Lumines

It's a podcast 'twixt travels this week, as Nathan returns from seeing THQ in New York and Matt and Justin prepare to fly out to Amsterdam to see Nintendo's shiny new 3DS. Expect a rather graphic description of what happens to unsuspecting games journos in Amsterdam, along with an even more graphic description of a special technique that 'gets things moving along'. Eeew.

On the videogaming front (video whatnow?), Nathan's been playing Homefont, Cundy's been playing Brain Training on Kinect and Justin's picked number 12 in his list of 'best games ever' for the Appreciation section. Yes, he made a list especially. Expect gamz jarnalizum, Ali G jokes and already-outdated news from your favourite games podcast, TalkRadar UK.

With each new console comes a promise of gorgeous new worlds, brilliant new level design and, best of all, genres and concepts we never could have predicted. The first time you sit down with your new machine is a treasured day of pure discovery, for in that brief moment everything is fresh again. Provided, that is, you chose the correct game from the launch lineup.

Not all launch games are equal. Oftentimes the games that help kick off a console are gussied-up versions of the same stuff we’ve been playing, or cash-grabbing releases meant to capitalize on the launch day fervor. But somewhere in the pile is the gem, the one game that encapsulates everything that’s great about your expensive new piece of hardware. And here we’ve narrowed down the best of the best...

GamesRadar UK returns to the studio for another round of non-commital, mostly mis-informed game chatter. It's nearly as good as a night out at your local Homebase.

Three weeks ago, our sibling site NextGen posted the article, "The Ten Greatest Years in Gaming." It was full of cool industry info, but the first thing we asked was, "So, the PlayStation was first designed as an add-on for the SNES. We get the irony, but what were we actually playing in 1993 that made it so great?" We checked it out. We made a huge list of the best games of the past 34 years, taped it to the wall, and fought for days about stuff like whether one Zelda is worth more than two