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Road Reggie Winners
We got the ‘Shop Contest back on the track last week thanks to Nintendo of America honcho Reggie Fils-Aime and a life-size Luigi bumble-bee kart. Cygnus_Mal chucked the spiny shell at 19 other contestants, so he finishes first! The usual gallery of lunacy awaits inside! aardvarkattack (2)catches Reggie stuck in morning traffic on I-5. lemonmanlemonman…
By Owen Good Published December 10, 2011 -
No TV? Watch the Spike Video Game Awards Here, Live
If you’re somewhere without a cable television or, worse, no television at all, you can still follow the action from tonight’s 2011 Spike Video Game Awards live, right here. Courtesy of Spike and MTV Networks, we’re glad to bring you live streaming video of the broadcast. A half-hour pre-show begins at 7:30 pm, which you…
By Owen Good Published December 10, 2011 -
A ‘Big 64’ of College Football Sounds Like a Nice Idea, Until You Try It in a Video Game
For the past two years, Stick Jockey has, at the end of the season, used EA Sports’ NCAA Football to supply an alternate-reality simulation of a postseason involving a true college football playoff, one that invites every conference champion. I’ve become resigned to the utter fantasy of this idea ever happening in my lifetime. What…
By Owen Good Published December 10, 2011 -
The Next Metal Gear Game is Brought to you by Bayonetta’s Developers
It appears the trailer for the next Metal Gear game, Metal Gear Rising, has leaked ahead of the Spike Video Game Awards. If it’s real, it contains an interesting little conclusion. The trailer ends with the revelation that Rising , which has long been out of the public eye, is now being “produced” by Hideo…
By Luke Plunkett Published December 10, 2011 -
Indie Developers Unhappy with their Placement in the New Xbox Dashboard
If you count the directions keyed on the D-pad (or the left stick) it takes 17 button presses to reach the Indie Games section of the Xbox Live Marketplace under the new Xbox dashboard, which released this week. It takes only eight buttons to get to the Xbox Live Arcade and Games on Demand catalogs.…
By Owen Good Published December 10, 2011 -
Next Year’s Games and This Year’s Winners, Live on Both Coasts, at the Spike VGAs Tonight
Oh man. Heisman Trophy? or Spike Video Game Awards? Heisman Effing Trophy? Or Spike Effing Video Game Awards? We have this problem every year. Actually, I’m going Spike, because the Heisman, unlike the VGAs, doesn’t tell you what next year’s big games will be. Ostensibly an awards gala, the VGAs’ biggest news value is in…
By Owen Good Published December 10, 2011 -
Club Nintendo Coins Will Soon Buy Virtual Console Games
Nintendo Coins, the virtual currency Club Nintendo members receive for doing things like registering their game and hardware purchases and answering surveys, will soon be able to buy Virtual Console games, according to an announcement that was briefly live on the Club Nintendo site. NeoGAF user Spike took that screenshot before the news was taken…
By Owen Good Published December 10, 2011 -
Skyrim’s Flying Louis Letrush and His Amazing Bear Flambeau
That’s the thing about The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim; even the game’s many bugs are spectacular. Take, for instance, this video. You think: So what, one of the game’s character’s, Louis Letrush, running on a running horse. Seen it! But have you seen the bard using his horse’s ears as a set of parallel bars,…
By Brian Crecente Published December 10, 2011 -
Buy Bulk and Save
If you’re shopping for yourself or more than one gamer this holiday season, this is the weekend to go. Major retailers continue to offer combination deals for buying two or more titles. The Moneysaver has more than 50 bargains on hardware, software, and digital downloads. Check them out now! Software • GameStop offers Buy 2,…
By Owen Good Published December 10, 2011 -
Xbox Live is Free This Weekend in Europe [Corrected]
On the heels of the new dashboard rollout this week, Xbox Live’s Gold level services are free to all this weekend. In addition to multiplayer gaming, features like Video Kinect are also available to Silver (free) subscribers. The weekend includes free previews and discounts on downloadable films (like The Hangover) as well. Enjoy. [Correction] I…
By Owen Good Published December 9, 2011 -
Oh, Good. More Duke Nukem DLC Coming Next Week
Can’t get enough Duke Nukem? (That’s—I say, that’s a rhetorical question, son, you’re not supposed to answer it.) Well, good. Gearbox done whomped up even more DLC for the game. Give the devils their due, despite a withering, almost universal critical rejection of Duke Nukem, Gearbox Software and 2K are earnest in their post-release support,…
By Owen Good Published December 9, 2011 -
Minecraft’s Blocky Water Made Wondrous, Shimmering, Natural
I’m a HUGE Minecraft fan. Sure, it could use a bit more hand-holding, but in general I’m a big fan of the game and how much it coaxes creativity out of everyone who plays it. I even like the way the game looks. So when Luke detailed how to pretty up the game, I pretty…
By Brian Crecente Published December 9, 2011 -
The Daily Show Gleefully Rips Into Free-To-Play Gaming
On Monday’s episode of The Daily Show with Jon Stewart, shouty correspondent Aasif Mandvi took on free-to-play iOS games like GameView’s Tapfish In the game, which is entirely free to download, players maintain an aquarium full of virtual fish. There’s a catch, of course—at some point your fish will probably die, and if you’d like,…
By Kirk Hamilton Published December 9, 2011 -
From Skyrim Meme to Lady’s Flesh
Skyrim‘s “Arrow in the Knee” meme didn’t only inspire an epic dubstep anthem. It also inspired this tattoo. As pointed out on Reddit, guards in the game often say, “I used to be an adventurer like you, until I took an arrow to the knee.” Tattoo artist Nikkisny originally uploaded the tattoo to website FunnyJunk,…
By Brian Ashcraft Published December 9, 2011 -
The Rookies Arrive This Weekend in NBA 2K12
With the NBA set to get back to work on Christmas, NBA 2K12 can start bringing in rookies who were drafted in June but went unsigned throughout the league’s lockout. Series producer Erick Boenisch told Kotaku last week that the game will drop in signings, trades and free agent moves as they happen, rather than…
By Owen Good Published December 9, 2011 -
What Are You Playing This Weekend?
This week I rediscovered my love for DC Universe Online thanks to its “Lightning Strikes” DLC, to the point I was up at 1 am last night and swearing at the television when I couldn’t connect to the server. MMOs are a helluva drug. I don’t know how I fell in with this one, probably…
By Owen Good Published December 9, 2011 -
Here is What a Kotaku Meet Up is Like
Every so often we at Kotaku try to throw meet up parties for our readers. Ever wonder what it’s like? Check out the video, and try to come to our next one! Like the music that’s playing? It’s by our own Kirk Hamilton, and you can listen to and download his whole album from bandcamp
By Chris Carolan Published December 9, 2011 -
The Man Behind The World’s Best Video Game Screenshots
Most photographers ply their trade by capturing snapshots of reality and preserving them on film. Through careful framing, posing, and a bit of luck, they seek to distill the essence of foreign lands, exotic vistas, war zones, and even distant planets. But what about the places we visit in video games? Games contain striking panoramas,…
By Kirk Hamilton Published December 9, 2011 -
If You’re Going to Add a Penis to a Game, Do it the Battlefield 3 Way
Few things confirm the ingenuity of gamers as effectively as the lengths they’ll go to add penises to video games that don’t include penises. Battlefield 3 may be a war video game full of phallic symbols, but it didn’t ship with drawings of genitalia. But the gamer in the clip here added one in the…
By Stephen Totilo Published December 9, 2011 -
What is FXAA?
Fast Approximate Anti-Aliasing may not be known by its name to many gamers, but they certainly do recognize its good looks, being used in such visually luxurious games as The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim, Batman: Arkham City and Battlefield 3 But what is it, really? It’s an improvement above three earlier iterations of anti-aliasing, rendering…
Jeff Atwood | Coding Horror Published December 9, 2011