As an artistic medium, games in general have become fully realized as perhaps the most poignant form expression to those privy to it. For all intensive purposes, games have replaced movies in the same way movies replaced books as the most accessible and mainstream method of story telling. Most games, however, released nowadays are still wholly integrated with the toxic refuse of Fredric Jameson’s postmodern “depthlessness.” While most AAA (“triple A”) titles have completely embraced interactivity on both a PvE and PvP level due to the advent of new technology, games in general still lack real and meaningful substance often becoming a parody of itself and things that have come before it.

Becoming a game developer in terms of financial success has, like anything in the world, become increasingly more and more difficult due to the nature of the market itself. Large game developers such as Activision and Electronic Arts are concerned with numbers. Financial triumphs over artistic freedom. They would rather risk becoming bigger at the cost of sacrificing quality in the fabric of their products, than taking a financial hit in the name of releasing something meaningful–even if it had a possibility of success.




I’m not going to sit here and tell you what these big game companies do is a bad, even in the slightest. These companies have massive power with the ability to create interactive worlds that overshadow anything we as humans have encountered in any other social medium before it. What I am going to tell you is that because of graphical and technological advancements games have become little more than a mere spectacle. Sega’s Bayonetta is a perfect example of this, and is, in my opinion, the crown jewel of postmodern games embracing spectacle, depthlessness, and parody. Sega wants their audience to drool over Bayonetta, even though under all that tight leather isn’t much meat both literally and in a metaphorical sense.

“To the Moon” by Freebird Games, unlike all the incredible AAA titles we were graced with this year inverts this idea of graphics over substance and beckons us to a time when artistic mediums were truly capable of evoking genuine emotion and reflection. It might be really funny to hear but “To the Moon” caused me to really think, to give some sort of conscious thought to how I got to where I am in life, and where I may or may not be going. I gave a lot of consideration to the idea of quantum realities, after playing it, and to the idea that our lives may be but one part to a multiverse of possible outcomes that could’ve and perhaps did happen in an alternative reality. Check out the “Parallels” episode of Star Trek: The Next Generation, if you have no idea what I’m talking about. This shit is fucking deep. And to think, a 16-bit game made with RPG maker caused me to ponder all of this.





Did I mention that I literally wept for the last hour and a half of the game? Experiencing an entire lifetime in five hours can do that to a person. In terms of game play itself, “To the Moon” is in the traditional sense a point and click adventure, but the masterful story telling and musical tone sets off a series of emotions that I refuse to think that you will want to miss. “To the Moon” is certainly a title that will more than likely be forgotten and I find it shameful, repugnant, and down right heartbreaking that amidst all the crazy ass forth quarter releases, that it may never gain the notoriety I think it deserves.

I challenge you as gamers to take one evening, that’s ONE, out of your busy schedule of playing the new Warcraft patch, Skyrim, Modern Warfare, or Skyward Sword and check “To the Moon” out. You can play this game in one five hour sitting, and unless you’re too busy ogling depthless bullshit chock full of spectacle, you certainly won’t regret doing so either. Play this game. Seriously. Play it.

Being game of the year shouldn’t be about having the prettiest graphics, or the most accessible game play. Being game of the year shouldn’t be about how much money went into creating the game, or if it was AAA title. AAA titles get enough coverage. It’s these indie games, these little gems that always come and go unnoticed. Being game of the year shouldn’t be something that catapults further sales for companies that just keep getting bigger. It should be about a game that does something with such wonderful execution and emotional fervor that it can and should be regarded as an artistic masterpiece. “To the Moon” accomplishes this and more, and that, my friends is why I regard it as 2011’s champion. Game of the fucking year.



You can purchase “To the Moon” HERE for $11.99. Please show your support for this incredible game!









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What A Final Fantasy VII Remake Could Look Like

Fans have been waiting so long for Square Enix to remake Final Fantasy VII that they decided to do it themselves.

A new fan-made Final Fantasy VII remake project has surfaced showing off the intro stage of the game in Midgar. This project uses Unreal Engine and is clearly still very early in production. The video trailer below highlights what the team has put together so far. The website for the project also has some high-resolution screesnhots.

We imagine it's only a matter of time before Square Enix orders a cease and desist. They closed that excellent Chrono Trigger remake, ya know.

What A Final Fantasy VII Remake Could Look Like

Fans have been waiting so long for Square Enix to remake Final Fantasy VII that they decided to do it themselves.

A new fan-made Final Fantasy VII remake project has surfaced showing off the intro stage of the game in Midgar. This project uses Unreal Engine and is clearly still very early in production. The video trailer below highlights what the team has put together so far. The website for the project also has some high-resolution screesnhots.

We imagine it's only a matter of time before Square Enix orders a cease and desist. They closed that excellent Chrono Trigger remake, ya know.

 Top 25 Most Ridiculous Game Weapons

From farting unicorns to gigantic purple sex toys

Weapons are important in video games. But some game characters have no need of swords, guns and trebuchets, not when there's a farting unicorn, cow launcher or wheelchair tank available.

Here's our list of the twenty five most ridiculous video game weapons.



Fight hordes of demons by... playing guitar. Well, every rock star thinks he's an all powerful God, so why not? Nevan is a lightning witch boss battle that Dante has to fight who defends herself with lightning and swarms of bats. Towards the end of the battle, if Dante gets too close, she can also grab him for a deadly kiss that sucks out his soul.

At the end of the battle, Nevan gives you this devil arm, which looks suspiciously like a guitar. To access her powers of lightning and summon swarms of bats, simply play a few riffs and along they'll come.

Music slays the savage beast.


Link's joke weapon in Soulcalibur II, the bug catching net can also be seen in many Zelda adventures as Link uses it to collect bugs and fairies.

In Soulcalibur II, the net can be bought in the Alioth Shop for 12,500 gold while you're playing in weapon master mode.

Why anyone would want to equip it is something of a mystery, though. Whilst using it, both Link's offense and defense decrease by 80 percent.

Other 'joke' weapons in the game include tambourines, magical sausages and... love.


One of the dilemmas in battles is what kind of weapon to have. Do you go for the up close and person melee option and equip a sword, or the safer long range option of a gun? Well, with the gunblade you don't need to choose.

Leading man Squall Lionheart's weapon of choice is the gunblade, although the weapon has gone on to appear in several other Final Fantasy games including Final Fantasy XII (it's one of Gilgamesh's legendary weapons) and Final Fantasy XIII (Lightning's weapon has both a gun and a blade mode). They also turn up in games Parasite Eve II, World of Warcraft and League of Legends.

Squall's gunblade doesn't appear to work as an actual gun, however, since he uses it mainly as a sword. Because *that* would be silly.


Blitzball is a fictitious sport that is a little like a combination of soccer and American football. It's played in a sphere underwater with the aim of the game being to kick the ball into the opposing team's goal. The irrepressible Wakka is a professional Blitzball player and captain of the Besaid Aurochs team, so it makes sense (to someone) that his weapon of choice be a Blitzball.

Wakka's Blitzball, is however, despite its appearance, actually a rather useful weapon to have around, since it's the only basic weapon that can reliably hit aerial enemies.


The Mk 2 Lancer Assault Rifle, to give it its full name, or the Chainsaw Gun as it's colloquially called, is the staple weapon of all Gears soldiers. It's fully automatic and comes with a Chainsaw Bayonet attachment for chopping off limbs in close combat.

It's versatile, reliable and even good over long distances as it has low recoil. The chainsaw part was added when soldiers on the battlefield were reporting that the humble bayonet simply wasn't proving effective against the Locust hordes. Thus a chainsaw addition was created, which proved helpful in cutting through their tough hides.

But let's back up a second there – it's a gun. With a chainsaw, clearly the most ridiculous idea in the whole world.


The delicious combo weapons that you could create went a long way to making Dead Rising 2 a whole lot of fun, and one of my personal favourites is the drill bucket. It's made with combining two regular household items – a bucket and a power drill.

When Chuck's done doing man things in his shed, he'll come out with a bucket with three drills through the bottom of it, described as "DIY dental work at its finest". Simply place the drill bucket on any zombie's head, and laugh as it drills through its skull, causing its head to explode. You almost have to feel sorry for them.


No one wants to be stuck in a wheelchair – having to be pushed around in one generally means that you've exhausted all the other options. Unless, of course, you have a wheelchair that is also a tank and you're stuck in a mall filled with shuffling zombies to kill. Then, the idea starts to look kind of attractive.

The Blitzkrieg is basically a wheelchair with three automatic weapons attached, made by combining an electric chair with an automatic firearm. You get an entire minute, actually slightly more than an entire minute, to enjoy slaughtering zombies while zipping around in your killer chair.

Your chair also, inexplicably, taunts zombies using an electronic program called Fred, although it's hard to hear what he's actually saying over the gunfire.


There are always some great weapons in games in the Ratchet and Clank series, but a personal favorite is the Sheepinator. The Megacorp weapon turned enemies into sheep. How could anyone possibly beat that? Well, in an upgrade to the Black Sheepinator, it turned enemies into sheep *that exploded*. Things clearly don't get any better than this.

Sadly, you have to wait until about halfway through the game before you can pick up the Sheepinator – on Planet Todano – but it's worth the wait.

Every Ratchet and Clank game has a morphing weapon, and others include the Morph-O-Ray, which turns enemies into chickens and the Chimp-O-Matic, which turned robots into toy monkeys with cymbals and organic creatures into chimps.

All 4 One also had a Sheepinator as a pre-order bonus.


Clear out the Funland tactical location in Green Bay and then these cheeky rubber ducks of death will appear on the Chuck's Ducks 2 stall in the fair ground. They're essentially just silly looking hand grenades, which stick to whatever you throw them at and detonate with the right button. When you get up close to them you'll notice that they also make a curious quacking noise.

Ignore the intel that to get this weapon you need to play the Facebook game Chuck's Ducks 2 (which will also ask you to install something called Microsoft Silverlight) to get hold of these rubber ducky grenades – you don't. Like the cake, it's a lie.


Think of two weapons that go well together and I could bet a fair amount of money that you're not going to be thinking of a gun and a pair of nun-chucks. But I can hear the designers thinking, yes, what a splendid idea, combining the melee elements of close combat with an effective long range weapon, of which there is, of course, absolutely no danger of accidentally blowing your own hand (or head) off.

I'm not sure that we should be surprised – everything about Bayonetta is clearly ridiculous, for example, her sexy catsuit is actually made out of her own hair. That makes having gun-chucks as a weapon almost seem sane.


Not actually a fat man, which would in its own way be hilarious, the Fat Man is a "shoulder-mounted tactical nuclear catapult." In layman's terms, that means it's a hand held weapon that basically shoots nuclear bombs at people. It should certainly incinerate your target, but do be warned, there's a high possibility it will also incinerate everything around it (including your mates and possibly yourself), as well as leaving residual radiation.

The name comes from the second atomic bomb that was dropped on Japan in 1945. Unsurprisingly, in the game's Japanese release, this had to be changed, with the Fat Man becoming the Nuka Launcher in the Land of the Rising Sun. In Japan, the side quest whereby you can choose to detonate the atomic bomb in the town of Megaton was also removed from the game.


Sora's iconic keyblade weapon doesn't really look like it's going to do any damage to anything, and although it clearly looks like a key, it's kind of hard to figure out exactly where the blade part of the name comes in.

His original weapon was going to be a chainsaw, which would have changed the whole tone of the games somewhat. At some point in the design process, Tetsuya Nomura ditched the limb-rending chainsaw prototype in favour of the more family friendly design, and we ended up with the keyblade.

The keyblade is a big part of the game's story – only certain people are able to use the weapon, which as well as being handy for bashing enemies heads in, is also used to seal up keyholes to the world of darkness

Bulletstorm was heavily stylized and filled with plenty of crazy content. Its weapons were no exception. The Flail Gun shoots chain-linked grenades that can wrap around enemies and blow them up. How cool is that?


The mini sequel to Dead Rising 2, Dead Rising 2: Off the Record bought with it a whole host of new silly weapons to be crafted out of everyday objects. This, the Pegasus, was clearly one of the best.

Made from combining a stick pony with rocket fireworks, Frank activates it by stuffing it in a zombie's stomach and then standing safely back. The rockets send the zombie into the air before exploding, setting fire to any other zombies they come into contact with en route.

Killing zombies is always fun. Killing them with a stick pony and making them explode is even more fun.


The sword of Cloud Strife, the blond haired, blue eyed hero of Final Fantasy VII, is clearly ridiculous. The boy barely looks as if he has the strength to lift a mug of steaming cocoa, let alone a blade that's almost as big as him. In reality, a sword that size would be impossible for anyone to effectively wield, but of course, this is not reality, this is video games.

Cloud's given the Buster Sword by his friend Zack Fair, who, in the conclusion to Crisis Core: Final Fantasy VII, dies protecting Cloud. In his dying breath, he hands his sword and legacy on to Cloud. Zack's the second person to make use of the overcompensating weapon, with Zack's mentor, Angeal Hewley, being the first.

It's become one of the most iconic symbols of the Final Fantasy series, and made an appearance in several games after VII, including Kingdom Hearts and Before Crisis.


Lulu's arsenal consists of a range of... dolls. Because what you really need when battling terrifying monsters and when your job is a Guardian protecting the Summoner on her pilgrimage are kids' toys. The otherwise bad-ass looking Lulu looks supremely ridiculous in battle sequences as she holds her dolls gently in the crook of her arm, facing off against monsters like vicious goblins, iron giants and imps.

She can use various dolls that she collects throughout the game, all of which are modelled on famous Final Fantasy creatures, like the Moogle, Mute Cait Sith, Moomba Warrior and Raging Cactuar. They attack by waddling off and bumping into enemies – unsurprisingly they don't deliver much damage, so it's probably better to have her use her devastating black magic spells instead.


As anyone who's tried to get to the discounted shelf in the supermarket knows, old women can be a force to be reckoned with.

This old dear is essentially dynamite wrapped up in her favorite pink mac and clutching her walking stick. When a worm sends her off to attack, she walks off very, very slowly towards her target, muttering quietly to herself. In most of the games, her muttering is inaudible, but in WormsDC she can be heard to say "I can't remember his name."

When she reaches her intended destination, she, well, explodes. Help the Aged would no doubt have something to say about that.

It was rumored that in the original programming she was intended to sometimes become confused and stumble back to blow up the worm that set her loose, but this never ended up in the final version of the game.


The Cerebral Bore basically drills into enemies' heads and makes their brains explode. It's alien technology, as apparently aliens had a need for a device which blew brains up. Or perhaps it just made them giggle.

It fires a projectile made of hooks, a drill bit and explosives, which locks on to your victim's brainwave patterns. Once that's done, there's nothing they can do but wait for the inevitable. The cerebral bore then attaches to their head, burrows into their skull (displacing all that pesky brain matter through a suction tube) and, as if that wasn't enough, as a grand finale, explodes.

The only downside was that you necessarily need to use it on sentient enemies, since it would be hard to drill out the brain of an enemy that, in fact, has no brain. Could rule out a few people, too.

You'll also find it in Turok 3 and Turok: Rage Wars.


The cluckshot launches rather surprised chickens at enemies and is particularly hilarious due to the fact that it's in Gears of War 3 – a game that, let's be honest, does sometimes take itself just a little too seriously.

The fowl weapon recently featured in the 'Thanksgibbing' event in the King of the Hill playlist, where all shotguns were replaced by the cluckshot.

To get it in the main game, you'll need to play through act four, chapter one on insane difficulty and make sure not to touch any of the ash bodies. If you do that, you'll earn the 'respect for the dead' achievement and Griffin will declare that maybe COGs aren't all bad and let you into his hideout. There's a chicken in it, which will explode in a flurry of feathers when you interact with it.

Then you'll need to attempt to get your hands on three sets of joke ammo that will fall away from you just as they're within reach, which you'll find in act four, chapters two and three. After that, a chicken will fly in as air support and reward all members of your party with the cluckshot. Happy clucking!


Oichi is a young girl – Nobunaga's younger sister – meant to add that 'kawaii' (cute) element to the game. Apparently, the idea of having children going around killing things was decided to be not so cute, so they gave her a silly weapon – a cup and ball.

Called a Kendama, Oichi's weapon has a number of attacks where she launches, spins and kicks the ball at enemies.

In Samurai Warriors 3, since Oichi was now all grown up and had even got married, the decision was made to give her a more mature weapon. They gave her a hula hoop.


If you were going to venture into a deep, dark, dank dungeon, what else would you take along with you as a weapon but a teddy bear? After all, nothing's likely to strike terror into the heart of an enemy than that cute, cuddly little teddy bear face.

Enemies will surely cower in fear as you move to strike them down with this... fluffy... weapon. As you'd imagine for a soft toy, the teddy bear doesn't actually deal much damage but it does heal the Prince with every blow he rains down on his enemies. It's also indestructible (if only real teddy bears were, too, there'd be far less tears at bedtime).

You can find the teddy bear in the mechanical tower while you're in the present time.


The weapons in a game based on the South Park universe was never going to be sensible, and happily, the game did not disappoint.

In the game, a comet is heading towards the happy town of South Park, causing all sorts of strange things to happen. Killer cows, robots and living toys have invaded the region, and it's up to you to kill them in the silliest way you can.

Weapons on hand include the aforementioned cow launcher, yellow snowballs and a toilet plunger launcher. When the cow launcher is successfully targeted at an enemy, they will end up with their head stuck in the cow's bum. If that doesn't kill them, they'll probably die soon after since they won't be able to see.


Described as "the absurdity of a sex toy with the lethality of a baseball bat", the Penetrator is essentially a massive purple dildo. That you hit people with.

They might start laughing as you approach them, but it's actually a pretty powerful weapon, so they'll stop laughing pretty fast once you whack them with it. Don't let the way it wobbles around fool you – this baby packs a punch.

In celebration of the game's launch, gigantic purple dildos were delivered along with preview copies of the game to video game web sites. Sadly, unlike in the game, they proved rather delicate, and not at all suitable for fighting with.


Professor Genki's Mollusk Launcher is possibly the silliest weapon in Saints Row The Third, which is no mean feat in a game where other weapons in your arsenal include a giant purple dildo and a fart in a jar.

The Mollusk Launcher will fire live octopuses (and yes, it is octopuses, not octopi, we checked) at enemies, which will attach to enemy's heads and control their minds, making them become confused and fight for your team – after they break into a funky dance.

The Launcher comes in a fetching pink and is described as containing, "Singing, exploding, cuddly, mind-controlling octopi." (Octopi is still wrong.) The octopuses will refuse to control some targets, for example Brutes, as these are considered 'unethical'.

Sadly, it was a pre-order bonus item, included as part of the Professor Genki's Hyper Ordinary Pre-Order Pack, and is currently unavailable to get hold of any other way.




To get hold of Mr. Toots you can either buy him with salvage once you've beaten the game or, alternatively, hunt him down at the end of the level Marauder Defenses, hidden in a secret area. You know you want to.

You can also purchase a Mr. Toots avatar pet that will "fly in on a rainbow of happiness" and prance around your avatar on Xbox Live for 240 Microsoft Points.