Why can’t some people just call a spade a spade? Or, in the case of video games, call a health pack a health pack, instead of a multi-purpose, cosmic healitron 3000. We’re sick of developers trying to give their games extra context or dimension by pasting unnecessary and sometimes baffling terminology onto simple, every day game actions or objects. It’s convoluted, embarrassing and totally comically. Below are some of the ...

The infamous Madden Curse has been crippling EA's cover stars consistently since John Madden himself stopped appearing on them. Call it coincidence, call it an ancient ju-ju; whatever it is, the evidence of stifling a career is in full swing. Don't believe us? Then check out the poor saps below and then tell us it's all BS. Oh, and for all you non-American Football fans, we've even dug a little deeper into other game franchises and picked out some beauties. What have we missed? Let us know in the comments. Enjoy... ...

Barack Obama. The most important politician in a generation. A peerless orator. Winner of a historic election. And exceedingly effin hard to recreate in every create a character mode we could find. You’d think the current leader of the free world’s unassuming features would be easy to make with the plethora of chin, forehead and septum sliders most games now have. Wrong.

Not only did we fail to craft convincing Obamas, we ...

Christmas '09 is cancelled, but early next year looks amazing. ...

At any games show there are always a handful of titles that are so impressive they fuel an excitable word-of-mouth buzz that rises above the raucous din of the showfloor. And things at Gamescom are no different. We've seen an absolute ass-load of games since we arrived, but we're only talking obsessively about a select few of them. And after chatting with other show-goers, it's pretty obvious which games have had the most impact and left a ...

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 ...