Silent Hill: Homecoming

"It was all a dream" is almost lazier writing than actually falling asleep on your keyboard.  It's the ultimate admission that the writer had no idea how to end his own story, or to put it another way, he was outwitted by his own one-dimensional characters.   It's also been used in more "Wizard of Oz" sitcom episodes than Toto, and has therefore measurably does more damage to scripts than an open flame.

TV isn't the only offender though – some surprisingly large videogame series have pulled the dream card too...

Games are no stranger to wild crossover events. From Smash Bros to Marvel vs Capcom, we’ve seen some of the industry’s biggest names go head-to-head for years now. But as games become increasingly expensive to produce and market, publishers are always on the lookout for the “sure thing,” something that’ll appeal to a wide audience right out of the gate. What better bet than more crossovers between existing, surefire hits?

Street Fighter x Tekken is just the latest. There will be more mashups coming, and there’s no doubt some of them will mix up series we’ve been dying to see together for years. So, in the wake of SF x T, what once-improbable crossovers could developers be conjuring up next?

Perhaps better than any other creative medium, videogames have managed to recreate entire ecosystems of imaginary creatures and presented them in an observable context. Books and movies may offer detailed glimpses of anatomy and behavior, but only in videogames does the observer interact with organisms and experience behaviors first hand.

You know the only real problem with downloadable content? It’s typically designed by the same people who made the original game. That’s boring. Why not give other folks, who don’t necessarily worry about whether something is “a good idea” or “sensible” or “legal,” a shot? Sure our ideas might be a little unusual at times, and a couple of them could conceivably land someone in jail.

Before we dunk our collective heads into the salty man-pool that is E3 2009, let’s take a moment to reflect on the events and images of E3 2004. Just five years ago Nintendo was struggling, Sony was unquestionably on top and Microsoft only had Halo 2 to keep fans attentive. Today… well, it’s a little different, but let’s not get ahead of ourselves

Because we enjoy making graphs, looking at graphs, and talking about graphs so darn much, we decided to do a little research experiment. Our goal was to discover which numbered entry in a game series (not the number of games into the series, the actual number in the game’s title) is most often the best. Is it scientific? Not in the least, but it still might surprise you.

When he started sharing his idea of an orchestra playing music from videogames, people thought the veteran composer Tommy Tallarico was off his rocker. It took him three years to convince publishers and developers that he was sane. “Imagine me making a call to Taito in Japan, asking them for the rights for the score of [1983 arcade hit] Elevator Action. “I’d like to play the theme tune to the game at the Hollywood Bowl with the Los Angeles Philharmonic. Hello... hello?’”

A few months back we featured the most bloodcurdling games to be unleashed this fall. We then graded each fright fest depending on what we assumed would be the scariest. The big surprise though is that half of the games featured - including FEAR 2 - either won’t be released by year’s end or - like in GhostBusters and Fatal Frame’s case - don’t even have release dates.

They can be creepy. They can be disturbing. They can obviously be gross, gory and gruesome. Are videogames, however, really that scary? Do they truly, honestly frighten you? We don't think so, and here are 13 reasons why.