Despite a stint on Humble Bundle and a bid to sell the company as a whole, THQ has finally dissolved, leaving in its wake the sale of well-beloved franchises and veteran development teams. This splintering has called into question the future of many games, but luckily there is as much hope as there is doubt for titles previously under the THQ banner.

“Metal Gear Solid” brings to mind a lot of things, like cardboard boxes, genetically engineered super soldier mercenaries, and the trials and tribulations of a cyborg assassin and his long-suffering girlfriend. Foregoing the franchise’s iconic stealth gameplay for a quicker paced, combat-oriented hack-and-slash style, Metal Gear Rising: Revengeance has raised concerns in the Metal Gear fanbase for straying too far off-base to be a “real” Metal Gear title. For now, it seems that, at the very least, its complex and much-loved sci-fi military mythos remains intact.

The Consumer Electronics Show comes once a year, and while dish washers and refrigerators aren’t particularly relevant to the gaming scene, gaming companies still come out in force to show off their latest offerings as well as future projects for us to drool at and pine for. CES events in the past have announced things high profile concepts like Razer’s Project Fiona or gamer-friendly gadgets such as the GAEMS G155, and this year’s is no different.

Kickstarter has quickly become one of the most popular ways for developers to get their games funded and into the hands of players without turning to big name publishers. However, for every successful project, like InXile’s Wasteland 2 and Obsidian’s Project Eternity, there are unsuccessful ones – Dark Vale Game’s flagship title, Forge, failed to reach their intended goal in the allotted time. However, they have risen from the ashes of Kickstarter purgatory with help from Steam’s new Greenlight program.

2012 was a year about a lot of things, like (terrible) end of world predictions, the discovery of the Higgs-Boson, and Mars rover landings. But it was mainly about video games, and not just video games, but good video games, because the worst kind of video game is a bad video game. And those aren’t nice. Here are some that are.

Digital downloads have quickly become one of the most popular ways for gamers to buy and for companies to publish. NIS America, known more for their anime-style imports like the Disgaea and Atelier series, has entered the virtual marketplace once again with the uncharacteristically serious Clan of Champions.