In all honesty, some games would be better off left on the whiteboard at the design meeting. Whether they're too ambitious, too expensive or simply too good to be true, we're frequently led to imagine great things only to have our expectations dashed when the game finally arrives. How could these games be so good on paper yet underwhelm so spectacularly? Let's take a look... ...

To clarify, this isn’t about dialog captions, which are also referred to as “subtitles.” This is about the wastes of ink which game publishers love printing after game names. Take “Halo 3: ODST,” for example. “ODST.” What is that? It’s some letters that provide no information other than, “Hey, this isn’t the original Halo 3, it’s actually something a bit different.” ...

We've all seen dozens of lists over the years that recount all the things old-school game designers loved to include in their games for bizarre and unknown reasons, like exploding barrels and wolves that carry gold and chainmail for you to loot upon their death. Yes, these things were weird, and yes, they were ubiquitous in 8-,16-, and even 32-bit games. ...

Sometimes, games are so good we say they're 'good enough to eat'. That's usually not strictly true, of course - DVDs, Blu-Ray discs and the human mouth do not mix. But what if games were turned into candy bars? Now there's an idea.

If our Photoshop attempts are anything to go by, there's a huge market of untapped potential just waiting for some entrepreneur to take a lucrative bite. Just try not to dribble on the keyboard, ...

It’s not easy being a horse, especially a diabetic horse who loves sugar cubes and games. As a proud member of the Equidae family, I don’t give a damn about the new protagonist in Assassin’s Creed II or the stupid non-animal flying device he’ll pilot. I just want to know if Ezio will be riding a freaking horse through the Tuscan countryside. Will he get to mount a Salerno, or perhaps a San Fratello? ...

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The Top 7… games you either love or hate If you’re in the middle, you’re in the crossfire.

Grand Theft Auto: Chinatown Wars ReviewRockstar's small step backwards is still a giant leap ...

On some level, roughly 95 percent of games have always been about assassination: go to point A and kill prominent entity B, fighting your way through goons C through Z to get there. Most games tend to come up with a morally justifiable pretext for all the violence, but more and more, we're seeing games that drop the act and let you be what you've secretly known yourself to be all along: a remorseless killing machine bent on destroying your targets. ...