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The Cost Of Playing Star Trek Online

Cryptic and Atari have announced the subscription rates for Star Trek Online, finally giving players an idea of the cost of playing the Trek-themed MMO, aside from sleep deprivation and a gradual loss of skin pigment. Cryptic is going with the current paid MMO standard of $14.99 a month for Star Trek Online, but there…

Should Video Games Permit Three-Player Arm Wrestling?

Yesterday, I found the line between reality and unreality that video games would not cross. It involved arm wrestling. I was visiting the offices of a public relations firm in Manhattan on Thursday to check out early builds of upcoming games from the publisher Hudson Entertainment. Among those was Deca Sports DS, the first portable…

Jack Bauer’s Calling

…from his Motorola i880, his mobile of choice. He wants to know if you are ready for Season 8 of 24, which premieres on January 17. What say you? Ping him back. No wonder Jack likes the i880—it has a 2.0 megapixel camera/camcorder, Walkie-Talkie features, GPS capabilities, Internet microbrowser, voice dialing and voice recorder. It…

BlazBlue Portable Strikes Stateside In March

The PSP version of Arc System Works’ BlazBlue comes to North America in March, complete with a new game mode, a shop full of unlockable content, and Unlimited versions of all twelve characters. Check out the announcement trailer. The 2D fighting game that confused the hell out of button mashers everywhere on the PlayStation and…

Kingdom Hearts Does Wonders For PSP In Japan

The release of Square Enix’s Kingdom Hearts: Birth By Sleep has given the PlayStation Portable a sales boost, while other platforms faltered this week. The PSP sits atop (and at the bottom of) this week’s hardware chart. The PSP moved nearly 150,000 units this past week in Japan, likely aided by the solid sales of…

Monday Night Combat Might Be The Xbox 360’s Most Violent New Sport

With a trailer that makes it look like a cross between Team Fortress 2 and Monday Night Football, here is Uber Entertainment’s Monday Night Combat, coming to Xbox Live Arcade. From the studio with the parkour-loving game developer. Official description: Monday Night Combat is a class-based, third-person shooter… and the most popular lethal sport of…

Phoenix Rises, Tom Petty Lives Next Week On Rock Band

Rock Band expands next week with a batch of live tracks from Tom Petty & The Heartbreakers, plus a smattering of new tunes from French rock darlings Phoenix and Southern flavored rockers Silvertide. The following new additions to the Rock Band library of songs will be available on Xbox 360 and Wii starting January 19…

It’s Humans Versus Cats In RISK: Factions

EA reveals the first two factions for its upcoming Xbox Live Arcade title RISK: Factions, with the humans and feline horde bringing an element of wackiness to the game than fans have not been missing for years. Silly factions do battle on the classic RISK map. On one side we have the stodgy, militaristic humans;…

Ken Levine Explains Irrational Switch, “Underwater Horse” Connection

Some time this year Ken Levine will finally let people know what game he and his studio are working on, the creative visionary behind BioShock told Kotaku today. Not yet. Today, he wanted to discuss the re-renamed Irrational Games. As reported earlier this week, 2K Boston, the lead development studio behind BioShock, System Shock, Freedom…

Surprise! Sonic Is The Only Playable Character In Project Needlemouse

Sega’s Project Needlemouse character reveal trivia contest is over, with Sonic the Hedgehog the last man standing, making him the only playable character in the game. The only thing that could make this news better is robot crabs. Sega kicked off a trivia challenge on Monday, with correct answers causing the names of potential playable…

Quantum Theory Screens

What Are You Playing This Weekend?

I’ll be basking in the soothing voiceover work of one Nolan North this weekend as I play an obscene amount of both Uncharted 2: Among Thieves and Assassin’s Creed II. I have Game of the Year research to do, arguments about Demon’s Souls to make and opinionated Kotaku editors to debate. Having not had much…

Dylan Cuthbert: Game Funding Model Is “Fundamentally Broken”

In an interview with Develop, Q-Games president Dylan Cuthbert discusses the “fundamentally broken” games funding model, saying it is geared towards “making publishers stinking rich.” Primarily working on the downloadable PSN PixelJunk series, Dylan Cuthbert doesn’t have much occasion to deal with the problems associated with the traditional relationship between publisher and developer, but that…

Kane & Lynch Devs Were “Bystanders” To Gerstmann Review Fiasco

Jeff Gerstmann, longtime game reviewer and one-time Kotaku podcast guest, is widely seen to have been fired from gaming site GameSpot in 2007 due to his negative review of Kane & Lynch. That game’s developers consider the episode “sad.” Blame GameSpot for firing a reviewer possibly due to the content of his reviews? Blame publisher…

Choose Your Own Just Cause 2 Adventure

This choose your own adventure style trailer for Just Cause 2 showcases the different ways to tackle a mission in Eidos’ upcoming action-adventure. Clicking the video at the designated time will take you on a magical journey to YouTube, but don’t worry, we’ll be here waiting for you when you get back. That is, unless…

Mega Man 10 Robot Masters Sprites Vs. Art

Here’s a closer look at all eight of Mega Man 10’s evil robot masters, showing us how the dynamic concept art fared in its conversion to sprites. As you can see, some of the Robot Masters made out better than others during the journey from cartoon art to pixels. Sheep Man, Nitro Man, and Strike…

Writer Identifies “The Pixar Of Video Games”

It’s not Nintendo nor Insomniac. Reporter Jamin Brophy-Warren declares that The Maw and Splosion Man development studio Twisted Pixel has Pixar’s knack for creating memorable, unreal characters with which we can empathize. Argument here: The Pixar of Video Games [Slate]

When Capcom Says Gold Edition, They Mean Gold Edition

Sheva gets bumped in favor of Jill Valentine on the cover art for Capcom’s Resident Evil 5 update, with a gold etched cover that leaves no room for doubt that this is indeed the Gold Edition. Ash posted the latest trailer for the Resident Evil 5: Gold Edition earlier, but it’s nowhere near as shiny…

Gabe Newell Is 2010’s Game Developers Choice Pioneer

Valve’s Gabe Newell joins the prestigious company of Ralph Baer, Alex Rigopulos, and Eran Egozy as the 2010 winner of the Game Developers Choice Awards Pioneer Award, honoring breakthrough figures in the game industry. Ralph Baer, winner of the 2008 Pioneer award, is widely considered to be the father of video games. Alex Rigopulos and…

Teen Drops 150 Pounds With Video Game-Inspired Diet

Taylor LeBaron weighed nearly 300 pounds when he was 14 and has lost half of that, thanks, he told the Today Show, due to a strategy he got from video games. LeBaron told the Today Show that he tackled his weight loss as if he was confronting a series of enemies in a video game.…