Video games are known for letting us mere mortals wield ludicrous amounts of power. You are the Master Chief, the Free Man, or the Chosen One, destined to save mankind and somesuch. Over the course of your journey, you unlock increasingly spectacular weapons and abilities. A crowbar gets replaced by a rocket launcher, a puny fireball becomes a gigantic meteor. Eventually, however, things get a little out of hand.

Overkill doesn't begin to describe the magnitude of these video game moves. Each one has the power to end all life as we know it - but only deals 9999 damage. They're breathtaking the first time you see them, but after repeat viewings they leave you wondering about the unspoken consequences. Is it really worth calling down a world-ending meteor strike just to knock off a few random monsters? Whatever you decide, here are the seven most destructive moves that casually end all life as we know it.

Nothing elevates a small-arms skirmish into an international incident faster than nuclear arms. Deploying Call of Duty's tactical nuke is a bit like pulling a gun during a knife fight. It announces to everyone that "shit just got real" and this little tussle is officially over. After calling down the thunder, a ten-second timer appears on the screen, accompanied by an air raid siren. A blinding, all-encompassing flash of white soon follows, and, in the immortal words of '90s metal band Drowning Pool, the bodies hit the floor.

Detonating a tactical nuke is an automatic win for both the user and his or her team, no matter the current score. Of course, everyone dies in the process and the area they were fighting over becomes irritated wasteland, but let's not split hairs. Let's also not split hairs about the long-term environmental impact of nuclear detonations of any size or potential loss of human life in and around the impact zone. You won the match, dammit, and that's what counts.

I'm not sure which would be more destructive to the Earth: the detonation of a small, nuclear warhead or the impact of two giant meteors. And in a way, I'm thankful for that. Naruto villain Madara Uchiha possesses one of the most excessive attacks in the entire series. It's play out in three steps, though it really could stop at step one: imprisoning the opponent inside a giant tree. Step two: a giant meteor descends from the heavens and crushes the magic tree (along with the person inside). Considering this would literally kill anything you'd think the attack was over. But no, it keeps going.

Step three: a second, larger meteor suddenly appears and smashes into the first (which has already smashed into the foe) causing a massive explosion (why?) that would likely blast the entire planet back to the ice age. Little piece of advice: if you have to measure your opponent's strength based on the number of world-ending meteors you need to drop on their head, the maybe it's time to put diplomacy back on the table.

The Novalith Cannon is a giant space gun that fires giant space bullets at planets - like an old six-shooter on an intergalactic scale. Like most strategy game superweapons, it's insanely expensive and wildly impractical to use in an actual game. These arguments feel moot, however, when you're on the receiving end of its bombardment, watching your worlds get reduced to space rubble in two shots.

It's interesting to note that, according to the Sins of a Solar Empire Wiki [LINK], the Novalith Cannon used to have a glitch where it would crash your game if you fired it at one of your own planets. This unintentional safety switch has since been fixed, though I'm not sure if that's really a good thing. As with any firearm, never point the Novalith Cannon at something you don't intend to destroy.

Ah yes, Dragon Ball Z, now here's a cast of characters that knows how to blow up a planet. Namek is the obvious example, but it seems every couple of episodes someone starts screaming about how they're going to blow up the Earth or how they can't let an attack hit the Earth. Towards the end of the series, Super Buu even has a move straight-up called Human Extinction Attack that does just what it says. But let's talk about Broly and his Gigantic Meteor, the attack linked above.

That explosion at the end is freaking huge. Just look at the size of it - and that's the view from space. It's like the size of all of North America. Now, I'm no scientist, but one would assume if the planet was racked by a continent-sized blast like that there would be some repercussions. Massive earthquakes would ripple across the surface, and the amount of dust and particulate matter thrown into the atmosphere would surely usher in a new ice age. But hey, at least Broly won the fight.

Planetary Annihilation is a massive strategy game on a celestial scale, with marathon matches that can take hours - or even days - to finish. But when it finally comes time to call it quits, nothing shuts your opponent down faster than the Annihilaser. This game-ending weapons transforms a specific type of planet into your very own Death Star. It takes ages to build and massive amounts of resources, but once finished this super weapon can vaporize an entire system of planets in mere minutes.

Stopping an Annihilaser rampage is difficult to be sure, but not impossible. One option is to strap a bunch of continent-sized rockets to a nearby moon and ram that sucker straight into it. Yes, that's absolutely something you can do in this game, and it's just as glorious as it sounds. Though, you have to wonder what sort of future is in store when entire planets start getting destroyed wholesale.

Now we really start getting into crazy territory. For those unfamiliar, Super Robot Wars is a long-running series of turn-based strategy games in Japan. Most of these games bring together dozens of popular characters and robots from various anime series, but a handful of these games are comprised entirely of original characters. These "original" games also tend to be the most outrageous when it comes to overpowered attacks, as the developers aren't beholden to any sort of source material.

Enter Shu Shirakawa and his giant robot, Neo Granzon. Shu's strongest attack is to have Neo Granzon generate three micro black holes which it then smashes together with its robot hands to form a single, violent energy orb. Shu then softballs the orb at his opponent, and when it detonates the resulting blast can be seen engulfing the entire universe. And then the two just pop right back into the fight and keep going. What? How is this even a fight when one person can literally end entire realities?

Lo and behold. We have arrived at what is possibly the most over-exaggerated attack in the roleplaying genre - nay, in the entirety of gaming. After transforming into some sort of angel-cloud-monster-thing, Safer-Sephiroth, the penultimate boss of Final Fantasy VII, unleashes his ultimate attack: Super Nova. This move summons a comet that tears through the Milky Way galaxy, destroying multiple planets before detonating our sun. The resulting blast consumes both Safer-Sephiroth and the entire party in the hellfire of an exploding star.

And then he does it a second time and a third time. Enough already, the Milky Way can only handle getting completely annihilated so many times. It doesn't help that this attack takes several full minutes to complete, enough time for a quick bathroom break, grab a sandwich, and file your taxes. It's also a testament to how far Cloud and the party have come: one day they're terrorists blowing up power plants, the next they're having someone explode stars in their face.

Okay, forget this entire list, we have the one true winner right here. All others pale in comparison to the Chaos Dunk, a jam so powerful and destructive it led to the Great B-Ball Purge and the B-Ball Removal Department. Famed b-baller Charles Barkley is one of the few to have successfully performed a Chaos Dunk, though the fallout had a damning impact on b-ball and the future of humanity.

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You all know the feeling - that unshakable sense of dread that pervades every single preview, every underwhelming gameplay vid - gnawing away at your lofty expectations, clouding your mind in doubt. Sometimes it can even seem as though we're a little bit clairvoyant, mentally tagging a game with a speculative scoreline, only to later discover that we were bang on the money. I mean really, who hasn't taken one look at an upcoming title and said, "That right there has 6/10 written all over it"?

These feelings may seem like simple paranoia, but I'm here to tell you that simply isn't so. unless of course it is, in which case those curtain rings are definitely not out to get you, Keith Smith of King's Road, Doncaster… Through the time-honoured method of writing gibberish on the internet, I have been able to deduce eight simple signs that may well be influencing that acrid taste in your brain. What are they? Where do they come from, and how do they signal a shoddy hunk of software? Let the text blocks begin!

Let's face it, having a set of gorgeous graphics is great. Just ask any aesthetically challenged chap or chappette on the worldwide dating scene. Given the choice between pretty and plum ugly, any sane soul would clearly opt for the former. It's just how we are as a species/ Hard-wired to recognise beauty before other, rather more meaningful factors. The same thing goes for video games, whereby many folks will become incredibly excited for a title based upon its slick visuals. Of course, the one thing that makes video games video games is their interactivity. What separates a good title from a bad one is simply how effectively enjoyable that interactivity is. Games may be a visual medium, but graphical fidelity isn’t its king.

Sadly it seems that some games forget all about this, opting instead to focus their efforts on producing ever more spectacular graphics. Critics can't help but mention these efforts, which in turn is how we end up with certain quote-heavy advertising campaigns predicated solely on visual. As with many entries on this list, the lesson here is simple. If the ads are heavily talking up one thing, why aren’t they addressing the rest? Hint: because they suck.

If anticipation is a double-edged sword, then the kind of hype that surrounds certain video game franchises is a six-sided, 18-bladed lightsaber. Indeed, nothing hurts a new game's chances quite like hopping aboard the ol' hype train. Even if all goes well, you haven't actually gained anything by waiting in such amplified torment. And if it should fail? Well then, I guess you'll just have to do without that big juicy payoff your brain had been promising... Of course, preventing oneself from becoming excited is never easy, particularly if the stimulant in question looks reaaaaally bloody good. But hopeful anticipation is a natural, healthy thing. Going full-on militant about it, that's another matter entirely.

Enter the mantle of the so-called 'something-killer', a type of hype that's usually targeted at insecure fanboys, hoping against hope that the horse they're backing will not only win the race but somehow kneecap the other mare in the process. Take Haze for example, a run-of-the-mill, PS3-exclusive FPS that somehow earned the toxic label of 'Halo-killer'. By failing to live up to that illustrious title, Haze effectively died two deaths, and it's not alone. While this tag doesn’t always denote an awful game, it does usually herald major disappointment. Be warned.

"Aha!", I hear you cry, "You fools are just jealous that the publisher didn’t choose your quote. For shame! Sneering down from your ivory towers, daring to insult the good names of The Daily Mail, The Sun on Sunday and The North Haverbrook Gazette!". Yes well, that second Faberge egg collection isn't just going to start itself, now is it? Erm, no…ignore that. What I meant to say is that by choosing to ignore the specialist press entirely, a video game's PR company is usually trying to hide something. Something negative. Of course, the inclusion of one or two 'jack-of-all trade' papers does makes sense in terms of mainstream brand recognition, but to plaster an entire campaign with their commendations? Why, that's fishier than a month-old bucket of chum.

To be clear here, I'm not saying that these folks are in cahoots, merely that mainstream press tend to be much less discerningwith their praise. So, if you're seeing their names being advertised over the more recognised specialist publications, it’s probably because those outlets didn't have a single nice thing to say.

Live demos are all well and good, but what about when they fail? When a mean-spirited glitch shows up to spoil the fun, or an avatar convulses uncontrollably? What if the audience's suite of smartphones starts to interfere with the signal, or a narcotics-addled 'celebrity' finds their way on stage? You certainly can't blame developers for wanting to avoid all that, for sticking to a more linear presentation and perhaps forcing a demo down a pre-determined path. If the game's still early in development then that course of action is positively encouraged. After all, we'd rather get a glimpse of your exciting new game in stage-managed action than see absolutely nothing at all.

The problem comes when these sorts of tightly controlled displays start showing up mere months from the game's final release. Common sense would suggest that if you aren't happy to unleash the beast at this point, then you probably never will be. That means that there's something about your wider title that's got you worried. Perhaps there's terrible pop-in, a sketchy frame rate, or maybe the NPCs all look like melted sticks of butter. Whatever the case, if you're worried, then the audience should be too.

Also known as 'Molyneux's disease', this horrifying affliction sends patients into a self-defeating hype-spiral from which few ever emerge. You'd think that after seeing the likes of Hitler, Stalin and Sarah Palin failing to achieve global domination that developers would be just a little less likely to promise us the world. You can't have it. It's too big. a wee bit like your aspirations. "Oh but yes you can plant a seed and watch it grow into a idyllic and bustling metropolis. But wait! That metropolis is actually a living, thinking robot bloke, one of thousands, actually, battling it a out cross the cosmos, and that's just level 1…"

There's no harm in being excited, developers, but by going too far you really are setting yourselves up for a fall. As a gamer, it’s important to keep the above maxim in mind whenever encountering a seriously ambitious title. If it sounds too good to be true it probably is. Said game may not end up being totally rubbish, but your opinion of it will always be coloured by that horribly pervasive feeling of 'What if'.

For all the talk of backroom deals, shady pay-offs, and assorted other scandalous actions it's important to remember that the core concept behind the PR guy/critic relationship is a sound one, and not just in gaming either. One side wants greater press attention - in the hopes of selling more units - while the other is trying hard to appeal to a readership that's uncertain about which games to buy. In short, critics need advance copies in order to have reviews penned in timely fashion, while PR peeps need ever more eyes on product. It's a veritable win-win.

With so much lovely winning to be done, it's a wonder why any publisher would choose to renege on this simple status quo. Oftentimes however, the answer is simple. Poor critical reviews - yes even those tagged with a launch date embargo - can massively hurt a bad title's profitability. So, if you still aren't seeing a flurry of reviews by release day, there's a fair bet that the people in charge of bigging up that particular title don't have a great deal of confidence in it…

Of all the entries on this list, this two-for-one warning is perhaps the most problematic. I say problematic because some great titles have actually escaped from development hell over the years. Look at Resident Evil 4, StarCraft II, and the original Shenmue, each of which took more than 6 years to make release. Generally however, these successes are the exception. A game that experiences repeat delays and/or a last-minute change in developer is likely to end up a whole lot shoddier for the experience. Consider Daikatana, Too Human and the inimitable Duke Nukem Forever. Each of these woeful titles was entirely scrapped and remade at various points in its production.

All three lacked a clear vision, continually adding and subtracting elements to cater to new trends and more powerful consoles. Doing so once would be a gamble, doing so twice - or more - a mistake. Any artist will tell you that a piece of work is never truly finished, that here's always more that can be done. The trick though, is in learning what's good enough, and just stopping. So if you spot an enticing game undergoing a similarly tumultuous dev cycle, best reset those expectations. There's a fairly good chance that that sinking ship is being steered by a crazed perfectionist.

Pulling quotes must be an awfully tricky business. After all, what you're looking for - i.e. snappy, upbeat appraisals - isn't always what you get. Sometimes there simply aren’t any nice things being said about your product. Of course, you can always try to be sly about it, adapting the form, if not the spirit of said assessment. 'Agonising from start to finish' might not fly with an FPS, but if it's written about a crappy new horror game, well then, thank heavens for interpretation… One of the easiest ways around this issue is to simply ignore reviews entirely, and instead draw your quotes from the much more speculative field of preview coverage.

Early-door assessments i.e. 'promises big things' or 'could be the best game of 2015' certainly sound as though they might've appeared in a review. Except of course that they didn't. The peeps in PR just want the public to think that they did. And really, if they're going to those sorts of lengths in order to fool you, you'd better believe that the game in question is complete and utter tripe.

And so, like a moron playing Scrabble, I'm all out of words. If you have any suggestions for further portents of doom, let me know in the comments section below. Until next time, remember the class motto. 'Scrutinize absolutely bloody everything to an almost insufferable degree'. Huzzah!

Looking for more bad game content (content about bad games, not bad content abou... Oh you get the idea)? Then check out

You all know the feeling - that unshakable sense of dread that pervades every single preview, every underwhelming gameplay vid - gnawing away at your lofty expectations, clouding your mind in doubt. Sometimes it can even seem as though we're a little bit clairvoyant, mentally tagging a game with a speculative scoreline, only to later discover that we were bang on the money. I mean really, who hasn't taken one look at an upcoming title and said, "That right there has 6/10 written all over it"?

These feelings may seem like simple paranoia, but I'm here to tell you that simply isn't so. unless of course it is, in which case those curtain rings are definitely not out to get you, Keith Smith of King's Road, Doncaster… Through the time-honoured method of writing gibberish on the internet, I have been able to deduce eight simple signs that may well be influencing that acrid taste in your brain. What are they? Where do they come from, and how do they signal a shoddy hunk of software? Let the text blocks begin!

Let's face it, having a set of gorgeous graphics is great. Just ask any aesthetically challenged chap or chappette on the worldwide dating scene. Given the choice between pretty and plum ugly, any sane soul would clearly opt for the former. It's just how we are as a species/ Hard-wired to recognise beauty before other, rather more meaningful factors. The same thing goes for video games, whereby many folks will become incredibly excited for a title based upon its slick visuals. Of course, the one thing that makes video games video games is their interactivity. What separates a good title from a bad one is simply how effectively enjoyable that interactivity is. Games may be a visual medium, but graphical fidelity isn’t its king.

Sadly it seems that some games forget all about this, opting instead to focus their efforts on producing ever more spectacular graphics. Critics can't help but mention these efforts, which in turn is how we end up with certain quote-heavy advertising campaigns predicated solely on visual. As with many entries on this list, the lesson here is simple. If the ads are heavily talking up one thing, why aren’t they addressing the rest? Hint: because they suck.

If anticipation is a double-edged sword, then the kind of hype that surrounds certain video game franchises is a six-sided, 18-bladed lightsaber. Indeed, nothing hurts a new game's chances quite like hopping aboard the ol' hype train. Even if all goes well, you haven't actually gained anything by waiting in such amplified torment. And if it should fail? Well then, I guess you'll just have to do without that big juicy payoff your brain had been promising... Of course, preventing oneself from becoming excited is never easy, particularly if the stimulant in question looks reaaaaally bloody good. But hopeful anticipation is a natural, healthy thing. Going full-on militant about it, that's another matter entirely.

Enter the mantle of the so-called 'something-killer', a type of hype that's usually targeted at insecure fanboys, hoping against hope that the horse they're backing will not only win the race but somehow kneecap the other mare in the process. Take Haze for example, a run-of-the-mill, PS3-exclusive FPS that somehow earned the toxic label of 'Halo-killer'. By failing to live up to that illustrious title, Haze effectively died two deaths, and it's not alone. While this tag doesn’t always denote an awful game, it does usually herald major disappointment. Be warned.

"Aha!", I hear you cry, "You fools are just jealous that the publisher didn’t choose your quote. For shame! Sneering down from your ivory towers, daring to insult the good names of The Daily Mail, The Sun on Sunday and The North Haverbrook Gazette!". Yes well, that second Faberge egg collection isn't just going to start itself, now is it? Erm, no…ignore that. What I meant to say is that by choosing to ignore the specialist press entirely, a video game's PR company is usually trying to hide something. Something negative. Of course, the inclusion of one or two 'jack-of-all trade' papers does makes sense in terms of mainstream brand recognition, but to plaster an entire campaign with their commendations? Why, that's fishier than a month-old bucket of chum.

To be clear here, I'm not saying that these folks are in cahoots, merely that mainstream press tend to be much less discerningwith their praise. So, if you're seeing their names being advertised over the more recognised specialist publications, it’s probably because those outlets didn't have a single nice thing to say.

Live demos are all well and good, but what about when they fail? When a mean-spirited glitch shows up to spoil the fun, or an avatar convulses uncontrollably? What if the audience's suite of smartphones starts to interfere with the signal, or a narcotics-addled 'celebrity' finds their way on stage? You certainly can't blame developers for wanting to avoid all that, for sticking to a more linear presentation and perhaps forcing a demo down a pre-determined path. If the game's still early in development then that course of action is positively encouraged. After all, we'd rather get a glimpse of your exciting new game in stage-managed action than see absolutely nothing at all.

The problem comes when these sorts of tightly controlled displays start showing up mere months from the game's final release. Common sense would suggest that if you aren't happy to unleash the beast at this point, then you probably never will be. That means that there's something about your wider title that's got you worried. Perhaps there's terrible pop-in, a sketchy frame rate, or maybe the NPCs all look like melted sticks of butter. Whatever the case, if you're worried, then the audience should be too.

Also known as 'Molyneux's disease', this horrifying affliction sends patients into a self-defeating hype-spiral from which few ever emerge. You'd think that after seeing the likes of Hitler, Stalin and Sarah Palin failing to achieve global domination that developers would be just a little less likely to promise us the world. You can't have it. It's too big. a wee bit like your aspirations. "Oh but yes you can plant a seed and watch it grow into a idyllic and bustling metropolis. But wait! That metropolis is actually a living, thinking robot bloke, one of thousands, actually, battling it a out cross the cosmos, and that's just level 1…"

There's no harm in being excited, developers, but by going too far you really are setting yourselves up for a fall. As a gamer, it’s important to keep the above maxim in mind whenever encountering a seriously ambitious title. If it sounds too good to be true it probably is. Said game may not end up being totally rubbish, but your opinion of it will always be coloured by that horribly pervasive feeling of 'What if'.

For all the talk of backroom deals, shady pay-offs, and assorted other scandalous actions it's important to remember that the core concept behind the PR guy/critic relationship is a sound one, and not just in gaming either. One side wants greater press attention - in the hopes of selling more units - while the other is trying hard to appeal to a readership that's uncertain about which games to buy. In short, critics need advance copies in order to have reviews penned in timely fashion, while PR peeps need ever more eyes on product. It's a veritable win-win.

With so much lovely winning to be done, it's a wonder why any publisher would choose to renege on this simple status quo. Oftentimes however, the answer is simple. Poor critical reviews - yes even those tagged with a launch date embargo - can massively hurt a bad title's profitability. So, if you still aren't seeing a flurry of reviews by release day, there's a fair bet that the people in charge of bigging up that particular title don't have a great deal of confidence in it…

Of all the entries on this list, this two-for-one warning is perhaps the most problematic. I say problematic because some great titles have actually escaped from development hell over the years. Look at Resident Evil 4, StarCraft II, and the original Shenmue, each of which took more than 6 years to make release. Generally however, these successes are the exception. A game that experiences repeat delays and/or a last-minute change in developer is likely to end up a whole lot shoddier for the experience. Consider Daikatana, Too Human and the inimitable Duke Nukem Forever. Each of these woeful titles was entirely scrapped and remade at various points in its production.

All three lacked a clear vision, continually adding and subtracting elements to cater to new trends and more powerful consoles. Doing so once would be a gamble, doing so twice - or more - a mistake. Any artist will tell you that a piece of work is never truly finished, that here's always more that can be done. The trick though, is in learning what's good enough, and just stopping. So if you spot an enticing game undergoing a similarly tumultuous dev cycle, best reset those expectations. There's a fairly good chance that that sinking ship is being steered by a crazed perfectionist.

Pulling quotes must be an awfully tricky business. After all, what you're looking for - i.e. snappy, upbeat appraisals - isn't always what you get. Sometimes there simply aren’t any nice things being said about your product. Of course, you can always try to be sly about it, adapting the form, if not the spirit of said assessment. 'Agonising from start to finish' might not fly with an FPS, but if it's written about a crappy new horror game, well then, thank heavens for interpretation… One of the easiest ways around this issue is to simply ignore reviews entirely, and instead draw your quotes from the much more speculative field of preview coverage.

Early-door assessments i.e. 'promises big things' or 'could be the best game of 2015' certainly sound as though they might've appeared in a review. Except of course that they didn't. The peeps in PR just want the public to think that they did. And really, if they're going to those sorts of lengths in order to fool you, you'd better believe that the game in question is complete and utter tripe.

And so, like a moron playing Scrabble, I'm all out of words. If you have any suggestions for further portents of doom, let me know in the comments section below. Until next time, remember the class motto. 'Scrutinize absolutely bloody everything to an almost insufferable degree'. Huzzah!

Looking for more bad game content (content about bad games, not bad content abou... Oh you get the idea)? Then check out