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Obama Compares Health Insurance To Buying A PlayStation

Earlier this month, president Barack Obama mentioned Microsoft’s Xbox as a way to frame the government shutdown. Today, it’s PlayStation’s turn: this time, Obama’s comparing health insurance to Black Friday sales. Clearly the president of the United States understands how important it is to stay neutral in this high-stakes next-gen console war. If you’re the…

Local TV: Sexy Game Characters ‘Worse Than Watching Miley Cyrus Twerk’

This local news report has all of the ingredients: Sex, teenage girls, the exploitation of them, video games, and a respected university’s research. Here to synthesize it all for us is Life Coach Jenn Lee: “This is even worse than watching Miley Cyrus twerk.” If you’re wondering why a “Life Coach” is competent to speak…

Halo‘s Half-Assed ‘Mister Chief’ Immortalized as an Xbox Live Avatar

Mister Chief came to us nearly 10 years ago, filling in for a Halo 2 promotional poster on the good ol’ Bungie Weekly Update. “A terrible idea that snowballed out of control,” says his creator. Now Mister Chief’s perpetually constipated, teeth-gritting expression finds its way to an Xbox Live avatar costume. Mister C. is the…

Here’s what’s going on Talk Among Yourselves, our reader-written blog: YourMotherIsAClassyLady pours some Last-Gen Zeroes hate on Square Enix. Kbabz writes up a playthrough of the entire Mass Effect trilogy. And DamsonRhee enshrines the Borderlands games as Last-Gen Heroes And you can always go join the voices talking about video games and life in TAY…

Damn, First-Person Pokémon Is Brutal

“Super-effective?” Well, that doesn’t sound like it hurts very much. Overall, the attacks in the Pokémon games haven’t ever really felt dangerous. You’ll re-think that after watching this video. This Pikachu vs. Bulbasaur video comes via Filipe Costa, who’s given Mario the same treatment. Watching Pikachu dodge attacks adds a tension to that the typical…

The good news is there’s going to be a lot of extra stuff in WWE 2K14 The bad news is they want you to buy a $20 season pass for it. Three packs contain extra wrestlers—including the NWO—and others will have customization options and loads of extra wrestling moves. Details here and in this video.

A Look Back at Eighteen Years of PlayStation (to Make You Feel Old)

Sony Europe released this tribute video today, a stylized look at 18 years of gaming with PlayStation consoles on that continent. Wait a minute, this dude has lived in the same room for 18 years? Kidding; this isn’t meant to be taken literally, it’s just an amalgamation of all the things you might remember about…

Here’s what went down during the overnight shift: Studio Accused Of Blocking YouTube Vid Over Criticism The Best Cutscene This Generation Shot A Noodle Shop In The Guts First-Person Firefighting Looks Intense It’s A Dark Day For Cosplay

Garchomp, use Plunge to Your Death! As Redditor Krshaw18 points out, Pokemon bridge logic falls short. Funny, everything else made so much sense. 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’ve got them.

LEGO Optimus Prime Lights Our Darkest Hour

One of the great crimes of the modern era is that Kre-o has the license for Transformers “building block” toys, and not LEGO. Never mind. We’ve always got fans stepping in where companies fail, and in this case, it’s Alex Jones, who’s made an Optimus Prime so good that it doesn’t even really look like…

It’s Windows XP. For The…Nintendo Famicom.

If you’re the type to fear Windows 8 and seek solace in the arms of something older, you can always go left field and not only step back to Windows XP, but do it on a Nintendo console from the 1980s. This wonderful bootleg does nothing more than emulate the Windows XP. The splash screen,…

The Best Cutscene This Generation Was A Shootout For The Ages

Let me tell you what I think makes a good cutscene: it’s got to be something you want to watch over and over and over. Something that stands out from the routine of general gameplay, sticks in the mind and elevates a piece of story-telling from text in a bubble to something genuinely cinematic. These…

It’s A Dark Day For Cosplay

HDR photography may make everybody involved look like giant action figures, but I’ll be damned if it doesn’t also take very pretty pictures. I’m speaking about the BioShock Infinite picture here, which while making their faces look weird, really makes the fabric on those costumes pop, where we might otherwise have overlooked it! As for…

First-Person Firefighting Looks Intense

For the past few days, some of the worst bushfires in Australian history have been burning across the state of New South Wales. Hundreds of homes have been lost, and the fires are so big that my hometown of Canberra, 300km away, was blanketed in smoke for much of the weekend. This is what it…

Studio Accused Of Blocking YouTube Vid Over Criticism [UPDATE]

TotalBiscuit, a YouTube gaming critic, is one of the most popular “personalities” on the service. When he says a game is rubbish, people notice. And when the company behind that game tries to get his criticism taken offline, more people notice. Earlier this month, he posted a look at a game called Day One: Garry’s…

Oh hi, PlayStation Vita version of Fez.

Search Engine Update Turns Your iPad into a Pokédex

Yes, there’s a Pokedex app for iOS—two actually, one official, another (better) one fan made. But you don’t need to download either to turn an iPhone or an iPad into a Pokédex. Just ask Siri. That’s because, as VentureBeat points out, the Wolfram Alpha database just added data for all Pokémon through their first five…

Bungie will post beta codes for Destiny this week on the game’s Facebook page, if you’re trying to get into it but haven’t preordered. The studio says the codes will be given out randomly each day. The beta should begin in early 2014. [via StrategyInformer]

Creepy Suspect Blamed for Electronics Going Haywire

Crime is a constant feature of video games writing. Somewhere, someone is doing something illicit with them—sometimes comically stupid, sometimes tragic. Kotaku‘s Police Blotter is here to round up the latest in games crime. All suspects are innocent until proven guilty in a court of law. leads Slender in suspicious Man sighting MASON, Mich.—Cops responding…

Space Invaders‘ Creator Says He Would Have Made It ‘Far Easier’

At 69, Tomohiro Nishikado readily admits he’s bad at video games. That’s not unusual for a man his age, but he was bad at them when he was making them, specifically Space Invaders. “Had it been left up to me, Space Invaders would have been a far easier game,” he told The New Yorker Nishikado…