Kotaku Australia

‘PlayStation Is The Most Powerful Game Brand In The World’

Steve Peterson — Sat, 28 Jan 2012 18:00:00 +1100

What’s happened in the business of video games this past week … QUOTE | “PlayStation is the most powerful game brand in the world.” — Jack Buser, Director of PlayStation Home, gives his obviously biased opinion on Sony’s gaming brand at a CES panel on the future of consoles. QUOTE | “I think it’s over, and Zynga won.” — Tim Chang ...

Game Jam Letters: No Country For Old Men

Mark Serrels — Sat, 28 Jan 2012 17:00:50 +1100

Tracey, This is no country for old men. The young developers come in swarms, in t-shirts featuring slogans, jokes I’m not cool enough to understand. They speak in tongues that my fragile brain rejects. They devour pizza at speeds I cannot comprehend. This is no country for old men. “We should start a new thing,” says Ben Britten, Technical Director at Tinman Games, and judge for Melbourne� ...

Red Dead Redemption Voice-Actor Details Cast’s ‘Redneck Zombie Romantic Comedy’ Quasi-Reunion

Kirk Hamilton — Sat, 28 Jan 2012 17:00:00 +1100

The cast of Red Dead Redemption are no strangers to rednecks, nor to zombies — Rockstar’s wild-west open world game featured plenty of the former in its original incarnation, and added an invasion of the latter added to the game via downloadable content. As we found out last spring, several members of the cast are reuniting to film a “Zombie Romantic Comedy” called ...

Game Jam Letters: I’m At A Racecourse

Tracey Lien — Sat, 28 Jan 2012 14:00:40 +1100

“Well, I have no idea where we are.” My dad has offered to drive me to Sydney’s Game Jam because its Rosehill Racecourse location is awkward to get to. “What do you mean you have no idea where we are?” I say in a high-pitched voice that is almost breaking. We’ve been in the car for a while. I’m kind of sweaty. “Didn’t you say you used to work a ...

Delayed! Aliens: Colonial Marines For Spring 2012

Logan Booker — Sat, 28 Jan 2012 13:30:48 +1100

It’s the worst kind of surprise, and I feel bad because we just posted the new trailer. But it’s been confirmed — we won’t be seeing Aliens: Colonial Marines until September, at the earliest. Game Informer managed to squeeze the unfortunate news out of Sega, the publisher stating the game will miss its autumn release and won’t be out until spring 2012. Here&# ...

The Week In Unbelievably Gorgeous Screenshots: Bioshock And Mass Effect 2

Kirk Hamilton — Sat, 28 Jan 2012 13:00:00 +1100

Since we ran a feature on Duncan Harris, the groovy “video game photographer” behind the website DeadEndThrills, I’ve been sharing some of his work each week here. This week Harris wrapped up Mass Effect 2 and dug into the original Bioshock, while throwing in a couple of enjoyable one-offs, as well. But first, he did a shot of The WItcher 2, which you s ...

No More Resistances, Says Insomniac CEO [Updated]

Logan Booker — Sat, 28 Jan 2012 12:30:51 +1100

Games are wont to end as trilogies. Going by Gears of War, Mass Effect, Halo and countless others, you could say it’s an unwritten law. Much like The Dude, Insomniac’s PlayStation-exclusive Resistance franchise will abide, with CEO Ted Price informing VG247 that the developer “won’t be making any more Resistances”. This, by the way, ...

101 Seconds Of Soulcalibur V, Which Sure Seems Better Than IV

Nick Vannucci — Sat, 28 Jan 2012 12:00:00 +1100

I played a little bit of Soulcalibur V today. I recorded some of it, cut out all the parts where I lost horribly, and made this video for you to watch. I’ve got glimpses here for you of the story, the character creator and the excellent new Critical Gauge. Plus, I’ve got Ezio fighting for you. Soulcalibur V drops in the U.S. on January 31, in Europe and Japan later i ...

Dramatic New Trailer For Aliens: Colonial Marines

Kirk Hamilton — Sat, 28 Jan 2012 12:00:00 +1100

Slow-mo trailers are all the rage these days, usually depicting extreme violence set to moody, emo pop music. It’s certainly become a popular practice in gaming advertising, and with good reason — those moody, introspective ads for intense action games can be pretty cool. Case in point — the above trailer for Gearbox’s Aliens: Colonial Marines, which IGN posted a l ...

Why I Don’t Want To Smell Video Games

Tim Rogers — Sat, 28 Jan 2012 11:30:00 +1100

The 2012 Consumer Electronics Show has come and gone, and still no smell-o-vision inventor has stepped forward to wave the flag violently enough. The next big thing in movies — once they figure out 3D — is probably going to be smell-o-vision and this will be pretty awesome, as long as you’re watching independent films about bakeries or pizzerias. Right now the only facsimile of s ...

Everybody Was Final Fantasy XIII-2 Fighting

Mike Fahey — Sat, 28 Jan 2012 11:15:00 +1100

Yesterday Square Enix released a video demonstrating all of the nifty things you can do instead of fighting in Final Fantasy XIII-2. Today? Today is all about the battles, which are arguably as entertaining. My favourite aspect of Final Fantasy XIII-2‘s battle system is definitely the ability to recruit monsters to your party. Every time a battle begins and my pal Chase the ...

Game Jam Letters: Good Morning From Melbourne

Katie Williams — Sat, 28 Jan 2012 11:00:29 +1100

This weekend Kotaku AU is covering Game Jam from Sydney and Melbourne. To kick off 48-hours of instant noodle-eating madness (and game development, of course), Katie Williams let’s us know what shenanigans the devs down south have gotten up to. Dear Tracey, Hello from the Melbourne Game Jam! Mark and I are writing to you from the Bundoora campus of La Trobe University, which is set in thick ...

How BioWare Writes A Mass Effect Game

Evan Narcisse — Sat, 28 Jan 2012 10:00:00 +1100

You may think, with all the fighting and decision-making of two games, that you’re the one who ultimately controls the fate of Mass Effect‘s player-created hero Commander Shepard. You do not. The person actually in control of your Shepard’s destiny is BioWare lead writer Mac Walters, who heads up the team of writers who’ve been working on Mass Effect 3. Wa ...

Racial Epithet Shows Up On Minecraft Menu, Developer Apologises

Kirk Hamilton — Sat, 28 Jan 2012 07:00:00 +1100

The newest version of Minecraft greets players with the sentence “You are a NIGGER”, if they switch their language settings to Afrikaans, the native language of South Africa and Namibia. It appears to have been the doing of an unruly Minecraft user who was among many people who worked on language translations of the popular game. Minecraft‘s developers ...

Mass Effect 3′s Multiplayer Turns You Into Sheperd’s Kick-Arse Strike Team

Evan Narcisse — Sat, 28 Jan 2012 06:30:00 +1100

It was kind of surprising that Mass Effect 3‘s multiplayer looked better than expected. But this trailer makes it look like must-play content. You’ll see the various races of BioWare’s sci-fi universe playing through skirmishes as several classes, with missions that appear to happen all over the galaxy. ...

Developer Makes Disabled Gamer’s Wish Come True With An Arrow Click

Mike Fahey — Sat, 28 Jan 2012 06:00:00 +1100

When a commenter on the website of Legend of Grimrock asked about clickable on-screen arrow navigation for the upcoming indie dungeon crawler, developers said they had no plans to implement such a feature. When they found out why the commenter asked, they quickly changed those plans. Legend of Grimrock commenter HarpoonIPA is a disabled gamer, forced to use a mouth stick for typi ...

See How Armored Core V’s Multiplayer Will Change Mech Multiplayer In This Video

Evan Narcisse — Sat, 28 Jan 2012 05:45:00 +1100

With Dark Souls already out in the world, dev studio From Software’s moving from magic to science with the upcoming Armored Core V. This video runs through the basics of multiplayer and shows off the new Operator role in action. It looks like there’s going to some tower defence elements in coming to ACV, when it comes out in March. ...

Watch A 3DS Make A Kid Puke And Other WTF Craziness In This Nintendo News Video

Evan Narcisse — Sat, 28 Jan 2012 05:30:00 +1100

Nintendo announced a bunch of actual news over the last few days — the release window for the Wii U, the Nintendo Network, a new Mario side-scroller for the 3DS — but Next Media Animation doesn’t care about any of that. Instead, the Taiwanese news animators give us Nintendo president Satoru Iwata popping out of a warp pipe and getting roughed up by Sony and Nintendo avatars and M ...

Jimmy Fallon’s Most Consoles Played In One Minute Record Shattered

Mike Fahey — Sat, 28 Jan 2012 05:00:00 +1100

In July of 2010 late night talk show host Jimmy Fallon attempted to play 10 different games on 10 different consoles in one minute. He only played nine. Not 10, but still impressive, at least until Ohio’s Ryan Sullivan did 13. Recorded in the RecordSetter Book of World Records, Ryan Sullivan’s record-breaking feat took place yesterday at anime convention Ohayacon. After a slow start an ...

Is JRPG Odin Sphere A Literary Masterpiece?

Lisa Foiles — Sat, 28 Jan 2012 04:45:00 +1100

The last thing I want to do is start another debate about video game storytelling. That sounds almost as fun to read as an article about any other dead horse that we’ve repeatedly body-slammed over the last few years. Rather, I simply want to tap the ongoing stories-in-games discussion on the shoulder and remind it to stop overlooking one of the greatest examples of ingenious and engaging st ...