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Champions are made of more than mutant powers and godly origins. Join as we pay tribute to the average men and women who rose above great odds in our countdown of gaming's top everyman heroes...

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...

How many lives has your favorite hero saved? Chances are, it's probably less than those on this list. See which gaming protagonist is a savior savant after the jump...

“Is that your profession or pleasure?” Well, when it comes to jobs in games, it’s usually both. Y’see, your average gaming hero’s nine-to-five is a never-ending stream of employed excitement. Acrobatic plumbers who frolic in magical fantasy kingdoms. Archaeologists with pornstar bodies who can dual wield pistols like everyone’s favourite slaphead assassin. And suspiciously buff scientists who routinely save the human race with nothing but a crowbar. They all enjoy incredible careers we mere mortals could only dream of. Of course, if their jobs were a little more true to life, Mario would probably do himself in when he faced his first backed-up toilet… 

Gamescom is unquestionably more low profile than E3’s explosive LA shindig. But that doesn’t mean there aren’t plenty of reasons to get pumped up for the upcoming event in Cologne. Hell, we can think of, oh, at least 23 examples why you should give a damn about the ‘European E3.’ And they all take the form of potentially amazing games. Below you’ll find a line-up of some of the most exciting titles due to

Way back in January, we did what a lot of other tech and gaming websites do, and published a list of predictions for the then-new year. In this case, we predicted the games that we thought – for a variety of reasons – wouldn’t see the light of day until at least 2010, and published it under the somewhat inflammatory headline No Heavy Rain until 2010?

You've read this sort of feature before. Website X points out that Character Y looks a whole lot like Celebrity Z. Readers agree or disagree. Publish and repeat. The articles are always fun, but eventually, the same obvious choices show up again and again.

So what makes mine any different? I didn't decide these matches – an all-knowing, face-recognizing, database-searching, algorithm-crunching computer did!

The results were… unexpected.

Just a few weeks ago we firmly held each others’ hands and danced jigs of joy for 2010’s biggest and best games. Yes, our Platinum Chalice awards were once again a festival of finery directed at the year’s brightest stars, but now come the dreaded Anti-Awards, which force a spotlight on all the bullshit games, trends and ideas we had to endure throughout the year.

To commemorate their anti-triumph, we’re awarding each “winner” with Bayonetta’s own Stone Award, the statue of a falling fat man that added insult to injury and nearly made us quit playing an otherwise brilliant game. Oh, what a day indeed...

For whatever reason, you don’t see a lot of video game characters taking time out from shooting dogs or whatever to watch TV. We’re guessing it has something to do with that thing we just said sounding insanely boring, but even so, games that let us watch the characters watching TV have become gradually more common. Here are our favorites...