Bully: Scholarship Edition

Video game cheerleaders are not like real-life cheerleaders. Where normal cheerleaders are so often like human candyfloss, all fluffy, sugary, and liable to cause nausea, video game cheerleaders are basically brilliant. We’ve collected together seven to prove it. Some are dangerous, some are deadly. Some might even now be dead. 

Look, just click on and we’ll explain all. No crap Wii games, we promise.

Criminals. Superpowers. Criminals with superpowers. For a genre that's all about being able to do anything, sandbox games have become mighty predictable. But you only have to look back as far as the end of the last generation for the antidote to the industry's myopia. Bully. A game that few people talk about now, but which remains easily the equal of GTA IV in terms of playability. It needs a sequel. Here's why...

There are two kinds of good game. There are the good games that come out, get fine reviews, sell adequately, and then fade into well-regarded obscurity: your Vortex, your Space Station Silicon Valley, your Land Stalker (a perplexed, blank stare is the correct response here). And then there are the good games that have a lasting impact on the medium. These games aren't necessarily any better, but they get talked about more often because they defied – and redefined – our expectations. Red Dead Redemption may be such a title. It's the first time a cowboy-themed game has transcended the resolute OK-ness of Sunset Riders, Mad Dog McCree and their ilk, capturing audiences without compromising its sand-and-saddles chops to prove that Westerns were a viable game genre all along.

But now that that point's finally been made, there are plenty of other film genres for games to try adapting next. Some haven't been touched since valiantly failed lo-fi efforts; others have never really been given a day in court. Maybe it's time to put the next Space Marines In Space title on the back-burner and try plugging a controller into one of these under-represented movie styles...

When the Puritans began settling down in North America during the early 17th century, they didn’t practice cosplay. Those were dark days - dark, costume-less days, filled with famine, toil, and a depressingly short supply of free candy. It would take nearly 200 years for Americans and Canadians to finally embrace Halloween as a mainstream event - and it was mostly thanks to a flood of Irish and Scottish immigrants in the late 19th century.

Videogames, television and movies frequently overlap. With so much cross pollination, you'd think the biggest and best film franchises would have respectable game adaptations by now, but that's just not the case, is it? Sure there are a handful of successful tie-ins, but many series flop around for years, seeing game after terrible game created with little or no regard for the source material. Well, we're sick of it.