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The Smartest & Dumbest Things Valve Did in 2012

Oh, Valve. If a company is doing this well, then you know there must be something incredibly sinister going on beneath the surface. I considered trying to infiltrate the shadowy ranks of Valve to uncover their origins (subterranean? Extraterrestrial? Cthulhoid?) but thought better of it for the sake of my health, and the fact that…

Sports Cover Voting Craze Gets Really Out of Hand, Goes Up to 126 Candidates

In 2010, Madden NFL 11 put its cover up to a popularity contest, giving fans three candidates for the honor of regressing to the mean in the coming season. Begun, the cover vote craze had. Two years later, the escalation in cover contests has reached five-blade razor proportions. Madden went from 32 to 64 nominees…

Gorgeous Games of 2012: Far Cry 3

Everyone loves a tropical island. Rolling green hills, crimson sunsets, crashing blue waves; when we think “paradise,” we think of the tropics. With its finely tuned engine and sprawling island setting, Far Cry 3 was easily one of the most gorgeous video games of the year. The drug sequences were awfully pretty, too. Of course,…

Bethesda announces new content coming for Rage (Yes, Rage) in The Scorchers DLC pack, out next Tuesday

Check Out Modern Combat 4 Played on the MOGA Controller

Yesterday the Power A folks celebrated the Android launch of Modern Combat 4: Ridiculous Dialog by giving away (or attempting to give away) free MOGA game controllers with copies of the game. If you managed to score one, this is what you’re in for. And if you didn’t mange to secure a controller, perhaps this…

Acclaimed Games Festival IndieCade Adds an East Coast Option with IndieCade East

Video game gatherings come in a few different flavors. GDC, as the name implies, is mostly for game developers and exists most as a professional networking/workshop space. The medium’s biggest hype machine is E3, where developers, marketers, press and select fans spread the excitement about upcoming games. But IndieCade—which has happened for the last few…

Military PC Case Showdown: Corsair Vengeance C70 vs. Thermaltake Level 10 GT

Gamers tend to take a lot of pride in building their own rigs, but it’s generally not enough to have top-notch performance without the looks to match. For those who wade deep into the enthusiast side of things, part of the fun of assembling a new machine is coordinating components so everything is pleasing to…

This Comedian Played Goldeneye 007 and Mario Kart to Get Boys to Like Her

Nowadays, you hear stories of video game true love all the time. Weddings and proposals themed around a couple’s favorite game are becoming increasingly common, as Kotaku has covered time and again. It seems like that nerdy nuptials may have been on the mind of comedian Beth Stelling back hen she was in grade school.…

Why Pay For This LOTR MOBA When The Best Ones Are Free?

Today, The Hobbit releases in theaters. While it looks like a video game, there’s an actual video game you can play: Guardians of Middle-Earth. It’s a Lord of The Rings MOBA game released in tandem with the movie. I’ve been playing Guardians lately. Guardians isn’t a bad title: it’s a standard, run of the mill…

Highgrounds is Deceptively Simple Multiplayer Strategy You Can Play in Your Browser

From Spry Fox, creators of the acclaimed (and cloned) Triple Town, comes a multiplayer strategy game so ingenious and accessible that you should probably just stop reading this and go play it. Of course that would require me telling you what it is first, so you’re stuck with me unless you quickly scan, and I’ve…

The Year in Arrows Starts Right Now!

On Feb. 12, 2012, Kotaku introduced “The Kotaku Network,” which brings you the best that TV has to offer: regularly scheduled programming. We hatched segments like Off-Kilter, Melodic, Sportaku, and Panel Discussion, and dedicated blocks of time on the site to their topics. But soon into this idea, a problem emerged: How do we let…

Fox News Expert Links Connecticut Shooting To Violent Video Games

We have yet to hear all the details on today’s horrific shooting in Newtown, Connecticut, which claimed the lives of 27 people this morning. News is still trickling in as we learn about what happened, how it happened, and why it happened. But Fox News is already bringing in experts to link the massacre to…

Today’s horror in Connecticut is on all our minds. If it’s something you want to talk about with each other, do so here.

The Press Row podcast, aka the most important podcast in sports video gaming, just released episode 7. Hear it here.

The Best Controls Of 2012

Video games are more than lasers and explosions, rules and design, music and graphics. They require input, and so they require controls. But human interface can be a dicy thing—so tough to get right, so easy to screw up. The games of 2012 have given us some fantastic new control schemes, interesting and satisfying ways…

Layoffs Reported At Machinima [Update]

The YouTube network Machinima seems to have laid off at least some of their staff. Details are still pouring in, and we’ll update this post as we hear more, but we’ve seen reports on Twitter about layoffs at the large video network. Update: This afternoon, a Machinima rep sent over the following statement: Today Machinima…

ChefVille ‘Ginger and Ginger’ Quests: Everything You Need to Know

Having trouble keeping enough Ginger on hand to cook ChefVille‘s new Christmas dishes? Ginger (the character) is here to help out with the launch of Ginger Crates. Similar to Pumpkin Hay Bales, these Ginger Crates can be tended only a few times before they disappear and need to be rebuilt. They’ve been released alongside two…

Here’s a 2013 Game You Should Be Excited About: Storyteller

Storyteller is an upcoming puzzle game about making stories. With a computer mouse, grab some characters, some objects, some captions and drop them into a few panels and see what tale they tell. Rearrange them to change the story. It’s that simple. Watch the game’s new trailer above. It’s that cool. Daniel Benmergui has been…

Baldur’s Gate 3 Was Almost Made Four Years Ago

Here’s a heartbreaker: Obsidian Entertainment was *this* close to starting work on Baldur’s Gate 3. They spent over a year negotiating the deal. And then the whole thing fell apart. Speaking to me as part of an extensive interview—which will be part of a larger feature on Obsidian that will be up on Kotaku Monday—Obsidian…

Go read the year’s cutest conversation about Super Mario between a five year old and her dad.