Will the next PlayStation have more of a casual focus than its predecessor?
One person claiming to be a former senior manager at Sony seems to think so, posting in a Glassdoor review of the company that he doesn't think Sony's next-gen system, codenamed Orbis, will do very well:
Take this with a healthy grain of salt, as you might for any anonymous "former employee" review. But, as pointed out by Kotaku columnist Superannuation, who discovered the review, this sort of casual focus would seem to align with the Orbis sketches we reported earlier this year.
While not the best Final Fantasy game of all-time (in my reality that's IX), Final Fantasy IV was one of the first role-playing games to feature a deep, character-driven plot and introduced the world to the Active Time Battle system, adding an element of urgency to pressing one button over and over again. That's at least $16 worth of value right there.
Matrix Software's 2007 remake for the Nintendo DS is prettier than ever on the retina screen of the iPhone and iPad (doesn't look too shabby on the mini either). Those pixelated 3D textures take on a certain charm when blown up to size, and the novelty of hearing Cecil and Cain exchanging dialogue with actual voices never fades.
Players get an epic tale of good versus not-so-good wrapped around an endless string of turn-based battles interspersed with exploration and equipment upgrades.
What that will cost them is $15.99, which is definitely on the more expensive end of the iOS game spectrum, but considering the cheapest price I can find for a used copy of the DS version—$14.99, not counting shipping—it's a fair price. And hey, Square Enix finally released a universal Final Fantasy game. That's progress!
If it seems like a bit of a cop out, picking a proven game from an at-the-time proven publisher for today's Gaming App of the Day, then consider this—it's Christmas Eve, and I need to make buffalo chicken dip. Of course it's a cop out, but it's also a damn fine choice.
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Lazlow Jones co-wrote the radio scripts for all the Grand Theft Auto games (save Chinatown Wars, of course) going back to III, and appears as a radio personality in all of the games. He also, evidently, has all of the master copies of the recordings. In his home. Which is on Long Island. Or, well, a barrier island off Long Island.
Ordinarily this isn't much of a problem. but it was as Hurricane Sandy came barreling in late October, and Long Island was whomped particularly bad by the stormacane, or whatever it was at that stage. In a visit to the Opie & Anthony Show last week, where Lazlow's a regular guest, he related what his priorities were as the storm came barreling in.
1. Get the GTA III master recording.
2. Get the GTA: Vice City master recording.
3. Get the GTA: San Andreas master recording.
4. You get the idea.
"My studio is on the ground floor," he said on the show. "That's where GTA 3, Vice City, San Andreas, all those masters like the full recordings with Axl Rose and everything. I mean, all this stuff," he said. "I started freaking out and grabbing, just boxes of masters and putting it up on the second floor. Cause I was like 'I'm not going to let this stuff get ruined.'"
Asked if he was storing the recordings elsewhere, Lazlow said he'd learned he shouldn't "keep a lot of amazing masters from some epic video games on the ground floor near a sand bar."
If you're curious if he said anything about Grand Theft Auto V, he did, but only to say the game was due in the coming spring.
Winter is coming, and we're going to need gloves. Not just any gloves, mind you, but gloves that allow us to interface with the touchscreen devices that have become such a huge part of our everyday lives over the past few years. I've been looking for a good pair for ages. I believe I've finally found them.
There are plenty of gloves on the market designed to give wearers access to capacitive touch devices. Most of these rely on placing special pads on the tips of certain fingers to allow those specific areas to access the screen. These are the gloves of the future, unafraid to look and feel a little strange for the sake of functionality.
Mujjo does not make those kinds of gloves. They make the knit Touch Gloves, woven hand-warmers laced with silver-coated nylon fibers that extend the skin's conductivity. They are quite clever. They are also, as I mentioned, knit. I'm not a big fan of knit gloves.
I will buy entire outfits at Wal-Mart, but when it comes to my hands I like to treat them special. Mujjo's latest product, the Leather Touchscreen Gloves, are just what the pampered paw ordered. Crafted from Ethiopian lambskin and lined with wool, these beauties look and feel outstanding.
They work incredibly well too, as you can see in the video above. Instead of using the woven nylon fibers of the knit pair, the Leather Touchscreen Gloves use advanced nanotechnology integrated into the leather that mimics human skin. I do not want to imagine how it does that—as long as they get the job done, I am fine wearing alien mimic particles on my fingers.
Of course when technology and luxury meet, wallets suffer. At €129.95 (roughly $170) these aren't the sort of gloves you mindlessly leave behind on the counter at Starbucks. I've already left them in two different friends' cars. I am pondering stapling them on.
Whether you're a fan of leather or prefer the homey-ness and affordability of knit gloves (around $30), Mujjo's combination of smart tech and quality construction should keep you gaming and texting long after the rest of your body has frozen solid. You might want to put on a jacket or something.
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I'm obsessed with video games. No news flash there. I can mark months of my life with the games I've played, the games I heard about, the new systems I got or the articles about video games that I wrote.
For me, it's games, games, games all the time, which is why, when I look back on 2012, I can see it through the filter of games.
What follows is my gaming year. I'd love to know yours:
January
This is a crazy month because, suddenly, I'm in charge of Kotaku. No pressure!
February
On the eighth of the month I land in Las Vegas and am waiting for a cab to take me to the Red Rock Hotel & Casino for the DICE summit, an annual gathering of various captains of the gaming industry and assorted press barnacles like me. While waiting on that taxi line I spot game designer Tim Schafer and a contingent from his studio, Double Fine. One of them tells me that they might have a news item for me shortly. A couple of hours later, they've tipped one of the most influential dominoes in the year by launching a Kickstarter campaign for a new Double Fine adventure game.
A day later, during a break in the DICE summit, Schafer and I sit for a brief interview. Our interview lasts 22 minutes, including an interruption from Leisure Suit Larry creator Al Lowe, who will later launch a Kickstarter of his own. During those 22 minutes, the Double Fine Kickstarter earns $23,000.
We have the video to prove it.
I play a lot of PlayStation Vita this month.
This is also the month we tell everyone what a Durango is.
March
I go to the Game Developers Conference in San Francisco this month and take a detour to visit Zynga. There I admire their colorful lobby…
...scratch my head when I see people from Crytek sign in…
…and I interview a trio of top Zynga people, not all of whom will even make it at Zynga through the next few months. Those interviews, at times encouraging, at times baffling, sit on my tape recorder for a few months until the company begins to hit extremely rough waters. At that time, I figure, it's worth a look at what these people think they're doing with and to video games.
Also, this month: Our team is split about whether Mass Effect 3's ending should be changed. I come out in favor of gamers asking for tweaks. Games are interactive, I write. They are the malleable artform.
After interviewing the studio chief behind the next Splinter Cell I pose a question that seems to keep popping up in various ways in 2012: "What If The Next Generation Thinks Video Games are Stupid?" This is the year, it seems, that even people within the world of video games, routinely fret that games are losing touch with what's new and exciting.
I go to Santa Monica for a week and play a bunch of E3 games early. This is when I first play XCOM: Enemy Unknown, the new Sim City, Metal Gear Rising: Revengeance and a bunch of other games. I download Diablo III over my hotel's internet and start playing it on a Macbook Air, while the rest of the team chronicles the game's crazy launch problems.
It's in this month that I play and review the worst game I'll play all year.
June
I go to E3, where I marvel at Watch Dogs and scratch my head at Nintendo Land. I come back and tick off a bunch of Nintendo fans when I write about the Wii U's expected lag in horsepower.
What history might forget, however, is that I just miss being in one of the year's best gaming GIFs:
I'm on the other side of Molyneux. I saw that missed fist-bump up close! History, witnessed from stage right.
July
This is a slow month for new games but another exciting month for Kotaku. We begin publishing shorter versions of some of our reviews in The New York Times.
Game designer Terry Cavanagh sends me a near-final version of his iPhone game, Super Hexagon. Bliss. Suddenly my iPhone is my gaming platform of choice.
It's also the month of my oddest interview of the year when, on the morning of August 15, I fly from New York to San Francisco to interview Nintendo CEO Satoru Iwata, then meet our own Kirk Hamilton in a café, head back to the airport and fly back to New York that evening. Let's call that an unusually long commute.
September
Oddly, I don't remember much from September. I'm pretty sure I spent a chunk of it playing Resident Evil 6. Ugh.
This is the month I play Assassin's Creed III and put myself on the side of people who like what is probably the year's most divisive game.
It's also the month of Hurricane Sandy…
November
… on the second day of the month, having experienced no serious personal hardship from superstorm Sandy, I wander down to the Brooklyn promenade and shoot video of one of the strangest things I'll probably ever see in my life.
Downtown Manhattan, almost entirely blacked out.
Later in the month, a sight of an altogether different sort: Wii U line-waiters meeting the president of Nintendo of America.
That evening, the Nintendo chief tries to convince me that ZombiU is so good it could be a system-seller. I scoff. Later that month I play it and realize he was right.
December
I re-discover my 3DS, switching to downloading most of the games I get for the system. I also inch ever closer to actually being a bona-fide PC gamer by… plugging my gaming PC into a TV and an Xbox controller and treating it like a next-gen console. Baby steps!
I stare wide-eyed at the number of fascinating games that I still want to finish playing. So much for this being a slow off-year for video games.
And I write this piece you're reading now, looking back at a Kotaku that has been filled with superb content written by a couple dozen amazingly talented writers, reporters, critics, columnists and a single, stellar video editor and I think: yep, these people made me look really good. You readers helped a ton, too. Thank you.
What was that? Did you say you were in need of some new wallpaper? And what? You love Minecraft too? Don't worry buddy. Dead End Thrills—the screenshot artist—has got your back.
Hit the site for higher resolutions of these beauties.
Twas the day before Christmas and all through the house, these are the games that are keeping parents from cooking and wrapping presents and the children from stumbling over internet porn.
I was pretty sure we all agreed to stop playing FarmVille 2. I let my crops wither, stopped working on my seasonal quests. Now everyone else's farms look like shining holiday wonderlands and mine looks like death. I suppose I could have visited a neighbor's farm to grab a more festive screenshot, but that would start me clicking on things and my failure would be complete.
I do not wish my failure to be complete. I have plenty more failing to do in Candy Crush Saga.
Most-Played Facebook Games by Daily Active Users — 12/24/2012
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The 2012 year is almost over. Soon, it'll be time to get out those top hats and ring in the New Year. But many you don't want to wear a top hat. Maybe you want to wear something else. Like these folks.
Here is a look back at the year that was in cosplay, sans Kotaku's regular features Fancy Pants and Who Wore It Best.
If you thought porn star Ron Jeremy was the only sexy Mario, you are wrong. There are other Marios, sexy Marios who like to preen and pose for the camera in overalls and with mushrooms and fireballs. More »
Tonight at the Tokyo Game Show, some of the best cosplayers in Japan-and around the world-gathered for Cosplayers' Cure Night.
It wasn't a competition or a contest to see who put on the best outfit (or the best show), but rather, a gathering of cosplayers-and members of More »
This poor, totally adorable animal! Chinese micro-blogger Toshiya86 uploaded a series of "cat cosplay", featuring her feline Guagua and cardboard. This is the result. More »
When Megan was short on time for her costume for Otakon 2012, this is what she came up with. Hipster Chell. So good. The glasses and beanie may be what first draw the eye, but the kicker is the can of PBR that's powering the portal gun.More »
It's sort of been unofficial Lord of the Rings week here at Kotaku, hasn't it? Guess everyone's just excited about The Hobbit.
This amazing video shows a weatherman in New Zealand going into full cosplay and reading the weather… in Elvish. More »
I'd like to think that a zombie Iron Man, retaining at least some small part of Tony Stark, would shamble around searching liquour cabinets and bars. Any brains or human flesh he'd find there would be just a bonus. More »
Zombie survival mod DayZ takes place in the nation of Chernarus, which sounds entirely made-up, but it's only mostly made up. The geography of the map is actually lifted from a real-world location, around Povrly, in the north of the Czech Republic. More »
Yesterday at an anime festival in Shenzhen, China, a cosplayer showed up dressed as a female spirit. Dressed? Did I say dressed? Silly me.
The cosplayer showed up as the Chinese apparition Nu Gui, but the crowd that gathered was very real. More »
If you've ever been to Hollywood, you've seen them: the low-rent "cosplayers" wandering around the Walk of Fame, stopping constantly for photos with those not put off by their often shabby outfits.
These types are the focus of a collection by LA photographer Nicholas Silberfaden, who wanted to use... More »
This week on Twitter, cosplayers have been posting photos with the following theme: "If you put cosplay outfits outside the bathroom, it looks like the character is taking a bath."
Japanese bathrooms are different from Western ones. More »
To help shill their upcoming Firefall, Red 5 Studios is employing two models to play the part of the game's characters at press events and shows. One is cosplayer Crystal Graziano, who Red 5 is also sponsoring for a full year. More »
A few weeks ago Kotaku showed you some cosplay photos from photographer Mengjie Luan. Meng, a 29 year-old web editor, has been snapping off pictures of Chinese cosplayers over the last 5 years. More »
A recent thread on various tardy penalties for Japanese companies turned up this jewel: At Japanese IT company ValuePress, employees who are late must dress up in a full body, Power Ranger (née Super Sentai) type outfit. More »
Today at PAX East, Stephen Totilo ran into a familiar face-Rana McAnear, the actress who provides the official model for Mass Effect's Asari Justicar Samara and her unhinged sex-killer daughter Morinth. More »
Cosplayers are often criticized for using too much Photoshop for studio pics. Eyes are made slightly bigger, waistlines are made smaller, and the end result doesn't reflect reality. More »
This guy is Mike La Jute Blanche. He's a French cosplayer, and holy crap, he is good.
Just look at his work. The outfits and make up are incredibly impressive, and he does a great job of capturing Predator, Dragonball's Piccolo, and Motal Kombat. More »
It'll be tough to top this! Reddit user rdt156 posted this photo of his friend and his friend's daughter, dressed for Halloween. Dad is a Work Loader from Aliens, and I'm assuming the daughter is baby Ripley? More »
Deus Ex: Human Revolution not sexy enough for you? It was for me, (I've always asked for cereal boxes and cigarette smoke, Adam) but not cosplay photographer chrisfkn, apparently. More »
I don't know how they got this cat to sit still long enough to get the costume on, let alone how many scratches and hisses they took as a result, but it doesn't matter. More »
Should Nintendo ever work up the courage to really mess with the setting of Mario games, there are worse ideas they could have than to have the plumber fighting his way through some Dickensian clockwork castle. More »
We've seen artist TwoHornsUnited come up with some Portal referencing gas masks before, but this one is even more creepily awesome.
I also get the impression that I would look like a Valve-inspired Transformer if I wore that, and then my brain goes on from there to invent wild action sequences... More »
Reader Eric, a mean Devil May Cry cosplayer (centre, standing), was at the recent ACEN 2012 in Chicago, where he joined some friends in visually expressing their feelings towards Dante's redesign in the upcoming DMC. More »
The bathysphere, scuba gear and colossal frikkin' shark in these new screens hint that you're also going to diving into some deep underwater hijinks, too. And, hey, dog is your co-pilot, too! How cool does that Rottweiler look in that ride? Cooler than that Fable 2 mutt, that's for sure.
