Microsoft

Team Fortress 2 With Little Dolls Is Just Too Cute To Handle

Made by a group of Source Filmmaker animators for Valve’s annual machinima competition, “Lil Guardian Pyro” tells the heartbreaking story of a miniature Pyro and other Team Fortress characters, in a way that you might think it’s one of Valve’s own animations. Here’s the full clip. Get ready for 4 minutes of cuteness overload: Lil…

Crimson Dragon: The Kotaku Review

Dragons—oh, I’ve killed dragons. Lots of dragons. I’ve collected dragon scales, I’ve made weapons out of dragon bones. I’ve even been able to speak the language of dragons. You’d think I’ve done it all, but no: before playing Crimson Dragon, I had never ridden a dragon before. This also means I’ve never played Panzer Dragoon—and…

Dead Rising 3: The Kotaku Review

The real world can be a frustrating place. Stuck in traffic, trapped in line at the supermarket… it always feels like there’s someone in the way. Certain games—the Grand Theft Autos, the Dead Risings—show us a world where it’s okay to act on our worst, most violent impulses. Our forest of problems becomes a lawn…

Enemy Within, the expansion set to XCOM: Enemy Unknown added new character customization: Hair styles, color combinations—and a 1950s fedora. The result above (you can call him Fedora Mech) is the strangest—or coolest—looking soldier XCOM has ever seen. Dayshot is an image-based feature that runs every morning, showcasing some of the prettiest,funniest game-related screenshots and…

​Need for Speed Rivals: The Kotaku Review

Everyone in this year’s Need For Speed—racers and cops both—is an asshole. Neither side is likable. Thank God. It’s incredibly freeing to be a total, speed-obsessed jerk, especially when it’s accompanied by amazing visuals and intense velocity. Way to welcome us to next-gen, Need For Speed Rivals Viewed on PlayStation 4, Rivals will make your…

Fable Re-Rated Because Sex is A “Reward”

This is strange. Very strange. When Fable was originally released on the first Xbox the game’s Australian rating was ‘M’. Today the Australian Classification Board revealed that Fable: Anniversary, the HD remastered version of Fable for the Xbox 360, would be rated R18+. Adults only. The reason? “Sexual activity related to incentives and rewards”. Very…

The Same People Worked On The Xbox One And PlayStation Commercials

The guys at Bluraren’t the only studio making top-shelf commercials for the video game business. The team at visual effects outfit The Mill have worked on loads of them as well, including some of this year’s best and most prominent. The video below is the studio’s showreel for the year, and while it contains footage…

The PS4 And Xbox One, Side-By-Side

Picture this as a very intimate cage-fight, or an even more intimate snuggle between colleagues. Up to you. German site PCGames has gotten hold of both an Xbox One and a PS4, and doing what the internet wants them to do, put them next to each other. And on top of each other. There’s a…

Nice shot! Who says there’s nothing to do in Battlefield 4 while you wait for friends? Apart from the bulletproof basketball, the Frostbite 3 engine seems to be working as intended. Better try this shot with C4 next time! Dayshot is an image-based feature that runs every morning, showcasing some of the prettiest,funniest game-related screenshots…

This Xbox One Takes Around 13 Seconds To Boot Up

Microsoft’s Larry Hryb has posted a short clipshowcasing how long it takes an Xbox One to boot up from a Kinect voice command. I timed it at 13.3 seconds. That’s going from the moment he stops talking to the point where the dashboard pops up ready for user input, which seems to me the most…

Someone Stuck an Xbox One at the Bottom of a Shark Tank in New Zealand

Sorry, New Zealand—you are not the site of the first Xbox One to be sold in the world, despite this promotional stunt involving an Auckland aquarium. About 150 folks already have theirs and didn’t have to swim to the bottom of a shark tank for it. But Microsoft pressed ahead with this anyway because, hell,…

Otherwise harmless little things, like the bunny mask from Team Fortress 2, can have a huge impact. For example, it can get someone in the Steam Community to pay homage to Hotline Miami with the game’s characters (complete with 80s sunglasses) in a really stunning way. Dayshot is an image-based feature that runs every morning,…

Watch Xbox One’s ‘Snap’ Multitasking In Action

Not to be outdone by Sony’s PS4 launch week extravaganza, Microsoft today released this video showing off how the Xbox One’s sleek Snap feature will work. That’s how you’ll multitask if you get yourself the newest Xbox, which launches on November 22. We’ll have a full review (and much more coverage) for you next week.

And The Lost Twin Brother Of Big Boss Is None Other Than…

So it looks like it’s not just Ellie from The Last of Us with a twin sister. Joel has one too: Big Boss from Metal Gear Solid: Ground Zeroes. Not to mention the artwork looks pretty much the same, too. Plus “Stealth of Us” is an anagram of The Last of Us Joelid Snake –…

Witness The Glory Of A 64-Man Battlefield 4 Base Jump

It takes up a lot of time and dedication, organizing an event where a full server of 64 people jump off a skyscaper in Battlefield 4, but it’s totally worth the effort. This is so much better than any of those precise and fast killshots that normally dominate Battlefield montages. If you attempt to do…

I shouldn’t like to be in Batman’s shoes when he has to face enemies like this in Batman: Arkham Origins That is just truly horrifying. Dayshot is an image-based feature that runs every morning, showcasing some of the prettiest,funniest game-related screenshots and art that we can find. Send us suggestions if you’vegot them. To contact…

Watch an Early Xbox One Owner Set Up His Console

Even if it’s a “small number”—we’ve heard 150—you can see why Target sending out Xbox Ones early is such a screwup. Here are a series of videos showing the console as it is set up by a user, apparently in Texas, who also got an early delivery. Yesterday, Stephen Totilo got a tweet from a…

Meet The Guy Who Got The Xbox One Early

Before Monday, André Weingarten figured he was out of luck. A devoted Xbox user from day one—he replaced two red-ringed 360s—Weingarten didn’t have a preorder down for the newest console. Then, lo and behold, Target had them in stock online. And then, incredibly, Weingarten had an Xbox One on his doorstep four days later. “I…

If you’re a Comcast subscriber and you can’t connect to Xbox Live no, it’s not just you. A lot of people are reporting the same thing. We’ve pinged Microsoft and a Comcast rep. “Both teams are working together for a resolution,” says Xbox Live support.

If You Get an Xbox One Early, You Can’t Connect it to Xbox Live

Microsoft has acknowledged Target’s screwup, which sent out some preordered Xbox Ones two weeks before the console’s launch, and said that anyone who does get one early will be unable to connect it to Xbox Live. This is the full statement sent to Kotaku by a Microsoft spokesperson: Due to a retail partner’s system issue,…