Features
Features
11:30PM Michael McWhertor | It’s in danger of becoming a lost art. Video game developers, increasingly focused on community building, cooperative play and massive online interactions, seem to have forgotten the satisfaction of the solo experience. More »
Is Single-Player Gaming In Danger Of Extinction?
11:30PM Michael McWhertor | It’s in danger of becoming a lost art. Video game developers, increasingly focused on community building, cooperative play and massive online interactions, seem to have forgotten the satisfaction of the solo experience. More » 
Features
Live At QuakeCon 2009: Doom II, Quake Live For XBLA
3:58AM Stephen Totilo | Among the towers, the PC accessories, the Galaga spaceships was a bit of early news perhaps including a glimpse at Doom II and Quake Live for the Xbox 360’s Live Arcade. More »
Features
Sega: Impossible To Please All Sonic Fans With One Sonic Game
3:40AM Stephen Totilo | As Sega targets 12-and-under gamers as its core Sonic market, company leaders told Kotaku that it has re-thought how to please all Sonic fans. More »
Features
Sega Updates Us On Wii Strategy, Aliens, “Sega-ness”
6:00AM Stephen Totilo | Kotaku sat with the new chief of Sega’s American and European divisions yesterday to get an update on everything from Aliens to Yakuza. More »
Features
3:40AM AJ Glasser | It’s been three months since the breakup and I still can’t delete my ex’s Mii. I still have Achievements and Trophies to win back and a stack of used games to re-beat. More »
Pieces Of You: Rebuilding Myself On Consoles
3:40AM AJ Glasser | It’s been three months since the breakup and I still can’t delete my ex’s Mii. I still have Achievements and Trophies to win back and a stack of used games to re-beat. More »
Features
How User Ratings Will Boost Your Xbox Experience
9:00AM Brian Crecente | The new Xbox rating feature, one of many Microsoft released today, won’t win any sexy points. Games on Demand has the sizzle and the Avatar Marketplace better enables self-expression. But no other update is more important in helping you play more games than the easy-to-overlook user ratings, or as Microsoft calls them, Community Ratings. More »
Features
A Year in Review: The Top Features and Reporting Of 2008
2:00AM Brian Crecente | It’s been a pretty amazing year for the game’s industry. We’ve seen record sales, major layoffs, the disbarment of Jack Thompson and not a few smaller stories to mull over as well.
News
The Man Behind Marvel Movie Magic Hopes To Do the Same For Gaming
3:00AM Kotaku US Edition | By John Gaudiosi Hollywood Producer Avi Arad, 33, hopes the production studio he runs with his father, Avi (former head of Marvel Studios), Arad Productions, becomes the premiere home for game developers and publishers to work with. Having helped turn Marvel comic book franchises like Spider-Man and X-Men into blockbuster film franchises, Arad is now focused on doing the same for games. Among the games he’s bringing to the big screen as big-budget, studio tent pole films are Lost Planet, EverQuest, Mass Effect and Uncharted: Drake’s Fortune. Arad attended E3 this year to announce that he is taking Capcom’s hit Lost Planet game to the big screen with David Hayter writing the script and Warner Bros. distributing the picture. “Lost Planet felt really original visually with the huge, snowy planet and the giant insects and the VF suits,” said Arad, who’s an avid gamer. “I really liked the art design, which made it look like a futuristic Jules Verne creation. There was also a lot of interesting story elements like Wayne, who’s almost like a Top Gun pilot. You have a lot of different factions and everyone has a point-of-view. Some of the stuff we’re working on with Eisenberg is really close to how he was in the game. But we have to make a credible argument of why he thinks he’s right. Having spent a lot of time inside the game, I felt like there were a lot of characters I could build a story around.” Arad said he’s played every one of BioWare’s games over the years and he’s had a great respect for the Edmonton-based game maker. When Mass Effect first came on the gaming radar two years ago he became very interested in it. “Once I played the game, beyond this massive world, the story’s almost structured like a spy movie like a Casino Royale or The Bourne Identity,” said Arad. “You have this guy, the first human spectre, and he has all of this pressure on him to deliver for his species. Then he uncovers this plot that he has to chase down because he’s a hero. I think that’s a good central character for the movie.” More »
Does Survival Horror Really Still Exist?
2:00AM Leigh Alexander | By: Leigh Alexander You’re picking your way through the destitute skeleton of an abandoned building. All around you, decaying, discarded décor reminds you that people lived and worked here once, just as it prompts you to wonder what happened to them. Strange noises and crawling damp seep through the rotted walls. Your backpack is stuffed with cryptic objects you inexplicably picked up in your exploration – unsettling to look at and obscure in their application, they somehow hold the solutions to the puzzles that impede your progress, if only you can figure them out. It’s dark, you’ve got a weak flashlight, a short knife, maybe a length of steel pipe you picked up along your way. And you have a sinking feeling that at the end of the next corridor, death is lurking in the shape of a shambling, deformed monster. But you press on through the dispassionate madness, driven by unravelling mysteries and the unresolved ghosts of your own past. This is survival horror – does it still exist? More »
