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Rift Breaks World Record For Virtual Love
Love was in the air in the world of massively multiplayer online role-playing game Rift last week, where players set a Guinness World Record for most in-game marriages in a 24-hour period. Rift tallied 21,879 marriages between 9am PST on February 14 and 9am PST on February 15. Assuming nobody decided to shack up with…
By Jason Schreier Published February 20, 2012 -
Who Cries for the Non-Player Characters?
We see them every day, but do we really look at them? When a nameless, faceless non-player character stumbles into your line of fire, who sheds a single tear? Commenter Sol does, and he wonders if you do as well in today’s Speak Up on Kotaku. Does anyone else feel sorry for NPCs? Strange question,…
By Mike Fahey Published February 20, 2012 -
Uncharted 3 Runs Away With Writing Award
The Writers Guild of America is a slight misnomer. In fact, there are two separate unions, WGA West and WGA East. But they work in tandem, and once a year they come together to celebrate the past year’s achievements in writing. The 2011 awards were presented on Sunday, February 19, in a simultaneous, shared event…
By Kate Cox Published February 20, 2012 -
Talk Amongst Yourselves
Praise be [Higher_Power_Of_Choice]! This is Kotaku’s official forum, known affectionately as Talk Amongst Yourselves, where we gather on a daily basis to discuss the joys and wonders of gaming all rolled up into one. Pit hasn’t yet made his return to a starring role in the upcoming 3DS title Kid Icarus: Uprising Apparently, Pan1da7—there’s no…
By Evan Narcisse Published February 20, 2012 -
MechAssault Creator Playing With Robots Once More
Day 1 Studios, the development studio behind MechAssault and F.E.A.R. 3, will release a new mech game called Reign of Thunder, it said today. There’s no info on platforms or a release date for the game, which sure looks a lot like MechAssault. All we know is that it stars giant robots attacking one another…
By Jason Schreier Published February 20, 2012 -
The Guild Wars 2 Beta Weekend Ends in Crash-Causing Chaos
To celebrate the successful press beta weekend for Guild Wars 2, the nice folks at ArenaNet gathered us all together in the main courtyard of Divinity’s Reach and killed us over and over again. The lag was bad enough with somewhere around a hundred members of the press and assorted ArenaNet staff bunched together in…
By Mike Fahey Published February 20, 2012 -
Ten Things I Learned From the Guild Wars 2 Beta Weekend
Of the more than a dozen hours I spent playing in the Guild Wars 2 press beta event this past weekend, seven involved actively battling enemies, three and a half were spent exploring, and a half hour was dedicated to creating my four different characters. The final hour involved trying to throw myself into a…
By Mike Fahey Published February 20, 2012 -
Interactive Mass Effect Fan Film Lets Viewers Go Paragon or Renegade
There’s quite a few fan-generated homages to Bioware’s sci-fi universe out on the interwebs but surprisingly few use the twist that “Assignment” does. Featuring two Alliance operatives named Hale and Meer, the clip by Sneaky Zebra Productions lets players choose between alternate endings pegged to Mass Effect’s signature good-guy Paragon or kind-of-a-jerk Renegade behavior poles.…
By Evan Narcisse Published February 20, 2012 -
I’m Not Excited About Transformers: Fall of Cybertron Just Because of Metroplex
In the next major Transformers video game, you will be able to issue orders to a massive, rampaging Metroplex. You will be about to control Bruticus. You will be able to transform, as Grimlock, from robot to Tyrannosaurus Rex. You’ll breathe flames from your jaws. You will be able to fulfill the fantasies not of…
By Stephen Totilo Published February 20, 2012 -
This Dude’s Fun
Nice Sweater | CHIBA, JAPAN: Japanese celebrity Tanoshingo showed off Sega’s new arcade game MaiMai in style. (Photo: GameImpressWatch) Mass Effect 3‘s Spectacular “Take Back the Earth” Trailer Gives Us All a Reason to Fight If last week’s teaser trailer for Mass Effect 3 got your juices flowing, you might want to grab a towel…
By Brian Ashcraft Published February 20, 2012 -
iPhone Belts? iPhone Flashlights? iPad Concrete? Oh China.
China’s Proview is taking Apple to court over the iPad moniker. While that looks to be one of Apple’s biggest legal headaches in China, it’s not its only one: Chinese companies are using patent law right and left to create a whole host of iPhone and iPad products. These products could ultimately dilute the iPad…
By Brian Ashcraft Published February 20, 2012 -
Breaking: Gabe Newell Grows Beard
Progress Score: Initially startling, but apprehension soon gives way to an appreciation of its wispy whiteness. Post-apocalyptic desert ranger meets Santa Claus. Most likely not a Half-Life Episode 3 tease. Most likely Valve’s Gabe Newell [Penny Arcade Report | Pic by Dabe Alan] UPDATE – Wow. This little thing generated some unexpected responses. For what…
By Luke Plunkett Published February 20, 2012 -
Pokémon on iTunes. Hello Scam!
While Pocket Monsters company GameFreak brought its monsters to iTunes last summer with Pokémon Say Tap?, this is not that app. Rather, this app is from “The House of Anime” and Daniel Burford. The hell? A quick iTunes search shows that this is the same outfit responsible for app versions of Digimon and Yu-Gi-Oh, including…
By Brian Ashcraft Published February 20, 2012 -
The Quality of Life in Virtual Worlds
They say that in life, nothing is certain but death and taxes. The cost of living in the real world seems to get harder each year as prices go up and the rich get richer. We, the little people, just have to deal with it. Virtual worlds don’t have troubles like ours, though. Sure, they…
Patrick Davidson Published February 20, 2012 -
Yankees Pitcher has one Hell of a Custom PlayStation 3
Yankees pitcher CC Sabathia – who we already know takes his video games seriously – has a very special, one-of-a-kind PlayStation 3. And it’s one that speaks directly to my tastes It’s wood-panelled! Pimped out like an old Telstar Classic. Sony made the console for Sabathia and emblazoned it with his number, a crown and…
By Luke Plunkett Published February 20, 2012 -
BioWare Trio Leave to Make a Strategy…RPG…Thing
Arnie Jorgensen, Alex Thomas and John Watson just spent over five years working on Star Wars: The Old Republic at BioWare. After which the perfect palette-cleanser seems to be leaving the studio to make their own game. That game is The Banner Saga, which the trio’s studio Stoic describes as “role-playing meets turn-based strategy, wrapped…
By Luke Plunkett Published February 20, 2012 -
The Very Best In Cosplay: Echow88
Today’s feature on the very best cosplayers in the world takes us to Indonesia, where we’re taking a look at the astounding work of Echow88. While some cosplayers can get by modelling characters with “basic” costumes, Echow88 goes all-out, appearing as the stars of games like Star Ocean 4, Kingdom hearts, Lineage II and Aion,…
By Luke Plunkett Published February 20, 2012 -
Want Your PS3 Games to Run Faster? Buy an SSD
The Xbox 360 and Wii are, if you want to stay under warranty, locked entities. You can’t upgrade them at all. The PS3, though, lets you swap out a hard drive, and with the coming of the age of solid state drives (SSD), this can result in big performance gains. Running a series of tests…
By Luke Plunkett Published February 20, 2012 -
Old Nintendo Game Contains Heart-Warming, Hand-Written Note
The story on a Reddit post from over the weekend goes like this. “My girlfriend bought an old copy of Animal Crossing. The surprise we found inside just made our day.” It’s made our day too. Located inside the box, and written in a style that to someone who once worked in childcare for six…
By Luke Plunkett Published February 20, 2012 -
This Amazing GoldenEye Homage Totally Nails it
If you’ve ever played the original GoldenEye on the Nintendo 64 – or even seen someone playing it – you’ll quickly see just how great this clip is. The fact it doesn’t just serve up the game itself, but YouTube playthroughs at the same time, only makes it twice as good.
By Luke Plunkett Published February 19, 2012