• Kotaku East

  Kotaku East Starts Now!

  Kotaku East runs from 4am to 8am Eastern. For more info about Kotaku East click here

  By Brian Ashcraft Published June 19, 2012
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  What if Game of Thrones Was a, um, Romantic Comedy?

  It’s a question whose answer I leave you with as I sign off for the night. [via Neatorama]

  By Luke Plunkett Published June 19, 2012
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  Did You Know Sony Has a S**t Umbrella?

  You rarely get to choose your nickname in life. Just ask Sony Worldwide Studios vice president Scott Rohde. His nickname isn’t, as you’d maybe guess, “Scholar”. Or “Rohde Warrior”. Or “Scottie”. Or, as Australians would assume, “Rohdesy”. It’s “the Shit Umbrella”. “It’s my job to create a giant umbrella and protect the studios from that…

  By Luke Plunkett Published June 19, 2012
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  BioWare Turns More Fan Art Into Official Mass Effect Merch

  In recognition of just how damn great they were, BioWare and EA have struck a deal that’s transformed Indonesian artist machine56’s Mass Effect t-shirt designs into actual, official merchandise. Three of his Cerberus-inspired designs are now available on the company’s store, along with a bunch of other stuff that’s either new or is coming very…

  By Luke Plunkett Published June 19, 2012
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  New Mortal Kombat Movie About…a Supermarket Employee

  According to a report on movie site Bloody Disgusting, the upcoming Mortal Kombat film will follow the exploits of a “lowly unlucky supermarket employee”. “With Kevin Tancharoen still attached to direct from Oren Uziel’s screenplay”, the site writes, “we’ve exclusively discovered that the live-action reboot will follow a lowly unlucky supermarket employee who discovers that…

  By Luke Plunkett Published June 19, 2012
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  There’s a Little Game of Thrones in This Darksiders II Trailer

  While it’s a little cheap, even by live-action video game trailer standards, this clip for the upcoming Darksiders II is saved by one thing: the presence of the ever-wonderful James Cosmo. One of the manliest men to have ever walked the Earth, Cosmo is perhaps best known these days as Jeor Mormont, Lord Commander of…

  By Luke Plunkett Published June 19, 2012
• Culture

  The Future is Either Clean and Glorious, or Dead and Busted…

  Artist Dan Blomberg has worked with just about everyone who’s anyone at the top of the concept art food chain, at least as far as video games are concerned. From studios with a history of investing heavily in their own internal talent (Eidos) to firms who do nothing but concept art (Massive Black), Blomberg has…

  By Luke Plunkett Published June 19, 2012
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  93 Players Join Forces to Create a Video Game Army

  Zombie mod DayZ might have military sim ArmA 2 sitting atop Steam’s sale charts at the moment, but this clip serves as a reminder that the core game is a fascinating beast in its own right. While its ageing engine has its quirks, when the game is played right, and with like-minded humans, it transforms…

  By Luke Plunkett Published June 19, 2012
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  Over Twenty Minutes of Dead Space 3 Gameplay

  CONS: This clip is almost entirely narrated by one of the developers, a practice which only marketing types enjoy. You could mute it, but then you’d lose the sound effects as well. PROS: It’s over twenty minutes of Dead Space 3 footage. Just gameplay.

  By Luke Plunkett Published June 19, 2012
• CultureTotal Recall

  Atari’s Awesome Arcade Prototypes

  Companies like Sega and Namco tend to get all the credit when it comes to weird and wonderful arcade cabinets, but even all the way back in the 1970s, Atari was trying its hardest to be different. To that end, it came up with a number of prototypes for cabinets that went a little further…

  By Luke Plunkett Published June 18, 2012
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  CultureTotal Recall

  Microsoft Already Has a Computer Called “Surface”, and it Makes Board Games Look Awesome

  The unveiling earlier today of Microsoft’s new “Surface” tablets was a strange one for me. Not because of the nature of the product, but for its name. It’s one Microsoft has been using for years, only, for an entirely different device. One that, for a while there, we thought could change the way we played…

  By Luke Plunkett Published June 18, 2012
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  It’s Time to Settle This Once and For All: Which Breakfast Cereal is the Best?

  I love cereal. I love it so much. I’ve felt that way all my life. For years and years, I’ve had cereal for breakfast, sometimes for lunch, sometimes even for dinner. It’s never not a good time for cereal. If there’s one thing people like to debate, it’s… well, it’s pizza toppings. But if there’…

  By Kirk Hamilton Published June 18, 2012
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  Gods & Kings ‘Fixes’ Civilization V (If You Think it Needed Fixing)

  I appear to be one of a rare breed of person who, on the internet at least, is proud to have enjoyed Civilization V. I thought the shift to hexes and abandonment of unit “stacking” was the best thing the series had done in years, and while it wasn’t perfect – the AI could have…

  By Luke Plunkett Published June 18, 2012
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  Persona 4 Arena Plays as Good as It Looks, But I Don’t

  These sweet new screens of the Arcade Mode in Atlus’ upcoming Persona fighter jogged my memory of the time two weeks ago I would have beat the publisher’s PR master had he not surely cheated terribly. How did Atlus’ Aram Jabbari cheat during our Persona 4 Arena session during E3 2012? Well, first off we…

  By Mike Fahey Published June 18, 2012
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  World of Warcraft‘s Azeroth and Expansions Mapped in Google Maps

  Video games let us explore other worlds. Sometimes those worlds are massive—that’s certainly true of Blizzard’s World of Warcraft. They don’t call it a massively multiplayer game for nothing! However, it can be difficult to keep an up-to-date cartographical record of such a massive world. Enter Cal Henderson, who, upon realizing that MapWow hadn’t updated…

  By Kirk Hamilton Published June 18, 2012
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  Iconic Game M.U.L.E. Is Back, and It’s Coming to a Phone Near You

  In 1983, Electronic Arts published a four-player, turn-based strategy game developed by a little company called Ozark Softscape. The game itself didn’t necessarily sell very well, but it left its indelible mark on a generation of players—and, perhaps more importantly, a generation of designers who would, in time, themselves become legends. That game was M.U.L.E.…

  By Kate Cox Published June 18, 2012
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  This Funky Slaughterhouse-Five Game is Unstuck In Time

  Why isn’t Kurt Vonnegut’s influence seen in more video games? I couldn’t help but wonder that after playing through Vonneguts & Glory, a new (very short) browser game by Shaun Inman based on Kurt Vonnegut’s classic novel Slaughterhouse-Five It’s a weird little thing, a shooter that is unstuck in time—you move backwards, picking up from…

  By Kirk Hamilton Published June 18, 2012
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  I Hope Video Gaming’s Apocalypse Now Fixation Isn’t Just An Excuse for Artsy Violence

  It’s starting to look as though game developers have moved their cinematic ambitions beyond the story of Charles Foster Kane and on to something a good deal more violent and possibly more attainable. To put it glibly: Apocalypse Now is the new Citizen Kane As we saw at E3, mainstream video games are in a…

  By Kirk Hamilton Published June 18, 2012
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  Six Tips To Improve Your StarCraft II Skills, From The Designer Of StarCraft II

  Want to be a better StarCraft II player? Want to boost your APM? Want to know what APM means? While chatting with StarCraft II lead designer Dustin Browder last week, I asked him to send over a few basic tips to help Kotaku readers master the challenging real-time strategy game. Since his APM (actions-per-minute, a…

  By Jason Schreier Published June 18, 2012
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  Microsoft Announces New ‘Surface’ Tablet PC

  At a press event today, Microsoft announced a new Tablet PC called ‘Surface.’ As you can see from the images in this post, it’s got a nifty keyboard built into its screen-cover. Also, pretty colors! Microsoft’s Steven Sinofsky introduced it thusly: “It’s a tablet that works and plays the way you want to. A tablet…

  By Kirk Hamilton Published June 18, 2012