As we've pointed out ad nauseam in our coverage of Mafia II this week, the first Mafia set a high bar for storytelling in GTA-style crime games. Assuming it follows through on the standards set by its predecessor, Mafia II will likely be as much about the complex relationships between its deeply flawed criminal leads as it will be about shooting mooks in the face and blowing up storefronts.

To give you an idea of what you can expect from this 1940s-'50s mob drama, here's everything we know about the game's main characters so far: ...

Mafia opens in 1938, as gangster Thomas Angelo arrives at a little diner to meet with an Irish cop named Detective Norman. Tommy's come to Norman to ask for police protection for himself and his family, but Norman - abrasive and impatient - scoffs at the idea. Tommy insists that he doesn't expect something for nothing, and that what he knows can help bring down a notorious mob boss named Salieri. Norman, still skeptical, demands to hear the ...

Just in case you missed out on the biggest trailers of E3 from the Sony and Microsoft conferences, you can see them here, in all their shaky-cam glory. We've got Resident Evil 5, Fallout 3, Gears of War 2 and more - we've even got Sony's financial report illustrated with LittleBigPlanet ...

Ah, the box art story. Ol' R'liable we like to call it, always good for a laugh and sure to inspire conversation about what makes cover art good, bad or legendarily awful. This time though, we're going a different route and focusing on covers that totally botch the simplest rule of box art - it should reflect the product cleanly and clearly. These poor examples couldn't even keep it together long enough to be regular old "bad box ...

Pardon our geekboners, but holy f**k Mega Man 9! Instead of dragging our boyhood hero through any more tired Star Forces or Battle Networks, those understanding folks at Capcom are giving us the Mega Man game we’ve always wanted.

What took ya so long? And more importantly, why haven’t other games turned to their pixilated roots when MM9 is making it look so damned easy? Tecmo Bowl is about to rise ...

Back during our Mega Man extravaganza, we sent our readers on a little GR scavenger hunt for Mega Man booty. Congratulations on not being idiots! We got waaay more 100% scores than we expected, so it’s a good thing we asked you to submit a Mega Man boss of your own design.

We loved your text submissions, but fashioning an image really performed wonders in appeasing our judges. ...

All week we've been posting articles about Mega Man, one of gaming's most beloved and long-lived characters. Capcom's official count puts him in at least 120 games over the past 20 years, a number that surely must beat out all other popular characters and mascots (save Mario).We've got a massive retrospective, an exclusive hands-on with the latest game in the series, Mega Man 9, a bad ass contest packed with 10 super-cool prizes... and that's not even all of it.
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