All Topics Gaming older than one year ago

Telltale invites us into The Devil's Playhouse.

#badnews "Right now we don't have any plans for Geometry Wars 3 or anything," said Bizarre Creations' Gareth Wilson during the Kotaku Talk Radio podcast, and all that could be heard afterwards were the relentless sobs of millions of disappointed fans. More »

#ufc The next UFC game doesn't exactly borrow from Street Fighter II: Hyper Fighting or Turbo, but the Street Fighter fan behind the game's fighting combat recently explained why a faster-playing UFC game is a better one. More »

A producer at DICE has apparently stated that the company doesn't want to "ever" charge for Battlefield: Bad Company 2 maps. According to CVG, DICE Senior Producer Patrick Bach told Xbox World 360 magazine, "We don't ever want to charge for our maps and insisted to EA that this attitude was crucial when it came to keeping our community happy and playing together."

Joystiq contacted DICE to confirm the quote and was told by a representative, "Unless they aren't standard maps we won't charge and there aren't any in the plan that would cost."

Unfortunately, Electronic Arts - publisher of Battlefield: Bad Company 2 and ultimate decision-maker in this situation - wasn't willing to go that far, telling us, "We can't comment on the future. But we'll have more details on our DLC plans shortly." And we'll share those plans with you, dear reader. Shortly.

A portion of a 1up review… …Western gamers really haven’t seen this mix of real-time, visual-novel storytelling and giant-mech strategy before. Besides, even if you’re skeptical, don’t you owe it to the 15-year-old version of yourself to at least give the game a shot?

Coming from the financial report that we referenced last night… Used game sales are huge business for GameStop, and you can be sure that the game industry just keeps getting more and more upset about that. Will 2010 be any different for the industry?

Check out more screens in our Flickr set Turbo Trainz Turbo Trainz is a fast paced train race which gets your heart thumping and your arms pumping! “Become the train” with the Wii’s unique control system! Cleverly crafted to advance your experience, the unique control system has you chugging like a train! Move your arms in [...]

Positioned as a new sequel to fan favorite Prince of Persia: The Sands of Time, Ubisoft Montreal's Prince of Persia: The Forgotten Sands is a clear return to tradition. It diverges from 2008's cel-shaded scurrier in more ways than one: platforming is more difficult; the time rewind is back; and the adventure is entirely linear. Though the game showed promise at PAX East 2010, we couldn't help but ask Level Design Director Michael McIntyre what this familiar entry means for fans and the franchise.

Joystiq: Prince of Persia: The Forgotten Sands -- how is that being positioned to fans of 2008's game? Is it an apology?

Michael McIntyre: Oh, not at all. Actually, this project was started before that game even released, so we had no idea how that game was going to be received. We knew that the PoP 2008 was a daring take on the Prince of Persia franchise. but we knew that there would be people that definitely liked it and we just weren't certain what fans of Sands of Time would take it, even though we knew it was quite different from Sands of Time. So, there was already an early plan to do a Sands of Time-type game, not at the same time but it was already in progress.

#sega It's still March 31 by the official Kotaku calendar, but it's April Fools' Day in Japan, something you should take into consideration while watching Sega's new trailer for Virtua Fighter 5 Final Showdown, its latest fighting game update. More »

#deals Are you a BioShock newbie who doesn't want to play through the second game without experiencing the first? Well then Amazon.com has the deal for you. More »

Check out more screens in our Flickr set Fractured Soul is a classic action platform game with a unique twist that turns the genre on its head: you play across both screens of the DS at once! Follow interplanetary rogue Jake Desaul as he battles through 5 distinct worlds. Each world possesses unique characteristics on one [...]

Danny Bilson - executive vice president of "Core Games" at rebounding publisher THQ - recently told CVG that his "fighting group is actually taking on the management of another game that we're going to announce at E3 that has a certain amount of melee combat in it ... ." Before spilling all the beans, Bilson added, "It's a major developer and you'll get exactly what I'm talking about when I'm able to talk about it. It's really cool, it's another one of the things I'm doing to rebuild everything around the core division of THQ."

This reminded us of something Bilson told Joystiq when we spoke with him at the Game Developer's Conference earlier this month. "We have one active product that we're going to announce pretty soon and it's on Move, it's on Wii, and it's on Natal," Bilson said. When asked if "active product" meant "physically active" Bilson replied, "It's physically active. On a big brand. And it's super awesome, we'll definitely show it at E3. I'm very proud of it."

Whether or not these two projects are one and the same remains to be seen, but there are some parallels worth pointing out: A "certain amount of melee combat" could allude to a "physically active" product and this unnamed fighting game is "really cool" while the unnamed motion game is "super awesome."

I had no idea that Wacky Packages were still being made! Glad to see that they still aren’t funny, which is what makes me love them to begin with!

Finally! We now have a use for a handful of the Club Nintendo coins we've been hoarding. Nintendo has announced that Grill Off with Ultra Hand, the WiiWare game in which you cook meat with an extending hand toy, is available through North America's Club Nintendo for 80 coins -- and we just can't resist the intoxicating cocktail of toy nostalgia and virtual grilled meats.

The reward has yet to show up in the Club Nintendo catalog, but we expect to see it soon. See a trailer for Grill Off here.

[Update: Did we say today? Clearly we meant "soon."]

Yeah, I think that just about sums up Mario’s 2007 outings, don’t you? Quite possibly his finest game ever…until Galaxy 2 hits.

New games and swag for the Nintendo loyalists.

A lot of people would call StarFox a second-tier franchise for Nintendo. Fox and the crew fall in at the same level of Kirby titles. While they have a big following, they don’t get the love or attention of bigger franchises like Mario and Zelda. I really hope to see that change [...]

This is just one bit of art from an upcoming project called ‘The 200X Product Catalog’.

0.08: The real gameplay footage kicks off at the 30 second mark, but this little snapshot here of Samus in a womb-like environment hints at Samus’s oft rumoured origins. Was she cloned? Genetically engineered from scratch? Seems a bit odd that as a newborn she had that big shock of blonde hair. It could be [...]