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How Many People Are Still Alive In The Walking Dead Universe

Months after the outbreak of The Walking Dead’s worldwide zombie apocalypse, calculating the number of possible survivors on the planet isn’t an easy task. Here’s an ambitious attempt from SourceFed’s Matt Lieberman, who tries to figure out an exact number by pinpointing various dates, comparing survival rates, and using stats from both the comic books…

A Ten-Minute Tour Of Pokkén Tournament Wii U

The Wii U version of Namco Bandai’s Pokémon fighting game has landed at Kotaku, along with strict time constraints on how much video we can share. So here’s quick look at training, fighting, customization and Amiibo unlocks of Pokkén Tournament. Before review day arrives we are able to share 30 minutes of direct feed (non-streamed)…

IGN Ad Leaks Overwatch Release Date [UPDATE]

We already knew that Overwatch would be out this spring; now, thanks to a leak from IGN’s advertising folks, we have more specifics. Blizzard’s hero-based shooter will release on May 24. The news isn’t official yet—as a publicly traded company, Activision-Blizzard has to do things very formally—but this is pretty clear. Overwatch is currently in…

Wartile’s World Looks Too Pretty To Bleed All Over

As I’ve said, we are currently living in a golden age of turn-based video games. The latest example (well, potential example) of this is Wartile It’s a turn-based tactics game that’s been designed to be “a living and breathing tabletop video game”, combining the flexibility and visuals of a video game (along with some design…

After 19 years of operation (and 10 months spent contacting the original developers), MAME—probably the most well-known emulator on the planet—is now 100% free and open-source (via Gamasutra).

Bob Ross And The Joy Of Super Mario Making

“A little bush has entered our world. Our Super Mario World.” Very nice work from A Dumb Thing. The only way this could be more Bob Ross is if the clip was streaming on Twitch instead of YouTube

Ambitious Fallout Mod Has Snow, Space, Tanks

Fallout: The Frontier is an in-development mod for Fallout: New Vegas that doesn’t just introduce new weather, weapons, quests and enemies, it takes the game to a space station. We actually saw this mod around a year ago, and back then the big deal was that it featured winter snow and some serious expansion to…

Successful $100,000 Kickstarter Dev Calls It Quits Due To Drama

In 2014 nearly 4,000 backers pledged $100,000 for a silly game about being a bear. Yesterday, despite seemingly happy backers and 78 percent positive reviews on Steam, Bear Simulator’s developer says updating the game any further is “a lost cause.” I playedJohn Farjay’s Kickstarted bear sim last weekend. While it could certainly use a lot…

The Omega Men Are Not Superheroes

As discussed previously, they’re more like super-terrorists. And they just did something shocking in the latest issue of their great series. Originally published 3/4/16 The basic set-up of The Omega Men—written by Tom King, with art by Barnaby Bagenda, Jose Marzan Jr. and Romulo Fajardo, Jr.—is a familiar one. The evil Alpha Empire (also called…

UFC 2’s Cover Is Now A Monument To Sadness

A few months back, EA’s marketing team probably thought that their choices for the front cover of this year’s UFC game—two of the world’s most popular and successful fighters, Ronda Rousey and Connor McGregor—were as safe as could be. Then this happened. And now this Somewhere, tonight, EA’s marketing team is dying. Rousey, seemingly invincible,…

Kotaku ‘Shop Contest: An Unfortunate Acronym: The Winners! 

I’ll admit I was a little worried about how wild our community might get given a‘Shop Contest that plays on the abbreviation S&M for the recently-announcedPokemon Sun & Moon. But you guys kept it mostly nice and tasteful. Great job, everyone! Some of my favorite entries in last week’s contest abandoned the implied meaning of…

There’s A Lot Of Killing Things In The First 30 Minutes Of Black Desert Online

Black Desert Online launched in North America and Europe this week, giving many players their first taste of that character creator everyone’s been raving about. This is what happens in the 30 minutes following character creations’ end. Now thatthe bumps have been mostly ironed out and Daum Games’ massively multiplayer role-playing game is available to…

I Miss Game Manuals So Much I’d Pay Extra For One

I opened up my copy of The Legend of Zelda: Twilight Princess HD yesterday and aside from the game disc it was depressingly empty, which describes exactly how I feel every time I pick up tellingly lightweight retail game. I miss instruction booklets something fierce. There was a time when retail games were solid, meaty…

‘Trump Has Successfully Eliminated All Life On Earth’

According to a tweet from developer Ndemic Creations (via Reddit), Trump is currently one of the most popular names for players to give their humanity-ending pathogen in the strategy game Plague Inc. Another win! Plague, Inc. is a game in which players create a deadly pathogen and attempt to encourage its spread across the globe,…

Killer Instinct season three launches March 29, bringing Killer Instinct 2‘s immortal barbarian into the updated fray. You can see the new Tusk in action over on the Killer Instinct Youtube channel.

Metal Gear Solid HD Fan Remake Suddenly Shuts Down

Remember that great-looking Unreal Engine 4 fan remake of Metal Gear Solid? Remember how you’ve spent every waking moment since it was announced dreading its unceremonious cancellation? Well, haha, about that… The remake, which made ever our grumpiest Metal Gear skeptic, Luke Plunkett, go weak in the muscles he’s built up from years of playing…

In its latest status update, Capcom says they’ve docked League Points to penalize “roughly 30” players as part of their efforts to start cracking down on Street Fighter V rage-quitters. That’s a very small number considering how many people must be playing the game and disconnecting after losses. A permanent solution is still being worked…

The Ugly New Front In The Neverending Video Game Culture War

Gaming’s culture war hasn’t ended. It’s still roiling, with new fights, new targets, new depths of ugliness, but also many of the same tactics. If you’ve witnessed this kind of “Chanterculture”/GamerGate drama before, you know the playbook: discredit, harass, shame, isolate, maybe find a skeleton in a person’s closet that calls their reputation into question.…

The Artful Escape of Francis Vendetti looks wild. Described as a “music-sampling, platforming, rhythm laser-light guitar solo kind of game,” it’s about a musician on a psychedelic journey to create a stage persona. Creatures have sounds, and you can sample them to make your own.

Nintendo Is Leaking Like Crazy

In 2013, when I visited Nintendo’s Redmond HQ for a feature on the company’s Treehouse localization team, staffers there opined that secrecy was essential to their operations. “We’re keeping things confidential until we’re ready to share them with the world,” Treehouse manager Leslie Swan told me then. “We work really closely with the development teams…