You've maybe heard of Minecraft, the building/exploration game that's hijacked our livestreams, hypnotized our children, and generally dominated the world over the last five years. It's hard to believe that what started out as the creation of a lone Swedish developer has gone on to such stratospheric heights of success - or at least it would be, if it wasn't the secret dream of anybody who's ever installed a copy of GameMaker or cracked their knuckles over a Java compiler.

But even once you get past the fact that Minecraft has inspired a seemingly endless supply of ports, merchandise, and even an , there's still so much more to be astonished by. That's where this week's Top 7 comes in. If you need a new appreciation for pixelated cubes, look no further. Ok, a little further. You still have to click to the next slide.

If you pay much attention to the internet (well you're here, aren't you?) you've probably gotten a bit jaded by the idea of stuff being recreated in Minecraft. The USS Enterprise? Yawn. The saucer section probably doesn't even detach. Game of Thrones' King's Landing? Wake me up when you do a perfectly scaled recreation of all Westeros. Granted, the latter would require some interpretation, since not even George R.R. Martin knows exactly what exists at every single point of his fictional realm. But Denmark? Denmark is defined. People know what's going on with Denmark.

That's why the Danish Geodata Agency was able to do a complete a 1:1 scale recreation of the entire country. Four-thousand billion bricks compose the country's roughly 40,000 square kilometers of Nordic tracts, complete with buildings erected across major metropolitan areas. Note that the map takes up 1 terabyte of data, and Denmark proper is the 133rd largest country in the world by surface area. Just imagine how big of a hard drive you'd need for Greenland.

Do a quick search on Xbox Live Indie Games (or the App Store, or Steam Greenlight) for the word 'craft' and let me know when you get to the end. It's damn near infinite, right? Even if we're generous and say half those games are using it in the 'WarCraft' sense, that's still half of infinity Minecraft clones. To be fair, the game is the perfect storm for copycats: lo-fi visuals and randomly generated content make Minecraft derivatives much easier to pull off than, say, a Call of Duty clone.

But Minecraft itself probably wouldn't exist without Infiniminer, a multiplayer PC game about digging up materials and building cool stuff with them. Creator Markus 'Notch' Persson has always been upfront about Infiniminer planting the seed for Minecraft in his behatted noggin. Of course, he, and eventually the team at Mojang, took the concept quite a bit further in just about every direction (literally, since Infiniminer's maps are tiny compared to Minecraft's potentially infinite worlds).

You know those weird little messages that start throbbing on the title screen as soon as you load up Minecraft? They're called splash text, and they range from pop culture gags to near-inscrutable gaming references. Seems pretty innocuous, but like any good inside joke, it quickly got out of hand: the game included more than 100 of these bobbing yellow messages at launch and it has more than 350 today. Whichever one shows up is completely random, so you know you've been playing too much Minecraft once you stop seeing new ones.

Here are a few of my personal favorites:
"Any computer is a laptop if you're brave enough!", which may be legally prosecutable.
"Treatment for your rash!", which I am so thankful for.
"Totally forgot about Dre!", which, I'm ashamed to admit, I did as well.
"Stop being reasonable, this is the Internet!", which is an unreasonable response.
"Run, coward! I hunger!", which is a rather sinister thing to say.
"Follow the train, CJ!", which is why I was not too upset about how things ended up with Big Smoke.

When you think of super popular Xbox Live games, you probably think of Halo and Call of Duty and stuff like that, right? Fair enough - shooters are definitely a big part of the online experience. But they're not the top dogs. Normally I'd drag the question of what actually is the top dog on for a bit longer, but it's either Minecraft or I've accidentally put this slide in the wrong article.

Yep, Minecraft for Xbox 360 is the most-played game on Xbox Live, with users collectively pouring 2 billion hours of their lives into the game over its two years on the platform - or nearly 230,000 years altogether. Fun fact: if you were to go 230,000 years into the past you could meet the Neanderthals of the , and they would probably think you were weird when the first thing you did after introducing yourself was start punching a tree.

Sorry, sorry, sales figures are boring. But let's just rap for a minute, here: so many frickin' people have bought Minecraft. You want to know how many? I'll tell you in a second. First I'll tell you that 30 million people have bought the Pocket Edition alone. Thirty million! That's enough to give six in every seven Canadians a copy of the game (the seventh one probably prefers Terraria), or . Meanwhile, the OG PC version is going strong with 18.2 million copies sold.

But if Minecraft Xbox 360 Edition is so popular on Xbox Live it has to have sold pretty well, too, right? Yup - more than 17 million, according to Microsoft. That all adds up to more than 60 million copies, which if you divide by five for no particular reason, is still a frickin' lot of sales, and we haven't even begun to account for the PlayStation versions. To be frank, I wouldn't expect the PlayStation versions to be trumpeted too hard in the future, considering this next fact...

You might already know this one, but I swear the refresher will be worth it when you click on to the next slide. Hey, wait! You still have to read this one first. OK. Microsoft bought Minecraft (and the studio that's responsible for its development, Mojang) for $2.5 billion. After that, Notch and studio co-founders Jakob Porser and Carl Manneh left Mojang because working is pointless when you already have all the money. Also, Notch said he'd never really wanted to be in charge of a worldwide phenomenon in the first place.

Poor guy. I could make a bunch of ridiculous comparisons to illustrate the wealth he reaped from selling this project he started in his free time, not to mention the cash he'd already acquired for heading up one of the biggest entertainment properties of the 2010s, but instead I'll draw your attention to one perfect example...

... in which Notch - the quiet, portly, very pale Swede who helped make a niche fantasy MMO called Wurm Online - - who are the closest thing the United States has to a royal family at the moment - on a palatial Hollywood manor. The final sum? Oh, just $70 million dollars. It's apparently the most anyone's ever spent on a Hollywood home, but it's still peanuts when you're rolling in Microsoft bucks. See, aren't you glad you read that last slide now?

In fact, the mini-castle may be a sound investment. When you have that much cash it's not wise to just leave it sitting around in a bank account. Granted, it will take some upkeep to keep the massive pool clean and the multiple bars well stocked and the candy room candy from getting all stuck together, but barring another housing market collapse he could do alright for himself. Meanwhile, I'll be over here trying to mine up enough Nether quartz to make a half-decent facsimile of its exterior.

Also, did you know that each of the eight bathrooms in Notch's house has a $5,600 toilet? I bought Minecraft near the end of alpha, so in a way I'm financially responsible for about 1/373rd of one of Notch's commodes. How much of a Notch toilet do you account for? Let me know in the comments!

Want some more revelatory factoids? Check out .

Not even the strangest-smelling games journalists are asking 'how many floating points' a game has any more. Obviously it depends how many you score (fnar), but I am so pleased to say that we've all got past the stage of citing polygon counts when judging a game's graphical merits. Pretty much anything you can imagine can now be drawn by modern consoles in terms of computational oomph, so now it's mostly down to artistic expression as to whether a game looks good or not.

But looking back over gaming's history, even when things weren't so easy, it was those who tried something a bit different who managed to make their games stand out. And so entire art styles were born. Sometimes through technical necessity, other times through a deliberate attempt to shun progress. Fortunately that means I have a lot to talk about! So follow me into the gallery, if you please - let me show you some beautiful things...

Look at that adorable little chap. There are only 44 white squares making up that image, yet I'm sure you said 'Space Invaders' in your mind as soon as you saw it. Back then, these tiles were simply the smallest level of detail the cripplingly low-resolution displays could handle. But even since video games have hit full HD (and beyond), some designers still choose to use 8-bit-styled artwork, deliberately restricting the resolution - and colour palettes - of their sprites so that they appear blocky and pixellated. Why? Because it looks cool, is easier to animate, and it looks cool. What more reasons do you need?

These days? Pixel art is extremely popular so it isn't hard to find examples. The wonderful 10,000,000 on iOS is a fine specimen, as is .

Vectrex was the first home console to display its games using vector graphics instead of rasterised imagery, such as sprites. If you listened in mathematics classes (which you totally did, right?) you might remember that vectors provide a method of calculating precise movements of points in space. Join those points up with lovely shiny lines and what have you got? Wireframe 3D. Yep, Vectrex was a 3D console. And that meant exceptionally smooth animation because it didn't use animation frames at all. It used maths.

These days? Some games still borrow that vector style, like . They've got a whole load of other stuff going on as well, but that clean, 'glowing lines' style still has an air of mystique.

This was absolutely on the bleeding edge of technology in January, 1982. Zaxxon employs an 'isometric' viewpoint that allows flat, 2D graphics to look like 3-dimensional images, simply by drawing them as if viewed from a slightly elevated vantage point. By having the ship pass behind some elements of the scenery, it is enough to fool the (admittedly foolish) eye into thinking it is viewing an actual 3D room through the screen. It isn't, of course. And we can see that now. But that effect must've been amazing if it was the first time you'd seen it, back in the days before your humble narrator was even born. Suddenly, games were starting to look real.

These days? Isometric graphics are still popular on iOS, but even now everything can be rendered in 3D, the viewpoint has been retained for strategy games. is a prime example.

Rotoscoped graphics were all the rage back in the early 1990s, as they allowed for far more realistic character movement than had ever been seen before. Basically what you need to do to rotoscope a character is film someone acting out the gesture you require, such as jumping, or picking something up off the floor. Then you trace each frame and use your drawings in sequence to create a moving character. Jordan Mechner pioneered the use of rotoscoping in games, first with Karateka (pictured, above-left), but then most famously in Prince of Persia (also pictured, above-right). Out of this World and Flashback then picked up the rotoscoped baton and ran with it.

These days? on Nintendo DS uses rotoscoped graphics to create its smooth animations. But the technique has arguably been surpassed by true motion capture, which is why it's seldom used now.

In the early 1990s, everybody was still drawing their sprites by hand, placing each coloured pixel on a grid until they had drawn one frame of the character in question. So imagine the leap-forward when Mortal Kombat let you fight with REAL PEOPLE. Well, real photos of people. OK, real photos of people that were retouched by hand to make them look good at tiny resolutions. Yep. I'm sorry, but I have to say: to modern eyes, the effect looks awful, at least when it's moving. Back then, it was revolutionary.

These days? Not many games choose to use digitised sprites any more, because the most 'photorealistic' games use 3D to achieve their goals. Um... on Wii and iOS? Yep, sorry, pushing it a bit.

Flat-shaded 3D is something you would choose for its stylistic merits today, but it was born out of necessity. Before we had processor-intensive texture-mapped polygons (but after those lovely vector wireframes), some gaming hardware could 'flat-shade' polygons, with a process very similar to MS Paint's bucket tool, to fill in triangles. High tech, eh? Games like LHX Attack Chopper on Mega Drive and even some ZX Spectrum games like Hard Drivin' managed flat-shaded 3D visuals, but Virtua Racing was the first to do it at any kind of enjoyable speed. Light-sourced, too. Yum.

These days? Any flat-shaded game these days is being deliberately retro (which is cool because flat-shading is awesome). There are some flat-shaded scenes in on last-gen.

Film grain is often applied to horror games to make it look as though you're playing a horror movie. No, Mickey Mania isn't a horror game (but it is... scarily good. Aha!). And, to be clear, I am talking about the scratches and lines, not the film-strip effect on the sides up there. These deliberate imperfections are often combined with a vignette effect to darken the corners and edges of the display. Makes it less sterile, see? And just like a real film in a cinema. Only without the popcorn stuck to the seats or the people talking noisily behind you. Unless you have a really awful house.

These days? Most horror games employ some element of it. is a great example, but it's so pronounced it includes an option to reduce it or even turn if off completely. Hours of fuzz are probably not good for your eyes. 25 hours of psychological horror? Totally fine, obviously.

This was all the rage in the late 1990s. Polygonal 3D graphics were still in their infancy, but characters could have more detail if they were the only 3D objects being drawn. Stick them over a flat, pre-rendered (or even hand-drawn) background and you can have visuals far more detailed than the primitive tech of the day could ever draw by itself. Games like Alone in the Dark did it earlier than Resi, but Capcom's survival horror classic is the finest example of the art. Well, that and its immediate sequel.

These days? Well, there really isn't any need to do it any more! But there is an HD version of the Gamecube's Resident Evil remake coming soon, and that has pre-rendered backgrounds, so the style will live on. Can't see many native PS4 or Xbox One games going for it, though...

The idea of making games look like cartoons wasn't all that new when Jet Set Radio did it on Dreamcast, but it was the first to add black outlines to polygonal 3D to such incredible effect. Funnily enough, The Legend of Zelda: Wind Waker doesn't actually use black outlines at all, instead restricting the blending between light and shadow so that rounded 3D objects look like flat drawings of 2D objects. Which they would be anyway if you think about it. Hmmm...

These days? The likes of use cel-shading on top of highly-detailed 3D character models to create visuals that really could be animated features. Of course the result is gorgeous. And Borderlands is another fine example of the (literal) art.

Photorealism is a lot of graphical developers' ultimate goal. Computer graphics so realistic, they're indistinguishable from the real thing. Some angles of Gran Turismo 6 are approaching it. Heavy Rain had a crack (and failed) and new-gen consoles might approach it by the end of their life cycle. How? Well, ray-tracing actual beams of virtual light... look, actual photorealism where you simulate the real world is still beyond games consoles. So until then, look at Kevin Spacey and imagine he's the real Kevin Spacey. There ya go.

Right now? The sea in . It's like the actual sea. But again, its people are nothing like actual people.

Now there's a question! The low-res textures on cubes make for a very distinct art style - which you could call 'Minecraft-style' - and one that is being copied by countless open-world resource-collecting games. But I would argue it's just pixel art applied to 3D. In spectacular, unmistakeable fashion, yes. But taking an existing idea and turning it into something new worked out 'pretty well' for Mojang. So! Got any more video game art styles that haven't been covered? Let everyone know in the comments.

And if you're looking for more, check out .

What's a 'dandy,' you may ask? Why, it's nothing more than a gentleman who appreciates the finer things in life: eloquent language, snazzy clothing, and a certain degree of vanity. Dandies strive to maintain a prim-and-proper demeanor, entertaining others with their witty speech, charming mannerisms, and debonair attire. You could say they're effeminate, but all it takes to be a dandy is a devotion to style above all else.

For whatever reason, the dandy archetype pairs wonderfully with a life of villainy. It must be something about the disconnect between a dandy's cavalier attitude and a slew of abominable deeds, making the bad guy seem likeable and reprehensible at the same time. Pagan Min from is probably the most famous evil dandy at the moment - but he wasn't the first, or the dandiest. Straighten your bowtie, dust off your top hat, and sharpen your bloodied butterfly knife as we take a look at gaming's most memorable, despicable dandies.

SPOILERS AHOY for the following games:
Bayonetta
The Legend of Zelda: Skyward Sword

Deep-pocketed fat cats, take note: this is what 'the one-percent' should/will look like in 2035. Graham might as well be a male model, with his three-piece suit, silk scarf, and eyebrows that have seen more tweeze than Elmer Fudd in a dense forest. At first, he seems like an amiable fellow, treating our hero Soma Cruz with cordial respect. But Graham's tune changes real fast when he realizes that Soma might be a threat to his true intentions: becoming the reincarnation of Dracula.

Graham is actually a 'Dark Lord Candidate' - someone who was born at the exact moment that Dracula was previously killed. His belief is that, by rights, all demons should serve under his command, and he slowly loses his sanity to delusions of grandeur as Aria's story runs its course. But maybe we shouldn't blame Graham for his villainy - a lifetime of kids saying that your last name should be 'Cracker' is enough to drive anyone over the edge.

Just listen to that and tell me Razer isn't a high point of the Jak and Daxter sequels. Not to be confused with the PC hardware brand or the long-forgotten Motorola flip phone, Razer simply oozes snobbiness, from his splendiferous coat to his pristinely trimmed goatee to the cigar ashes he's always tapping hither and thither.

It's hard to imagine that a man so dapper would get his jollies by decimating competitors in futuristic death races, but that's just how Razer rolls. And even for all the taunts, thinly veiled threats, and plumes of smoke that Razer sends Jak's way, Daxter still can't help but appreciate his "certain odd, sexy style". You know a villain's got panache when even the heroes can't help but adore him. Jak puts up a gruff front, but you just know that deep down, he's intrigued by his long-eared frenemy. I better stop before this launches into full-on slash fiction.

Now there's a beautiful man. Wait, please wait officer - I wasn't aware that Ash is only 16 when I said that! If you filled a pixelated blender with the the pyrokinetic powers of KOF poster boy Kyo Kusanagi and the leather-obsessed fashion sense of Iori Yagami, Ash Crimson would be the result. But unlike his masculine predecessors - Kyo with his everyman appeal, Iori looking like a guitarist in a goth metal band - Ash is a lithe, effeminate fighter with a hairstyle that seems better suited for a 1960s go-go dancer. And if you don't stop staring at his extravagantly painted nails, he'll punch in your guts with fists of green flame.

When you meet the sardonic, uncaring gaze of Ash's blue eyes, you know that this guy must be a straight-up sociopath. That assumption is reinforced by the fact that Ash treats enemies and allies like pieces on a chessboard, displaying almost zero emotion in his quest to rob KOF's leading super-humans of their powers. Maybe he's not technically the most evil guy in town, but Ash's motives are so ambiguous for the majority of his convoluted plotline that he might as well be the villain.

Attempting to understand the entire plot of Bayonetta is like learning a new language: there are tons of unfamiliar words you need to memorize, and you're going to be confused as hell for at least a month. So instead of getting into Father Balder's time-traveling escapades and 500-plus years of existence, let's just focus on the dandy-osity of his extravagant ensemble. The flaxen half-mask/monocle combo; the ornate white-and-gold robes; the actual peacock carcass draped over his shoulders complete with full plumage. If a villain was any sharper dressed, they'd have to be wearing a tuxedo made out of knives.

It's clear where Bayonetta gets her sense of outrageously sleek style - let's just say that they don't call him 'Father' Balder because he's a priest. But even when he's threatening to eradicate his own flesh and blood, Balder's elegant rhetoric makes his attempted filicide seem A-ok. He's the classic combination of dashing and dastardly, much like David Bowie in Labyrinth (though by comparison, Balder's crotch-bulge game still needs work).

One look at De Singe's made-up, ghostly pale face, and Aerosmith's 'Dude (Looks Like a Lady)' will instantly get stuck in your head. Then you hear his voice, which sounds like a French person doing an impression of an American person doing an impression of a French person. De Singe constantly peppers his lispy speech with words au francais, completing the illusion that he could never be a threat, even to a pirate as gullible as Guybrush Threepwood.

But that couldn't be further from the truth - which you might've already guessed, given that this villain's name is a play on Marquis De Sade, the aristocrat whose last name is the actual root of the word 'sadism'. When De Singe isn't conducting experiments on helpless animals, he's trying to amputate Guybrush's pox-ridden hand in a misguided bid for eternal life. To make things even more 'mad scientist', De Singe is controlling the winds around Flotsam Island so he can strand pirates there to serve as his not-actual-guinea-pigs-for-once guinea pigs. But with that foppish attitude, powdered wig, and aristocratic garb of his, you'd never guess that De Singe is probably more vile a villain than the infamous Captain LeChuck.

From reading his rap sheet, you'd assume that young royal Alfred Ashford is an absolute monster. Not because he's a test-tube baby - Alfred and his sister Alexia had no say in the genetic experiments that created them. It's more the way he conspired with his twin sis to infect their father/creator with the t-Veronica virus before imprisoning him in the basement. If that wasn't sadistic enough for you, there's also Alfred's love for administering torture in his private prison camp. He also enjoys taking potshots at people with his sniper rifle when they're not looking, which is so uncool.

But when you actually meet Alfred for the first time, he seems like such a sweet (albeit a little demented) guy. It's a one-two punch of dandy charm, what with Alfred's well-groomed appearance in his regal-looking military uniform, and the ludicrously high pitch of his voice as he eloquently accosts our heroes, Claire and Steve. Allow me to take a shotgun approach to some pop culture comparisons: Alfred Ashford has the . If you got all that, guess what: we just became best friends.

Yes, it's true: you can be intimidated by a skinny, pale elf rocking an emo haircut, gigantic jewel earrings, purple eyeliner, and a skintight, patterned leotard. Ghirahim's degree of self-assured fabulousness rivals even Beyonce, and I dare say he's the most sexually charged character Link's ever had the pleasure of meeting, given how often he speaks in moans and . Ghirahim is what every dandy aspires to be: a cross between the authority and poshness of an aristocrat and the flamboyant charisma of a hair metal band's lead singer.

But this is a list of the most menacing dandies - and Ghirahim's got evil intent out the wazoo. Whenever this pretty boy loses his cool, you get a glimpse of his true self: a psychotic sword-wielding murderer who's more than happy to dole out slow, painful death in his quest to abduct Princess Zelda. At least, that's what I gathered from quotes like "I need to vent all this unhealthy anger, and your agony is a great stress reliever!" or "I'll do more than just beat you senseless. I'll make the affair so excruciating you'll deafen yourself with the shrill sound of your own screams". Damn.

Long live the villainous dandy - without them, we'd have to endure a never-ending stream of big, uncouth brutes as our antagonists. Are there any other evil-doer dandies - like the young Revolver Ocelot or Kingdom Hearts' Marluxia, both pictured above - that you think could've made the cut? Tell me all about it in the comments below - but please, do be courteous about it, lest our genteel discourse be reduced to plebeian drivel.

And if you're looking for more, check out .

Microtransactions aren't so bad, you guys. Sure, they tend to be most effective when parents don't realize their kids can make as many of them as they want for a whole half hour after signing in, but they introduce so many interesting new mechanics for developers to explore on top of new ways to make money. And I know just how to prove their worth to you: by defiling - er - improving your favorite games with their presence.

Come with me on a grand tour of what it would have looked like if a dozen classic games had microtransactions built-in from the get go. Trust me, you'll find the idea of a paid coin doubler much more palatable when couched in the familiar trappings of the Mushroom Kingdom. Heck, by the end of this gallery you could well be tearing at your clothes and shouting praise for new monetization methodologies.

It took me forever to get to Staunton Island in Grand Theft Auto 3. Y'know why? Four words (and a number): Bomb Da Base Act 2. It's so irritating that my ability to escape Portland and head to Staunton Island, the center of the GTA 3 world, hinged entirely on my ability - or inability in this case - to snipe dozens of thugs using clunky first-person shooting controls.

But there's an easy solution for everybody. GTA 3 simply needs a paid 'Cut to the Chase' feature, where players can pay a reasonable price for a set number of 'clapperboards'. Whenever you get stuck on one of GTA 3's checkpoint-free missions, you can just use a 'clapperboard' to skip it. That way players who prefer to bash their heads against poorly designed levels are free to do so, but everyone else can just pay up and get back to exploring the city.

You got a purple rupee! That's worth 50 rupees! Too bad your wallet was already full, sucker! Don't lie, how many times did you open a chest and groan when Link pulled out another shiny gem? It should be a happy occasion, but you know full well that you'll need every one of those wasted rupees to buy yourself another Goron or Zora tunic after some asshole Like Like eats you.

You could go through the hassle of a Gold Skulltula killing spree and unlock them one by one - all the while wasting rupees from every pot you smash and monster you kill - or you could just spend a buck to upgrade your wallet right now. Hey, the Giant's wallet is only $5 and holds two and a half times as much - we'll just need your Nintendo Network ID and password to confirm the transaction...

Aside from a musical cue here or a burst of gunfire there, everything in Half-Life 2 is so… quiet. I mean, is this a near-future dystopian city or a near-future dystopian library? It's fine if you like 'ambience' and 'atmosphere' and other fancy stuff like that, but what I could really go for is a disembodied voice that shouts whenever I manage to kill a couple Combine soldiers in quick succession.

That's where the Announcer packs come in. Fill out all that dead air with enthused hollering from a host of Valve characters! Thrill as the Scout shouts "bonk!" with every crowbar strike! Cheer as Louis observes how Gordon going for a health pack is not unlike grabbing pills! Also, you can craft them all into a badge. No, I'm not sure what that means either.

I wouldn't do a thing to change the challenging, rewarding experience of playing the original Super Mario Bros. Actually, I could find one little issue with that 'rewarding' part - the coins. You need to get a hundred of the damn things for them to actually be worth anything. When you consider how many of them you'll actually find in an average playthrough, it's just a poor experience for most users.

Enter the Coin Doubler. A proven staple of the microtransaction arsenal, it doesn't replace the Mario coin economy or let you buy your way to victory, it just gives you a little boost. Now that you get to those 1-Ups twice as fast, you'll really go out of your way to snag extra coins. It's a winning solution for everybody! And it's cheaper than a venti frappuccino.

Aside from its own campaign, Sonic Knuckles' lock-on technology lets players try out parts of Sonic the Hedgehog 2 and 3 with the eponymous echidna, or access the new game's stages with familiar characters. On top of that, cramming the cartridges you already owned into the new one you just bought is still an oddly satisfying notion. The whole idea is so totally radical that it's a massive shame Sega didn't keep going from there.

Why stop building the lock-on tower at the second floor? Imagine a world with Sonic Knuckles Christmas, a low-priced cartridge that puts all the characters in Santa outfits and adds a North Pole level? Or Sonic Knuckles Hardcore, which removes the HUD and introduces permadeath? Mix-n-match however you want, as long as you can still fit it under the TV!

Did you know Suikoden has 108 characters to recruit? That's only 32 less characters than you can fit in a tweet. Sure, it's a role-playing classic and all, but how much time do you really have to devote to recruiting fictional cronies - many of whom you'll never even bother to add to your party?

Let's get real here. If you have a job or kids to take care of, you're not gonna find time to get all the 'stars' and unlock the secret ending. But don't give up hope! Just buy some Stars of Destiny Packs! Each one contains a random assortment of six characters with at least one holographic hero guaranteed per pack. If you get doubles, you can grind extras down to Stardust and craft them into the heroes you need.

Ok, you're pretty sure you need to talk to Otis in the prison next, but Guybrush keeps saying he won't because his breath stinks. That means talking's out, so let's try some other verbs. Use Otis. Nothing. Look at Otis. Ok, yes, you know what he looks like. Fine, let's get rough. Push Otis. Pull Otis. Turn off Otis? Arrrghhh!

But wait! You don't need to fret, and you don't need to overcome your crippling social anxiety to call the Lucasfilm Games help line! Just use a Hint Coin! What, you're telling me you don't have any hint coins? Well, you're in luck - all you need to do is click the icon in the corner of the screen, put in your credit card information, and buy some! Better get a few extra just in case - this game's tricky. Remember, 500 coins is the best value!

Halo introduced the genre-shifting concept of a recharging shield to first-person shooter games, (mostly) ending the long and glorious reign of the health meter and inexplicably effective medkit. But damn if it doesn't take a long time for your shields to start coming back. And once it does, the tiniest little pop from a Needler sets you back to square one! Sheesh, more like Combat Devolved.

Sure, you could take cover for a while. That's fine if you want to be all tactical. But players who prefer to run and gun can just make sure they're stocked up on Instant Shield Boosts. Hit up the Waypoint Store and get back in the fight in no time flat! It's not an advantage over non-premium customers, it's just another way to play the game!

Narrowly avoiding ghosts is fun and all, but it can get a bit stressful. Hardcore Pac-Man players know how to ration out their limited supply of Power Pellets so they always have one to turn to when they're about to be surrounded, but the rest of us get all too familiar with that "byoo byoo byoo BWAP BWAP" sound effect.

Don't deprive yourself of the thrill of munching on frightened ghosts. Activate a Power Pellet Booster to turn 24 random Pac-Dots into Power Pellets, and turn the tables on Blinky, Pinky, Inky, and Clyde!

This is it. One win and one loss. It's the final battle to take down M. Bison and strike down his nefarious Shadaloo criminal network. You and Ryu have made it all this way and nothing's gonna stop you now. Just get back, set up a good hadouken and… Ok! You've gotten him down a third of the way, play it conservative… No! He pulled off a scissor kick! But you can still recover if you just... andddd he knocked you out.

But wait, you can start right where you left off! All you need to do is drop a quarter in the - oh, wait, you already know how continues work? Ok then.

Here's the thing about Super Metroid: it's almost too big. Zebes has so many huge rooms and tiny nooks to explore, and every time you equip a new piece of equipment you get to go back and look it all over with a new eye for detail - like revisiting a book as you learn the complexities of its language. It's incredible. It's daunting.

Thankfully, Samus' limited supply of Exploration Energy ensures that players appreciate each and every room they visit. Passing through a door will deplete her reserves, so make sure you've found everything you need before you head out! Exploration Energy will recharge after enough time passes in the real world, but why not speed it up by watching a commercial or by using some of those Chozo Crystals you bought?

Ah, the joy of a well-constructed base. Look at it hum with activity, SCVs scurrying back and forth from mineral deposits and fresh marines pouring out of its barracks. The only bad part is that it took you so long to get everything set up just right that you don't really want to move on to the next level.

That's where SCV Boosts come in! Accelerate your building speed so new facilities form instantaneously, and never worry about spending hours establishing bases again! Don't worry Zerg and Protoss players, Larvae and Probe Boosts are available at the same reasonable price points!

Those are just a few of the many classics that could be made even better with the help of the humble microtransaction. I know you can think of a dozen more old favorites just begging for dialogue boxes that exhort players to spend more cash, so let me know what you think in the comments below!

As long as we're dwelling on the past, check out these .

Sleigh bells. Gift wrap. Homicidal gingerbread men and heavily armed snowfolk. Mistletoe. These are the things that the holiday season's made of, at least if you go by the many Christmas expansions video games have to offer. In a bid to wring every precious cent out of the season, developers have long made a point of playing Santa with festive mission packs and candy cane-shaped firearms sold to their holly jolly fanbases.

The memories of these merry offerings may fade with the turning of the seasons, but as that time of year comes 'round again and we troll the ancient Yuletide servers, we wish to honor those jolly Christmas expansions of yore. Don you now your DLC apparel, prepare yourself for some ho-ho-horrible Christmas punnery, and lets dig into those precious holiday memories.

What do you get? A new, Christmas-themed game in the Monty Mole series. Perhaps you kids, with your Ratchet Daxter and your Grand Torino videogame entertainments, don’t appreciate that a new Monty Mole game was a pretty big deal once. Your job is to wrangle the source code for a new Monty Mole game, oversee mastering of said game, and get it to distributors in time for Christmas, even as you play that very game. Remember the season of Seinfeld devoted to the making of a fictional Jerry Seinfeld sitcom? That's nothing compared to the postmodern genius of Moley Christmas.

Are you filled with holiday cheer? By replacing the drudgery of actual games programming and distribution with scenes of hectic Santa-suited platforming and dodging holiday traffic, Moley Christmas pretty much puts a gun to your head and orders you to make with the festive, bitch.

What do you get? Some short demo levels of then-huge Lemmings, in which the suicidal little creatures romp in the snow and wearing Santa costumes. This concept proved to be so popular that two full games were launched around it. Still, it's a bit of an odd bird. Why do the “basher” lemmings have just as much trouble digging through fresh powder snow as they would solid rock? What’s the point of keeping the moronic critters alive through all manner of peril, only to bake them into a Christmas pudding? But meh, they're wearing Santa suits, so we’ll give it a pass.

Are you filled with holiday cheer? Christmas Lemmings threatens to succumb to a very merry malaise: it’s so bursting with holiday cheer it could almost make you sick. The game averts this outcome though by providing you with hundreds of Santa-looking merry-makers, all of whom can be exploded at your merest whim.

What do you get? Two levels of cult Saturn-era Sega action-adventure NiGHTS into Dreams, set during Christmas and featuring date-sensitive holiday content. The limited edition of NiGHTS wouldn’t turn into Winter Nights until November, but wait another month after that, and the game would bust out the seasonal festivities. Of course, you could just tell your Saturn every day was Christmas, and NiGHTS would be none the wiser.

Are you filled with holiday cheer? With all those presents, Christmas trees, sleighbells and techno-rearranged Christmas carols on offer, Christmas NiGHTS is a bit like eggnog. It’s great during the appropriate season, but yearly access would probably make you ill.

What do you get? Jazz Jackrabbit is a hare who collects carrots and fights turtles (convoluted Aesop shout-outs FTW). In his three(!) holiday games, he does those things in the snow, set to a sleigh-bell-accented backing track. Audiences were disgusted by the games’ slapdash approach to seasonal biology (neither jackrabbits nor turtles are greatly active in the winter months), which is the only reason Jazz Jackrabbit is never today mentioned in the same breath as Mario or Sonic.

Are you filled with holiday cheer? Holiday Hare’s leading speculates the Jackrabbit holiday games “may become part of the next generation’s holiday traditions.” Evidently, adding a “snow on the rooftops” effect to the game’s menu fonts went a long way.

What do you get? A couple of Christmas trees that sit in Station Square and display messages wishing best of the holidays, joining you in waiting with bated breath for then-impending Y2K. You're hardly whisked away to a winter wonderland, though. By and large, the whole affair stays the same, but the sunny downtown Square has a couple ropey-looking trees in it. Being as this isn't even DLC so much as a limited-time key for pre-existing content, you’d think there could be some dodgy late-‘90s snow effects or something.

Are you filled with holiday cheer? You are if you go close to the trees and listen closely: it would play you an acapella version of the music from Christmas NiGHTS.

What do you get? In Star Wars Galaxies, Rebels and their sympathizers join in celebrating the Star Wars universe’s greatest holiday festival. That would of course be Wookiee Life Day, invented for the single most reviled piece of Star Wars media ever produced: the Star Wars Holiday Special. As Wookiee Life Day isn’t actually a celebration of Christmas per se, the game can do whatever it likes with seasonal tradition. What it likes is to expand the mythology of the Holiday Special so that Wookiee Life Day is at once mortifyingly sweet and kind of heartwarming. You know, like Christmas itself.

Are you filled with holiday cheer? How could you fail to be? Just as the Holiday Special enriched the lives of everyone except George Lucas (who probably sleeps OK at night regardless), Star Wars Galaxies’ Life Day brings cheer into the homes of all who participate. Except those playing as the Empire: their official mandate is to grief the whole celebration.

What do you get? An installment of Sam and Max in which every Christmas trope is rehashed, subverted and twisted into a plot that also involves demonic possession, corporate meddling and the imminent Apocalypse. It's pretty seamlessly done, so it makes us wonder how game designers until 2007 to capitalize on the fact that Santa is an anagram of Satan. Puns and video games – who knew those tastes could go together?

Are you filled with holiday cheer? Sam and Max could take Tax Day and turn it into an occasion for festive merriment. By the time you’ve digested the , you'll be forgiven for just not having any idea what to do with yourself.

What do you get? Santa costumes. You could dress your characters up and use them to traumatize viewers too young to have their notions of Kris Kringle marred by the film Silent Night, Deadly Night. For a series that's endured the bolting-on of everything from bug-catching nets to diminutive Jedi warriors, the ability to make your characters dress like a pissed-off mall Santa is par for the course. As long plenty of ludicrous ass-kicking remains, the spirit will endure.

Are you filled with holiday cheer? Like fun you are. A couple measly red suits cost two bucks! Charging for this kind of frippery is basically forcing hardscrabble penny-pinchers to choose between seeing new outfits or eating Christmas dinner.

What did you get? The same juicy, slashy goodness you've come to expect from Fruit Ninja, but now there's a snow globe! To be precise, the snow globe is you, and as you flail your arms in a desperate attempt to reach that escaping coconut, your silhouette is replaced with a lovely, snowy landscape. Plus, your ninja-bladed hands have become candy cane blades, the most fearsome of all Christmas weapons. Everything else is pretty much the same, except that the master of fruit is wearing a Santa hat and instead of getting the multi-slice pomegranate, you get a fruitcake. I've always wanted to destroy one of those.

Were you filled with holiday cheer? Sometimes it's the little things that make the season special. Yeah, you're still slice and dicing tropical fruits, but the wintery hints are just so whimsical you'd have to be a Scrooge not to crack a smile.

What do you get? A lot of weirdness, which is good, because it wouldn't be Saints Row otherwise. While the Saints are decorating their base of operations with all sorts of holiday livery, a cybernetic Shaundi from the future appears and claims that the boss must defeat a corrupted Santa Claus with nothing but some pop-guns and the joy of the season. The boss isn't huge on that idea at first, but after blowing away Santa's gingerbread army, s/he inevitably gets into the spirit. You might say that his/her heart grew three sizes that day.

Are you filled with holiday cheer? This much holiday merriment in one place would be as cloying as a mug of melted candy canes, if it was at all serious. As it is, the Saints make their cybernetic, trigger-happy holiday hijinks just funny enough that ending on a cutesy Grinch reference is entirely tolerable.

What do you get? Two missions in an inexplicable Christmas town full of murderous, gun-totting snowmen. In How Marcus Saved Mercenary Day, arms dealer Marcus calls on the vault hunters to travel through a wardrobe to the annoyingly whimsical land of Gingerton and check on a lost gun shipment. That explanation creates way more questions than it answers, but there's no time to think about that as you're thrown into an adorable winterland where everything is out for your blood. There you meet the unnervingly shirtless Smaller-than-average Timothy and defeat a vicious snow-overlord named Tinder Snowflake.

Are you filled with holiday cheer? If you spend the entire game trying to figure out what a holiday about contract killers could possibly have to do with awkward Dickensian knock-offs, probably not. But if you think a Psycho singing Carol of the Bells is hilarious, you'll probably love this whole thing and get some sick loot out of the deal. And in the end, isn't that what Mercenary Day is REALLY about? No seriously, that's a real question.

What do you get? A content pack as fat as jolly ol' Saint Nick. The Minecraft Festive Mash-Up Pack contains 36 new avatar skins, as well as a feature that transforms your Minecraft world into the sort of joyful snowscape that Jingle Bells was written about. There's also a new, jollified version of the Minecraft soundtrack, giving the pack that extra holiday tinsel it needs to round it all out. This festive mash-up is currently exclusive to Xbox consoles, though Microsoft has claimed it will appear on other systems in the near future. Still, looks like the corporate overlord might be playing favorites this Christmas. Just a guess.

Are you filled with holiday cheer? With this many semi-square Christmas trees, white blocks replacing brown blocks, and , how can you not get into the holiday spirit?

What do you get? It's the most wonderful time of the year, and what better way to show it than with completely impractical festive costumes? Whether it's a sexy snowman, a sexy angel, or a sexy badly-wrapped present (seriously, someone get these girls some gift paper before they die of hypothermia), this Christmas costume set has you covered. Heck, even Hayate and Ein join the party as sexy reindeer, so there's something here for everyone. Except maybe people who don't want to sit in their living rooms shivering in empathy. Can't help you there.

Are you filled with holiday cheer? Just like with Soulcalibur, the idea of laying down hard-earned holiday money for a bunch of costumes is painful, especially when the pack costs a whopping $18. Holy mother of mistletoe! And yes, it only contains the costumes (a seasonally appropriate twelve of them), so you must really want to see the Dead or Alive cast in barely-there holiday attire to make this one worth it.

'Tis the days before Christmas, and all through the 'net, devs are offering expansions you may want to get. But take heart: memorable as they may be, there's only a few you'll want under your tree. Which of these expansions do you think is the best? Is there something much better you'd like to suggest? Say so in the comments, and have no fear - if you hate all of these, there's always next year!

Is it beginning to feel a lot like Christmas? Keep that feeling going with .

If you're a guest in someone else's home, don't go through all their drawers looking for money. If you see a turtle, don't stomp on it. If you need to escape from a bunch of armed dudes, don't leave a nudie mag on the ground and expect them to hunker down and leer at it while you make your escape. Video games teach us all kinds of lessons that would be unwise to carry over to real life - but ‘You'll feel better if you just use X healing item’ might be the most deadly of all.

Seriously, it's a wonder that video game characters are still standing after all the unrefrigerated poultry they consume, , and anomalous drugs they inject into their veins. Can you imagine what would happen if you, a mortal creature of flesh and bone, tried to nourish yourself with these pick-ups? Well, you don't have to - I already did. Click on for some cautionary tales of healing items that would totally, totally kill you in real life.

How it works in the game: Max limps into a bathroom, barely able to stay on his feet after taking a gut full of bullets from a two-bit mobster with an Uzi. He opens a medicine cabinet, grabs a few bottles full of pills, pops one open, and downs its contents in a single gulp. Aside from that scratchy throat feeling you get from taking pills dry, Max's pain is killed.

How it would work for you: You're bleeding from a gunshot wound. Rather than calling 911/999 and awaiting assistance from trained paramedics, you decide to guzzle a bottle of oxycodone you found on top of the refrigerator. The pain fades after a half-hour or so, even though you're still bleeding like a stuck pig - you feel a little cold, but otherwise okay. Maybe you'll take a little nap on the floor until the healing effect kicks in… this was… a great… idea...

How it works in the game: The horde of ghouls is still pounding at the door, but Leon is safe for the moment. He reaches into his pocket and produces a little spray can with a green plus sign on its label. He pulls his hand away from the grievously bleeding wound on his neck, grits his teeth, and presses down on the can's nozzle until the last of its refreshing mist sputters out. He's no doctor, but he would assess his condition as Fine after that.

How it would work for you: Jesus Christ, what was wrong with that hiker? He almost looked like he was sleepwalking, but he was so pale… Anyway, you'd better do something about that bite. Good thing you keep a can of Umbrella-brand first-aid spray in your car. Just give that a good spritz and you'll feel better in no time. There you are… the pain's gone, but God, is it getting hot in here? Now you've got the chills. Better head home.

How it works in the game: Donatello's not looking so tubular. He could wreck a platoon of purple Foot Clan ninjas in his sleep, but the orange ones are just the absolute worst. Not to mention those gnarly raptors that keep trampling around and ruining his day. Luckily, Leonardo saved him a slice of 'za from this box he found by the cliffside in 250,000,000 B.C. A few quick chomps and the turtles are back in fighting shape. Cowabunga!

How it would work for you: You're lost and confused, and your pants are still damp from soiling yourself at the sight of a pterodactyl carrying a robot ninja. Suddenly, a familiar scent wafts into your nostrils - pizza! There it is, an unguarded box of the sacred pie! You're so hungry you don't even care that it's topped with anchovies - you just devour the whole thing. Then you wink out of existence, because that pizza would have fed the rodent-like creature that was the ancestor of all mammals. Whoops.

How it works in the game: Vulcan Raven stalks through the warehouse, scanning left and right for his quarry. There isn't much further for Solid Snake to crawl. Ah! There he is, panting and bleeding! This last volley will end his unnatural existence! But as the high-caliber bullets slam into Snake's body, the surprisingly calm soldier bites down on something and his wounds begin to close. Damn him! He had a ration in his mouth!

How it would work for you: You've accepted that these strange military rations are laced with some kind of healing agent, and that eating them instantly mends your wounds. But after months of miraculous recoveries, your supply is running low and you figure you'd better conserve them. Rather than wasting a morsel of their healing power, you'll wait until you're at the moment of death and then take a replenishing bite… but it turns out you may have overestimated your ability to carefully unwrap and consume foodstuffs while being shot in the face.

How it works in the game: Sabin nearly fell to that accursed toothy squid! Come to think of it, he may have actually died, depending on the philosophical ramifications of using a Phoenix Down on a fallen combatant… For now, there's a damn potion to drink. The taste is almost unbearable - but if he can just chug down the contents of the little blue bottle he'll be back to pumping iron and thrashing villains faster than you can say 'Biggs and Wedge'.

How it would work for you: That traveling salesman promised his 'Vitality Potion' would get rid of your cough if you drank it every night just before bed. And it did! By causing multiple organ failure. When your corpse is exhumed a hundred years later, researchers will find your bones are still infused with enough mercury and lead to kill twenty men. No cough, though.

How it works in the game: Blaze Fielding is a woman of action, and she doesn't have time to get take-out with all these goons around. They need a good face pounding. Fortunately for Blaze and her fellow street-fighting vigilantes, helpful citizens have taken to hiding their spare foodstuffs in garbage cans and newspaper racks all across the city. She smashes a few open, discarding an apple here or there (must have been from some smartass dentist) until she finds a roast chicken and chows down. Good to go!

How it would work for you: You vaguely recall some old wives' tale about discarding cooked poultry if it's left out for more than two hours. Something about salmonella? Bah. That must've been why some joker dropped this beautifully roasted bird in the garbage, plate and all. It's cold and you'll need to wipe off a few cigarette butts, but it's cheaper than Chik-Fil-A! Urp… maybe there's some Pepto Bismol in that trash can, too...

How it works in the game: Sometimes Mario isn't so good-a at the depth-a perception. In this case, he overestimated how much speed he needed for that last jump and ended up soaring clear over the platform, crashing into the floor a hundred meters below. But he's not a-worried, even as he pants-a with exhaustion, because he landed right next to a nice big lake. He dives, holds his breath for a few seconds, and springs back out like-a new man. Mamma mia, that's a good-a baptism metaphor!

How it would work for you: You were on the team back in high school, so swimming with two broken legs and a collapsed lung shouldn't be a problem, right? Just a quick dip and you'll feel right as rain. Can't stand, so you'll have to roll your way over… and in you go! OK! Your legs still really hurt! But swimming without using your legs is hard! So is breathing underwater! This was maybe not such a great idea!

How it works in the game: Well, that fight could've gone better. As per usual, Jack was way too conservative with his plasmids (even though he was full of EVE) and he took a few stray bullets. Luckily for him, that dumb Splicer led him straight to a well-stocked liquor cabinet right before she got torn to bits by a turret. Four bottles of Rapture's finest fortified wine later, and Jack's feeling much better. A little wobbly, with a little less EVE, but much better.

How it would work for you: Ahh, that really hurts. How could you cut yourself this badly just chopping carrots? It's like cooking 101 and carrots are so not worth dying for! No bandages in the house, of course, but you do have a couple boxes of wine you were planning to bring to the dinner party. Maybe if you polish one off you'll feel better. No, just drunk, still hurts. Try another. Ok, stop puking, that's not going to help. Try another. Don't pass out, you lazy…

How it works in the game: This might be it for the Lone Wanderer. Trapped in a vault deep underground with a busted leg and surrounded by super mutants, she's running out of options. Almost as much for old time's sake as out of any real hope for salvation, she pats down a corpse… and feels a familiar syringe in its pocket! In one fluid motion she pulls the stimpak forth and jabs it into her leg, instantly knitting the wound and mending the fracture. Alright - time to see about getting back to the surface.

How it would work for you: You were kinda worried for a few weeks after you injected yourself with that filthy syringe you found lying in a pile of rubbish, but it really did wonders for your aching back. Your fears are just beginning to subside when you get a call from your doctor's office. Her tone is grave as she asks you if you're sitting down. You say yes, and she tells you that you are infected with every bloodborne pathogen known to man and have at most a month to live. Your back still feels great.

That's it for my accounting of gaming's deadliest health items, but video games are jam packed with inadvisable diets and wellness plans. So sit down with a nice cut of garbage chicken and think of your favorites, then come back and share them in the comments below!

For some characters, .

Christmas is great. As a result, a lot of people like it. But, as is the case with everything a lot of people like, there are folk out there more than ready to capitalise on its popularity with Distinctly Less Than Great products. Despite modern games not lending themselves too well to seasonal theming (as I mentioned in ), history is littered with fairly stinking releases designed to cash in on the finest reindeer and snowman-based holiday of all. The '80s and '90s, with their quick development turnarounds and cheap publishing costs, were a particularly dark period.

So I decided, on this most joyous of Christmas Eves, to name the guilty. Read on, and I shall identify and bluntly critique the worst offenders. You'll get to have a fair old laugh at my pain along the way, and at the very least you'll gain a newfound appreciation of the games and consoles you'll be getting tomorrow, however many hours of updates and patches you might have to go through before the fun.

How crap is it? So crap that it defies my natural instinct to throw reasoned, critical gamz jarnalism at it. It’s just unremittingly rancid. A side-scrolling shooter so basic that it barely even exists, Santa's Xmas Capers is less an exercise in frustration, more an exercise in WTF.

You control a reindeer-led sleigh (which bizarrely does not at all contain Santa; presumably any activity mirthsome enough to warrant the label of 'caper' involves not being in this game). Endless scrappy sprites 'representing' Christmas Things are hurled at you. The collision detection murders you instantly, and you're booted back to a title screen screeching an out-of-tune We Wish You a Merry Christmas. Forever. There is rumour that the game is currently being rebooted as Satan's Xmas Capers, as playing it is exactly like being in Hell.

How crap is it? Pretty crap. It’s hard to truly hate any game so devoid of substance that you won’t play it for more than two minutes (in your entire life), but regardless, Sober Santa is crap. Santa is on a roof. You move him around to collect booze, which inexplicably spawns on that roof, rather than near the fireplace, at the bottom of the chimney he’s supposed to be going down. With every drink, he gets more boozey, and thus more difficult to control. Eventually he falls off the roof, whereupon you close the browser tab and ever think of Sober Santa again.

It’s taken me four days to write this entry, so forgettable is the game that every time I wrote half a sentence, the very experience of even having played it would drift from my mind as if some barely-remembered fever dream. Hardly perceptible, but still rather unpleasant with it, Sober Santa is the silent fart of Christmas games. But at least it doesn’t linger.

How crap is it? Legendarily. As in ‘12 on Metacritic’, crap. Originally parped out as a freebie PC game, Elf Bowling, along with its sequel, was later put out at retail on the DS and Game Boy Advance. That was a big mistake. Not only because charging £20 for this perfect snowstorm of bad controls, bad visuals and bad sound is a recipe for an unwinnable battle against karma, but because putting Elf Bowling out as a ‘real’ game allowed real critics to have a go at it. And we eviscerated the thing, with 100% justified ferocity.

Oh, I’m sorry, did I say “along with its sequel”? That implies that Elf Bowling was a relatively localised disturbance. In actual fact there were six more after that, part seven even having the affront to call itself “Elf Bowling 7 1/7: The Last Insult”. Not only does that a) strongly imply that the devs know how shit these things are, and b) show a total lack any respect for either originality or the Naked Gun series (both big no-nos in my book of values), but it wasn’t even the last game. Elf Bowling: Hawaiian Vacation arrived afterwards. This stuff is the wildly spreading Black Death of Christmas games.

How crap is it? Crappier than you might like to believe. Briefly a Huge Deal in Europe due to the popularity of the Commodore Amiga home computer in the early '90s (and more specifically said format's continued, desperate, agonisingly hopeless attempts to breed its own answer to Mario and Sonic), Robocod reviewed bizarrely well back in the day, largely down to it’s being a bit of a looker and packing a rather cool gimmick in the form of its aquatic hero's stretchy robotic midriff, which allowed him to reach otherwise unattainable heights by way of a hyper-extended spine.

Some loved it, but for those of us who actually had access to the plumber and the hedgehog, it elicited only the most awkwardly polite of weak plaudits in the face of our friends' enthusiasm. Ultimately, for all the jaunty presentation of the jolly Santa's Workshop setting, the platforming just wasn't that good. Vague, overly floaty, empty, and a bit abstract, it was typical of a lot of the substandard western platformer design of the day, and thus paled in comparison to the NES, SNES and Mega Drive's more tightly designed big-hitters. By way of its original tie-in to Penguin chocolate biscuits, it was also one of the earliest pioneers of in-game advertising, so we have that to thank it for too. THANKS, JAMES POND.

How crap is it? Diabolically. Yes, it’s older than space, but I’m not going to give it any excuses based on age. This thing would be a stinker in 2727 or 9000 BC. You’re a snowman. You jog from left to right. Every so often you die for no discernable reason. Every time you do, you return to the far left and start all over again, creeping, existential terror growing with each and every repetition. That is all that happens. Forever. There is no reason. There is no explanation. There is only futility and death. Frosty the NOOOOOOOOOOOOOman, more like.

The poor fucker must be begging to be released from that accursed silk hat. How sweet it would be to melt back to the cold oblivion from whence he came.

How crap is it? On the surface, not too crap. Yes, it’s a generic platformer, in that fairly dull, western-designed style I was talking about earlier, but it looks nice, and Santa is animated marvelously. And his intermittent transformations into the powered-up, Krampus-style Anti-Claus are a fun little twist, albeit a potentially worrying forerunner to The Werehog. So why’s it on this list? Simple. Bad writing cannot be tolerated.

Watch . Try to read the entirety of the game’s intro. It’s only three screens long, but it feels like it goes on longer than a traffic jam through the very bowels of Hades. The most bland, uneventful story. The most tortured, awkwardly hammered-together ‘poetry’. A seemingly randomised syllable structure for every stanza. Sentences that barely mean anything. A total disregard for grammar. And then the first level intro-card appears. “SANTAS HALLWAY”. Are here multiple Santas? No there are not. So use a freaking apostrophe. Kids are reading this, for God’s sake. What do I want for Christmas, Santa? Just basic, primary school-level linguistic understanding for all.

How crap is it? Okay, maybe it’s a bit unfair to put this one on the list. Back in 1984, it probably wasn’t bad. As Santa, you fly through the skies, collecting presents dropped by floating angels, slinging them, Paperboy-style, down chimneys, and occasionally entering houses for a bit of rudimentary stealth-gifting amid nocturnal corridors patrolled by unpredictably marauding children.

But there are two factors to consider. Firstly, if you can find me a game on a 1984 home computer that still plays well today, then I’d find you a dirty liar, or at the very least someone with depressingly low standards. Secondly, this thing is quietly horrifying. For starters, the limited sprite-work means that Santa’s sleigh doesn’t so much have reindeer leading it, but rather a severed deer-head spiked totemically onto the front of it. Additionally, those kids make Santa explode. Yeah. Santa-guts all over the house come Christmas morn. Jolly. And as for those angels? No faces. Not even any heads. Just halos. Can we trust the gifts of such macabre, faceless beings? No, no we cannot. That is some Doctor Who-level shit going on there.

Okay, so I've sort of already done that gag, but it's Christmas Eve, and I want to put this one to bed quickly so that I can go off and start drinking White Russians. And after trawling through that lot, I think we all deserve one or three. Any suggestions of other crappy Christmas games I might have missed? If you've been so unfortunate enough to have played one, drop it in the comments so that we can share your pain.

And if you're looking for better Christmas games to play over the holidays, I have a couple of suggestions to help you out. For a list of generally well-suited festive fun, have a look at has you covered. Have a splendid one, all.

Ah, love in video games. Remember when it was so cool and giggle-provoking that Final Fantasy 7 let you take whichever lady party member (or Barrett) you favored most on a date to the Golden Saucer? Back then, the idea of building a romance in a video game was mostly limited to creepy adult adventures/untranslated dating sims. Not so any more.

Thanks in large part to BioWare's brave experiments in high-stakes fantasy smooching, the modern game consumer expects a host of dating options in anything that can muster up a dialogue tree. This critical eye for digital matchmaking reveals a disturbing trend: there are so many good player companions that, for whatever reason, you just can't date. In the following slides you'll find some of the most egregious examples of sadly un-romanceable characters, from the fan favorites to the obscure. Fortunately for you, taking this relationship to the next level only requires the push of a button (instead of, like, three buttons spread out over the course of a campaign).

Just imagine how things would have been different if these two former crime partners dealt in affection instead of cocaine. Sure, they have their problems - Tommy Vercetti's a control freak who is more comfortable building a criminal empire than talking about his feelings, and Lance Vance is a self-hating coke addict who guards himself from the outside world (most of whom, admittedly, just laugh about his name) with a paper-thin veneer of narcissism.

But who doesn't have issues? Instead of doing endless quests to expand the influence of Tommy's various businesses, why not make enough money so you can check Lance into rehab? After he's cleaned up, why not take him out to Club Malibu to show him you can have a good time without getting into the stuff? Once Tommy and Lance have found happiness in one another, rather than in money and high-powered firearms, then they can take over the city. They're still heinous criminals, after all, but at least they have each other.

Ok, a disclaimer up front: my Shepard's relationship with Dr. Chakwas was one of my favorite unifying elements of the Mass Effect trilogy, and I don't think I'd change a single thing about it. That said, in another playthrough with another Shepard, would I share more than just a bottle of Serrice ice brandy with her? Definitely. But no dice - the closest the Commander can get to a fling with the wise and witty medicine woman is a cherished friendship. Psssh.

This is a BioWare game. If I can't make out with a character just before the climactic final mission, can I even be certain it exists? They'll let you do it with an extraterrestrial that could die from taking off her helmet, yet Dr. Chakwas is left all alone in her little sick bay night after night? I'm beginning to detect some latent ageism at work here and I am not at all happy about it.

You get Seth Green to do a voice role in your game and then you don't let players date him? That's… ok, that's actually pretty understandable. At first blush, going out with a hollow-boned Scott Evil doesn't sound very appealing - particularly when you could instead be dating a sexy space Australian, or a blue empath with a button nose, or a humanoid reptile dying of a romantic disease. Despite the relatively scant screentime that Joker manages to snag across the Mass Effect trilogy (usually while peering back from the helm of the Normandy), his endless jokes and dauntless loyalty still managed to steal hearts.

I'm just saying, BioWare would have been much better served making Joker romanceable than Kaidan (yuck). Yet the only time it saw fit to acknowledge the potential pairing was a throwaway line of dialogue in the third game, at which point he already has his sights set on EDI's new metallic form. Damn you, Joker! Her robotic arms may hold you tighter, but ours are far less likely to crush your ribcage!

Can the 'master of unlocking' pick her way into Chris Redfield's heart? Can the pointman for S.T.A.R.S. Alpha Team show he's more than a beefcake cop with a burning need to prove himself? I'd like to know, but for whatever reason Capcom left a romance subplot out of the original Resident Evil and the director's cut. Talk about an oversight! What an ideal change of pace it would have been to leave a little love note in a typewriter, or a touching little herb arrangement in a safe room, or to rearrange a bunch of puzzle panels into a heart shape.

That's all I'm really asking for, here - they don't need to convert Resident Evil into a full-scale dating sim. Whatever it is, it can't be worse than spending a decade-and-change denying the pair's chemistry as they go from police partners to the co-founders of the Bioterrorism Security Assessment Alliance. Maybe the relationship doesn't work out after the adrenaline-pumping thrill of escaping the Spencer Estate wears off? That's completely fine - at least they gave it a shot.

Mario and Peach have been doing this whole ‘I rescue you, you bake me a cake, I rescue you, you give me a kiss on the cheek’ thing for almost 30 years. Clearly the kidnapper-rescuer dynamic did something for them at some point, but it's just become rote by now, and he still hasn't put a ring on it. It would be much healthier if they just broke off whatever informal courtship they maintain and see other people.

Peach will have her choice of royal suitors, but who should Mario try to connect with? Someone who doesn't carry around all that royal baggage. Someone who cares about his well-being enough to guide him through tutorial after tutorial. Someone who was happy for him when he and Peach were doing well, even though she cried at the thought of not seeing him. Someone whose bouncy pink braids could be made out of hair or fungus, depending on what Toad Caps actually are. Someone named Toadette.

This must have been one of the many concepts that got left on Irrational Games' cutting room floor, right? I mean, Elizabeth and Booker would just be so perfect together! He's the grizzled veteran who lost his wife in childbirth, she's the smart but naive young woman who is ready to find her place in the big, bright world. Remember when she asked him if there was a woman in his life? And all those coins and ammunition packs she keeps finding? Yeah, she wants the 'D'... as in 'DeWitt'. You're gross.

They complete each other so well, it's hard to believe that BioShock Infinite didn't set the two of them up. If only Irrational devoted fewer resources to endless gunfights and more to romance! Admittedly, I didn't finish the game, so maybe this entry is in error. They have to get together in the end, right? What reason could Booker and Elizabeth possibly have to not hook up?

Ah, Varric, he whose winning smile and flowing chest hair launched a thousand Tumblr posts. The guy has a lot going for him aside from the amber forest that sprouts from his ultra-low-cut shirt, of course. You'd be hard-pressed to find a more charming scoundrel outside of the Millenium Falcon. And despite his thin facade as a conniving spymaster, he can't help but use his underworld connections to protect his fellow adventurers.

In more grounded terms, he's clearly the best-adjusted character in the series, and once he gets too old for the adventuring game he can always retire to run the family business… or write trashy novels full time. If only he hadn't pledged his heart to Bianca - the girl, not the crossbow. Or maybe the crossbow, too? Oh well. Statistically speaking, if Varric keeps showing up in Dragon Age games he'll have to date a protagonist at some point.

You've made it to the finale! Now let me see if you've performed enough favorable actions to get the makeout ending… Hmm, looks like you're still on 'warm handshake' level. Ah well. But before we part ways, make sure to note in a few of your own ideas for companions that should have been romance-able in the comments below.

It's just not fair, considering how these in gaming.

If Hallmark Christmas movies are always hammering one point home (aside from the fact that cute female elves on sabbatical will always run into a disaffected but good-at-heart businessman to fall in love with), it's that the spirit of Christmas is bigger and more important than any concrete, surface trappings.

And so it is with games. While some have Christmas settings - or the odd Christmas level, at least - the longer term nature of playing a game means that compared to films, they don't lend themselves as well to overt seasonality. But there is a solution. Evoke the feeling of Christmas without specifically being a Christmas game. You might not notice at first, but it happens in plenty of them. Loads of them, in fact. So I've collected together eight of the best, furtively festive offerings for your perusing pleasure. Forget those quickly-made, cash-in iOS efforts. Fire one of these up over the holidays, and you'll be ho-ho-hoing with the best of them*.

*The best of them being of course Santa. He is the best of all of us.

Is really Christmassy because: While not actually set during The Season (a point later emphasised when prequel/slightly inbred cousin Arkham Origins specifically set its procession of crime-fighting glitches on Christmas Eve), Arkham City feels exceptionally festive, despite all the grim-dark misery at play. I think it basically comes down to the fact that between the snow and the more colourful, Burton-esque bits of production design in the city-prison's centre, the whole thing frequently feels like Batman Returns. ie. The third-best Christmas film ever made, after Scrooged and Die Hard, and slightly above Gremlins.

In fact it's rather telling that Warner Montreal's more explicitly Christmassy prequel actually feels less so, despite all the baubles and tinsel on show. It could be a case of diminishing returns through repetition. That would be a shame. After all, the wintery themes in Origins were an important and committed design choice. Not just an excuse to reuse as many of City's assets as possible for a quick turnaround. Definitely not that. They were important.

Is really Christmassy because: Cool, Cool Mountain. The slightly alpine look of the whole level; all cosy, wooden huts, icicles, ski-lifts and mountain bridges, amplified to a delirious level of wholesome, festive joy by the jaunty, European vibe of the giddy accordion soundtrack. Also, coin collection noise = subliminal sleigh bells. Fact. That’s some smart dovetailing of aesthetics right there.

Though that shouldn’t be a surprise. This is a Nintendo game, after all, and Nintendo is effectively the video game Disney. As such, winter stuff is automatically elevated to full-blown Christmas joy, and Christmas itself must be treated with all the benevolent magic of a friendly wizard with an infinite hospitality budget. This vibe, unsurprisingly, continues through pretty much all Mario snow levels from SM64 onwards.

Is really Christmassy because: The whole Snowpeak section of Twilight Princess is a 150% perfect, condensed evocation of a Christmassy day out in the snow. First of all there's the giddy fun of the snowboard ride down the mountain. That's your childhood afternoon's sledging, that is. Then there's your entry to Snowpeak ruins, and the discovery that it's not a traditional, abstract Zelda dungeon, but a cosy, family home complete with the most wonderful recreation of an open fire that video games (and in fact science itself) could possibly ever produce. That's your 'coming home to a warm sofa and a big mug of cocoa' moment.

Then there's the way the contrast is repeated, as the ‘dungeon’s design demands that you frequently go out into the crisp, frosty grounds, before returning back inside. Nothing emphasises festive cosiness more than repeatedly going out into cold places and then back into warm places. And hey, you even get a present along the way. And what kid hasn't wanted a giant, wall-crushing flail for Christmas as some point? Lame kids. That's who.

Is really Christmassy because: Snow + festival atmosphere = Christmas, each and every time. Well, not every time. A freak blizzard around the main stage at a black metal fest wouldn't feel particularly Christmassy. Darkly epic, with all the terrible, Nordic majesty of a thousand '80s album covers, certainly. But not Christmassy.

But in SSX's case? When the festival vibe is that of a cool, fun community who seem to be permanently off work, hanging out and partying in an upbeat celebration of all things snow? With fireworks and neon standing in for fairy lights? Throw in a boys' choir/glockenspiel cover of N.E.R.D.'s Rock Star, and the picture is complete.

Is really Christmassy because: If it wasn't for the frequent imperial occupation and impending End of the World, Narshe would be the perfect, quiet Christmas getaway. It's small, it's unspoilt, it’s discrete, and good Lord is it a delightfully snug little place to hole up in. All those coal and log burners warming the place up, and filling the air with their soft billows of smoke and steam. The big, picturesque, eminently snowy mountains behind it, which frame the town beautifully, while also sheltering it from the worst of the northern storms.

And crucially, like all of Final Fantasy VI, Narshe is as steampunk as it gets. And as we all know, that puts it one step away from Victoriana, and therefor but two steps away from the most canonically Christmassy period in human history.

Is really Christmassy because: Call it the consumerist death-trance of the human soul if you like, but the pre-Christmas trawl around the shops can be an integral ritual in the run-up to the main event. Pick the right day, leave you misanthropy at home, and the all-pervading glow of red-and-gold cheer emanating from those shop windows can really kickstart the excitable, fun loving spirit. If only by firing up the instinct that had you standing in games shops, ogling the Super Mario World demo for hours on end for much of that December when you were a kid.

The original Condemned understands the importance of all that. That’s why, despite not being set at Christmas, the Bart’s Department Store level inhabits a Christmas time-warp, the long-dilapidated shop having gone under during the festive period many years before, and still filled with the trappings of the happiest time of year. And murderous crack-heads. And human mannequins. And casually discarded firearms. Merry Christmas, everyone!

Is really Christmassy because: The entire region of Skyrim is made of snow, fir trees, fires and roasting meat, and every third person you meet looks like young Santa. Also, Scandinavian accents. And there's that whole Christmas/skeletal dragon connection too.

What, you don't know that one? Seriously? You'll be telling me you've never heard of the Easter Unicycle Knight next. You big weirdo.

Is really Christmassy because: Just look at the state of Froenborg! Just look at it! The place is one big, inhabited Christmas cake, its buildings carved from the finest spiced sponge, its snow a veritable heaping of delicious, sweet icing. And that’s before you even .

Also note that although it’s technically ensconced within Russia, Level-5 gave Froenborg a distinctly cod-Scandinavian name regardless. That shows nothing but the studio’s tireless commitment to Christmassiness in the face oppressive, geographical logic. It matters to them, goddamn it. There’s a metaphor in there somewhere too, about how if Santa can be everywhere in one night, Christmas can as well. Or something. But probably definitely that.

I'm just going to jump straight to the request for comments here, because that desperate pun was all I could come up with for a headline, and I don't want to waste its meagre value by losing momentum.

And while you're here, have a look at some our other Christmas-themed features. Check out (those ones aren't Christmassy at all).

When Eartha Kitt rudely requested Santa come and trim her ‘Christmas tree’ in , she clearly wasn’t picturing the strange assortment of stand-ins below to dive down her ‘chimney’. These weirdos range from a fat megalomaniac to a time-controlling cat to a mournful spider lady. But they share a common trait: they’d all be awesome Father Christmases.

How? Why? Read on and we’ll explain all in our follow up to the feature that looks at ! I say we. It’s actually just me slouched in an office chair writing this without a shred of warmth or humanity visible on my stoney face. Merry, er, something!!

“Oak Oak Oak, Mareep Christmas!” That’s what the legendary Pokémon prof and well-known master of puns would definitely say all the time if he decided to don a beard and become Father Christmas. It wouldn’t even get old. Imagine it, a new Pokémon for every girl and boy on Christmas morning. Transporting them wouldn’t be too hard for Oak - he’d need only grab a few hundred pokéballs and toss them out to bug catchers, campers, youngsters and lasses of Kanto. He could even ride a sleigh pulled by Deerlings and Stantlers. And for the naughty kids? Give ‘em a lump of Torkoal.

Oak would have competition though. See, Santa actually exists in the Pokémon universe, first appearing in the anime episode Holiday Hi-Jynx where he employs an army of Jynx to prepare presents for Christmas.

A big part of the whole Santa Claus experience revolves around knees. More specifically, kids sitting on knees, explaining what they want for Crimbo. And annoyingly, old Kris Kringle only has two of them. Weak. Whatever your thoughts on the man are - and let’s be honest, he’s a divisive character - that’s pretty disappointing. This is why Chaos Witch Quelaag from Dark Souls would be an excellent stand-in because, with a whopping eight legs hosting 16 hairy knees, she would boost knee-sitting frequency in Lordran tenfold. That’s simple science.

Yes, she’s not very child-friendly what with her vicious nature and toplessness, but give your kid an estus flask to chug on and take them away before she starts spewing fire and they’ll be alright. Probably. Her home of Blighttown contains many suitable gifts, including a plank shield, pyromancer robes, and the extra special Tin Banishment Catalyst, as well as bunch of friendly faces to help her deliver them, from giant mosquitoes to bloated leeches to that old festive favourite: the parasitic wall hugger.

Tingle bells indeed. This notorious middle-aged fairy man comes festively dressed as standard, what with his tasteful all-green bodysuit, bulbous belly, and smart red thong. Simply dye his wispish facial hair white and he’ll be the spitting image of Old Saint Nick. Old Tingle's a cartographer, so he already knows where all Hyrulian children live (in a non-creepy way), and he travels by way of ultra-safe and convenient hot air balloon, which allows him to drop rupees into the wallets of fairy boys and girls everywhere. Kooloo-Limpah! That’s what he says.

See, Tingle loves collectibles of all kinds - in Four Swords Adventures it’s Force Gems, and in The Minish Cap it’s Kinstones - so his sack would be positively bursting. His generosity takes on darker implications when you consider that in the DS game Freshly-Picked Tingle's Rosy Rupeeland it is explained Tingle needs Rupees to live. Does… does Tingle have a death wish?

Einstein famously disproved the existence of Father Christmas when he selfishly declared that nothing can travel faster than the speed of light. NOT EVEN SANTA. But hold on a merry minute: did Einstein ever mention a time-controlling cat called Blinx who’s able to alter the so-called immutable laws of the universe. No he most certainly did not!

Star of the 2002 Xbox platformer, and another in 2004 that was even worse, this tuna-crazed temporal tabby is billed as the world’s first 4D action hero (CATction hero? No) thanks to his crazy (CATrazy? No) vacuum cleaner that can slow, stop, reverse and fast-forward the very fabric of time. Hey Einstein, imagine how useful that would be at delivering presents, you know-it-all. Let’s just hope Blinx doesn’t use his powers for evil, like freezing time and stripping everyone naked! Haha, oh Blinx. Never change.

Ok, so Wario is less of a Santa and more of a grinch, shaking down fools for treasure, shrewdly managing a microgame-making company, and in Super Mario Land 2: 6 Golden Coin even tricking poor Mario out of his castle and taking hard drugs in the throne room. But what if the greasy idiot used his powers of greed for good? Why, he’d be able to give children of the world a positively golden shower of unimaginable riches, possibly contributing to the formation of a new 1% and removing the secret elite lizardmen from their seats of power.

Plus he’s got an awesome assortment of fast-ass vehicles, including two cars, a tractor, a plane, and a bike, on which to deliver presents. Obviously he couldn’t ride them all at once, but we’re sure he could recruit his WarioWare mates like Kat, Spitz and Mona and to help out. Also his good buddy Dr. Crygor (half robot) once fixed Wario’s GBA, so it’s extremely likely he’d know how to programme an advanced AI into these vehicles so they could drive themselves. Yeah...

I'm pretty sure celebrating Christmas is banned in the dystopian, whitewashed city of Mirror’s Edge, but then ‘The Man’ tells you not to run fast or scare pigeons or kill people in cold blood with a series of deadly firearms and Faith does it anyway. Because she’s rebelling against the system, yeah? Barring a poor bit of signposting or amateur-grade level design or something, nothing would stop our nimble Nike ninja from delivering you presents speedily, provided they’re not a tiny bit heavy. You’d need to ask for an iTunes gift card or some stamps - something she could fit in a bumbag.

Nope, not low-hanging pipe, steam vent, nor small, jumpable gap would stand in Faith’s way. And let’s not forget her loyal band of runners, just as fast but a touch more forgettable, who’ll no doubt help her with her haul. Careful though, because one or more of them are bound to betray her at some point. That just makes for a better narrative.

Santa’s whole mythology is based on him making snap judgements about people. “Oooh, you’ve been naughty, you’ve been nice.” Dude, you don’t even know me. Who made you the world's moral adjudicator? People don’t get tattoos with ‘only God can judge me (and also Santa)’. It just seems a bit of a dick move to be dealing in absolutes, especially around Christmas. Luckily, that’s Mike Hagger’s whole spiel. And he does it with a lot more class.

From the Final Fight series, this former professional wrestler turned mayor rules over Metro City with an iron fist and a waxed chest and a class moustache. If you’re naughty, like the Mad Gear gang who kidnap Haggar’s daughter and send house prices in the area plummeting, Haggar won’t just shove a lump of coal in your face, but a signature reverse elbow too. And if you’ve been nice? Expect a platter of delicious pavement turkey and possibly a confiscated blade or two. Merry Christmas!

Well, there are my picks for the video game characters who would actually make great Santas. Now, if you'll excuse me, I'm off to decorate my home with festive, parasitic wall-huggers, such is the tradition in my family. If you have comments, and your fingers aren't too full of gifts, leave comments below. On anything, really, I don't mind.

Want more Crimbo features? Here's one about . Enjoy!

Santa Claus. Kris Kringle. St. Nick. Just the name brings to mind a benevolent and loving father figure who cranks the joy dial up to 11. He's the human embodiment of the generosity, joy, and Olympic-level eating that Christmas is all about. His very presence reminds us to be good and kind to our fellow man (with a little bribery on the side, but still), bringing out the best in everyone who celebrates Christmas during this most wonderful time of the year.

So naturally, we mortals have a morbid fascination with dragging Santa's sterling reputation through the slushy Christmas mud. You want to see the bad Santa, the creepy mall Santa, the Santa who's gone mad from his gift-giving burden and is trying to destroy the world. Nowhere is that more apparent than video games, where you are often charged with fighting the evil Father Christmas, or at least the corruption that has overtaken his holly-jolly soul. In these twelve games Santa Claus comes to town, and he's got a sleigh full of whoopass with your name on it. Read on, and remember, it's better to give than to receive!

How and why are you fighting Santa? In the Saints Row 4 DLC How the Saints Save Christmas, after revealing that s/he doesn't care all that much about Christmas, the protagonist is warned by a fashionable Terminator reference that s/he has less than 24 hours to learn the reason for the season before the universe is conquered by a demon warlord Santa. You know, that old Christmas chestnut. Dubbed Santa Clawz following years of mind-bending torment by antagonist Zinyak, his main goal is to ruin Christmas by putting everyone on the naughty list and stuffing a big ol' lump of murder in their stocking.

Thankfully, the protagonist decides to get into the holiday spirit and deliver presents to the people of Steelport in Santa's stead, weakening evil's grip on St. Nick's soul. He makes a last ditch effort to go full demon and send the universe to holly jolly hell, but it's nothing a little impalement on a giant Christmas tree star topper can't fix.

Is he the real Santa? It sadly looks like it, but don't worry, he gets better!

How and why are you fighting Santa? You may be shouting at your screen this very moment, telling me that the Krampus is a separate Christmas creature and he's totally different from Santa Claus, duh! To that I say 1) stop talking to your monitor, I can't hear you, and 2) this guy's the Krampus in name only. While the Krampus of Alpine folklore is a demonic man-goat with an impossibly long tongue and a basket full of naughty children, the Krampus from CarnEvil is just an evil-looking Santa with reindeer horns, pine claws, and inexplicably thorny ice skates. Because evil is pointy?

In any case, this freakishly evil St. Nick is another abomination that rules part of the CarnEvil park, and he wants nothing more than to "stuff your stocking" (no really) with his Santa cla - talons. The clear answer to this problem is just filling his jelly belly full of lead until he keels over in a bizarrely comedic fashion. I guess after you go insane from seeing a childhood icon turned into a demon, everything's funny!

Is he the real Santa? He's more like an anti-Santa, so don't feel bad about putting him down. Plus, you bag a ten-pointer!

How and why are you fighting Santa? In Gex 3, the titular Gecko travels through the multiverse inside a TV to save his coquettish and worryingly human love interest from an evil robot dragon (it was the '90s). The first stop on the telly train is a land composed entirely of cheesy Christmas tropes, where Gex inevitably runs into Santa. But apparently our reptilian hero is on the naughty list (surprising no one), and this Santa's vision of gift giving involves a lot of violent box flinging.

On the bright side, Santa may have gift delivery down pat, but he apparently can't handle a Return to Sender. All Gex has to do is pull a rude relative and pass back Santa's present projectiles, and Father Christmas goes down like a sack of coal. Don't quit your day job, Mister Claus.

Is he the real Santa? Nope, since this Santa exists in a mix of bad Christmas movies and is a festive Frankenstein himself. That'd make anybody go a little sideways.

How and why are you fighting Santa? You probably never wanted to think about Santa Claus wearing a thong, but I didn't either, so you and I are going to share this brain-scarring pain. In Deathspank: Thongs of Virtue, the tragically named hero Deathspank must collect the six Thongs of Virtue and destroy them in the Fires of Bacon. How ham-fisted. Santa Claus is corrupted by the Thong of Generosity, and is apparently so huge he can't get up off his back, giving you a nice view of his underthings 100% of the time. Can I get some brain bleach for Christmas?

Though Deathspank is the sole occupant of the Nice List, that doesn't stop the jolly ol' jerkass from trapping him in an exitless dungeon (with one too many exits) or sending a coal golem to kill him. So you don't feel so bad when Deathspank finishes off the North Pole's merry minions and slices Santa like a holiday ham.

Is he the real Santa? I hope not, since if Santa's going to go down, I hope it isn't in the process of removing his thong.

How and why are you fighting Santa? It's generally not advisable to slice mall Santas open with a giant sword, as creepy and demonic as they may be. But when that mall Santa's been infected with a mutant zombie virus? Okay, maybe now the sword's the way to go. In the enthusiastically punctuated Hunter: The Reckoning: Redeemer, Hunter Kylie is forced to fight an undead scourge unleashed by a former companion that is quickly taking over the city and kind of putting a damper on the holiday cheer. She learns that the virus has left one professional Kris Kringle one partridge short of a pear tree, and only she can the innocent civilians he's kidnapped. His ho-ho-hostages? ...No?

While that all sounds relatively reasonable (yeah yeah zombie Santa, you're not wowing me here), things take a turn for the weird when a perfectly normal human being turns into a demon with mouths in his mustache and invites you to sit on his lap. It takes some serious swordplay to crack this nut, but Kylie manages to pull it off, and then no one ever spoke of this moment again. Um, until now.

Is he the real Santa? Thankfully no. This is just a mall Santa with a nasty case of the undead flu.

How and why are you fighting Santa? It's a pre-Christmas apocalypse and this time the Mayans are not involved. Instead, the awesome, fearful power of a long out-of-use stone calendar is replaced by the slightly more effective threat of a DNA warping zombification virus. It's early December. The streets are awash with blood. Chaos and violence erupts from every doorway and back alley. A hackneyed joke about Christmas shopping rears its ugly head, but fear not. We're going to be far too classy to run with it.

Being one of a tiny percentage resistant to the tasty delights of cranial offal cuisine, it's your task to fight your way through the stinking mob in order to find someone who can turn your vein juice into a bona fide cure. Given the time of year, the flesh-hungry masses comprise an influx of bearded, previously jolly men in red coats. But mid-zombie apocalypse, there's no time to be sentimental. He needs detonating into pate just like the rest of them.

Is he the real Santa? We hope not. A world without Santa is not a world worth saving.

How and why are you fighting Santa? Back to the Multiverse uses parallel universes to create a wildly eclectic, thrillingly unpredictable narrative/really cheap method of mixing up the level design without requiring any real attempt at coherence.

In one of those universes, Stewie and Brian discover that due to the rise of online shopping (satire!) Santa has become redundant and has turned his factory into a freelance manufacturing plant for any and all bidders. He's currently building weapons for main antagonist and Stewie's evil(ler) twin Bertram, so the pair ignore that none of this makes the slightest bit of logical sense when you really think about it and head off to take the big man down. Which they do via a rather dull boss fight.

Is he the real Santa? Yes, but only in the universe that this particular level takes place in, so ours remains completely safe. Hurrah!

How and why are you fighting Santa? Because Clayfighter has always been such a 'hilarious', 'quirky' and no doubt quantifiably 'wacky' series, and because its mascot character is a snowman, it was crushingly inevitable that Santa would eventually appear. And in the third game he did. In an explosion of pioneering obviousness he was conceived and realized as a walking fat joke, fighting in a pseudo-sumo fashion and with his belly out because "LOL LOOK SANTA IS FAT!" Oh, and his finishing move is to butt-slam himself on top of his stunned enemy, wedge them up his crack, and fart out their bones. Keep it classy, Clayfighter.

The storyline reason for fighting him? Sumo Santa is sort of an evil version of Santa, and a rival of Bad Mr. Frosty. He's been exiled to the tropical Klaymodo Island since Frosty took control of the North Pole and he now wants it back. So, you know, fighting.

Is he the real Santa? Probably not. Though it' s all a bit vague. Let's say no, because the real Santa couldn't possibly be that crap.

How and why are you fighting Santa? Discovering that the deadly Maimtron 9000 that attacked their street was sent by Santa, Sam Max head to the North Pole and immediately have a defensive Santa stick a gun in their faces. Which, let's face it, is a bit of an upgrade from coal in the stocking. Eventually discovering that one of the elves is possessed by a demon, they perform an exorcism and seal said eldritch nightmare in a jelly. Day saved?

No. Santa then eats the jelly and turns the gun on them once more, this time less as a defensive measure, more as a deliberately murdery gesture. The two eventually knock him out using a Rube Goldberg contraption comprising a cannon, a present and a toy plane. Eventually the source of the demon is revealed as an administration error. He was meant to be sent to Satan, not Santa, so Sam Max box up the bearded fella and post him to Hell.

Is he the real Santa? Unfortunately it seems so, despite looking a lot like Colonel Sanders.

How and why are you fighting Santa? It's basically self-defense. He just turns up halfway through the obligatory ice level and starts attacking you. You see this Santa doesn't have toys in his bag. He has only death, by way of a seemingly infinite supply of bombs. Which makes it rather a shame that we used up the "worse than a lump of coal" joke in the last entry. Damn.

Anyway, given that it's the caring, sharing season of peace, goodwill and forgiveness there's only one way to deal with the little bugger. Through the tried and tested medium of a barrel to the face. Given how cold it is, that's really going to sting. Incidentally, the boss of this level is a naked white-bearded muscle mutant with literal claws. We think we see what they did there.

Is he the real Santa? Possibly. Don't let the color of his suit fool you. Traditionally Santa doesn't have to wear red. Though we can only justify his behavior by theorizing that someone swapped the sherry and biscuits for PCP this year.

How and why are you fighting Santa? Very little reason other than that it's Christmas. Literally. Every year, brutal co-op arena shooter Killing Floor has a special Twisted Christmas event, bringing a themed festive map and the gift of new high powered weaponry for all. During the event, the game's enemies are reskinned as evil Santas and evil cyborg Santas, as well as mutant elves, drill-handed nutcrackers, murderous carolers and the most horrific snowman ever to ruin the Christmas dreams of an innocent child.

In 2010, the event took place in a sinister grotto. In 2011 the festive fragging occurred in an ice cave. In 2012? Space. Obviously. Seriously, what did you expect? Weirdo.

Is he the real Santa? We like to assume not, given that 1) there's more than one of him and 2) the thought of this guy having nocturnally snuck into our bedrooms year after year makes us want to hose our childhoods down with bleach.

How and why are you fighting Santa? Because you don't realize he's Santa until you've defeated him. You see the boss of Secret of Mana's Ice Palace is the Frost Gigas, the coldest and most blue of the world's three elemental giants.

Once he goes down though? Santa. He turns into Santa. Or rather he turns back into Santa. You see he's not really one of the Giga bros. What actually happened was that after becoming disheartened by children starting to lose faith in the true meaning of Christmas, Santa hatched a plan to grow an epic Christmas tree using one of the world's mythical Mana seeds. The idea backfired and the seed turned him into the Frost Gigas. But now he's saved! Because you, er... tried to kill him.

Is he the real Santa? Yes! His grand, selfless plan for the benefit of the world's children proves this, as does the appearance of Rudolph after the fight. So not only have you liberated the Ice Country and taken another step towards saving the world, you've also saved Christmas as well, probably for all worlds in the multiverse. Consider yourself coal-exempt for the rest of your life.

Congratulations, you saved Christmas from the dark machinations of evil Papa Noel! And/or ruined Christmas by brutally murdering its wayward patriarch. Either way, happy holidays! Which of these is your favorite Santa beatdown, you monster? Or is there another Santa-wrecking game that you prefer more, because you are a sick, sick soul? Tell us in the comments below, and remember, he sees you when you're sleeping…

Did those tales of Christmas carnage get you in the holiday spirit? Then you'll love the .

YouTube is amazing. Take away all the videos about cats sliding into boxes, cats falling off things, and cats (sorry if you were expecting an activity, this one's just cats), and you've got a legitimate historical archive of a cultural phenomenon. I'm talking about video games.

The following slides contain the earliest footage of some absolute classics, often looking very different. It's a bit like looking at celebrities before they were famous, and laughing at their awful dress sense. But then wishing you could at least try their clothes on. Sorry, that analogy got weird fast. What I mean is: you'll likely wish you could play the prototypes. Er... You'll find the videos underneath the text in each slide, so give them a watch. It's fascinating stuff...

Back in 2009, Markus 'Notch' Persson posted this video of a little something he was working on, saying that he would do more 'if he had the time'. Well, good job he didn't decide to take up birdwatching in the interim, because that little bit more work on an intriguing idea has spawned what threatens to be the biggest game of all time.

The demo here doesn't draw in the world very well, only features stone blocks (and stone blocks with grass on) and... well, that's about it. Love it.

New Super Mario Bros became one of the original DS' biggest hits, appearing at or near the top of the all-formats charts for months. At one point, it looked like it might be there FOR EVER. But have you seen this footage of the tech demo version? In it, you can clearly see the massive powered-up version of Mario smashing through blocks and collecting swathes of coins before jumping on tiny Bowser's head. Should have stayed in yer castle, mate.

This tech demo was never released, but it's clearly a work-in-progress version of New Super Mario Bros. Pretty damn awesome, if you ask me.

Well this is a bit special. In the movie Hackers, a young Angelina Jolie plays an arcade version of Wipeout. Yes, Wipeout that helped catapult PSone to 'iconic' status. The game shown in the film is (of course) pre-rendered CG, as realtime 3D of that quality was still a little while off. But it is Wipeout. A very early render of what the gameplay would be like.

This video? Better even than a clip from the movie - this is actually the original render, complete with an announcer offering instructions to the player. It's awesome. And amazing to see that while it was damn ambitious, having to pull the nose up in a valley on the track was a feature that made it into the final game. Wonderful.

Super Mario 64 was clearly going to make a big impression on the gaming world even before it was released. This footage from Gamesmaster (back when it was a TV show, as opposed to an awesome mag), shows an in-development version of the game, complete with different HUD and level layout.

Oh, and Mario sounds like Michael Jackson.

But the earliest footage is probably this round-up video from Spaceworld 1995:

Super Mario 64 gets credited with being the first true-3D platformer, but Tomb Raider was being developed at the same time. This 1995 video is a mega-early, pre-alpha, version of Tomb Raider (one which is likely to have been shown to Eidos executives as a proof-of-concept) and it's amazing to watch.

It's running at less than 50% speed. Lara still has her ponytail (glitching around everywhere, which is likely why it was removed) and is sporting Matrix-style sunglasses. Despite all the strangeness, there's no denying the quality of that hand-animated movement. That's art in motion.

We know that the original . But the earliest glimpses of Sonic the Hedgehog on Genesis/Mega Drive were thought to be the likes of those in Wayne's World. No more! The pilot episode of Nick Arcade was found recently and uploaded to the internet. And lo-and-behold, it's got a mega-early version of Sonic in it. Oh. Em. Gee.

It's familiar enough, until the most '90s kid the world has ever known happens across the wrecking ball from the first boss battle... only it's rolling around the stage. It doesn't hurt when you touch it, instead allowing Sonic to stand on its surface. Sure, the iOS version of Sonic also lets you play with these things, but it was thought that nobody had ever seen the original in-level rolling ball in action outside Sega until this video appeared.

Wanna see John Romero playing a pre-release version of Doom? Course you do! This video was shot in November, 1993, at id's offices. The version of Doom contains plenty of elements not found in the final version of the game, even to the extent that the sound effects are from the SNES version of Wolfenstein 3D as the real ones hadn't been finished yet.

The whole video is a fascinating insight into 1993 gaming culture (just look at them cooing over the Genesis version of Aladdin at the start!), but you can skip to 9:35 to see Doom in action, complete with early Deathmatch action. It's amusing today to hear people reacting to a rocket launcher blast for the first time, but this was bleeding-edge technology in 1993.

BioShock was shown quite a few times before anyone actually got to play it. But the strange thing is that the quality of the final game seems slightly pared down compared to the pre-release versions. Case in point: this gameplay video, narrated by Ken Levine himself.

In it, you'll see some very slick-looking environments, plus different behaviour from the Big Daddy and Little Sisters (including the latter apparently drinking fresh blood to get her fix of Adam). There is also footage of the teleportation plasmid doing the rounds, again looking significantly different to the final game, which you can see .

We all know Shenmue as being one of Dreamcast's brightest stars, but the game was originally intended to be released on Sega Saturn. If you finish Shenmue on Dreamcast, you are treated to this video of the Saturn version in development.

Even though the screen is covered in debugging readouts and the frame-rate is sketchy at best, it's amazing to see scenes from Shenmue 2 already in action on the 32-bit hardware. I personally adore this sort of thing. Makes you wonder what other mind-blowing prototypes exist in the vaults of the big-name devs.

This VHS tape from an early edition of Sega Saturn Magazine is full of early looks at classic games. There's a comprehensive look at the beta version of Sega Rally Championship (complete with rotating background sky) that appeared on the 'Bootleg Demo' that came with early Saturns. But it's Virtua Fighter 2 that's the most exciting.

In this 40% complete port to the Saturn, there are movement demos where two characters are on-screen, showing off their skills but not hitting each other. Then there's an early version of Shun Di going through his demo routine, and Lion Rafale acting out his attract mode moves without an opponent. The characters don't have shadows, victory taunt cameras aren't in... but even at this early stage, it was running beautifully. Oh, by the way, there may be a few seconds of the previous game in this clip. And the next one. Sorry about that.

OK, so perhaps this one isn't as well known as the others, but the game in this ultra-blurry pre-release VHS promo is very different. Look at the first screen of the game in the VHS compared to the final version (inset). The final game and the level design is almost completely different.

There are other games in that tape, most notably Sonic 2's beta, but we've covered that so many times in the past I'm going to give it a rest. Hooray!

I have to admit, I absolutely LOVE looking at old screenshots and videos of games. In fact, if you like this article, maybe we could do a screenshot version too? That would be awesome. Until then, tell everyone which games you wish you could see early stuff from. Or games you have. We can geek out together.

And if you're looking for more, check out .

Elder Scrolls: Oblivion marked the start of a new era of gaming in more ways than one. It brought many into then-new-gen gaming, sold people on the Xbox 360, and notoriously set the bar for insulting DLC. Oblivion’s Horse Armor is a famously poor example of downloadable content, charging players $2.50 / £1.70 for some extra equine protection that did absolutely nothing besides make your four-legged ride glimmer in the sunlight. It quickly becoming a cautionary tale in how not to handle DLC- but that 2006 offense to gamer's wallets seems quaint when compared to some of the downloadable mistakes that followed.

Despite consumer backlash, publishers always seem a little too willing to test the limits of how much they can charge for additional content. And consumers have always been ready to let them know where that limit is. Read on to see some of the most ludicrous ‘enhancements’ gaming has seen in the recent past...

You won’t hear me complaining about Asura’s Wrath’s on-disc content. It’s an entertainingly excessive quest for revenge fueled by one man’s unending rage, all told in a clever episodic structure influenced by anime. It’s a great story, so you think I’d be hyped for more episodes being offered as paid DLC. However, the excitement recedes when you realize you’re paying $7 / £4.69 for the actual ending to the game.

Spoiler warning: The campaign ends with Asura discovering who’s really responsible for all the horrible things that happened to him. At first it seems like setup for a sequel, but Asura’s final battle with his nemesis and any actual sense of closure or resolution are all available for purchase in Episode Pack: Part 4. Perhaps worse than ransoming off the finale is the fact that the main campaign’s hard-to-unlock secret ending acts as nothing more than a preview of said DLC pack. That’s like finishing the Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows with a link to a website where you can buy the last two chapters.

Tiger Woods is famous for two things - extramarital affairs and no-nonsense golf. You’ll find a good deal of the latter in his sim-heavy sports games, featuring as many real-world courses as fans can get their hands on. And those fans are fine with working to unlock extras - but not if the game constantly reminds you that you could just pay $5 to get it right now, as is the case with Tiger Woods 13.

Even if you buy the full game, 14 of its courses can’t be touched unless you spend currency, either in-game or real cash. But the hard-earned in-game gold only unlocks one 18-hole round at a time, and if you want to fully unlock said courses it takes an ungodly amount of effort and skill to complete the necessary challenges. Concurrently, as you’re slaving away on the green, the game is quick to remind you that it could all be skipped with a little extra cash. If this seems like EA execs chose to follow the poor example of freemium Facebook and iPhone apps, that’s because, well, .

WWE is sports entertainment, which is PR speak for pro wrestling. That said, the recent WWE games are certainly acting like sports games, with annual releases and cover athlete photoshoots, and they have an unfortunately similar approach to DLC. Beyond the expected season pass, the last two WWE entries include a paid-for bonus called the Accelerator. That may sound like it makes wrestlers move at triple speed, but it’s a bit sidious than that.

WWE games have hundreds of unlockables, including dozens of playable superstars, and you normally get them by completing the single-player mode’s numerous objectives. It can take a long, long time - especially when facing the nigh-unbeatable John Cena - but for $2 / £1.59 you can save yourself all those hours with the Accelerator, which unlocks it all instantaneously. It’s arguably a low price, though it feels a bit more devious than consumer-friendly, especially when “unlock everything” codes were free in older games. The Accelerator is a necessity for gamers with limited time on their hands, working like a tax for anyone that want every possible exhibition match-up immediately.

The Saboteur tries its best to make something fun out of the extremely depressing idea of freeing occupied France during the second World War. Killing Nazis as an Irish racecar driver certainly sounds like a hoot, as does the idea of the leading man hiding out in a Parisian burlesque house. It’s the setting to some risque scenes, along with one of gaming’s most ridiculous concepts: DLC nipples.

See, the ladies of the Belle de Nuit strip club are fittingly underdressed for their profession, but their nipples are usually covered by pasties. If (for some reason) you wanted to go the extra mile and see absolutely everything above the digital waistline, that’ll cost you an extra $3. You have to give EA credit for finding a new avenue to collect a few extra dollars via a player’s libido. The Saboteur’s servers have since been shut off, and the topless DLC has vanished as a result, so count yourself lucky(and a little ashamed) if you were able to get into this exclusive club before then.

BioWare makes massive RPGs and is also known for selling extra story missions of varying spaces and sizes. Dragon Age: Origins was one of BioWare’s earliest games to normalize this DLC practice, which is fine if that story content is optional (looking at you Mass Effect: The Arrival). However, I’d say it gets obnoxious when an NPC villager becomes a walking billboard for additional content.

As you walk around Redcliffe Village, you’ll spot a number of characters with a highlighted objective over their head. Talking to them will further your quest, but one unnamed man starts giving you all the details on a certain quest, then ends with a plea to start the quest by purchasing it with real money. Much like a play would be ruined by an actor stopping mid scene to beg the audience for spare change, this type of DLC destroys the immersion instantly. Would it have been such a crime to simply put that in a menu instead, or was that not aggressive enough for the corporate suits?

This iOS game may seem like a trifle, but it actually represents the current low point in Final Fantasy’s long history. The simple touch interface appears inoffensive, but just beneath the surface are some of the cruelest microtransactions imaginable. Not only are you faced with waiting hours to revive your team or paying Square Enix money to bring them back immediately, but DLC characters are insultingly locked behind a random lottery.

Standard Operating Procedure for DLC: Game X offers to unlock character Y for price Z, which you either pay or don’t. If you’re playing All The Bravest and want to add Final Fantasy 7 star Cloud Strife to the game, you can pay $1 and maybe unlock him as a randomly pulled character from the 35 unlockable possibilities. If you’re particularly unlucky and get every character but Cloud, you’ll spend more than $34 before you can play as the spiky-haired icon. Having to gamble to unlock characters that would’ve been freely unlockable a decade ago is pretty obscene, even by mobile game standards.

Sonic Adventure was celebrated when it hit the West in 1999, only to be widely judged as overrated when an upgraded version came to the GameCube in 2003. Because one re-release simply wasn’t enough, gamers would get a whole new chance to reexamine Sonic’s Dreamcast premiere when Sega ported the game to PS3 and 360 in 2010. Unfortunately, it costs you some extra green to get the complete version of this HD remake.

For about half of the game’s $5 asking price, you can buy Sonic Adventure’s DX Upgrade, which unlocks all the extra missions and modes that were in the GameCube edition. Of course, that DX version update isn’t all that complete, because the GC release came with several unlockable Game Gear games, none of which are included with the DLC. And really, why would Sega give away those games today when they can just sell them in a separate collection?

As an American child growing up the 1980s, television instilled in me a near-endless love for Transformers, be they toys, cartoons, or games (but I draw the line at Michael Bay films). War For Cybertron is a loving throwback to the Transformers of my youth, crafting a surprisingly serious tale of Autobots waging their battle to destroy the evil forces of the Decepticons. You could even reskin the robots to look like their classic ‘80s characters, but only if you bought your game from a specific retailer (or waited for an unspecified amount of time).

As I , you had to buy WFC from specific retailers to unlock classic designs of the likes of Jazz and Demolisher, or you paid a crazy price for those codes on sites like eBay. Short of buying the game multiple times at different outlets, there was no other way for die hard fans to play as some of the most beloved Transformers - at least, not at first. Months later, and without warning, Activision made all those skins available in a couple of $5 DLC packs, which must have felt real nice for all the folks that paid $200 for them mere weeks earlier. Maybe next time you can give your biggest fans some advance notice before they spend a small fortune just to play as Shockwave?

Just kidding! But if you recall any DLC that you found unforgivable, tell me all about it in the comments. I promise, there are no hidden fees to do that.

Hungry for more rip offs? Check out .

It's beginning to look a lot like Christmas, which means all you good little girls and boys will soon be receiving a visit from old Saint Nick. Of course, I know what some of you little monsters are thinking: "Santa is so lame. He's fat. He's old. He wears a stupid outfit. He's fat. He needs an upgrade." Santa would be a lot cooler if he was replaced with one of your favorite video game characters, am I right?

No, I am not right, and neither are you. Video game characters exist in worlds of violence and fantasy, and don't know the first thing about Christmas spirit. Don't believe me? Let's take a look at some notable examples of video game characters you would NOT want to find breaking into your house with a bag full of 'goodies' in the middle of the night.

I know some of you would love to find David Bowie-esque Albert Wesker waiting under your tree come Christmas morning, but hear me out. Underneath that leathery voice and those piercing, reptilian eyes is an ego that's grown three sizes too large. Chances are, if you see Big Al teleporting down your chimney it means someone is either going to die, get put under mind control, or is actually an Umbrella CEO in disguise - none of which are very Christmas-y.

Gift of choice: Uroboros. Albert Wesker doesn't need anyone else; he has… uroboros. And he is all too willing to share it with anyone (and everyone) on the planet, thus ensuring complete global saturation. Hope you kids like zombies.

"ARRREES!!!" You know what that is? That's the sound of Kratos wishing you a merry Christmas. It's also how he says "Ho! Ho! Ho!" and "Good morning" and a whole bunch of other everyday idioms. Kratos may appear to be in the holiday spirit - what with that red-and-white ensemble he's always running around in - but don't let that fool you. His heart is a lump of coal, and every single man, woman, child, and especially ARRREES!!! is on his naughty list.

Gift of choice: Murder. Let's face it, Kratos only has one setting: murderdeathkill. It's how he gets through life. Try and think of a problem that Kratos has encountered in which stabbing didn't fix everything. Okay, there was that one box-sliding puzzle, but that's about it.

At first blush, Samus seems like a good pick for the part of Santa Claus. She has a spaceship that can zip her all across the planet. She can transform into that little morph ball and roll her way down the chimney. And she's a pretty nice and well-adjusted lady when she's not battling space pirates. Just slap a fake beard and a red coat of paint on her and you're good to go. There's just one tiny hiccup when it comes to the actual giving of the presents...

Gift of choice: Nothing. Don't get me wrong, Samus would love to give little Timmy a present. But here's the thing: her commanding officer, Matt, hasn't authorized the use of Samus' present cannon just yet. Apparently it poses too great a risk to the general public, or somesuch nonsense. Better luck next year.

The Pokemon prof. wouldn't be the worst Santa. He kinda looks the part, which is a good start, and he has lots of experience working with children. His knowledge of Pokemon is absolute, making him a great storyteller when roasting chestnuts on an open fire. At some point, however, he will try to send your son or daughter off on a ‘Pokemon adventure’. All he asks in return is for someone to tell him the name of his grandson.

Gift of choice: An empty house. The professor never leaves home without a few Pokedexes plus a Charmander or two, just in case he should run into a young person who hasn't dedicated his or her life to catching wild animals. Those Pokedexes aren't going to complete themselves after all.

Naked Snake's whole job - nay, his entire life - is built upon sneaking into places he's not supposed to be. Whether it's the Russian wilderness, the jungles of Costa Rica, or straight into our hearts, this legendary soldier is custom-made for infiltration, so you'd better believe he can worm his way down a chimney. Just make sure the kids are tucked in tight - otherwise they could end up in a sleeper hold, or with a tranq dart to the neck.

Gift of choice: Dead animals. Wake up, little Billy, wake up! Look at what Santa left you: a reticulated python carcass. It's right next to that hunk of raw markhor and the kenyan mangrove crab. They smell of dead animal (go figure), but I hear they taste pretty good.

Dante is one of the most destructive and obnoxious guests you could have the displeasure of hosting during the holidays. He starts by kicking in the door (because chimneys are for nerds) and spies the milk and cookies left on the table. Instead of eating them like a normal person, Dante first shoots out the legs of the table and kicks the whole thing towards the ceiling. Then he stabs each cookie out of the air with the tip of his sword, before catching the glass of milk at the last second without looking. He then leaves a demon corpse under the tree with a bow on it.

Gift of choice: Property damage. Here's the thing: Dante knows his whole life is one big video game. Why do you think he's able to get away with all the crazy stuff he does? He's like Neo at the end of The Matrix: he knows the rules - sees the code - and knows how to break them.

Kuma is a bear. You do not want to have a bear in your home attempting to hand out presents. Bears are wild animals, and pose an obvious safety hazard to both children and adults - not to mention the potential property damage. Have you seen those videos online of bears breaking into campground dumpsters? They're crazy. If a bear smells food inside your pantry (or small child) they will pop the top and refuse to stop. Plus, bears don't look anything like Santa Claus.

Gift of choice: A mess. How big of a mess, you ask? Imagine if your household cat was actually a ferocious mountain lion. Now imagine if that mountain lion was a bear. Think of all the damage those long claws and sharp teeth could cause. Not to mention all the fur it would shed.

December 25, 2006

I can feel The King's presence - he smells my hunger. My family doesn't believe he's real, but I know it to be true. I've seen him dancing across my periphery; seen his dead, soulless eyes peering out from the shadows atop a twisted grin. He won't stop until all manner of fast food horror has been visited upon this house; my family drowned in a sea of dry hamburger patties and soggy fries. I can't stop it. The hunger inside me is growing worse. The King will be here soon.

Gift of choice: Delicious Burger King food products. The King bestows upon his subjects only the finest beef patties from your local Burger King eatery. If something should go wrong with Christmas dinner, never fear. The King will be there - burgers in tow - regardless of how many doors you lock.

Now do you understand, children? At the end of the day, the original Santa Claus is still the best Santa Claus. He's round, he's jolly, and he won't try and steal your stuff or abduct your kids. Let him do his job, and let the video game characters do their jobs.

And for even more holiday fun, be sure to check out .

The life expectancy of a free-running enthusiast who is infected with a zombie virus is admittedly pretty slight, but that doesn't mean you have to try and get yourself killed. The new choose-your-own-adventure style interactive trailer for Dying Light embedded below lets you get a feel for the game's survival freedom: engage in your preferred mix of high-flying acrobatics and clever zombie traps, or maybe even hang back a bit when distraction is the better part of valor (hint: no matter how much you idolize Casey Jones, taking on armed thugs with a baseball bat is still a poor idea).

Will Techland finally make good on its grand zomb-pocalyptic ambitions, previously seen in ? We'll find out soon enough. Dying Light's set to release on PC, PS4, and Xbox One on January 27, 2015 in North America, but until then make sure to click on for some of our preview impressions from earlier in the game's development.

Usually, your character in a first-person shooter isn't much more nimble than your typical zombie. It's here that Dying Light immediately separates itself from the rest of the genre, with fast, acrobatic movement that looks more like Mirror's Edge than Dead Island.

You can scale trees and poles, jump from rooftop to rooftop, and climb around almost anything, within the world. Being this agile completely changes how you approach situations, as you don't always need to carve a hole through the undead horde in order to escape. When forced to choose between fight or flight, flight is actually an option, and it looks incredibly fun.

Climbing around wouldn't be as entertaining if the world itself wasn’t wide open to explore. Thankfully, Dying Light is massive, with detailed environments that look truly stunning. We watched as the hero ran across rooftops, looking off into the brilliantly rendered distance and surveying the gigantic playable game space.

Techland wasn't ready to talk about the actual geography of Dying Light, but we could see that the game didn't take place in a wholly developed nation. The buildings were made of wooden planks and sheet metal, and the location looked more like a shanty town than a bustling metropolis. If we had to take a wild guess, we'd place the setting on an island or in South Africa, but we're not sure just yet.

When our demo started, the protagonist saw a number of supply drops fall from the sky. After a quick radio call with another survivor, he set off to try to work his way towards the nearest one in hopes of finding medical supplies, leaping over buildings and avoiding undead along the way. As he passed a building, he heard a noise that sounded like whimpering, and went into a nearby home to investigate.

Inside, he was attacked by a zombie, who chewed on his leg for a few moments before being stomped to a pulp. In the next room, a little girl was hiding in an armoire, crying about how her dad was "very mad and might hurt you." You got back in touch with a woman on the radio who said she'd come pick her up, and continued on your way. Objectives like this are optional and randomly appear in certain areas, creating unique situations for each person who plays.

Yeah, you read that right: Your character just had his foot chomped on by a zombie. Shouldn't that, you know, cause him to freak out and kill himself else he be turned into one of them? Well, no, because he's already on his way. Your character in Dying Light is infected with the zombie virus, and a little nibble here and there isn't going to change that.

His infection does come with a benefit, though: it also allows him to sense other zombies. He can send out a pulse--a sonar of sorts (zombdar?)--that shows where undead monsters are hiding. Totally worth it, right? We're guessing this is why it's so important that he finds medical supplies.

Sure, you'll spend plenty of time running over and away from zombies, but eventually you're going to have to fight some. This is, after all, a video game--and one made by the people who made Dead Island, no less. We watched as the zombie-hunter beat down hordes of enemies, cracking their skulls with blunt objects (with gory visibility thanks to with a cool x-ray effect), slicing off appendages with blades, and even using some cool acrobatic maneuvers to kick enemies or jump on their heads.

There are special abilities unlocked throughout the game, too. At one point the hero spun around with a machete, slicing enemies in a circle around him. Later, he grabbed a sledgehammer and leapt off a building, smashing into the ground and sending a wave of body parts flying through the sky.

You won't be limited to the weapons scattered around the world, though. Tinkering is a major part of Dying Light, and you'll be able to piece together different weapons from parts found in nooks, crannies, and bodies. We watched as the hero turned loot into a badass electric machete that was later used to slice apart undead hordes.

This element feels like it might be a double-edged sword. On the one hand, adding loot that can be turned into upgrades and crafted items gives you a reason to explore the world even more. No stone will go unturned when there's a chance that doing so could result in making a rocket-powered sledgehammer. That said, we feel as though an open-world zombie game with an emphasis on parkour might be enough complexity for one game, and adding in goofy, makeshift weapons might muddle things.

It's not uncommon for there to be day and night in open-world games, but usually day is bright and sunny, night is dark, and that's all there is to it. This isn't the case in Dying Light--when the sun goes down, everything changes. In the demo, the character was finally able to find a supply drop (besides the first one, which was guarded by gun-toting soldiers), but he arrived just as the sun went down.

During the night, the zombies behave more aggressively. This, alone, is disconcerting, but even more troubling is the other stuff that shows up when it's dark out. There's a different, mysterious kind of monster that prowls the streets after dark, hunting down the living (instead of, you know, just wandering around like a dumb zombie). You can try to outrun them, hide from them, or avoid them altogether by getting back to your base before they arrive.

We're still learning about the world of Dying Light--we don't know what caused the zombie outbreak, where the game takes place, or what's going on with the story. After seeing some of the different zombie types, though, we're sure it's all bad news. Besides regular zombies, which can swarm in massive groups (at one point, it looked like there were easily 100 running at the player) and the aforementioned night hunters, there are also other things that go bump in the day.

Giant, monstrous zombies roam the streets, bashing walls and charging the player. The coolest thing we saw, though, was a recently turned human. It was a zombie, through and through, with a hunger for flesh and a case of the undeadsies, but he still had some of his humanity left. It felt… different when he was killed. The noise he made unsettled us. We doubt the game will go into the morality of killing a mostly-human zombie, but we were intrigued by the concept.

We'll give you a few minutes to let this all sink in. We know what you're feeling. It's… confusion. Here you were, thinking you'd seen everything there was to see from a zombie game, when Techland shows up and throws Mirror's Edge into the mix and gets you all excited. Will it end up bringing your love for zombies back from the dead? Let us know what you think, and be sure to check back as we find out more about this intriguing game.

And if you're looking for more, check out .

Christmas is a tricky time of year. In addition to working out how to eat your own body weight in Pringles and little sausages wrapped in bacon (without being sick all over your Grandmother's eyes), you need to work out what game (or games) to play during that magical work-free / school-free / parole period. And there are many, many guides clogging up the internet, telling you what to play. I counted at least 37 of them. Never fear, though, your old friend GamesRadar+ is here. He's drunk, belligerent, and has some advice for you.

Following the success of my feature earlier this year, which got me nominated for no fewer than zero Pulitzer awards, I turned to another trusty member of the Game Of Thrones cast to give his take on 2014's best. After spending roughly a week getting his phone number from Hodor, I contacted Jon Snow to tell me his top picks for what to play this Christmas. The results are enlightening.

Jon Snow says: Sorry, I know nothing about this game.

Hmm, not the reaction I was expecting. Oh well, it's a bit much to ask someone to play every game in 2014.

Jon Snow says: Sorry, don't know anything about this one either.

Oh. Not a COD fan, eh? Look, I get that. I skipped Modern Warfare to put more time into Destiny, so am sure he did the same.

Jon Snow says: Nope, no knowledge of this game either.

Really? I mean everyone has an opinion on Destiny. Where have you been all year, Snow? Beyond the fucking wall?

Jon Snow says: You are going to hate me... I don't know anything about this.

Not ringing any bells, Snow? Our #2 Game of the Year? Big RPG? BioWare? Dragons? Dwarf rufty? NOTHING? Are you trolling me?

Jon Snow says: Um, well, this is awkward. Literally no knowledge of this game.

Christ-on-a-bike, Snow. You're winding me up, yeah?

Jon Snow says: Sorry, not heard of FIFA.

Seriously? Because it's the official game of the biggest sport on the planet. It has been running for decades. Just fake a goddam opinion. No wonder everyone calls you the bastard.

Jon Snow says: Um... I've got nothing.

Yeah, fair play, no-one bought LBP3.

Jon Snow says: This game is really... um... it's kind of. I really like the, er, robots in it... Dragon-robots. Yeah...

You don't know what the hell you're talking about, do you, Snow?

Jon Snow says: I... uh...

Don't even bother.

Jon Snow says: Wait, is that Dragon Age?

Fuck sake.

Well, that was insightful. I'm calling your agent, Jon Snow, and telling them how utterly useless you are. I might as well have been talking to fucking geese. Even Hodor had an opinion on these games, even if it was the same fucking one. You? Yes, you, the one staring at the screen making that 'I'm not amused by your jokes' look. Have an opinion? Good. Leave it below, and show Jon Snow how it's done.

Want more hilarious features that are based on repeating the same joke until it gets funny? I've made a career out of those. Here's . Actually, that's still pretty funny.

The bigger the game, the more people it takes to make it a reality. But when you have hundreds of people toiling away on one project, figuring out who's contributing to what can get a little tricky. Super-specific job titles to the rescue! Why have a team of equally responsible designers when you could have Lead, Project Manager, Assistant, Associate and Assistant Lead variations of every position imaginable? That way, there's absolutely zero confusion as to who is doing exactly what!

But in the quest to make every piece of the puzzle feel unique, some honorary titles can get a bit... convoluted. Ever watched the credits to a game and thought "I wonder what that person actually does?" Me too! To refresh my memory, I scoured through the credits of some of the past year's biggest productions - - and omitted names so as not to single anyone out. But rest assured, all of the following are actual job titles that you can spot in credits and on business cards. Maybe you're also looking for a career working as...

What I'm picturing: "EUREKA!" moments don't just happen on their own - they're orchestrated. When employees arrive at a brilliant new idea for their game, they assume that it was just a spontaneous stroke of genius; a moment of serendipitous brainstorming. Only the Realization Directors know the truth: the inception of that idea was planned years ago, fed to the game designers through subtle cues and subliminal messaging during the course of their daily lives. Truly, the Realization Directors are the puppet masters pulling our cerebral strings from unseen shadows.

The more likely, mundane reality: These people assist the creative director to ensure that the game stays true to the team's vision.

What I'm picturing: After everyone else is finished with their work and leaves the office, this person diligently walks around to each and every computer, closing files, programs, and browser windows while making sure to Save All Changes. Clicking hundreds of "X" buttons day after day isn't glamorous, but it pays the bills.

The more likely, mundane reality: Someone who's brought on to ensure that the game finishes on time.

What I'm picturing: Feeling lazy today? Think your bosses don't have a clue what they're talking about? Well, guess what: the Lead Compliance Specialists have your family, and you don't want to know what they'll do to them if you don't cooperate, now. You think making games is a game? The Lead Compliance Specialists will break you down like cardboard boxes at a recycling center, until you're no longer capable of a generating a single thought that goes against company policy or the brand.

The more likely, mundane reality: The enforcers of rules and corporate policy within the office.

What I'm picturing: When you need three cheetahs, a humpback whale, and a gaggle of geese STAT, you call the folks in the Animals Production department. They don't just render or program them in boring old code, either - they produce them, overseeing an extensive network of breeders and animals in heat to guarantee the most desirable traits. Once the requested animal is born and matures over the course of years, only then is it ready to be motion captured into its virtual form. Magnificent.

The more likely, mundane reality: These people design animals that populate the game.

What I'm picturing: Your ears do not detect airborne vibrations without the permission of the Sound Masters. An ancient sect of immortal wizards, the Sound Masters have spent eons dictating the ebb and flow of noise. If you hear a melodic harmony, it is because the Sound Masters will it so. If you narrowly avoid a car crash because of loud honking, it is because the Sound Masters will it so. If someone puts an air horn directly to your head and blasts you until your ears bleed, it is because the Sound Masters will it so.

The more likely, mundane reality: Audio engineers who determine what noises sound like in the game.

What I'm picturing: Rarer than a unicorn and more elusive than the winged Fae, the Ergonome is a wood-dwelling creature long believed to be naught more than a myth. Diminutive in stature, it skulks about the village at night and uses its bulky, gnomish physique to support the lower backs of townsfolk while they sit down. What feels like sturdy lumbar support to them is actually the work of the Ergonome, which chuckles to itself knowing that it has spared another commoner a life of lower back pain.

The more likely, mundane reality: This is a respectable job title written in French, which I don't speak. Ergo, gnome.

What I'm picturing: You think drawing a straight line is easy? HAH! You couldn't be more wrong. After years upon years of dedicated study and training in a remote mountain facility, the Line Design Director emerges with a prized power: the ability to draw a perfectly straight line, freehand. This kind of supernatural talent fetches a ludicrously high price, whether you're on Wall Street, the black market, or a cubicle in Montreal.

The more likely, mundane reality: A producer who manages day-to-day content strategy.

What I'm picturing: Literally God. I can think of no other entity whose profession expands the far reaches of our seemingly infinite universe, turning that which isn't into that which is.

The more likely, mundane reality: Someone who writes blurbs to fill any gaps in the game's lore or backstory.

What I'm picturing: In the ultimate act of self-sacrifice, this person has transformed their skull into a living piece of radiant artwork. As the Head of Art slowly paces back and forth around the office in respectful silence, employees can't help but notice the striking still-life adorning this particular worker's cranium. They'll be so inspired by this avant-garde display of artistry that they'll hastily return to their graphical work with newfound vigor, the Head of Art simply nodding with serene, monk-like approval.

The more likely, mundane reality: Leads the art team.

What I'm picturing: A sentient gamepad, given life after a horrific accident involving radioactive AA batteries inserted during a thunderstorm. By day, it improves video games, offering developers insight on the subtleties of player comfort. By night, it goes face-to-face-buttons with the forces of evil as The Controller, a potent piece of psychic plastic with the power to bend minds like it twiddles joysticks. But not in that way, you degenerate.

The more likely, mundane reality: This person is in charge of accounting operations across the company.

What I'm picturing: An author the size of a skyscraper, forced to use the world's largest MacBook Air in order to sharpen his craft. He knows that any sudden movements would surely crush the innocent citizens below like ants, so he stands stationary, like a benevolent protector of the skies. For a small fee, you can take an elevator up to his shoulders in the hopes of glimpsing some passages from his next literary work.

The more likely, mundane reality: The person who wrote the dialogue for the Tower, Destiny's main social hub.

What I'm picturing: Sometimes, when your game's servers keep glitching out, disconnecting players and dropping matches like clockwork, there's nothing you can do to fix the problem. And at that point, you might as well just blow up the whole damn thing and start over. This is where the Server TNT Engineers come in - they'll rig up your server mainframe with indisputably illegal amounts of dynamite, blasting powder, and other assorted explosives. From there, it's just a matter of evacuating your employees from the building, pushing down on the plunger with a satisfying ker-PLUNK, and enjoying the fireworks from afar.

The more likely, mundane reality: The go-to tech people for fiddling with TNT networking software.

What I'm picturing: The Matchmaking Engineering Lead has two distinct, but equally useful responsibilities. When they're not carving small sticks of wood which create fire via friction, they're pairing together perfect couples on internet dating sites. Either way, there's going to be some heat.

The more likely, mundane reality: A chief programmer that designates how users will be matched up during multiplayer.

What I'm picturing: A regal knight errant of the Emea clan, this nobleman has been tasked with bolstering the throne's forces as the kingdom prepares for war. Through his wisdom and guidance, militias will be honed into seasoned troops, and entire provinces will swear loyalty to the king's name.

The more likely, mundane reality: Someone who handles marketing in Europe, the Middle East, and Africa. Which is still pretty cool, to be honest.

What I'm picturing: Beer lovers around the world know its name: Das Boot, the footwear-shaped glass that can deliver 92 oz. of your favorite brew directly to your drooling mouth. Such a terrifying, awe-inspiring vessel of alcohol didn't just pop into existence - it was thoroughly assessed by a team of Boot Flow Testers. They were the ones who discovered the secret to downing Das Boot: .

The more likely, mundane reality: These testers ensure that the game starts up as intended.

What I'm picturing: This high-octane sequel to the blockbuster thriller Program Managers will have you at the edge of your seat like a toddler at the grown-ups table. When Jodie and Steven discover that the malevolent computer virus they thought was dead is back on the 'net, it's time to boot up their Uber-laptops for one last job. This time, the code is for keeps in… Program Managers II: Executable!

The more likely, mundane reality: Another team of people who manage programs.

What I'm picturing: A delightfully resourceful chap who knows his way around a multitude of gizmos and gadgets. Whatever will he tinker with next?

The more likely, mundane reality: The highest-ranking member of the RD team at a large corporation.

What I'm picturing: Gladiatorial combat is not for the weak. You must prove your strength as a warrior if you wish to fight for glory - and all pass judgment before the Combatants Testers. They will bend you to the point of breaking, putting your body through rigorous physical exertion and preparing your mind so that you may speak confidently in the presence of the great Caesar. By the time you march out onto the gritty dirt of the arena, thousands of bloodthirsty onlookers fervently chanting your name, you will hate the Combatants Testers for what they put you through - but you will also love them, for they have taught you well.

The more likely, mundane reality: These people test enemy AI.

Hey, maybe I'm just jealous of these fine workers - 'Editor' doesn't have quite the same flair to it as some of these titles. Know of any other convoluted job titles in game credits? Or maybe you know a few deliberately goofy titles, like the Sleep Deprivation Team, Shadows, and Render Wranglers listed in 's credits.

And if you're looking for more goofy features, check out .

Pain and injury are usually so abstract in video games. Most of the time you only care if it lops off a portion of your health bar - and even then, only until you can find a medkit or engage in some self-healing breathing exercises. But some video games seem delight in injury so much that they transcend the beatdowns we've come to expect and willingly, enthusiastically, inflict sympathetic pain in their audience.

These are some of the worst games to leave you squirming in your seat, clutching at your ribs, and wincing in agony at the events transpiring before your eyes. Sometimes they do it to drive home a point, sometimes they do it to make you sympathetic to a character, and sometimes they just do it to make you uncomfortable. You might want to get some aspirin ready before you click on for these gruesome memories.

Animal Crossing making its players wince in agony? I know what you're thinking, but bear with me for a second here. Yes, most of the game is chill and cheerful, with nary a concern in players' minds aside from when to sell turnips or how to make enough bells to pay off the mortgage. C'mon, is anything more zen than going from one tree to the next, lightly shaking it, and waiting to see what will drop from its branches? Yes. Many things are. Because some of the trees drop hives full of bees.

These bees aren't the kind of animal that will write you letters or ask you to bring them a peach. They're the kind of animal that chases you with kamikaze zeal until you dart into a neighbor's house and barricade the door or, more likely, the swarm catches up. When they envelop you, the awful KRSSSZZTTT sound that they make as they sting you right on the eyeball will echo in your mind forever. And the huge welt they leave where your eye used to be will stick around for the rest of the day or until you apply some medicine... assuming that bastard Nook even has any in stock.

It's kind of cool to be able to point at one of a character's most recognizable attributes and say, "Oh hey, I was there when he got that!" It really makes you feel connected, and it's the kind of thing you come to appreciate in time. But when you first experience stuff like, say, Big Boss being tortured and then having his eye shot out in Metal Gear Solid 3, it's a little harder to stomach.

You may be wondering about the absence of a on this week's 'Top 7', but I had to give it to Big Boss, not least because the torture scene encompassing the incident goes on for nine minutes. Nine minutes of electrocution, bludgeoning, and near-eye-extraction topped off with the little misfire that plants a patch on the face of Big Boss and, in the grand scheme of things, on the faces of his progeny. It doesn't hurt that voice actor David Hayter really made an art of pained grunting in this performance.

Lots of painful things can happen to Amanda Ripley throughout the course of Alien Isolation. But I'm not talking about the deep-seated abandonment issues that stem from her mother leaving her at the daycare center and disappearing into space. I mean the terrible ways that she can meet her end from Sevastopol station's many threats. Among many other candidates, she can be shot to death by panicked survivors, have her neck snapped by unfriendly androids, or, y'know, that alien could show up.

The monster has so many ways of snuffing out poor Ripley's life, but the most painful is probably (and yes, this is a tough choice) the good old tail-through-the-guts maneuver. What makes it so bad? I have to give it to the brief pause before she looks down and sees the spear-like appendage quivering in her newly remodeled torso. You spend a moment thinking, "Wait, why did I stop running?" and then, "Oh, hello, that's my diaphragm". It's the anticipation that gets me.

Ok, fair enough, inflicting gratuitous injury is kind of Mortal Kombat's thing. I understand that. But there's a big difference between a pixelated fatality animation and the gratuitous cinema experience that are the X-ray moves, not least because almost every fight is interrupted for several seconds to dwell on them. That's not unusual for fighting games, but at least in Street Fighter it's just Ryu hollering as beams shoot out of his hands. He doesn't pause the game to show you some Un Chien Andalou-grade bullshit.

I can't be the only one who feels uncomfortably aware of their own bones after playing a match of Mortal Kombat. The way it zooms in deep to show the skeleton before and after it's shattered in multiple places, turning on the super-slo-mo so you can see bits splinter off and lodge deep inside the body… it makes me ache all over. Drink your milk, kids, or this could be you the next time in you're in a scuffle.

Do you ever put a few shots into a particularly nasty boss when you finally manage to kill it? There's no gameplay reason to do so - it's just as dead before as it is after - but it feels good to celebrate your victory with some macho depravity. Macho depravity is pretty much God of War's schtick, but the final battle of the final chapter takes the beefcake by letting you pound Zeus' face into a lumpy blob of minced meat for however long you want.

You might have noticed that this is the only example in which the player character is dishing out the pain instead of receiving it. But this article isn't about characters wincing - it's about players. And if you have even a shred of sympathy for Zeus after all the crap he's put you through, you'll feel every one of those punches… even after his blood obscures your vision and you have to go by the crunching sounds. That didn't stop me from keeping it up for a good minute or two, of course.

There's only one reason the otherwise-forgettable Quake 4 keeps . What else could it be but that damn Stroggification scene, in which id's contribution to the body horror genre is delivered with all the subtlety of a buzzsaw? The absolute worst part, though, is that you get to watch the assembly line of suffering have its way with the guy in front of you before you experience the agony in first person.

Take special note that, at multiple points in this scene, your vision blacks out and Quake 4 permits you to think that it's just gonna cut to the next scene. NOPE. Your eyes open again (I guess all those Strogg nanites keep you from going into shock and passing out from blood loss) and it's off from the leg-cutter, into the torso bolter! And when you're rescued just before the brainwashing begins, your fellow soldiers spend a whole 30 seconds on genuine concern. Then they run off and expect you to follow on the robo legs that were just attached to your bloody stumps moments ago. Screw you guys.

Oh, God. Just try watching Metal Gear Solid 4's microwave corridor scene without feeling some... phantom pain. And then remember how unexpectedly involving it is to have to pound the triangle button throughout the whole thing. Hideo Kojima loves an over-long camera shot, but every second of this scene drives home the theme of self-sacrifice like another nail hammered through your hand - not a single second is wasted, much as we all hate Kojima for dwelling on our hero's unimaginable suffering.

Snake's already limping and grunting when he enters the microwave-trapped chamber, his prematurely aged body having been battered and burned throughout the course of the game. Once he's in, his high-tech octocamo suit starts smoking within seconds. Its panels turn red-hot and burst as he drops to his knees, then to his belly, and crawls. The health meter chirps its familiar little 'Uh-oh' sound as the door opens, revealing another corridor full of lethal radiation. By the time you reach safety, your thumb is so sore from button mashing that, silly as it sounds, you feel unified with Snake in his struggle. Then you both can have a good puke.

Wondering why I didn't put any groin shots in there? Well, 1) they probably don't hurt as much to watch if you don't have testicles so, statistically speaking, the pain averages drop off, and 2) we already . But what do you think? Any other truly agonizing games you think deserved a place in the Top 7? Let me know in the comments!

Want more Top 7s? Check out the .