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There's something about misguided attempts to amuse children that bring with them a unique streak of terror, and nowhere is that more apparent than with the noble clown. Intended to be a harmless jester with a painted face and a slapstick approach to life, the image of the clown has instead become associated with creeping dread and paranoid mistrust.

Videogame developers have tapped into this instinctive fear of clowns, and that's why the realm of interactive entertainment is chock full of nightmarish harlequins that haunt our dreams and ravage our days. You’ve probably been sleeping far too well lately, so why not keep yourself awake with thoughts of some of gaming's scariest clowns? Go on, they won't bite... except for the biting ones...

Nothing's perfect. Stare closely enough at anything - even a masterpiece - and you're bound to find flaws sooner or later. They might be small. They might be insignificant. They might not detract from the overall quality of the piece at all...

Except when they really, really do. With these seven games, in fact, you don't need to stare. Their flaws are so huge, so obvious, so frustrating and so effing obnoxious that you can't help but

Like petty school children bickering in a playground fight, gamers are obsessed with choosing sides. Never content to rate a game as simply “above average” or “slightly disappointing,” we allow internet hearsay, magazine previews, fanboy feuds and console preferences to push our views to ridiculous extremes. We can’t just like something… we have to deem it BEST EVER. We can’t just dislike something… we have to declare it EPIC FAIL.

Breaking news! Toad isn’t actually a toad... street fighting doesn’t involve fireballs… guns rarely come with chainsaws attached… and a theoretical physicist has never spent his scientific career smashing zombie head crabs with a blood-soaked crowbar.

As we demonstrated last week, however, the real world would be a hell of a lot more interesting if any of the above was true.

We hate rubbish endings. There's nothing more unsatisfying than becoming emotionally attached to a game for 10 or so hours and then have it end on a whimper. It's like having a really tasty meal and then finding a rusty nail in your last forkful. A nail that ends in an unsatisfying cliff-hanger, cheesy line or unresolved plot thread. And sod everyone who says it's about the journey, not the destination. The following games all take you on a

A good boss battle is like a fine wine. Refined, elegant in its execution and quite likely to kill you fourteen times on the spin. Wait, scratch that last one. Unusually, 2010 has seen a string of games with bosses that not only didn't suck, but actually proved to be some of the biggest highlights of their titles. So if you're keen to go back and reminisce about fighting feral tigers in casinos or popping a deity’s eyeballs like juicy grapes, keep on a reading...

Virtual children are undoubtedly worse than the real thing. Diminutive, shrill and noisy, you can’t even send them to the naughty step when they’re misbehavin’. We’re used to solving our videogame problems with violence, but due to standards of ‘good taste’, that approach isn't generally allowed with young-uns. Often voiced by high-pitched women because kids can’t act, they also tend to look…weird – like shrunken adults. Because of this, we’ve put together a list of youngsters in games whose toys we’d love to take away, but can’t.

G'day! How are you all? Smashing. You're here for the latest episode of TalkRadar UK, right? Great. This week's show includes the rampant ramblings of Meikleham, Cundy and Irvine as they combine to cover such subjects as...

- THE NEWS: In which there is much discussion about a potential Call of Duty subscription plan, a surprising entry into the all formats chart and more swears than you can shake a f*cking sh*tty stick at. Apologies in advance.

- APPRECIATION SECTION: Where Meiks gets all teary-eyed over Mario 64.

- WHAT WE'VE BEEN PLAYING: Find out which game not to play when suffering from a stomach bug. Think of it like a public service announcement.

- QUESTION OF THE WEEK: We inadvertently start a mini-flame war with the question... In your opinion who's winning 2010 so far - Microsoft, Nintendo or Sony?  It burns! It burns!

- AND MUCH, MUCH MORE: <---- what that bit says.

Listen now...

Much like the latter missions in Red Dead Redemption, it's time to round up the cattle, or in this case guides, and wrangle them into the corral, this article. See, it's that kind of fantastic writing that gets me the respect I deserve. All joking aside, GamesRadar has put up a huge number of guides this year, and  this handy article is here to highlight some of the biggest and best from 2010. If you don't see a game you're looking for here, use our search function at the top of the page to find what you want, then click the cheats or guides tab on the page.