This Game Uses Alcoholism As A Gameplay Mechanic

Spate is a platformer that, judging by visual aesthetic alone, looks crazy. There’s a reason for that. The game, according to Rock, Paper, Shotgun, follows a man who has to deal with the death of his daughter. The loss is so painful, the man resorts to drinking absinthe as a means of coping. “At the…

Pandora’s Tower Will Be Out This April. Here’s The First U.S. Trailer.

Wii action-RPG Pandora’s Tower will be out in North America this April, publisher Xseed said today. You can check out the first U.S. trailer above. With Nintendo focusing on their newly-launched Wii U and third-party publishers sticking with game consoles that can output in high-definition, this may very well be the Wii’s swan song. Farewell,…

Borderlands, Assassin’s Creed and Tons More Coming to Minecraft‘s Next Xbox 360 Skin Pack

Minecraft Xbox 360 Edition is pouring on the fan service with this week’s release of Skin Pack 4—providing delightfully low-res interpretations of Claptrap from Borderlands, Klei’s Mark of the Ninja and The Behemoth’s Castle Crashers, plus a whole lot more. Images of all 28 skins can be seen at this link. Here’s what you’ll get…

Tomb Raider Gets Better After You’ve Beaten It

Tomb Raider gave me the worst kind of quiet at first. The game’s silences were ones filled with tension and dread, interludes where my worries about getting Lara through the experience would fester. All throughout Crystal Dynamics’ reboot of the archeological adventure series, players are left to wonder how the awful mythology of its fictional…

Game of Thrones Set As A 90s High School Comedy

High school can be a cutthroat place, a den of sex, lies, deceit and backstabbing. Relationships are forged for political purposes and torn asunder under dark, mysterious circumstances. Power resides where students believe it resides. And always, a warning: Prom Night is coming. Welcome to School of Thrones, which re-imagines George R.R. Martin’s dark fantasy…

Here’s a trailer for the next Halo 4 map pack, Castle, which releases April 8.

Hacker Likes Using The Sims 3 Torrents To Acquire Women “Slaves”

Over the weekend, Ars Technica wrote a great feature on hackers who abuse remote administration tools (RAT) in order to gain access to the computers of strangers. The purpose of using a RAT in this case is to gain control of computers featuring webcams—these allow the hackers to spy on their targets, which they call…

Leaked Star Wars Game Is ‘Predecessor’ To Battlefront III, Source Says

Last October, we saw a listing for Star Wars: First Assault, an unannounced Xbox Live Arcade game developed by LucasArts. Today, Kotaku can reveal that Star Wars: First Assault is a downloadable multiplayer shooter that was originally slated for release this spring. The game supports up to 16 players—one eight-person team of rebels and one…

Nikola Tesla’s Finest Creation Gets His Own Mobile Game

Created by Brian Clevinger’s Nikola Tesla in 1923, Atomic Robo is a robotic member of a think-tank of Action Scientists, probing the shadowy outskirts of science. In Second Fiction’s Atomic Robo: Violent Science, now available for iOS and coming soon to Windows 8 and Android, he does that too, only gamier. Atomic Robo is the…

The Boy Scouts Add ‘Games Design’ to Their Merit Badge Program

Two years ago, the Cub Scouts offered their version of a merit badge for video gaming. This week, the Boy Scouts of America added the 131st merit badge to its active list: Games Design. The BSA’s program doesn’t mean just video games design either, though that is a part of it. (And, this post by…

From LittleBigPlanet Roots Springs the Freshest Puzzle Game on iTunes

I play dozens of mobile games a week, at least 24 percent of which are puzzle games. From block-matching to word games; physics puzzlers to good old Tetris clones—I’ve played them all. The last thing I expected to see in last week’s crop of new games was a puzzler unlike anything I’d played before. If…

The NMA Video About the SimCity Launch Disaster Goes from Funny to Cringeworthy in 39 Seconds

NMA, the wacko Taiwanese animation studio, has become a kind of grim reaper in the world of Internet scandal. If you end up in an NMA video, it ain’t good—although I am sure Francis, the YouTube comedian who rants about video games, is happy to cameo here on behalf of the outraged. That said, NMA…

The ESA announced a new game-ratings awareness campaign in a statement endorsed by Democratic and Republican lawmakers.

Watch StarCraft II: Heart of the Swarm‘s Global Launch Party Right Here

Let the zerg rushing begin. StarCraft II‘s first expansion comes out tomorrow, and to celebrate, Blizzard is streaming StarCrafty things all day. The Heart of the Swarm global launch event, which you can watch using the embedded stream below, is hosted by the much-beloved Sean “day9” Plott. They’ve got cameras at a bunch of the…

Miyamoto Wishes That Pikmin 3 Could’ve Been a Wii U Launch Game

It’s been a rough few months for folks who bought the Wii U right at launch. Almost none of the third-party games that came out alongside Nintendo’s new home console set the world on fire and the first-party offerings made by Nintendo didn’t deliver a lightning-bolt success like Wii Sports. It’s no wonder that Shigeru…

If SimCity Were A Noir Film

With SimCity slowly stabilizing, more and more user-created content surfaces—which means we finally get to have some time to kick back and enjoy the beauty of our creations. YouTube user Calvin Chan put up this melancholic, noir-themed (the music from L.A. Noire fits right in) montage of his city at night. SimCity – My City…

Look At This Cool Journey Hoodie That You Can’t Have

I was browsing Reddit casually last night and stumbled on this seemingly well-made Journey hoodie by user volpinazzurra (you can only tell so much from pictures). “It’s reversible, too,” I excitedly proclaimed to myself and my cat. Quickly check the comments and…oh. Not for sale. Not on Etsy. Probably can’t bribe volpinazzurra with cookies and…

Why Some Korean Fans Are Upset about StarCraft 2: Heart of the Swarm‘s ‘Collector’s Edition’

StarCraft 2 expansion Heart of the Swarm is launching in South Korea. Some gamers are very excited! Others are excited, too, but also totally ticked off. Besides concern over whether or not fans can get the special package game, there’s also concern about a flood of non-gamers trying to snap up these physical copies to…

Sister site io9 has pretty, new digs. Swing by and say hello!

NetCafe Offers Free Transport to Gamers… In a Limo

Shuttle services are a great way for business owners to attract customers. In China, Carrefour and WuMart offer free transportation for grocery shoppers, but for internet cafes to offer a shuttle, that’s a first. Spotted outside of the Nanjing Institute of Technology today was a stretched Lincoln Town Car, with a banner that welcomed students…