The MMORPG genre is changing. Free-to-play is taking over, but that doesn't mean the end of the genre--it means a new beginning...
It's a rare occurrence nowadays, but every once in a while, a game you’ve never even heard of comes along and absolutely blows you away. Sometimes it's a little indie gem that didn't get enough promotion. Other times, what appears to be a quick cash-in turns out to be an awesome game.
Demon slayers, snipers, assassins, and Muppets are just some of the characters you'll find in the first wave of new year releases. Take a peak at your post-holiday gaming selection in our rundown of January 2013's new arrivals...

“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…
You should really read each and every word, view every screen, and watch every video that every website on the interwebs has written about E3 09. However, since we assume you’re just one person and not Google’s army of web crawling automata, we’re going to give you a daily primer of the most critical tidbits. Here goes…
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?
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
E3 2009 was a monster. A huge, massive, face-eating beerdemon that erased the agonizing memory of 2008’s meager, emaciated E3 from our minds with a flood of great-looking games, earth-shattering announcements, and a few quizzical oddities we never want to speak of again. After this, we mean, because some things are so good, bad, or just bewildering that you just have to tell people about them.
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.

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...