Guns! They’re great, aren’t they? In games, we mean. The look and feel of a good gun can single-handedly transform a by-the-numbers shooter into something a bit special. And it helps if it looks badass too, since you spend 99% of your in-game time staring at the back end of it. In celebration of the gun, we’ve rifled (ha!) around the Xbox’s back catalogue to bring you 15 of our favourite bullet-dispensers of all time...

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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

In the olden days, your first time playing a game rated M for Mature was a big deal. Maybe it was the fact that, like getting your driver's permit or being able to vote, the power to buy a game deemed too bloody or scandalous for younger eyes felt like a true coming-of-age moment. Maybe your first M-rated game was like a secret hidden from your parents' prying eyes, or smuggled to you by a hip relative like clandestine tickets to an R-rated movie.

Now you've got all these kids getting Call of Duty as a present on their eighth birthday, or playing Five Nights at Freddy's and skipping those 'ESRB' or 'PEGI' things altogether. It's not like it's illegal for parents to buy age-inappropriate games for their children - but there was a time when booting up something M-rated as a youngster had a certain mystique about it, with the sense that you were suddenly ready for anything (except maybe those ). So, which gory, gratuitous experience ushered you into gaming adulthood?

It was wonderful fun growing up around the founding of the ESRB, because even though game ratings existed, parents didn't notice or particularly care about them yet. That's how my friends and I got our young hands on Perfect Dark at the tender age of 11. GoldenEye's weird cousin with a head for alien conspiracy theories, Perfect Dark made us feel like we were getting away with something every time we played it. You could blow people up, blood would splash across the wall whenever you shot a guy, and sometimes enemies would call you a bitch as they went down. Everything a pre-teen could want.

But what really made Perfect Dark great was the multiplayer mode. Sure, it was just a bunch of blocky maps where you could play King of the Hill or shoot up mooks, but that was only part of the draw. What we loved was being our own little army, eliciting shrieks of AI terror and spraying the walls with gore, crushing those who would oppose us with the sort of chilling cruelty only a child can wield. That is, until we turned our digital guns on each other. Does anyone else hear child-like cackling on the wind?

Like all good things in a young boy's life, Resident Evil 3: Nemesis came by way of a cool older cousin. Violent games were forbidden in my household, so I dove into this one with ravenous curiosity. The blood. The guts. The gore. I wanted to see it all. RE3 was my glimpse into gaming's seedy underbelly. Then there was the Nemesis itself. Powerful and imposing, this unstoppable monster hounded my every step; its guttural cry of "STARS!" heralding my imminent doom.

Tragically, after a mere three days in Raccoon City, my parents put the kibosh on RE3. I was distraught. YouTube didn't exist yet, so how would I know if poor Jill made it out alive? That's when I found the novelization of RE3 at a local bookstore, which I secreted away under my mattress. I figured, 'My parents want me to read more, so even if they do find this, they can't get that mad, right?'

Let's see here... we've got a serial-killing clown, a dude who got his face mutilated during a botched surgery, a girl who has a porcelain mask nailed to her skull courtesy of an abusive father figure, and a Vietnam veteran turned cannibal. And that's just on the character select screen! The most iconic part of the car combat Twisted Metal series is its utterly deranged cast of psychotic misfits, but David Jaffe and co. went extra dark and disturbing for the PS2 installment.

My parents agreed to buy this horrifying concoction for my 13-year-old self based on one condition: I would skip all the potentially psyche-scarring cutscenes, meaning the only violence I would ever see would be car-on-car. I held up my end of the bargain (since I was too scared to watch anyway) - but I wasn't quite prepared for a stage set-piece that lets you fry death row inmates to a crisp, or Brimstone's special attack that launches a suicide-bombing zealot onto enemy vehicles. Let's just say my mom wasn't exactly pleased to see that kind of imagery on the family TV.

My older brother was always there to lead the charge, so I never had to worry much about getting M-rated games. As long as I kept it low-key, I could play pretty much any of his purchases without (voiced) concern from our parents. I never got in trouble at school for reenacting all that 'Animated Violence' and 'Animated Blood and Gore', so I guess it worked out ok.

Speaking of which, the only thing I vividly recall about the N64 Turok games is the blood. I doubt anything else about them is still remarkable (except maybe to virtual fog enthusiasts), but that blood was really something. It's even more impressive when you consider that Nintendo made Mortal Kombat fighters bleed frickin' Ecto Cooler just a few years before. But I digress: My first truly M-rated experience was throwing a razor-sharp Frisbee into Turok 2's giant eyeball boss so I could watch blood spurt as it bounced around inside the vitreous humor. Hooray for video games!

At least Connor got a chance to play his copy of Turok. See, I come from a pretty religious household (true story: My mom made me throw away some Magic: The Gathering cards I'd bought from a friend in middle school because the devil). So other than a quick round of Mortal Kombat or Doom at a friend's house, M-rated games were out of the question. But one day, when I was 13 or 14, I decided to press my luck and rent a copy of Turok: Dinosaur Hunter. I don't remember how it happened exactly, but somehow the game slipped past the watchful eye of my parents and the Blockbuster clerk well enough for me to take it home and play it.

For five whole minutes. I slapped the cartridge into my N64, booted up the tutorial, and began wandering through this foggy, dinosaur-filled realm. I took aim with my bow, and loosed an arrow toward an unsuspecting mook. Decapitation! And, because this is how these things go, this was the exact moment my dad walked in my room, shouted "WHAT THE HELL IS THIS?" and promptly grounded me for a week. I felt upset about it at the time, but I'm honestly kinda grateful. He saved me from a pretty terrible game.

I was in love with adventure games from the late '80s and early '90s, and the only reason I had access to them was because my dad had colleagues who would share their games. So in between playing King's Quest and Police Quest, my dad had also passed along Leisure Suit Larry in the Land of the Lounge Lizards because he had no idea what it was about. Yeah, I know. I even helped Kickstart the remake a couple of years ago... and still haven't played it.

Parental controls weren’t really a thing with my parents, unless I was tying up the phone line (and he took my modem). So naive, clueless little me was walking around as this pervy guy in a white suit trying to hit on women. I kinda knew who he was since he made a cameo in Police Quest, but I didn't quite get the full picture until many years later. Many, many years later. Luckily for me (or maybe not), I couldn't figure out the puzzles and didn't get the jokes, so wandering around trying to kiss whoever showed up didn't really get me very far.

Had the ESRB actually existed when Mortal Kombat 2 launched, that would technically be my first, but instead the honor officially goes to Duke Nukem 3D. The FPS certainly earned its rating with gory violence, crude humor, and even some heavily pixelated nudity. Back in 1996, all of that had an intoxicating charm to me and my juvenile friends. It was such a thrill knowing my parents would disapprove of Duke Nukem saying “I'll rip your head off and shit down your neck,” let alone him literally doing that during the post-boss-fight cutscene.

Today, Duke’s reputation as gaming’s bad boy seems so quaint. His gory escapades look tame next to God of War, and his dirty attempts at wit can’t really compare to the colorful insults of Saints Row. Also, once I saw films like They Live, I realized all of Duke’s best lines weren’t even original. Nowadays, I'm mortified whenever I think about my seventh-grade self's excitement for Duke's breakout hit.

So, how about you? What was the first M-rated game you ever owned or played, and how did it all go down? Did you incur the wrath of your parents, or exploit their inattention to what you were actually playing? Or heck - maybe you were old enough to just buy it for yourself, no questions asked! Share in the comments below.

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