As you may have guessed by now, comedian and talk show host Conan O'Brien is fairly rubbish at video games. Mostly because he neither plays nor really even likes games.
But then, that's exactly what makes his "reviews" so good.
It was only two weeks ago that the World of Warcraft movie, fresh off its big-time director leaving the project, looked set to join the scrapheap of failed video game adaptations.
Today? It sounds like there's some serious push behind the movie, because not only has a new writer been announced, but Activision boss Bobby Kotick has made the rare move of speaking publicly about the flick.
Kotick told Variety that if the movie is "important to Blizzard, it's important to me. They're very excited about having a 'World of Warcraft' film. They've been very careful and thoughtful about the development process."
The new writer, meanwhile, is Charles Leavitt, who has penned flicks like Blood Diamond, and whose take on the franchise has Legendary pictures excited.
'World of Warcraft' drafts new scribe [Variety]
Sebastien Larroudé is one of my favourite concept artists working today. Formerly a senior concept artist at Eidos, where he worked on Thief 4 and Deus Ex (we actually featured some of his DE:HR work previously here), Larroudé - aka Rainart - now heads up Steambot Studios, a collection of brilliant artists that includes the likes of Thierry "BARONTiERi" Doizon.
This gallery features a selection of works, both professional and personal, encompassing not only his time with Eidos but other projects as well like Tron Legacy (the actual movie) and Steambot's awesome coffee table book Exodyssey.
You can see more of Sebastien's work at his personal site.
To see the larger pics in all their glory (or so you can save them as wallpaper), right-click on them below and select "open in new tab".
Around 80% of trade-ins that take place in a GameStop store are re-sold in the same location. Those that aren't, though, are moved on to this enormous factory and processing facility in Texas.
If a game is traded in and the disc is looking a little worse for wear, it's sent here for cleaning (with the top layers of a disc sometimes literally scraped away) and then testing in "banks of test consoles stacked upon racks". If you trade in a console, it's sent here to have its hard drive scrubbed not once, not twice, but thrice.
The images you see here are from an IGN report on the facility, which also contains an interesting piece of information: once tested and cleaned, games aren't sent out randomly, or even simply to stores with bigger sales. They're sent out according to "algorithms based on buying patterns", which sees "More shooting games are sent to stores near military bases" and "More hockey games are sent north."
What Happens to Your Used Games? [IGN]
This elaborate custom PC was built for display at this year's QuakeCon. You can take your pick as to what's most amazing about the project: the fact it works, the fact it looks identical to a terminal from Fallout, or the fact the entire thing cost under $60.
The PC's exterior is hand-made, while the screen is an old CRT unit. It's running Ubuntu, and that hacking game you see on the screen isn't static; it's been programmed to actually work as a Fallout hacking game.
Fallout 3 Terminal [Reddit]
When you spend over $400 on an action figure - that's right, this is a posable figure, not a statue - you expect a certain level of "wow". I'm not sure this Batman figure delivers $400 worth of wow, but it sure does come close.
Standing an enormous 18 inches tall, the Hot Toys figure will be out in 2013, so you've got time to save up for it.
The figure includes everything except a highly-detailed, miniature kitchen sink. There are three heads, one of which has moving eyeballs and another which has light-up eyes. There are also three faces, each with a different expression.
There's three sets of interchangeable hands, a flight pack, a cape, grapnel gun, sticky bomb gun, EMP gun, three batarangs....yeah, you get the idea.
PlayStation All-Stars Battle Royale will get a public beta this fall, following a private beta that, over the weekend, was said to reveal eight more characters from the game's roster and what appeared to be all of its stages.
SuperBot Entertainment, the game's developer, acknowledged the leak in a post today on the PlayStation blog, calling it "unintended and unexpected," but adding, " the leaked content does not fully represent the final product. ... This will be evident in the coming weeks as this content is officially revealed, beginning with our next character announcement at Gamescom in a couple of weeks."
Details for getting into the public beta are forthcoming, said SuperBot, though PlayStation Plus subscribers apparently will be given early access.
PlayStation All-Stars Battle Royale Public Beta This Fall [PlayStation Blog]
GeekRemixed has put together this mashup by Fatboy Roberts, called "A Dance With Dragonborn," which combines the two tracks into an at-times discordant, at-times symphonic mix of two of the most iconic recent melodies in fantasy.
There are times where it simply feels like you're listening to two tracks playing at once without any rhyme or reason, and other times when it feels like you're listening to something entirely new. Nice work.
When friendly Mr. Anthony Carboni shared Porter Robinson's new video for "Language" yesterday, he described it as "What tumblr dreams about at night."
I agree. It's a little bit Twilight/Hunger Games, a little bit The B.F.G., a little bit "Desktop Background Website." And a lot awesome.
The first two Katamari soundtracks are almost perfect, ranking in as some of the most eclectic and vibrant music to ever be featured in any game. Even as the franchise became more and more rehashed and it's creator, Keita Takahashi, moved on to do other things, the music was still well above most of what gaming has to offer.
This week on the Kotaku Mixtape we look at weird and wonderful the music of the Katamari series. I also included a few remixes from some of the later games that some Katamari Fans might have missed.
THE LIST:
Katamari On The Rocks - Yu Miyake
Lonely Rolling Star - Yoshihito Yano
Baby Universe - Hiroshi Okubu & Maki Nomiya (of Pizzicato 5)
A Crimson Rose And A Gin And Tonic (YMCK 8BIT REMIX) - Asuka Sakai &YMCK
DISCO ☆ PRINCE - Hiroshi Okubu
Katamari of Love (SEXY SYNTHESIZER REMIX) - Yoshihito Yano, Akitaka Toyama, SEXY SYNTHESIZER
Houston - Hideki Tobeta
Na na na na na na na na na na na na na na na....