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  Backstage Access with Kotaku, Ko, Ko, Ko-taku

  To: Ash From: Crecente Last week was insane and things don’t show any signs of letting up anytime soon. Our GDC coverage marched right through the weekend and will continue well into the week with plenty of big stories including interviews with some huge names like Reggie Fils-Aime. We also had some interesting news out…

  By Brian Crecente Published March 15, 2010
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  What Are Halo Creators Making With ‘Bungie Aerospace’?

  Halo creators Bungie are cooking up something new, something that, despite its new name, may not actually follow in the trail blazed by id Software’s John Carmack and involve shooting rockets into space. So what is Bungie Aerospace? Well, it’s not much more than a trademark spotted by Attack of the Fanboy while many of…

  By Michael McWhertor Published March 15, 2010
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  NCAA Video Game Picks Kentucky, but Trouble Lies Beneath

  A tournament simulation I did with NCAA Basketball 10 returns a believable national championship – Kentucky 88, Kansas 82 – but the rest reads like 3/4ths of the brackets in your average pool: Lots of chalk, and several WTF upsets. Yesterday, after suffering with plugging in this year’s 64 teams (the sim does not include…

  By Owen Good Published March 15, 2010
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  An Extra Life In The Dying Light

  Photographer Jon Beard discovered an extra life in the dying light of an unprotected light bulb filament. Ghostly and gorgeous, as seen (appropriately enough) on Flickr, via Digg

  By Mike Fahey Published March 15, 2010
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  Final Fantasy Director’s Take On Western Vs. Japanese RPGs

  How does Final Fantasy XIII director Motomu Toriyama explain the difference between Japanese-designed role-playing games and their western counterparts? By pointing out the divide between classic RPGs like Tomb Raider, Hitman and Final Fantasy. I know what you’re thinking. “Tomb Raider and Hitman aren’t western RPGs!” But Toriyama’s argument was that western gamers—or, more specifically,…

  By Michael McWhertor Published March 15, 2010
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  ModNation Dated, Kratos, Ratchet & Clank, And Nathan Drake Join The Race

  Want to know how to get Ratchet & Clank, Kratos, and Nathan Drake figures for ModNation Racers when it hits stores on May 25? It all depends on which retailer you preorder the game from. Don’t you love retailer-exclusive preorder bonuses? Me neither, but Sony seems to enjoy them, so much so that the company…

  By Mike Fahey Published March 15, 2010
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  Call of Duty For The Rest Of Them

  There are people who can’t play Call of Duty. Maybe, according to a flight of fancy proposed last week at the Game Developers Conference, those people could at least help us CoD players out. The theory was explained during a panel at GDC 2010 entitled Sporadic Play: The History And Future Of Making Games For…

  By Stephen Totilo Published March 15, 2010
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  Superbrothers: Sword & Sworcery EP, The Cool Thing At GDC

  I wish I’d seen Superbrothers: Sword & Sworcery EP for the iPhone/iPod Touch at the start of last week’s Game Developers Conference, instead of at the end, so that I could better answer the event’s most commonly asked question. It’s the best response to the frequent smalltalk question “So, did you see anything cool at…

  By Michael McWhertor Published March 15, 2010
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  The Hunt For Sam Fisher Begins On Facebook

  Third Echelon’s best agent has gone rogue, and they’ve turned to Facebook for help tracking down Sam Fisher. Where would you go if you were a top secret government agency trying to track down a traitor? MySpace? Please. Even super spies need social networking. The National Security Administration’s Third Echelon is on the hunt for…

  By Mike Fahey Published March 15, 2010
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  Should Windows Phone 7 Offer Easy Achievements?

  One of the stories I told to a few people at the Game Developers Conference was about the bright idea I had on Tuesday about a psychological trick Microsoft could play, if they wanted to. I guessed that this company, eager to sell the world its new cell phone platform — and therefore probably convert…

  By Stephen Totilo Published March 15, 2010
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  The Super Championship Edition Mash Up That Is Pac-Man Battle Royale

  What is Pac-Man Battle Royale? This week’s Amusement Expo in Vegas explains it all with a playable four-player Pac-Man face off that borrows from both Pac-Man Championship Edition and Super Pac-Man to interesting results. Arcade Heroes captured first footage of the newest multiplayer Pac-Man arcade “come back”, giving us a good idea of how it…

  By Michael McWhertor Published March 15, 2010
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  Building The Ultimate Transformers Origin Story

  In this video documentary for Transformers: War for Cybertron, the development team at High Moon Studios talk about bringing the Autobots and Decepticons back to Cybertron to tell a story never fully told. With the team working closely with Hasbro, War for Cybertron is definitely Transformers canon, which is both good and bad news to…

  By Mike Fahey Published March 15, 2010
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  EA Sports MMA: Who Knows About Broken Bones?

  I was outclassed last week by the other games reporter watching a demonstration of EA Sports MMA. He knew the name of the game’s fighters, the name of the referee — and — he knew the ref’s shaving habits. I am an oddball who likes boxing and pro wrestling but has never had the urge…

  By Stephen Totilo Published March 15, 2010
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  Frankenreview: Final Fantasy XIII

  Come, brave adventurers, and witness the Final Fantasy XIII Frankenreview, a Franken so disparate we decided to run the graph right at the top of the post. As you can plainly see, Final Fantasy XIII isn’t shaping up to be the runaway critical hit that Square Enix was hoping for. Metacritic scores are currently hovering…

  By Mike Fahey Published March 15, 2010
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  Make Rico Pull Off the Best Just Cause 2 Stunt: UPDATED

  Instructions: 1) Download the Just Cause 2 demo here; 2) play, play, play; 3) submit your video to [email protected]. Click here for full contest details. Winner gets a PS3!

  By Gawkercreative Published March 15, 2010
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  Stream Netflix, Read Comics, Track Sports, Play Games With Windows Phone 7

  Windows Phone 7 is shaping up to be a mighty powerful looking platform for all forms of entertainment. What’s that mean? Well check out all of the things you can do on the upcoming mobile phone platform. Here, for your viewing pleasure, are a selection of videos showing off how you can stream videos on…

  By Brian Crecente Published March 15, 2010
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  Progress Wars Cures Your Craving For Progress Bars

  Are you addicted to leveling up in Facebook games like Mafia Wars and Farmville? Jakob Skjerning cures that craving with Progress Wars – “The ultimate game of being better than all your friends at filling progress bars.” “No mafias, no vikings, no pirates – just pure, uninterrupted progress bars,” that’s one of the witty messages…

  By Mike Fahey Published March 15, 2010
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  Windows Phone 7 Playing an Xbox Live-Linked Game

  The MIX10 conference kicked off today in Las Vegas. Most of the stuff they’ll be talking about puts me to sleep instantly, but Microsoft let us know to expect some Windows Phone 7 news to hit as well. The first taste of gaming we saw at the show was this sexy video of Xbox Live-linked…

  By Brian Crecente Published March 15, 2010
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  Hunted: The Demon’s Forge, A Dungeon Crawl For The Gears Age

  inXile Entertainment’s Brian Fargo wants to update the classic dungeon crawler, popularized by MUDs and dark medieval adventures like Stonekeep and the Wizardry series, for the modern age, for the Halo or Gears of War player, with Hunted: The Demon’s Forge. The argument can be made that the dungeon crawl has already been modernized with…

  By Michael McWhertor Published March 15, 2010
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  Trooping Through The Oblivious Enemies of The Old Republic

  Much has been made about Star Wars: The Old Republic and its “next generation storytelling” driven by volumes of spoken dialog. But what’s it like to play the game? I spent a few minutes trying the game out at E3 last year, but only enough time to get a short taste of the game’s controls…

  By Brian Crecente Published March 15, 2010