Happy Fourth of July, dear reader! To celebrate US independence, we’ve rounded up all the characters adorned in red, white, and blue from gaming’s past and present, in order to honor their dedication to patriotic fashion. Fireworks can wait; it’s high time you paid respects to these all-American heroes…
So many sequels, so much hype, so little time... Let our foolproof guide help you cut through the crap before it's even released
Okay look guys, Disney's been using Wreck-It Ralph to pump video game references out like they're going out of style (they're most assuredly not). It's about time we took a good close look at just how many game characters we can spot in the clips released so far...
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...
Pac-Man and Mario owned the 1980s. Sonic, Lara and Snake took over for the 1990s. Their games are considered classics. Their names are timeless and iconic. Their images are burned into the memory of every gamer, even those who were born after the characters themselves.
Now we have another ten years worth of heroes, villains, sidekicks and love interests to occupy our imagination. Which, however, will remain there?
Real-life shopping. Unless you enjoy shambling about like an extra in a Romero flick, it's a mostly soul-destroying activity that ranks somewhere between 'watching The X Factor' and 'tasting vomit' on our list of Things We'd Rather Not Do If We Can Help It. So it's testament to the subversive qualities of games that they can make shopping not suck. How do games do it - what makes shopping in games so much more enjoyable than shopping in
Pac-Man and Mario owned the 1980s. Sonic, Lara and Snake took over for the 1990s. Their games are considered classics. Their names are timeless and iconic. Their images are burned into the memory of every gamer, even those who were born after the characters themselves.
Now we have another ten years worth of heroes, villains, sidekicks and love interests to occupy our imagination. Which, however, will remain there?
Whoever said love is the strongest emotion apparently never met any of these folks...
Real-life shopping. Unless you enjoy shambling about like an extra in a Romero flick, it's a mostly soul-destroying activity that ranks somewhere between 'watching The X Factor' and 'tasting vomit' on our list of Things We'd Rather Not Do If We Can Help It. So it's testament to the subversive qualities of games that they can make shopping not suck. How do games do it - what makes shopping in games so much more enjoyable than shopping in
It's everyone's favorite time of the year again, when thousands of overcaffeinated journalists descend upon E3 with their live-blogged, 2000-word diatribes on the most minor of details. The objects of their unending speculation? The biggest games of the show, which, oddly enough, have been known to the gaming press for months and will surprise literally no one.
That's why we're interested in games that haven't been seen, announced or