>The hardest, most challenging, most pain-in-the-ass-difficult game of 2010 was without a doubt Donkey Kong Country Returns.Oh, the first few levels are peppy, brightly colored, old-school fun. Bananas fly everywhere, secrets practically reveal themselves. And the collectible K-O-N-G letters dangle like low hanging fruit.But then things take a turn.The cursing began for me probably around level three or four. The praying at level five. The despair at level six.During each absurd jump in difficulty, I told myself, This won’t last. I’ve played enough games over the years to know that developers typically include sharp difficulty spikes before giving way to…

>Every game starts off as a perfect 10. During those virgin moments when I’m loading up a game for the first time–Havok acknowledgement, Bink Video acknowledgement (what the hell is “Bink Video” anyway, and why do some many games seem to depend on it?), and so forth–my heart practically explodes with hope. (I wrote about this peculiar brand of hope in detail in this post.) I’m at maximum optimism, baby. I want the game that I am about to play to be nothing short of spectacular. I want my head to be blown off by how terrific the game is.Then,…

>OK, you jackals, here are the rest of my You-Like-What-You-Like picks for 2010. Feel free to chime in with your personal picks, recommendations, and/or hate mail below. [Missed the first entry? Too lazy today to scroll down a few pages? Click here to view my 10 through six picks.]One more point I’d like to make before I continue: These games are not necessarily perfect 10’s. In fact, every game in my like-what-I-like list is flawed in some significant way. Perfection isn’t a part of the like list. The like list is simply about the games that I wound up investing…

>Over Thanksgiving–American Thanksgiving, Canadian people–I traveled back to the East Coast to ostensibly visit New York, see my friends, and consume pounds of succulent turkey. But my ulterior motive, I confess, was to make a long-anticipated journey to Funspot in New Hampshire, otherwise known as the world’s largest arcade.Fellow writer John Teti grew up in the area and frequented Funspot as a child, never realizing that it would one day become an accidental mecca for gamers. So John and his terrific wife Anna and I flew up to Manchester, New Hampshire together in a plane that was only slightly larger…

>”You like what you like.” That’s a phrase that Vic and I often repeat to one other while shooting the show. We say it on camera. We say it off camera. The only other phrase that even comes close to being repeated as often: “Let’s stop here for coffee.””You like what you like,” of course, is shorthand for saying, “I am not going to go out of my way to understand StarCraft II, or Civ 5, or Gran Turismo 5. Yes, they are all well-made games. Yes, smart people made them. Yes, I admire those people. They worked very hard….

>Had a couple of reviews appear in The Onion’s A.V. Club recently. First up: God of War: Ghost of Sparta.”Ghost Of Sparta’s plot is more of the series’ highbrow trash. Typical of all God Of War games, the mythological milieu gives this installment a faux erudite patina. Though you’re merely banging away at two buttons, the series’ genius is that you forever feel like you’re doing something of grave importance, something that would make a ninth-grade English teacher proud.”Read the rest of my words–the A.V. Club limits me to a miserly 400, so there aren’t too many more to read–here….

>It’s that time of year. Time when I see the Fed Ex delivery man more than I see my imaginary girlfriend. Time when I am literally buried beneath a gamevalanche–that’s an avalanche of games, people–and the rescue team won’t be deployed until December at the earliest. Time when my wrists are sore, my thumbs ache, and my right eye twitches involuntarily–it’s doing it now, even as I type this–because I have stared at my television for a thoroughly unhealthy number of hours in a row.That time.Fact: It is not uncommon for me to require an eye exam each January because…

>A few short days before Crispy Gamer suddenly stroked out, pooped itself, and went to website heaven–R.I.P., old girl–I met a man who had recently done a stint behind the counter at a New York City-area GameStop. As he told me his tales of woe, I began to write them down, hoping to turn the stories into a much larger piece for CG.Once CG gave up its ghost, I figured there was no reason for this story–which felt important to me–to die along with it. The result: a massive seven thousand-word piece that my friend, writer and editor Susan Arendt,…

>On a recent brisk Vancouver afternoon, while shooting our review of Medal of Honor for the show, Vic and I got into a heated Crossfire-style debate over the merits of turning real-world conflicts into armchair entertainments. We hadn’t planned on doing this. Our original goal was to have a semi-lucid conversation about the game’s multiplayer modes. But suddenly, there we were, doing something neither of us expected to be doing.It was awkward. It was uncomfortable. But it was real, and necessary. And not completely unenjoyable.Vic posits that building a virtual experience, as Medal of Honor does, around up-to-the-minute news headlines…

>It was Canadian Thanksgiving here last week. Which was strange, because no one really seems to celebrate Canadian Thanksgiving. All the shops and restaurants and bars and poutine vendors are open, like any other day. The post office and the banks are closed. But otherwise, it’s a day off for people, little more.I met Thumb-Blaster for breakfast at the White Spot on West Georgia Street. White Spots are the Canadian version of Denny’s, only less cheery. They smell vaguely of bleach and depression. Strippers and old people eat here. Everything on the menu is incredibly cheap. Thumb-Blaster and I both…