Nobody at Sony is recommending that you recreate iconic tracks from Nintendo's Mario Kart in the upcoming PlayStation 3 game LittleBigPlanet Karting. But what do you think is going to happen when you let gamers into a beta of a kart-racing game that has a very malleable track editor?

You get Mario Kart tracks in your LittleBigPlanet kart-racer, of course. We've got four of them in the video, via the game's just-concluded beta. DK Mountain and Bowser's Castle are the stand-outs. And they were only made in the limited one-month beta. When this game comes out in the fall, you can expect much better Mario Kart on Sony's console. Nothing official, of course.

Star Wars: The Old Republic currently has less than a million subscribers, publisher Electronic Arts said in an investors call today.

BioWare's massively multiplayer online role-playing game has been hemorrhaging subscribers since it launched last December. Earlier this year, the subscriber total dropped from 1.7 million to 1.3 million.

EA did not give the number of current The Old Republic subscribers, though the company said it's "well over" 500,000.

Earlier today, EA said the MMORPG would be going free-to-play this fall.

The people who run mega-giant-huge gaming company EA have said they want to put out few games. Probably to be like their rivals at Activision. Make a few huge console and PC games and maybe they'll be golden. But they also believe in something else you may have heard about: that mobile games, Facebook games and free-to-play games are on the rise.

So, when you look at the chart above, take note that what you're looking at in the quarter three line-up—October through December of 2012—consists off all of EA's heavyweight games for the big holiday season. And what do you see? Three console/PC game: the next Need for Speed, the next Medal of Honor and FIFA Manager '13

For fans of console and PC games, you'll see that there are more games coming out for those machines in "Q4", which is January through the end of March 2013. Only three are listed in the chart here, so you get to guess which games will fill out the rest of their winter. Some new Dragon Age? Something for Wii U? Who knows.

But the numbers 3 and 18 on the top chart should jump out to you.

No need to fret. The three games could be amazing, and more mobile games could continue to up the quality of what's playable on phones. It might all be good; but it is also very different. This is modern video games.

If you're here in the Panel Discussion programming block, you might be a lapsed comics reader, trying to find a way back to the JLA Satellite. Or you might someone killing time until you pick up your weekly Wednesday pull list. Or maybe you've said goodbye to dozens of longboxes to embrace the promise of digital comics. Whichever it is, you're still interested in the good stuff.

Welcome, then, to the Panel Discussion Dozen Quintet, where I pick out just-released or out-soon comics that I think are worth paying attention to. Ready? Then, let's meet the sequential art that'll be draining your wallet this week. Be sure to chime in with the books you'll be picking up or that you think everybody should be ready in the comments.

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Beasts of Burden: Neighborhood Watch #1
I've loved everything I've read from Evan Dorkin and Jill Thompson's animals-as-defenders-against-the-supernatural comic. The animals' different personalities feel as they would in real life—headstrong, wise and a little fearful—and Thompson's excellent art makes the proceedings both creepy and adorable. If you like Buffy, Scooby-Doo or just great story-telling, do yourself a favor and pick this up.

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Animal Man #12 & Swamp Thing #12
It's rare that a crossover feels worth the wait. Usually, the build-up is slow and poorly paced. But, that's not been the case in these two horror-inflected titles. Alec Holland and Buddy Baker's parallel paths as the avatars of animal and plant life finally converge in this week's issues and I can't wait to see how their characteristics and cast clash and co-operate in the Rotworld crossover.

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Harvest #1
I can't say anything about this medical crime thriller better than the solicitation copy already does: "Human traffickers. Rogue medical teams. Yakuza run organ mills and a six year-old drug fiend. Welcome to Dr. Benjamin Dane's nightmare. His only way out? Bring down the man who set him up by reclaiming organs already placed in some very powerful people. If Dexter, ER and 100 Bullets had a three-way and that mind blowing tryst somehow resulted in a kid, that kid would read HARVEST. Medical Grade Revenge."
I'm going to read this.

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Defenders #9
Matt Fraction and the artists on this title have already made the slightly trippy adventures in this series one of my favorites. But this issue promises a journey into alternate universes, always a favorite trope when executed well. Fraction's the kind of writer who can use twisted views on well-known characters extremely well so hopes are high for this issue.

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Hawkeye #1
More Fraction, this time on a fan-favorite character. Hawkeye reunites the writer with the wonderful David Aja, who illustrated the excellent Immortal Iron Fist book a few years back. The sleek design sense of Aja's rendering suits an archer character. It'll be pretty, if nothing else.

I'd known about the upcoming animated adaption of The Dark Knight Returns for a while now, but that awareness receded somewhere into the back of my brain somewhere. Like Old Bruce in a bathrobe.

But this new trailer—via MTV Geek—is like "the rain on my chest," a baptism. A baptism of remembering. It makes sense to follow The Dark Knight Rises's success with an adaptation of one of the texts that inspired it. Peter Weller's a great choice for a geriatric Batman and the look of the film approximates Miller's line drawing pretty well.

I, for one, cannot wait to recite all my favorite lines from Frank Miller's quote-tastic script word for word when this thing comes out. "You don't get it, boy. This isn't a mudhole... It's an operating table. And I'm the surgeon." The Dark Knight Returns Part emerges from the darkness and onto Blu-ray, DVD and digital download on September 25.

BioWare's massively multiplayer online RPG Star Wars: The Old Republic will go free-to-play this fall, publisher Electronic Arts said today.

EA later said in a press release that The Old Republic will go free-to-play this November. The game will be available for $15 starting August 7, a price that also includes a month of free play.

Earlier this year, the game became free-to-play until level 15. This fall, players will be able to play any storyline up to level 50 for free. To access higher-level game content and other new features that the company plans to implement, you'll have to either pay for a subscription or buy things individually.

"Players want flexibility and choice. The subscription-only model presented a major barrier for a lot of people who wanted to become part of The Old Republic universe," BioWare Austin GM Matthew Bromberg said in a press release.

Here are the two options BioWare has to offer, according to their press release:

Subscription – A service designed for players who want unrestricted access to all the game features via ongoing subscription or by redeeming a Game Time Card. In addition to gaining access to all game content as our current subscribers do now, subscribers will receive ongoing monthly grants of Cartel Coins, the new virtual currency that will be introduced later this fall. Cartel Coins can be used to purchase valuable in-game items including customizable gear and convenience features that will enhance the game play experience.

Free-To-Play – The first 50 levels will be Free-to-Play, with restrictions on access to new content and advanced player features. Some restrictions can be "unlocked" with Cartel Coins.

If you're already a subscriber or you've subscribed to the game in the past, you'll get a bunch of rewards for your money: 150 Cartel Coins per paid month; 1,000 Cartel Coins and a "Heroes' Banner" for Collector's Edition buyers; and extra bonuses for people who sign up between August 1 and the eventual free-to-play launch this fall.

BioWare also promises more regular content updates in the near future, starting this August.

This is a decision that has been hinted at for a while. Earlier this year, following news that The Old Republic had lost a significant chunk of subscribers, BioWare's Emmanuel Lusinchi said they were considering the free-to-play move.

"Since launch, we've been listening to feedback from our fans and adding new content and refining The Old Republic at a breakneck pace," executive producer Jeff Hickman said in today's press release. "We believe we are in a position to help improve the service even more, not only by continuing to add new content, but also by expanding the game to many more Star Wars fans, increasing the populations on worlds and the vibrancy of the community."

With The Dark Knight Rises and The Avengers posting record performances at cinemaplexes, it can be easy to forget that not everyone can rattle off the names of Bruce Wayne's parents or the address of the X-Men's school off the tops of their heads.

Comics' reach gets through pop culture seems to get bigger every day, meaning that more and more people are having to wade through the medium's wild jungles without so much as an Adamantium machete. Well, Kotaku wants you to explore all that comics has to offer and has come up with a plethora of starting-out tips that should help out even the most inexperienced of sequential storytelling neophytes. Let's get started!

Where to Get Comics

• Support your local comic shop. Don't let the Simpsons character scare you off; most comics shops have friendly staff ready to steer you towards great material that you'll probably love.
• Back issue boxes are your friends. Almost every comics shop has a cache of recent and older comics—single issues, mostly, but sometimes trade paperback collections as well. Older copies of a single issue can be had for as cheap as a dollar, or even a quarter. Back issues can let you explore various titles and talents at a lower price point, which is great for anyone trying to figure out what they like.
• You'd also do well to check out online subscription services like DCBS. Their sister site, in-stock trades boasts RIDICULOUS prices on trade paperbacks. Other sites like Khepri specialize in exclusives that come directly from creators.
• If you don't have a comics shop nearby or don't have the square footage to stockpile loads of printed material in your home, then think about digital comics. Most of the major publishers have digital storefronts where new comics are available on the same day as they arrive in stores. You'll also find selections from their back catalogs, usually at a big discount, in digital comics stores.
• If you really, really like something, buy it in print. It's been noted in several examinations of the relatively new digital comics market that you may not own those digital comics you get through a website or an app store. At least, not in the traditional sense of physical ownership. Devices break or become outdated and web services mutate and fracture. (Look at how cable TV providers are feuding with various channels for an example of how wrong things can go.) But you'll always be able to dig out a paper version of a comic you love. Besides, most comics are designed for the printed page. The way writers and artists use layout, color and other storytelling techniques are generally going to be best experienced that way.
• For those interested in digital comics, the main thing you want to check is Comixology, an app for iOS, Android and other devices that sells comics from most of the big and medium-sized publishers, with the notable exception of Dark Horse (those folks publish Star Wars, Buffy, Sin City and other cool comics; so check their app out, too). Comixology ties your purchases to your account, so while they don't let you outright download a file for the comics you buy, they do let you download them to any app they support. You can also read them through their website. Comixology sells most new comics from major publishers, day and date with release, so that's around noon ET on Wednesdays. They usually add about 100 issues of older comics to their back catalog at the same time. One of the nice things about their service is that they run a lot of sales and drop the price on most new comics after about a month (they usually go down a dollar). Sales run throughout the week, but the big ones consist of 99-cent-per-issue Marvel sales on Mondays and Fridays and frequent weekend sales, including a 101 or 201 (that's 101 or 201 comics for 99 cents each) from DC about once a month. Dark Horse and Comxology also have lots of free comics, so check their free sections, too.
• Ask friends for recommendations and loaners. Seriously. The people you know who read comics are REALLY into their comics. They are unfulfilled prophets and will happily lend you anything worth reading that they think will convert you to the tiny tribe of comics-readers.

What Kinds of Comics to Get

• You don't have to read superheroes. Seriously. If you think that comics are just home to the big bruisers and babes that make it onto the screen, you should know the capes-and-cowls set isn't all the medium has to offer. Memoir, historical non-fiction and beautifully allegorical creativity all thrive in comics. Comics remain a relatively cheap field to produce work in, which means that there's a plethora of styles, voices and viewpoints to experience.
• Don't ever buy anything because it'll be "worth something." Anything touted as a collector's edition is most likely going to be so mass-produced that it won't actually ever be rare enough to fetch an astronomical price at auction. There will probably plenty of copies of the Get-It-Now-Edition of the "Death of Captain ZOMG" twenty years from now.
• If you want a true collectible, get a commissioned sketch or page of original art by an artist you like.
• Read some webcomics. The best part about comics work designed for the internet is how it can use pacing and technology differently than paper comics.
• Buy trade paperbacks, or TPBs, for short. Sorry, monthlies lovers, but there are no ads and you get a story all at once, making them a much better way to read a comic.
• If you're reading this guide, don't go jumping into continuing superhero storylines without guidance. They're a tangled mess of canon and backstory that will just confuse you. Aim for classic, standalone pieces. So, don't just pick up Superman. But Superman: Red Son? Pick it up.
• Follow your favorite writers and artists, not favorite series or characters. More specifically, follow writers and writer-artists as opposed to artists. Everyone likes cool illustrations, but it's a far worse experience to read a badly-written comic with good art than it is to read a well-written one with bad art. So learn which writers you like; most of the best have excellent runs on a surprising array of creator-owned and company-owned work. Maybe you're a Garth Ennis person. Maybe you're a Brian Michael Bendis person. Or maybe Warren Ellis is more your speed.
• Don't worry about starting in the middle. Publishers of serialized super-hero comics sometimes advertise that such-and-such issue is a great jumping on point for new readers. Non-readers, meanwhile, fret that most ongoing comics will be too impenetrable for them to understand. Forget about all of this. Jump into the middle of something. See if there's anything you like about it and then, if you're intrigued, load up on back issues.The longest-running arcs in comics right now are things like Brian Michael Bendis' 8-year run on an array of Avengers comics and Grant Morrison's 6-year run on a batch of Batman books (both concluding in the next 12 months by the way). Even those massive runs are chopped up into 4 or 6-issue arcs, so you're never more than a few issues from being at the start of something. You can always go back and fill in from the way beginning if need be.
• Size up your wish list and plan to fulfill it accordingly. Many of the books people will rave to you about—Watchmen, Maus, Ice Haven, We3, to name a few—can be read in an afternoon with time left to read a second. These comics are no bigger a risk to your time and budget than a dinner at a restaurant you've never tried before. Longer, iconic series such as Sandman, Preacher, Transmetropolitan, Y The Last Man or The Walking Dead run 60-100 issues (and still going, in the last one's case). These longer runs take much more time to read can cost more than $100 to obtain in print. This may drive you toward piracy. Avoid temptation!; comics creators get paid crap money as it is. Consider either getting the trade-paperbacks, which is still pricey or doing legit digital downloads, which, if you catch a sale, is way cheaper. But, remember, you probably have a friend who can lend you a collection of one of these longer runs so that you can see if it's your thing.
• Read some modern comics, and then read some Will Eisner's The Spirit (look for a best-of collection; skip the early part of the run) or Jack-Kirby-drawn Fantastic Four (sampling the first few issues of that is fine). These two guys are seen as the pioneers of the field and probably the two greatest artists in its history, but both did work that's an acquired taste. The same holds true for alt-comics godfather R. Crumb. Trust us. It may seem backwards, you should try to attain your literacy in modern comics before going back to try to appreciate the masters. But, when you do, you'll be in for a treat.

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In April, we fielded a rather confusing rumor that involved game developer Sergei Girgorovich supposedly telling a Russian news outlet that he had sold the rights to his development team's acclaimed post-nuclear-apocalypse-horror-first-person-shooter series, S.T.A.L.K.E.R., to Bethesda, the people who brought us the acclaimed post-apocalyptic first-person role-playing game Fallout 3. But a Bethesda rep no-commented and the official S.T.A.L.K.E.R. Facebook page said that Girgorovich "has not sold the IP rights to anyone."

Here we go again.

Via PC gaming news experts Rock Paper Shotgun comes a report that the same blogger who called the cancellation of S.T.A.L.K.E.R. 2 now says Bethesda has nabbed the rights to the game series—though somehow without Girgorovich selling them the rights to the whole S.T.A.L.K.E.R. world (just giving them the ability to make S.T.A.L.K.E.R. games).

What's Bethesda have to say about the rumor the second time over? "We don't comment on rumors or speculation," a rep told Kotaku today.

And what about the S.T.A.L.K.E.R. Facebook page this time? This was posted there about an hour ago: "Attention Stalkers: I will get clarification on the "Bethesda purchasing the rights to Stalker" and let you all know as soon as possible!"

Update: Deja vu... The person running the official S.T.A.L.K.E.R. Facebook page now says: "According to my sources the news that Bethesda purchased the Stalker rights is false. I will continue to keep a look out and if I hear anything new, you will all be the first to know!"

QuakeCon, the official convention for id Software and Bethesda, starts this weekend. That would be a good time for this rumor to either be confirmed or debunked by one of the many Bethesda folks who will be at the show.

Over the years, I've dabbled in a hefty number of video games. I'm pretty used to sitting down and picking up a new system reasonably quickly. It's part of my job, after all. I may not be good at it right away (or ever), but I can navigate myself around a world and figure out what I'm doing.

I missed X-Com: UFO Defense along the way, back in the 1990s. I sat down to play it last night, so I could learn a bit about it before the remake comes out. As I began cautiously to dabble with the title, I realized the biggest problem I have with games of that era is one I did not expect: I can't figure out how to play them.

I don't mean from a high level, or tactically. I was able to build bases, sort out my revenue, make sure I had soldiers and ships, and decide to intercept both flying and ground-based UFOs pretty easily. I got the idea. I knew what it was I needed to do, what was expected of me. I could understand my goals and improve. In theory.

Because my biggest problem was that I literally could not figure out what half the buttons did.

Faced with a wall of textless icons, I automatically moved my mouse to hover over them. But of course, mouse hover was not a common feature of games in 1995. It took me three tries to intercept my first UFO before I figured out "cautious attack" and "heavy attack." The first time, I accidentally disengaged entirely.

Knowing is half the battle. When you can't tell what the tools do, it's hard to learn how best to deploy them.

It's not just X-Com, either. I sat down to two of my all-time old favorites recently, SimCity 2000 and Heroes of Might and Magic 3. I scoffed at the idea of looking over a tutorial for either: how many hundreds of hours of each have I played, over the years and decades? And then I discovered how obtuse the games and I could both really be. I could play parts of both from muscle memory, true. But when it came to more complicated actions, or ones I performed more rarely? A thousand clicks just to remember how to view the pipes, instead of the streets.

On the one hand, it's intuitive: a mortarboard for education, a lightning bolt for electricity. But part of that intuition comes from having read and internalized the novel-length manual over fifteen years ago. Games don't really ship with long manuals anymore. Players often lament "handholding" and prolonged tutorial sequences, which certainly exist, but really part of the change is just that context-sensitive menus and popups were invented, and they've turned out to be incredibly useful.

Civilization V can be an incredibly complicated game, but I was able to sit down with it and learn it on the fly, thanks to the ability to hover for tooltips. The same goes for every skill redesign I sat through in six years of EverQuest II, as well as for every MMO I have ever picked up for a free weekend, demo, or beta. Could I possibly make it through The Secret World and all its zillion possible skill combinations without an occasional reminder of which highly stylized icon does what?

I always knew I appreciated the evolution of pause and save as modern features that made gaming more accessible, but until this week I honestly never thought about how valuable tooltips and context-sensitive information can be. The mouse-hover and I had evolved together, over the years. I expect my UI to tell me what I can choose to do with it just as I expect my game to use millions of colors.

Games speak a highly specialized language of iconography. After you've learned what the tools do, their pictograms seem obvious. The "heavy attack" icon and the "disengage" icon clearly show their functions after you've tried them out. The little arrow is moving away from the UFO. Of course! How could I be so foolish?

I only had to screw up fights a few times in order to figure out how they should actually work going forward. There's something to be said for learning by trial and error; the mistake that cost me half my soldiers is not one I will easily forget. But I will be a lot more appreciative the next time I sit down to play a complicated game and I can actually see what the buttons do. It's much easier to take options that you actually know you have.

My earliest days as a computer gamer were spent scouring static scenes with my mouse pointer, waiting for that telltale shape change that indicated the item or bit of scenery that would lead me to the next static scene. These were adventure games, and they were the closest gaming came to delivering a cinematic experience back in the early 80s.

We've come a long way since the days of point-and-click. Advances in graphics and processing power have brought the action movie experience to our fingertips. We're firing guns, jumping from planes, shooting fireballs and delving deep into dangerous dungeons, all in real time.

We've taken control of the characters we used to only guide. We've gained a more personal experience, but we've lost touch with the magic of those thoughtful, barely-animated adventures.

The magic lurking within the pages of The Book of Unwritten Tales.

Adventure gaming isn't dead; it's just not mainstream. It's a type of game that doesn't work particularly well on consoles (Quantic Dream's Heavy Rain being a notable exception), and with today's cutting-edge 3D titles dominating the market, big-name publishers aren't chomping at the bit for the latest and greatest point-and-click title.

Adventure games began on the PC, and that's where they live to this day. Games like the recently-released indie hit Resonance nod to the pixelated past of the genre, which regular releases from European developers apply the technology of today to enhance the time-tested adventure formula.

Available today on Mac and PC, The Book of Unwritten Tales is a product of one such developer, Germany's King Art Games. Available since late last year via the developer's website, today The Book of Unwritten Tales goes wide across popular digital distribution platforms (Steam, Gog.com, etc.), and it's the most potent pure point-and-click adventure I've had the pleasure of playing in ages.

From the official description:

In a world torn by war, the aged gremlin archaeologist Mortimer MacGuffin harbours the dark secret of a powerful artefact. Whoever calls this artefact his own, will determine the fate of the world. While the Army of the Shadows sends out its best and most devious agents to discover the secret, the Alliance's four heroes find themselves involuntarily drawn into the crisis...

This is, unfortunately, an incredibly generic description. There is much more to The Book of Unwritten Tales than a small band of adventures caught up in a conflict. It's the story of an impetuous elf girl rushing headlong into danger without a thought for... well, much of anything. It's about a young gnome that dreams of adventure entrusted with a ring of relative power (not that much power). It's about a swashbuckling scoundrel and his hair companion (more Muppet than Wookie).

And it's about some genuinely funny moments.

Beneath top-notch voice acting, an inspired fantasy score and writing almost too witty for its own good, are more than 200 puzzles to solve on the way to freeing the world from the shadow of darkness. Much more than simply fetching item A and applying it to item B, the conundrums you'll encounter in The Book of Unwritten Tales require actual though, and there's no hint system, so you'll have to keep it honest.

The art direction combines the look and feel of hand-painted animation with 3D characters the create a look reminiscent of the best fantasy animation of the late 70's and early 80's. It's like a Rankin-Bass film (The Last Unicorn) come to life, with an orchestral score to match.

I play it and suddenly I'm sitting in my father's smokey computer room. I'm dressed in footie pajama bottoms and a long-sleeve baseball t-shirt. The smell of bacon wafting in from the kitchen isn't enough to tear my attention from the screen, chewing my lip as I peruse my inventory, looking for the key that opens the door to the next in a long string of bite-sized adventures.

A good adventure game is a powerful thing.

The Book of Unwritten Tales is what adventure gaming is all about, a showcase for a game type that many of us have lost track of, and an excellent title to help get you reacquainted with the genre. The genre where story and substance take precedent over action, and most importantly...

The Book of Unwritten Tales [Steam]