• Uncategorized

  Have a Baby. Get Some Money!

  Japan’s population is graying. The population is shrinking. Until the country can either open up immigration or mass produce robot citizens, there’s only one thing left to do: Screw. One of the culprits always blamed for the country’s low birth rate is corporate Japan. Namco Bandai is looking to change that with generous bonuses. Namco…

  By Brian Ashcraft Published September 6, 2011
• 

  Uncategorized

  If the Original Deus Ex Had Been More Like Human Revolution…

  If you think the kind of people who say “games were better in the good old days” are bad, they’re even worse when they’re talking about PC games. Except, on rare occasions like this, they actually make a decent gag out of it. This clip blends the original Deus Ex, which is eleven years old,…

  By Luke Plunkett Published September 6, 2011
• Uncategorized

  Halo Creative Director Leaving Halo 4 [Update]

  Halo 4 is the first title in a new trilogy of Halo games. The previous three titles were developed by Bungie, but the next three are being made in-house by Microsoft’s own Halo studio. Halo 4 won’t be out until late 2012, and today, one of the game’s creative directors, Ryan Payton, is not only…

  By Brian Ashcraft Published September 6, 2011
• Uncategorized

  Dragon Quest X Needs the Internet And Extra Money, Too

  Dragon Quest IX was the deal of the century. It had something like seventy hours of single player gameplay, checking off two things that Japanese gamers love: meaty RPGs and playing solo. DQX is a different beast. An official Square Enix FAQ regarding the game noted that while DQX can be played alone, it can…

  By Brian Ashcraft Published September 6, 2011
• Uncategorized

  Whoops, 3 Million Copies of Dirt 3 Just Went Missing [Update]

  Publishers Codemasters and graphics card manufacturer AMD have been running a promotion lately whereby purchasers of a card got a free copy of excellent racer Dirt 3. That offer has now been, uh, slightly expanded. It seems Codemasters had the reserved download codes for the promo – estimated at around 3 million copies of the…

  By Luke Plunkett Published September 6, 2011
• Uncategorized

  This Is the Arcade, Totally Re-Invented

  In the past decade, retro game bars have popped up across Japan. Part of the appeal is that these water holes have game consoles you can play while getting shitfaced. There are other places where you can game with maids or talk with game voice actors who serve you alcohol. But what about a place…

  By Brian Ashcraft Published September 6, 2011
• 

  Uncategorized

  Ni No Kuni Is Looking Beautiful In This New Trailer

  Here’s a new trailer for the upcoming Ni No Kuni for the PS3. The more I see of this game, the more I clench my fists, grind my teeth and try and will it into already being out. And in English. While the DS version was released last year in Japan, it’s the sexy PS3…

  By Luke Plunkett Published September 6, 2011
• Uncategorized

  Japan Gets Official Uncharted 3 Control Pad

  On November 2, the same day the game is released, Japan will be getting this fancy, limited edition DualShock 3 bearing the colours and livery of upcoming action game Uncharted 3 Featuring a two-tone colour scheme with khaki up top and brown down below, the pad also comes with a “map” motif across the surface.…

  By Luke Plunkett Published September 6, 2011
• 

  CultureTotal Recall

  There Has Never Been A Good Akira Game

  It’s one of the defining works of modern popular culture, and features plenty of stylised, graphic action. So why is it nobody has ever made a good game out of Katsuhiro Otomo’s Akira? It’s not for want of trying, that’s for sure. There have been three (well, maybe five, but we’ll get to that later)…

  By Luke Plunkett Published September 6, 2011
• Uncategorized

  Halo, BioShock, Dead Space as 16-bit Heroes

  Artist Michael Myers was brought in by t-shirt team High Score Society to design a range of gear in which modern video game heroes were rendered in a stylised 16-bit-ish form. The results? Wonderful. He did five designs in all, one each for BioShock, Gears of War, Killzone, Dead Space and Halo. You can check…

  By Luke Plunkett Published September 5, 2011
• Uncategorized

  Uwe Boll’s Latest Game Movie Fodder

  Uwe Boll,who’s not as bad as you think, is making a new video game movie, Zombie Massacre Zombie Massacre is a 1998 Amiga title also known as Gloom 4. If you think Gloom sounds like “Doom”, that’s no accident. It was a Doom clone. Boll won’t be helming the project, but producing. Marco Ristori and…

  By Brian Ashcraft Published September 5, 2011
• Uncategorized

  What? A PC Developer Who Actually Understands DRM?

  In recent years publishers like Ubisoft, 2K and EA have done a great job pissing off paying customers with systems aimed at preventing piracy. Which, uh, is counter-productive! Especially when PC pirates are able to easily circumvent said measures. So it’s great seeing Christofer Sundberg, from Just Cause developers Avalanche, speak a little common sense.…

  By Luke Plunkett Published September 5, 2011
• Uncategorized

  Dragon Quest Spin-Off Rocketing onto the Nintendo 3DS

  The Rocket Slime spin-off was an enjoyable Nintendo DS outing. Its 3DS sequel aims to be the same, but for the 3DS. The second entry in the Dragon Quest Heroes was localized as Dragon Quest Heroes: Rocket Slime back in 2006 when it was released in North America. The third entry, which I guess could…

  By Brian Ashcraft Published September 5, 2011
• 

  Uncategorized

  This Halo Helmet Looks Good Enough for the Movie They’ll Never Make

  The way it’s looking there’ll never be a Halo movie. Ah well! So long as regular humans keep making killer props like this, we’re free to imagine our own. Which is always for the best, because then, they never end up sucking. This helmet was submitted to MAKE magazine by creator Tsabo Tsaboc over the…

  By Luke Plunkett Published September 5, 2011
• 

  Uncategorized

  The Lovecraftian Crysis Game (Well, Mod)

  Thanks to Adam over at Rock, Paper, Shotgun for pointing out The Worry of Newport, a Crysis mod that turns the tropical shooter into a slow, moody traipse through a drab seaside village. Which looks cooler than it sounds. Set in and around the town of Newport, it’s all about exploration. And listening, as the…

  By Luke Plunkett Published September 5, 2011
• Uncategorized

  If 1992 Had Limited Edition Consoles…

  We started to see limited edition consoles pop up regularly in the late 1990s. They’re of course commonplace now. In the early 90s and before, though, they weren’t really around, which is where Ricepuppet’s console customisation service comes in handy. He sells commissioned consoles, bearing the theme of the purchaser’s choice. Want a Hello Kitty…

  By Luke Plunkett Published September 5, 2011
• Uncategorized

  New Multiplayer Details, Sumo Wrestling, and the Price of Being Elite: All the News from Call of Duty XP

  Badges awarded at Call of Duty XP [above] give an idea of the activities that expo attendees enjoyed over the weekend. Kotaku spent the past two days the inaugural gathering for fans of Activision’s combat shooter, where the publisher revealed more details about the premium Call of Duty Elite subscription, we spent time with the…

  By Owen Good Published September 5, 2011
• Culture

  Sister…This Storyboard Artist Has a Twin Sister…

  That Darth Vader line has always creeped me out a little. This stuff, though, featuring a pair of storyboard artists working in the games industry, does nothing of the sort. After I ran that Crysis 2 art last week, I was contacted by Trudi Castle, another artist who worked on the game. Unlike the static…

  By Luke Plunkett Published September 5, 2011
• Uncategorized

  An Army of Video Game Fans in the Dragon Con Day Three Cosplay Gallery

  It’s the fourth and final day of Dragon Con 2011, but I’m not there. The final day of a convention like this is a sad affair. Instead, let’s revel in the glory of yesterday’s cunning cosplayers. Dragon Con isn’t a video game convention, though it’s trying to be. There’s a MMORPG programming track that consists…

  By Mike Fahey Published September 5, 2011
• Reviews

  The Rockus 3D 2.1 Speaker System Sounds Nice, But At What Cost?

  When one thinks of quality computer speakers, several names come to mind: Logitech, Altec Lansing, Bose, and Creative Labs, to name a few. Soundscience isn’t a name that comes to mind. Neither is Antec. In fact, when one thinks of the name Antec, they think PC cases and power supplies. Hit up the company’s Wikipedia…

  By Mike Fahey Published September 5, 2011