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There are several ways to gauge how far videogames have come since their bleep-blorp beginnings. You can look at graphics, gameplay complexity, or as we’re about to illustrate, how your character actually dies in the game. As technology improved, so did the deaths suffered by the myriad protagonists, eventually progressing to the point where, today, you live through that death in the first person, forced to watch your hero’s grisly final moments

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...

Now that the veneer of freshness is drying off of our copies of Modern Warfare 2, we can fully devote ourselves to complaining about the lack of dedicated servers, and just how much the maps suck because our piss poor ranking certainly isn’t due to a lack of practice and the statistical disadvantage of playing against millions of people, no! Which got us thinking: What multiplayer maps reign over all others?

This is officially the longest TalkRadar to date – but what a value! You’ll hear us attempt to solve the worst puzzles in history (most are from PC adventure games), talk up gaming flatulence, even trade horror stories involving bodily functions and a certain bathroom apparatus.

If you’re not one for potty humor, you should listen anyway because there’s lots of talk about the next Call of Duty (World at War), Spider-Man (Web of Shadows) and Bond shooter (the very GoldenEye-esque Quantum of Solace).

There are several ways to gauge how far videogames have come since their bleep-blorp beginnings. You can look at graphics, gameplay complexity, or as we’re about to illustrate, how your character actually dies in the game. As technology improved, so did the deaths suffered by the myriad protagonists, eventually progressing to the point where, today, you live through that death in the first person, forced to watch your hero’s grisly final moments

Seeing as it took almost 40 years for movies to learn how to talk, gaming hasn’t exactly shuffled its feet. It hasn’t even been 40 years since Computer Space became the first commercial game, and what began as little more than dandruff on a black screen is already threatening photo-, audio- and physical realism.

Seeing as it took almost 40 years for movies to learn how to talk, gaming hasn’t exactly shuffled its feet. It hasn’t even been 40 years since Computer Space became the first commercial game, and what began as little more than dandruff on a black screen is already threatening photo-, audio- and physical realism.

This week, we’ve been extra busy covering Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2. GamesRadar’s own George Walter called it “this year’s must-buy first-person shooter” in his Super Review, and we expected nothing less from developer, Infinity Ward.

Forget rubbish Facebook games--what are the best free games that are also AAA? Here are our best free games, from Planetside 2 to League of Legends to Hawken...