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While mainstream rappers express their affection for video games from time to time, the underground "nerdcore" hip-hop movement takes the connection to a whole other level. There are entire songs and albums dedicated to a love of gaming, and many of these artists plug references into their most popular tracks.

Here are our ten favorite songs and videos. Crank your PC speakers, dial the geekiness to 11 and let's get rolling.

Looking for categories like Best PSP Driving Game? Greatest Achievement in Control Layout, Artistic? Eastern European Developer Most Worth Watching in 2011? Then our end-of-year awards might not be for you.

GamesRadar's Platinum Chalices are different. We're not interested in checking off a massively tedious list of genres, platforms and technical subdivisions… we'd much rather focus on the stuff that makes this hobby, you know, fun. And reward whichever games delivered the most of that stuff.

So if you're looking for the best fan service, most satisfying gore or greatest achievement in old-school kickassery in 2010, you've definitely come to the right celebration. Let's get it started…

Welcome one and all and very merry Christmas to you. You're probably sick of the sight of turkey by now, not to mention your relatives and the oh-so predictable Christmas TV schedule, right? Well, why not escape the sadness by tucking into a tasty special episode of TalkRadar UK.

This (rather explicit) Christmas themed edition contains a round up of the highs and lows of gaming in 2010. Fuelled by alcohol, the finest mincepies that £2.99 can buy and some pathetic Christmas crackers, the whole GamesRadar UK team are crammed into the studio to discuss their best and worst of the last twelve months.

So what are you waiting for? Come on inside and treat yourself to gaming chatter, tales of sexual innuendo and essentially five grown men becoming increasingly more drunk before your very ears. 

2010 is special. Normally, when we choose the best games from the first half of the year, we're taking time to recognize and celebrate stuff that will be forgotten by December. Take a look at 2009's winner, for example, and then check how many Platinum Chalices that title received just a few months later. From number one… to only one mention.

This Top 7, however, could easily serve as a blueprint for our eventual end-of-year awards. Six of the games received "10/10" from GamesRadar, and total countdown combined, almost 150 perfect scores from the industry as a whole. What follows, then, aren't merely the best of 2010 so far. Judging by their quality and by the rest of the release calendar, these might be the best of 2010 – period.

Every year the collective hive mind of GamesRadar picks its Game of the Year as the ultimate accolade of the Officially Annual Platinum Chalice Awards. It's very exciting. And while that's still totally happening (the Platinum Chalice Awards will be posted next Friday), this year we thought we'd take a minute to unplug from the Master Brain and give some love to each of our own personal games of the year. Long live individualism.

Mario, Kirby, Samus and Donkey Kong will not appear on these pages. Neither will Ezio, Sam Fisher or Commander Shepard. While we spent plenty of time with these videogame stars in 2010, they're old. Familiar. Expected. Lovable yet predictable.

You certainly can't say that about the following 10 characters, first introduced to us over the past 12 months. They're new. Surprising. Exciting. We'd barely heard of them at the start of the year, but by the end, we couldn't stop talking about them. Or wanting to see more of them...

Back in January of this year, we switched on our doom-and-gloom machine and predicted which of 2009’s most anticipated titles would inevitably be pushed back to 2010. We didn’t want to be right. In fact, we spent the next six months wishing, hoping and praying that the industry would prove us wrong. It didn’t.

Christmas '09 is cancelled, but early next year looks amazing.

Since we enjoyed sharing our personal favorite games of 2010, we thought it was only appropriate to share the games that most let us down last year, the games that most drew our vitriolic ire. These aren't objectively the worst games of 2010 - they are the ones that most rubbed us the wrong way. There are even fantastic games on this list, but if everyone loved the same things, we wouldn't all be unique slowflakes in the great blizzard of life, now would we...