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After the gaming blizzard that was October and November, publishers are winding down the year with only a handful of releases in December. Still, a month that features Far Cry 3 and Hawken can't be completely forgettable, can it?

Looking for categories like Best PSP Driving Game? Greatest Achievement in Control Layout, Artistic? Eastern European Developer Most Worth Watching in 2011? Then our end-of-year awards might not be for you.

GamesRadar's Platinum Chalices are different. We're not interested in checking off a massively tedious list of genres, platforms and technical subdivisions… we'd much rather focus on the stuff that makes this hobby, you know, fun. And reward whichever games delivered the most of that stuff.

So if you're looking for the best fan service, most satisfying gore or greatest achievement in old-school kickassery in 2010, you've definitely come to the right celebration. Let's get it started…

Not everyone owns an iPhone, it just seems that way because they get all the coverage. Android owners know Google's platform has plenty of quality apps too, though it can be tough sifting through the dross. The following 25 have caused us a few sleepless nights and some very sore fingertips...

Now that the world hasn't ended after all, let's pretend we got caught in the apocalypse anyway, as we pick our the top wastelands we'd like to inhabit...

December may offer the true climax of the holiday season, but in terms of new game releases, it's very much the calm after the storm. Most of the giant blockbusters of the season made their way out between September and November, but the final month of 2011 isn't barren by any means: big releases like Mario Kart 7 and Star Wars: The Old Republic lead the pack, while system-specific versions of some notable recent titles also find their way to store shelves. But if you read this over and don't see anything on the horizon that works you into a tizzy, surely November's overstuffed lineup holds a few leftover options to consider...

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...

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…

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...