All Topics Gaming older than one year ago

#screengrab "Chocolate Rain" YouTube sensation Tay Zonday hangs with Sony Online Entertainment's John Smedley at their booth! More »

Mafia 2 has vintage Playboy centerfolds in it. This we knew. Sitting down for our hands-on with the mob simulator the 2K Games representative mentioned on the sly, "If you want to know how one of the Playboys work it's on the kitchen counter."

Our eyes widened and heart raced as we began the demo. The dim lighting and comfortable couch in the room urged us to make the game's protagonist approach the magazine. With a press of the X button we were presented with the first of five centerfolds in the demo (out of 50 in the game). So that's how it works if you care about that sort of thing.

Ticker!

#e3 The Kotaku Talk Radio E3 podcast spectacular was recorded earlier this week and now you can download it to hear six members of Kotaku debate the big news of the show and name some of our favorite E3 games. More »

Years have passed for legendary assassin Ezio Auditore da Firenze since avenging the death of his family for Assassin's Creed 2. Relaxing in his villa in Monteriggioni after a romp between the sheets with a lady friend, Ezio is shaken out of a peaceful cuddle. An attack on the town is in full swing and -- after a cannonball crashes through his bedroom, crushing his armor -- Ezio rushes out to find waves of enemy forces at his doorstep.

Outside his home, Ezio's uncle explains that his status in the region as a legendary assassin has split factions and incites a war between families. To counteract the mass-scale attack, Ezio pushes toward defensive cannon emplacements scattered on the wall of Monteriggioni. It isn't a scene that will end in the assassin's favor; rest assured that Monteriggioni will fall. This is the beginning and the basis for Assassin's Creed: Brotherhood.

You can only fit so much into an E3 press conference, and with as many huge titles as we showed at Tuesday’s event, not every game got the full trailer treatment during the show. We’ll of course be talking about all of these games extensively in due time… but while we’re still at E3, why not take a closer look at some trailers you may have missed?

The Sly Collection
Now this is one hell of a deal – All 3 Sly Cooper games, remastered in HD, with Trophies, PlayStation Move mini-games, and 3D support – all on 1 Blu-ray disc. Oh yeah – you requested it.

God of War: Ghost of Sparta
Go back to Kratos’ roots in his second rampage on PSP and discover what shaped the ancient world’s angriest man.

Heroes on the Move
Ratchet, Clank, Jak, Daxter, Sly and Bentley are together at last in this PlayStation Move enabled game.

Hot Shots Tennis: Get a Grip
This one will become available before the month is over. Hot Shots Tennis: Get a Grip was a hit at our E3 Meetup, and winners of doubles matches actually won pre-release copies of the game.

Hope you enjoyed this first look at some more of our first party lineup. Indeed, there are even more titles that we have yet to really talk about. Of course, we’ll be featuring everything on the Blog later this summer.

#e3 The next console Metal Gear game, Metal Gear Solid Rising, will bridge the gap between Metal Gear Solid 2 and MGS 4, the game's developers revealed at E3 this week. Plus, we'll finally find out how Raiden became cool. More »

After hearing all about the game a few months ago, we finally got to see Test Drive Unlimited 2 in action at Atari's booth on the floor of E3, and it was just as impressive as expected. Eden Games has really expounded exponentially on their premise of creating an MMO racing game, and the result seems to be a title that all kinds of players will find enticing.

Customization is one of the backbones of the MMO genre -- in a persistent world full of thousands of people, you've got to do everything you can to try and stand out. So Eden has made almost everything in the game customizable: the vehicles you drive, your own character, your home and your location. The first title in the series toyed with customization, but the second title almost puts it front and center.

The game's lead designer talks about Kaos Studio's unique FPS and pushing everyday people into extraordinary action.

Sony's pre-E3 press conference may have had an appearance by Kevin Butler, but it didn't offer a glimpse at the far-out "shooting attachment" (a.k.a. gun shell) for its fast-approaching PlayStation Move magic wand motion controller. Sure to be great for lightgun-style games such as the just announced Time Crisis: Razing Storm, the shell snaps onto the Move controller, giving it a trigger and a distinct likeness to the sci-fi blaster wielded by the star of Earthworm Jim.

No pricing info yet, but you can bet we'll be bugging Sony for it when day two of E3 2010 gets underway. We'll update then -- well, as soon as we stop aiming the "guns" at one another and making "pew-pew" sounds, that is.

Warren Spector is here at E3 this week showing off his Disney Epic Mickey project for the first time, and we got to sit down with the creator of System Shock and Deus Ex to talk about his new gig with the House of Mouse.

After the jump below, Spector answers our questions about why he decided to do a Disney game in the time and place that he did, his favorite Disney properties, and how hard it is to make a platformer game. Read on for more.

#xbox360 I shot this image of Castlevania: Harmony Of Despair from the new game's E3 trailer. Harmony of Despair includes many characters and supports multiple players. But does it really ever look like this? Or is this a trailer trick? More »

#e3 Near the beginning of my trip out here in Los Angeles for E3, I heard the oddest of rumors: Microsoft's controller-free sensor array, Kinect, would only work if you were standing up. No way, right? More »

We got this business card LEGO person from LEGO Universe Creative Director Ryan Seabury yesterday, and every single person we have showed it to since agrees that it is indeed the best form of sharing contact information ever seen. Seabury's name and likeness are on the front, and his phone number and email are on the back of the little guy.

We've placed him atop the pile of business cards that's been handed to us this week. We've met a lot of fun people on the show floor at E3, but if we need any LEGO-related advice, we'll know exactly who to call.

Newspaper report suggests secret feature for 3D portable.

It's brother against brother as we pit the two two-screened systems against one another.

#e3 These are the controls for The Legend of Zelda: Skyward Sword, that new 2011 Wii game I played earlier this week at E3. Let's take a closer look, shall we? More »

Nintendo CEO believes 3D is the future for games.

There's a phrase that sometimes comes to mind whenever a developer is showing off the differences between their upcoming sequel and the past iteration of the franchise. It only springs forth when this new installment introduces major, sweeping improvements over the series' previous entry, and, in my case, it almost always serves as a metric for my excitement for the sequel: "Well, this changes everything."

As a fond appreciator of the already powerful creation tools upon which LittleBigPlanet is perpetually built, this phrase entered my mind a score of times during Media Molecule's recent E3 media demo of LittleBigPlanet 2. I suspect that, in order to contextualize the hugeness of some of these changes, you have to have a deep understanding of how the creation tools in the first game functioned. Even if you don't, the proof is in the proverbial pudding: You didn't used to be able to make real-time strategy games. Now you can.

#retail While Microsoft has yet to release pricing details for the Kinect motion control camera, retailers are having no such hesitation, Amazon now joining GameStop in charging $149 for the device. More »

#fable Even if Fable III ends up being just like Fable II - which is a distinct possibility - I'm still interested in it, thanks to the setting. More »

#e32010 Yeah, we know. Day two wasn't as big as day one. It never is! Just because it wasn't as big, though, doesn't mean it wasn't big. More »

#nintendo Some people thought this would be the week Nintendo unveiled the successor to the Wii. It wasn't. And while that day will inevitably come some day in the future, it doesn't look like it'll be any time soon. More »

David Jaffe is a big fat liar. He's a liarface. But at E3, he finally told the truth: Twisted Metal for PS3. The return of this beloved demolition murder derby series isn't so much a surprise as it is a relief for dedicated fans, fingers soar from begging for an original console sequel on any forum that will listen. Still in pre-alpha (and in the garage until 2011), Twisted Metal is up and running at Sony's E3 booth.

A 15-player demo (the game does support up to 16 players) staged in the "Slaughterdale" map showcased what Santa Monica Studios producer Chad Cox called the key feature of the new Twisted Metal: "online factions." While there will be free-for-all gametypes, the team-based matches appear to be the feature modes. You pick a side: in the demo, Clowns or Dolls (though more factions are to be revealed), and then you're free to choose and change your vehicle throughout a match; much like you might change up your character class or loadout in an online shooter before you respawn.

#gearsofwar Just because Marcus Fenix has a neck of steel doesn't mean he has a heart of steel. He is a man, and men have feelings. Which he may indulge from tie to time, when he's not busy chainsawing things. More »

#pullquote Sounds like a covert pitch for Nintengirls to us. More »

It seems impossible for Scott Pilgrim vs. The World to live up to the promise presented in its screens and trailers. People who love retro games, indie comics, chiptunes, pixel art and brawlers could potentially all find reason to hang their hopes on Ubisoft's PSN/XBLA title. Based on a short demo put together for E3, the game has more than satisfied my hopes. In other words, wow, this game. As a lifelong River City Ransom fan, this game is kind of a dream. A dream with a soundtrack by Anamanaguchi.

#rumor It's a feature that wasn't disclosed during the public unveiling of the Nintendo 3DS, but Japanese business newspaper Nikkei is reporting that the new handheld will allow users to install games on its onboard storage. More »

#3d In an interview with Japan's Nikkei, Nintendo President Satoru Iwata has hinted that the company's next home console may, like the freshly-unveiled 3DS, go 3D. More »

#e32010 If Spec Ops: The Line was a movie instead of a game, and had released this trailer in 1994 instead of 2010, with all that slo-mo and Alice in Chains, it would be just about the most awesome thing ever. More »