing the game through rose-tinted glasses. Capcom is clearly trying new things that seem inventive. I want to love Dragon’s Dogma. I want to be able to support a game that tries its hand at something new, and hope that…
By Tina Amini Published May 23, 2012 -
Reviews
The Massive Delivers a Chilling, Water-Logged Look at the End of the World
Most pop-culture apocalypses crank up the volume, right? Whether it’s alien invasions or natural disasters, the end of civilization as we know it tends usher in a whole lot of noise pollution. So, the palpable silence left by mankind’s near-extinction happens so quietly is one of the best things about The Massive Now, of course,…
By Evan Narcisse Published May 22, 2012 -
ReviewsGhost Recon: Future Soldier: The Kotaku Review
Ubisoft’s Ghost Recon franchise has always occupied the “tactical military shooter” space a bit uneasily. The series initially focused on brutally lethal engagements in long, outdoor spaces but with the Advanced Warfighter games of the mid-2000’s evolved to cast the player as a technologically enhanced one-man army, pitting him against tanks, helicopters, and platoons of…
By Kirk Hamilton Published May 22, 2012 -
ReviewsDiablo III: The Kotaku Review
Plagued with disconnects and shot through with lag, the May 15 launch of Diablo III had players and press alike railing against the always-online nature of the latest entry in the genre-defining action role-playing series. While not entirely unexpected, those unfortunate events punctuated the problems with requiring constant external server access for a single-player game.…
By Mike Fahey Published May 21, 2012 -
ReviewsGame of Thrones: The Kotaku Review
I’ll confess: I really wanted to start this review with a choice quote from George R.R. Martin’s A Song of Ice and Fire novels. “Winter is coming” is played, I just did a riff on “You Know Nothing, Jon Snow” the other week… maybe a less common one, like, “Jon Snow flexed his sword hand”…
By Kirk Hamilton Published May 18, 2012 -
ReviewsStarhawk: The Kotaku Review
Starhawk is a third-person shooter. Actually, scratch that, let me try again: Starhawk is a fighter-pilot game. Although… only sort of. Maybe Starhawk is a real-time strategy game. This is all getting complicated. How about: Starhawk is a Western, in space. And a fun one. Yes. Let’s go with that. The truth is, Starhawk takes…
By Kate Cox Published May 16, 2012 -
Reviews
This Graphic Novel Shows The Horrific Costs of Modern Warfare
Shooters protagonist Terry Glass isn’t that different from the kind of character you’d play in a Medal of Honor, Battlefield or Call of Duty game. He’s a fictional American soldier fighting in the geopolitical hotspots where America’s armed forces face off against disparate, tough-to-pin-down threats. Young, handsome and affable, Glass fights for all the right…
By Evan Narcisse Published May 15, 2012 -
ReviewsMax Payne 3: The Kotaku Review
“This isn’t going to end well.” Start up Max Payne 3 and the first menu screen just loops an endless sequence of the title character sitting alone drinking and smoking. Stare at that for more than a minute and you can’t help but think those six words. It’s been almost a decade since we last…
By Evan Narcisse Published May 14, 2012 -
Reviews
Sizing Up China’s Home Video Game Console, the CT510
China’s first foray into creating a mainstream video game system is a solid try in the right direction, except the system isn’t a game system, it’s an Online Multimedia Motion-sensing Device. The eedoo CT-510 already exceeded my expectations when I first saw it, it did exactly what it set out to do, entertain while providing…
By Eric Jou Published May 14, 2012 -
Reviews
An Afternoon Spent With $350 Worth of Lara Croft
You know you’re about to unwrap something expensive when a box that you know contains a Tomb Raider collectible needs to be carried into my house by two people Sideshow’s new Lara Croft piece, announced last year but only just recently released, depicts the classic character as she appeared in 2010’s Guardian of Light (read…
By Luke Plunkett Published May 13, 2012 -
Reviews
The MSi GT70 Gaming Laptop’s Guts are Almost as Impressive as Its Keyboard
As a PC gamer that enjoys getting my hands on the latest hardware, the most exciting feature of MSi’s new GT70 laptop should be the 2.3GHz Core i7-3610QM quad-core Ivy Bridge CPU or its ridiculously speedy storage solution, a combination of a 7,200RPM 750GB hard drive and a pair of Samsung 64GB solid state drives.…
By Mike Fahey Published May 9, 2012 -
ReviewsWendy’s Fries in a Wendy’s Frosty: The Snacktaku Review
Anyone can open up a package and devour the contents, or order an item off a grease-smeared backlit plastic menu. The true connoisseur knows that the most transcendent snacking experience lies away from those convenient, often slippery beaten paths. It’s the enlightened snackster that looks at a pseudo chocolate milkshake and a salty cardboard container…
By Mike Fahey Published May 7, 2012
