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A Super-Technical Look At The Lighting Of BioShock Infinite

Programmers don’t generally have reels, but we do have blogs. I’ve been explaining the rendering work I did on BioShock Infinite quite a bit due to recent events, and I thought it made sense to write some of it down. For the bulk of development, I was the only on-site graphics programmer. As Principal Graphics…

Today’s selection of articles from Kotaku‘s reader-run community: Adventure Time: Card Wars: The TAY Review • Phoenix Wright: Ace Attorney vs. Danganronpa • Console vs. Handheld TAY Classic—TAY Open Forum—Beginner’s Guide To TAY Follow them here.

After Delays, Watch Dogs Is Finally Out This May

After a delay from November, the open-world sci-fi game Watch Dogs will release on May 27, publisher Ubisoft announced today. Here’s a new story trailer for the game. It’ll be out for PS4, PS3, Xbox 360, Xbox One, and PC. The Wii U version will come “at a later date,” Ubisoft says. (Will it, though?…

There’s Pretty Much No Reason To Buy An Ouya Anymore

First came the Ouya Android microconsole. Then came Mad Catz’s M.O.J.O. Android microconsole. Today Mad Catz announces the M.O.J.O. microconsole will be playing host to Ouya content. I am so confused. This is all due to Ouya’s recent decision to allow the Ouya experience to be embedded in other Android devices. They call it Ouya…

Tony Hawk Explains the Back to the Future Hoverboard Prank

While you don’t need Tony Hawk to realize that the HUVr Back to the Future hoverboards were fake, the legendary skateboarder still felt it needed some explanation. It still looks awesome, though. HUVr Tech – Tony Hawk Reveals Hoverboard Prank [RIDE Channel, YouTube] To contact the author of this post, write to: [email protected]

‘Marvel vs. Seinfeld’ and Other Games No One Asked For

Once again, Pete Holmes shows off his favorite fictional games, and while some of them might sound horrible (I don’t even wanna touch something called Middle-Age Mutant Ninja Turtles!), some have potential: My Newman, Soup Nazi, Bob Sacamano (he’d be a secret character I guess) trio would beat anyone with ease. All The Games: Number…

Rust with David Attenborough is a Peaceful Adventure

The last things that come to one’s mind when playing Rust are its relaxing ecosystem and Mother Nature (well, unless you count all those naked characters). And while the game might not have a calm narrator, here’s YouTuber Penal Cast, and a funny, Planet Earth-ish take on the otherwise intense sandbox game. Planet Rust –…

Kerbal Space Program to Introduce NASA-Backed Asteroid-Wrangling DLC

Yes, soon you’ll be able to do in Kerbal Space Program whatNASA wants to do in real life. Of course, in this case, it won’t take decades of careful research. And it will probably involve a lot more explosions. KSP developer Squad and NASA are collaborating on a mission-slash-content pack called Asteroid Redirect Mission, named…

Princess Peach Is Ready To Kick Ass And Take Names

When Alexia Jean Grey cosplays as Princess Peach, she doesn’t go for puffy dresses and a smile. She channels Peach: Warrior Princess. Inspired by Peach’s performances in the Smash Bros. series, the outfit is made almost entirely out of worbla, a thermoplastic from the future. The pics here were taken by Travis Photography; there are…

A Shooter Where You Don’t Shoot, You Program

Glitchspace might look like the Mirror’s Edge expansion, and appear to show you running around holding a gun, but this is a game about puzzles. And programming. You spend the game running around a cyberspace environment, looking for glitches. When you find a puzzle, you don’t just slide a block; the game’s developers have built…

A New DirectX Is Coming

I hope you didn’t get too comfortable with DirectX 11, because DirectX 12 is right around the corner. Microsoft has released a teaser image, showing that more info will be revealed at GDC (on March 20). That gives you just under two weeks to get the fear, paranoia and Windows 8 jokes out of your…

Timesplitters Custom Action Figure

Sergeant Cortezfrom Timesplitters custom action figure.

In Which I Overreact To The Homeworld Remake Box Art

Look, I was happy enough that Gearbox was just going to be re-releasing Homeworld so that modern operating systems (and widescreen monitors) could actually play them properly. But that’s not what they’re doing. No, they’ve gotten carried away. In a good way. Instead of simply putting in some HD textures and optimising the code, Relic’s…

A Vita game I can’t stop playing: If you’ve got a Vita, check out Surge Deluxe, a highly enjoyable (and addictive) electro-charged tile-matching game from Futurlab. At a certain point it clicks, and you’ll be hooked. Futurlab’s next game will be Velocity 2X for Vita and PS4.

How To Get The Best Deals At GameStop: Dumpster Dive

Ever wonder what happens to your games and gear after you trade them in to Gamestop? Some games, obviously, get put back on the shelves—the hope is to resell them. But not everything gets resold. A fascinating report by IGN details the hidden world of dumpster diving—it turns out that Gamestop sometimes throws away games…

The Xbox One’s Controller Now Has “Increased Sensitivity”

Last month, Titanfall developers Respawn said that, after consultation with Microsoft, some changes were going to be made to the Xbox One’s controller. Now we know exactly what those changes were. The statements, from Respawn’s design lead Justin Henry, said the original controller input “was a little overly twitchy”, and that a pending update would…

Killstreaks: Tell Us How You Really Feel

Ah, the killstreak. A single idea that changed the face of multiplayer shooters. All these years later, has its time finally come? Is it time for the world to leave the killstreak behind? The killstreak is a multiplayer game feature popularized by Call of Duty, but these days the concept turns up in other games…

Glitches Turn Surgery Into A Massacre

Surgery means dealing with blood, guts and sharp instruments. Playing a game means dealing with bugs and wonky physics. So it shouldn’t be surprising to hear that a surgery game might feature some bloody nightmare fuel whenever things go wrong. The glitches above come from the iPad version of Surgeon Simulator,the silly simulation game where…

A Game of Pac-Man That’s Also A Mesmerizing Symphony

It’s always lovely when the cultural iconography of gaming fuses with other forms of art to become something new, wonderful and different. Six Pacmen is one such work of art. Six Pacmen is an interactive performance piece by Tacit Group and an adaptation of a piano composition named Six Pianos by famed minimalist composer Steve…

​Batman’s Next Game Won’t Revolve Around His Greatest Enemy

The story for Batman: Arkham Knight picks up one year after the events of the preceding game, 2011’s Arkham City. A whole lot has changed in Bruce Wayne’s hometown, including the fact that crime is at an all-time low. Part of it is because someone pretty central to Gotham’s criminal ecosystem is laying very low.…