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Wii is the punching bag of the games industry, regularly (though not undeservedly) saddled with the “kiddie crap” moniker and more associated with forgettable shovelware than legitimately good games. Those of us who own and actively play Wii obviously don’t share this view, but it’s almost impossible to read any piece of Wii news, be it feature, review or just straight reporting, without weeding out the “Wii sux who cares" crowd.

New Super Mario Bros Wii

Getting one of the best platformers of all time with four player support should be a godsend, right? Sorta. And even though the game retains the DS’s impeccable tight and intuitive, the characters goofily occupy a physical space in a relatively small field. “Up To Four Friends!” can now halt your movement, ruin timed jumps, and even swallow you while riding on Yoshi. Furthermore, one player

Once a videogame hero has more than one or two adventures under his or her belt, it simply isn’t enough to just have an archenemy anymore. To keep things interesting, they need a foil, a rival, or some other angry opposite number obsessed with matching wits with them. Sometimes, those characters stick around long enough to make themselves an indelible part of the series, even going so far as to make friends with the protagonist – although more often than not, their friendships tend to be shaky at best, and even those involved might never fully admit to them. Relationships like that tend to make for gaming’s most enduring and interesting rivalries, and what follows are some of the most notable...

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...

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.

This month's Breaking Bad cliffhanger has us all hungry for illicit thrills. Sure, that's not a videogame (though it's inspired a couple), but with narcotics subplots in titles like Sleeping Dogs and Borderlands 2, controlled substances are all over contemporary games. Then again, you've probably been gettin' that yellowtop in-game for years without even realizing it, thanks to the well-hidden drug metaphors we're about to expose...

What is the best Super Nintendo game ever made? Which Xbox 360 title is already the definitive classic? What Atari, Dreamcast and PlayStation experiences are most worth remembering? Growing tired of the internet’s countless, wishy-washy attempts to answer such questions, we decided to make the tough decisions ourselves. You’ll find no Top 5s, Top 7s, Top 15s or Top 100s here - just a single winner and runner up for each platform.

In real life, war is messy. Mistakes get made, civilians get hurt, families are shattered and once-thriving countries are bombed back to the Stone Age, often because of the misguided actions of their politicians. Wars in videogames, by contrast, are a hell of a lot more convenient and clean. Because they’re (usually) fictitious, the justifications are clear, the goals relatively simple and the opposing forces completely, irredeemably evil.

But that’s not always the case. Whether by design or through slapdash writing, some of gaming’s most notable conflicts – when examined objectively – are completely meaningless, stupid exercises in futility for all involved. Here are some of our favorites...