Find a feature

To clarify, this isn’t about dialog captions, which are also referred to as “subtitles.” This is about the wastes of ink which game publishers love printing after game names. Take “Halo 3: ODST,” for example. “ODST.” What is that? It’s some letters that provide no information other than, “Hey, this isn’t the original Halo 3, it’s actually something a bit different.”

Have you ever heard someone say, “sometimes words aren’t enough?” That person was probably talking about books. Yes, books may seem like nothing more than a primitive ancestor to videogames, and in some ways, they are. Books are linear, non-interactive, and require little to no skill to write. They might even be obsolete today if it weren’t for people with no reflexes. But books aren’t entirely without merit, because occasionally they're adapted into some really great videogames

Time to get "eggcited" for another "eggcellent"... no. No, I can't do this. Egg puns are horrible. Look, Easter Sunday was yesterday, so here's a Top 7 with some eggs in it, OK?

Last year a fellow with the Gamertag StripClubDJ became the first Xbox 360 owner to smash through the 100,000 Gamerpoint barrier. Quite an Achievement (excuse the pun). Instead of being shunned by the gaming community for being a daylight-dodging loser, hes been widely revered and showered with friend requests by fellow 360ites. But if youre not one of the Gamerscore elites, logging in to Live to see your buddies clocking up tens of thousands of points while you languish in the late hundreds

I bag on the tired "Ch-ch-ch-changes" headline all the time. After all, just because there's a popular song with the word "changes" in it doesn't mean you have to reference it 90 times a year. That said, I'm no Bowie hater. I have a late-blooming, latter-day appreciation for the groundbreaking, multi-talented man, all of which stems from his track "Everyone Says Hi," easily one of the best songs from 2003's Amplitude - aka Harmonix's pre-Rock Band, pre-Guitar Hero music title that carved a path for Activision to mine.

Two songs embedded inside!

Sony seems to be on something of an HD remake kick lately. This week finally brought us long-awaited confirmation that the Ico and Shadow of the Colossus Collection will head our way sometime next year; with last year’s God of War Collection and the upcoming Sly Collection, that brings to three the number of classic PS2 series Sony’s retrofitting with 1080p visuals and Trophies, before re-releasing as budget-priced PS3 games.

This is a trend we can really get behind; as much as we love our old PS2 games, we can barely stand to look at them anymore. Give them a makeover so they don’t look crap on our new TVs, though, and we’re all over them. With that in mind, here are a few other series from the last generation we’d love to see resurrected for the modern age of HD consoles...

Game music has been a passion of ours roughly since, oh, 1985, but in the past 10 years, it’s come to mean something more. Don’t get us wrong, we still love the beepatronic music of the 8- and 16-bit periods (and the wave of chiptune artists it inspired), but the past decade has also seen licensed music become a surprisingly important part of gaming. Sometimes, this just means a selection of familiar hits to accompany our music games, but every so often, a game will use licensed tracks to careful, brilliant effect – and in the process, will expose legions of gamers to music they might never have heard otherwise.

What follows are the games and franchises that have been the most influential in bringing strange and terrifying new musical styles to gamers’ ears – and in the interest of making this our most self-indulgent Top 7 since that other one, we’ve asked a handful of our editors to explain what made each one important to them personally...

Ragnar Tornquist is one of gaming's few true storytellers. Since developing The Longest Journey in 1999, then going on to create its sequel Dreamfall as well as the MMO Anarchy Online, his work has always made story its focus. With the super-hush-hush MMO, The Secret World, now in development, while Dreamfall Chapters looks certain, storytelling is still at the center of his game philosophy. Why do you write so many female characters?Ragnar:

Demon slayers, snipers, assassins, and Muppets are just some of the characters you'll find in the first wave of new year releases. Take a peak at your post-holiday gaming selection in our rundown of January 2013's new arrivals...