Uncategorized

Nintendo’s Commercial For Luigi’s Mansion 2 Is Straight-Up 90s

Grab your Gushers, kids. This new commercial for the second Luigi’s Mansion—out March 24 for 3DS—feels straight out of 1995. That’s not a bad thing, of course. Nothing like some good old 90s nostalgia to brighten up your Friday afternoon.

A Vicious Man-Eating Worm Chases You Through This Week in Gaming Apps

Any discussion of the games I’ve played over the past week is not complete without a reference to the humongous worm with sharp teeth that chased with such persistence I never even got around to writing it up. But this isn’t the place to praise Worm Run for the excellent sense of tension it generates.…

BioShock Infinite‘s Pre-Order Scheme Is A Bold Step In Consumer Manipulation

Each week it feels like the video game industry is coming up with new ways to get you to pre-order games. Packaged bonuses, collectors’ edition cases, limited edition figures, in-game items, early access to betas, and more. Today, Irrational Games announced new Steam pre-order incentives for their hotly anticipated action game BioShock Infinite. The rewards…

The Thing I’m The Most Excited About On The PS4 Isn’t The Game Lineup Or Hardware

There was one feature—should Sony actually deliver on their lofty promises with the PS4—that left me feeling rather excited. It wasn’t the games, or the hardware. To Sony’s credit, that stuff seems cool—I’m digging the new triggers on the controllers and Watch Dogs touches on great subjects—but not as cool as a feature that is…

These City Skylines Prove Just How Far Video Game Graphics Have Come

Wednesday’s PlayStation 4 event showed us what next-gen graphics are capable of, so if you had any doubts that game environments could grow even better looking and more detailed, they’re probably now gone. Cities and city skylines in general were always a perfect way to show how beautiful a game is, so we collected some…

ChefVille ‘This Calls for Cake’ Quests: Everything You Need to Know

Observant chefs probably noticed the addition of Cake Batter as an option within the ChefVille Mixers. But we’ve just learned what the addition was for. Ever since ChefVille first launched, players have been longing to cook desserts, and it’s finally that time via the release of the Cake Oven, Cake Display Case, and more. There…

The Lack Of Women Presenters At The PS4 Event Is Bigger Than Sony

The consensus on Wednesday’s post about the lack of women presenters at Sony’s PS4 event was rather uniform: there were no women at the PlayStation 4 reveal, because obviously there aren’t women in high positions and the project leads just happen to be male. “The reason there were no women on-stage is because the presidents…

If You Like JRPGs, It’s Time To Start Speaking Up

I spent my Wednesday night sitting in Kotaku‘s office, gulping down coffee and furiously typing as I watched Sony announce their new PlayStation, a revolutionary device that will let you play games where you shoot people with guns. And as they banged out one announcement after the other, my mind kept roaming to a single…

The Incredible Rise and Fall of a Hacker Who Found the Secrets of the Next Xbox and PlayStation—And Maybe More

The first thing that ever puzzled me about the man I used to know as SuperDaE was that he didn’t sound Australian. I couldn’t detect an accent. SuperDaE told me back then, during our first long-distance call from New York to wherever he was Down Under, that he got that a lot. He swore to…

DayZ Dev Shows Us What A Convincing Zombie Moves Like

Boy does motion capture—the process involved in animating digital characters—looked darned goofy sometimes. This is especially true when you’re pretending to eat a human, apparently. Here’s the latest DayZ standalone video blog, which features the mind behind DayZ, Dean Hall, along with other members of Bohemia Interactive. Dean is suited up in a mocap suit,…

PC Tomb Raider Will Be So Much Better Than Console, If Your Rig Is Up to It

Rejoice, computer gaming Tomb Raider fans—when Lara returns to her home turf this March she’ll be bringing along a treasure trove of PC-centric bells and whistles that’ll make the console versions look downright sad in comparison. Let’s see if your system has the juice to run them. Tomb Raider started on the PC, and Crystal…

A Mysterious Next-Gen Project Sponsored By Bill Gates, And Other Gaming Secrets

In his LinkedIn profile, a Seattle engineer who joined Activision as vice president of research and development this month states that he is “looking for graphics and systems software developers in the Greater Seattle area,” seemingly suggesting that the publisher is establishing an office in Washington. (Presumably this is unrelated to Bungie and Destiny, as…

What Sonic Might Play Like, If Sonic Were Invented in 2013

Magnets, man. They make you go fast. Major Magnet looks like Sonic a little, even though Sonic is a hedgehog and Magnet’s protagonist is a pudgy, big-nosed hero. Major Magnet kind of sounds like Sonic at times, too. As far as I can tell, these similarities are intentional—but, unlike Sonic, Major Magnet is an iOS…

A retro adventure game based on the worst movie of all-time, Manos: The Hands of Fate is now available on Android

If PS4 Games Only Cost $60, They’re Actually Cheaper Than PS3 Games

On CNBC last night, Sony CEO Jack Tretton implied that games for the company’s newly-announced PlayStation 4 won’t retail for more than $60. “We’re gonna welcome free-to-play models, games from 99 cents up to those 60 dollar games,” he said. Later, he added: “We’ll justify that $60 price point.” That might come as welcome news…

In Fear I Trust Is a Game I Don’t Want to Know About

What I know about In Fear I Trust: It’s developed by Turn Me Up Games in conjunction with Black Wing Foundation. It’s built on Unreal Engine 3, and looks wonderfully creepy. It’s an episodic psychological thriller set in 1979, and the first three of ten episodes are due out this spring for iOS. It’s got…

Why Your Board Game Collection Needs Some German-Style Games

Board games are big business now! I’ve been screaming this for so long that my lungs resemble two teabags flapping in a breeze. Excitingly, this means every week I get a tweet, email or text from someone who’s started their board game collection. I’m hoping that includes you, my favourite reader (I have other readers…

This Week’s iPad Charts: What Happens When You Set the Zombies Free

Last week it was Infinity Blade, this week it’s Plants Vs. Zombies. It’s really not fair to the real free games when you temporarily give away wildly popular paid iPad games you guys. Poor Temple Run 2. It was on top of the free iPad app world at one point. Now it’s got Monsters, Inc.…

Hungry for more Dreamfall? The devs are streaming the 2006 game and commenting live on TwitchTV, starting at 12PM EST.

Even Sony Doesn’t Know Yet What the PS4 Will Look Like

Thought it was odd that Sony didn’t show off the PS4 at… a PS4 reveal? Well, you’re not alone! It was odd. But it was also understandable, seeing as how, you know, Sony doesn’t know what the final retail machine will look like, either. In an interview after this week’s unveiling, Hiroshi Kawano, President of…