All Topics Gaming older than one year ago

#review Racing games are often judged by their ability to provide more realistic driving experiences, to throw increasingly massive collections of cars at the player or to offer infinite replayability online. Judged normally, Art Style: light trax would be a disappointment. More »

A portion of the Nintendo World Report review: Puzzle Quest 2 doesn’t have the fresh, “gotta-try-it” feeling of the original title, but for those who enjoyed the ideas behind Puzzle Quest but weren’t thrilled with the execution, this sequel is a no-brainer purchase. It feels like a breath of fresh air…relentlessly addictive fresh air. Full [...]

#gameface SWAT officers find out the hard way that they're never taking Asshole Dog, dead or alive. Seen via Reddit. More »

These are just too cool. If you like Pocket Monsters, than you have to check them out. Seeing all the sweet designs here make me realize how I should really get back into HeartGold. Sigh, someday it’ll happen.

Epic is planning an extra XP event for Gears of War 2 that will coincide with next week's San Diego Comic-Con, tied to producer Rod Fergusson's Twitter account -- and designed to promote it, of course. The more followers he gets, the more XP gamers can earn during the upcoming event.

I really dig the unique art that this series has maintained over the years. f only I could get into RPGs more readily. Click here to see the rest of the logos.

#nothingpersonnel Red Dead Redemption is a commercial and critical success, moving more than 1.5 million copies in its first month while wrangling rock-solid reviews. Despite that, Rockstar has axed about 40 employees from the San Diego studio, according to sources close to the developer. More »

#skumor Loyal reader [redacted], a Best Buy employee, passes along not only this SKU-mor, but how new products on double-secret probation work for one major retailer. More »

A portion of the WiiLoveIt review: The thing is, this game quickly climbed to the #1 spot on the WiiWare charts in Canada for its popularity. In fact, it’s still in the Top 10 and I don’t doubt that the same case is also true in the US. So clearly, although there was some potential to [...]

These days, every developer and their brother seems to be making a beeline for hot new gaming platforms like Facebook and the iPhone, visions of Farmville- and Doodle-Jump-style riches dancing in their heads. But nDreams CEO Patrick O'Luanaigh says all these gold rushers might be ignoring a more welcoming and neglected platform for their gaming projects: PlayStation Home.

#japan Raise your glasses, because that boozing-and-bar girl game Dream Club is making the leap from the Xbox 360 to the PSP. More »

According to a GamesMaster interview with Project Sora head Masahiro Sakurai (excerpted by ONM) 3DS flagship title Kid Icarus: Uprising might feature Kids Icarus, plural. "The online capabilities are currently being tested," Sakurai said. "There could be some versus play but we can't go into any detail. There are a lot of capabilities that expand on what was in the DS that people are taking advantage of."

If anyone's going to make a 3DS online game happen, it's Sakurai, one of the few Nintendo developers to make an online game (Super Smash Bros. Brawl). But how would a versus mode work in an on-rails shooter -- score competitions?

#blik Kitchen not Asteroids-referencing enough? Have a Centipede problem in your foyer, as in not enough Centipede stickers slathered upon your walls? Wall experts Blik and retro-game rights holders Atari can fix that right up. More »

You've already seen a near photo-realistic rendering of LeBron James in a Miami Heat uniform, and now you can see a comically over-the-top version, courtesy of NBA Jam.

#sports The NBA's tumultuous offseason involved far more than LeBron James jumping ship to Miami, and basketball video games, which release Oct. 5, will have to react to that on short notice. More »

Did you know that in addition to being the new CEO of Activision Publishing, Eric Hirshberg is also responsible for giving birth to fake Sony pitchman Kevin Butler? It's true, the towheaded adman sprung fully formed from Hirshberg's loins while he was still with marketing firm Deutsch LA. However, he says in a Kotaku interview that he's not interested in plopping out a clone for Activision, saying "Kevin Butler was the right solution for Sony." Hirshberg doesn't take the job until September, so he says he hasn't settled on how he'll be attacking Activision's image problems.

Hey Eric, if you're hard up for ideas, you can feel free to co-opt our new character: "Blogger Who Carries On a Birthing Metaphor Too Long Until Both He and the Readers Are Grossed Out." We think he's headed for big things.

Hayley Williams from Paramore certainly looks to be the inspiration for a new Pokemon in Pokemon Black/White. Could the guys at Nintendo be big fans of Ms. Williams?! Thanks to mr_raccoon for the heads up!

#sonicthehedgehog You know what the Sonic the Hedgehog series has been missing? Dangerous levels of obesity resulting in adult onset diabetes and eventually death, a glaring omission corrected in the Sega Genesis hack Sonic 2 XL. It makes Sonic a fat-ass. More »

#podcast This week's very very special episode of our weekly Kotaku Talk Radio podcast is here! Actually, it's there, on servers across the internet, waiting for your download. This week, our hosts Stephen Totilo and Brian Crecente talk about video games. More »

Old-school items, older-school ads.

Twenty-five years ago, Rare founders Chris and Tim Stamper had to reverse engineer a Japanese Famicom development kit in order to make the early NES game Slalom. Today, at the Develop Conference in Brighton, Rare Talent Director Nick Burton outlined some of the very different challenges the company has run into in the developing of Kinect Sports for Microsoft.

"Kinect was a no-brainer as far as we were concerned," Burton said. "Just the opportunities it brought ... because it removes one layer between you and the computer." Burton said that Rare has always been interested in technology and game design that "is trying to remove that barrier to entry, trying to get that fun experience the entire family could have, but also getting the fidelity gamers could love."

The problem with older motion control solutions Rare has worked with -- like accelerometers and even the Power Glove -- was that the fidelity wasn't there, Burton said. Rare tried to fix this for years by augmenting the original Xbox Live Vision Camera with a PlayStation-Move-style light-up handheld wand made out of a supermarket vitamin tin (pictured above). The first-person spell-casting game they made for the wand, Soulcatcher, never got out of the prototype stage, but it did go a long way to "prove you could have that kind of hardcore depth of experience with this kind of control scheme," Burton said.

Old-school items, older-school ads.

Old-school items, older-school ads.

Old-school items, older-school ads.

Get your Wii MotionPlus ready for some more mini-game fun.

A select few are able to partake in Hulu Plus on the PS3 right now, thanks to an introductory preview program, and we thought we'd capture some footage, just for you, the dedicated gamer and television viewer. Beyond the break, you'll find a lengthy video walkthrough documenting all of the features found in this impressive content delivery platform -- however, if you feel the sheer awesomeness of high-speed HD video may be a bit too much for your puny little eyes to handle, enjoy the stills in our gallery below. The future is now, people!

#rosters PS3 gamers with NCAA Football 11 only had to wait one day after release for the first custom, fully-named roster to become available. Xbox 360 rosters are still being written, and we're told they'll be available shortly. More »

The rest of the year is looking hot. We count down the best upcoming games.