The BioShock games have always had a weightier tone to them than just shooting things in the face. The first game was lightly basted in an Ayn Rand marinade, while the upcoming BioShock Infinite deals with some tricky issues like racism.

The developers are to be applauded for this, but at the same time, it leaves them open to attack from those lacking in the brain cell department. Like the cheery white supremacists at racist forum Stormfront, where someone summed the game up as "The Jew Ken Levine is making a white-person-killing simulator."

Infinite director Levine speaks at length on the issue in an interview on PC Gamer, which you should definitely read. But that bonkers comment got me wondering, what else did the self-styled fascists have to say about the game?

Here are some of the "highlights", from a thread titled "Upcoming video game "BioShock Infinite" with common, reoccuring, Hollywood theme: ‘kill racist whitey'". A warning: some of this is pretty nasty stuff.

A ‘racist,' ‘violent,' ‘backward' world...? Oy vey indeed. The previous "BioShock" games also had very strange, borderline-deranged (if not psychotic) themes with anti-White undertones. I remember in one of the previous parts, one had to kill little White girls as the player for ‘power-ups.' The makers, "Irrational Games," have at least one "Cohen" amongst their staff

I wish somebody would make a game about an ethnically pure jewish utopia whose inherent aggresion and hatred of all non-jews causes the inevitable extinction of all human beings, jews included. That would be more in line with reality.

That really sucks that they made they theme of the game to destroy what is left of America. Instead it should have been killing an all-powerful federal government and racial non-white groups that bring nothing but violence and want ot end America and turn it into Africa or Mexico. And they worked so hard on that game, such a disappointment with the story line being 100% anti American and anti White.

So you go around blasting white patriots. I get it. They aren't human, there is a "force" at work, the vox populi movement is not much better. The whole city is an evil death weapon. They promote eugenics, they hate foreigners, they love Washington, their utopia is a dystopia, due to... whatever. Essentially your still running around blasting white patriots.

I wonder how many sci-fi twists I would have to make, before I could create a game about some white midwestern townsfolk shooting hordes of samoli immigrants.

The anti nationalist sentiment is more than slightly obvious really. It looks like a jew trying to piddle on old small america.

Not surprised, the owner of Irrational Games (the company who made this) is Ken Levine, a Jew. He and his like minded clique come up with these ideas, then get their white programmers and 3D designers to make it beautiful and marketable. It is thanks to the white piss-ons that the game looks as beautiful, and has the fun playability that it does, it is thanks to Levine and the higherups that it has the propaganda that it does crowbarred into it. 99% of the people who actually make the games are white, all the designers, programmers, artist etc. But 99% of the company owners with the actual power are Jewish, such as Levine, Robert Kotick of Activision (the guys who make Grand Theft Auto) etc. Sadly the game industry is getting more and more taken over by the chosen. Anytime any small developer has any success, one of the big Jewish owned mega companies buys them out. Since games are distributed and advertised through much of the same pipelines as Hollywood movies, Jews have a temendous advantage in the industry, since as everyone knows they already control Hollywood. This means competition can be choked out, and their own games bolstered to success. Really makes me sick to watch it happen.

The next time you think a YouTube comments section is missing the point, remember, this is the internet. There's always someone worse.

For more fun reading, check out a thread about complaints that there are too many white male protagonists in video games.

Interview: Ken Levine on American history, racism in BioShock Infinite: "I've always believed that gamers were underestimated." [PC gamer]

Upcoming video game "BioShock Infinite" with common, reoccuring, Hollywood theme: ‘kill racist whitey' [Stormfront]

Remember back in September when Borderlands 2 players were experiencing a reset in their Badass ranks?

Well Gearbox finally released a chunky 360 patch to fix that, and many, many other issues. Your Badass tokens will be reissued to be spent as you choose.

A notable addition that comes with this patch is the ability to reset challenges (not tokens). Tokens earned from those challenges will still be retained, but you can get extras for a higher badass rank. The specifics:

Players can now reset all challenge progress for a character once they've completed 85% of all non-DLC, non-area-specific challenge levels. This will keep the player's current challenge bonuses and rank, but reset all challenge progress to 0 and allow challenges to be re-completed for additional ranks and bonuses. This option will appear as a tooltip at the bottom of the "challenges" screen within the status menu if the player has met the criteria.

G4 is also reporting that the patch landed them 10 shiny Golden Keys. This could be a gift in return for the glitch's hassles, or it could just be a coincidence. Let us know what you're experiencing.

The Christmas season is upon us once again (as was frightfully apparent from the Christmas songs that started playing sometime around, oh, November 1st… (seriously, at least wait for Thanksgiving to be over)), and soon gifts will be piled under the Christmas tree for all to see and wonder at what goodies are contained within.

This week, the Japanese gaming magazine Weekly Famitsu asked its readers the question: What would you give to someone as a Christmas gift? Here are some of the video game-related answers:

"For a friend, I'd like to get Borderlands 2. We could play co-op over New Years!"
-18 year-old male high school student

"I think Animal Crossing: New Leaf would be perfect as a gift for a friend who doesn't play video games very much, since it lets you play casually at your own pace. I want to enjoy the village life together. Plus the characters are so cute!"
-33 year-old female part-time worker

"I want to give the Resident Evil series! Playing together with a romantic partner would be more exciting than watching a horror movie."
-25 year-old self-employed male

"I think for this season, the Wii U is a no-brainer. It's just been released and now's the time when it'll be the hottest item."
-25 year-old male company worker

"The Nintendo 3DS is perfect since it has a lot of games with network play. It'd be a lot of fun to play with the person you give it to!"
-16 year-old male high school student

"My husband is a huge fan of the Yakuza series, so I'm sure he'd love it if I gave him Yakuza 5."
-40 year-old self-employed female.

"I'm giving my girlfriend a PlayStation 3, since she doesn't have one. Now's a good time since the price has dropped."
-36 year-old male company worker

"I'm giving a PlayStation network card to buy downloadable games with. The software lineup has gotten bigger and that way they can choose whatever they want."
-24 year-old male part-time worker

Regardless of what you get your friends and family, if you haven't picked out all your gifts and stocking stuffers yet, you'd better hurry up…

ファミ通.com [ファミ通.com]

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Today Ken Levine, the creator of BioShock, announced that BioShock Infinite will have a reversible box art. But that's not all.

You can actually vote on which you want to be featured on the opposite side of your box.

Maybe the official box art isn't marketed for you, but the reverse side could be. Personally, the three up top are my favorites, with the right-most being what I'd vote for.

As of this writing, the number one voted design is a solo Elizabeth, which to me seems too simple compared to the many other gorgeous ones. Let's go fix that!

And the other two options:

One of the neater (and sadder) aspects of the new XCOM: Enemy Unknown is the fact that your base comes with a built-in memorial wall for your fallen soldiers. It's a great idea, though the execution is only okay: You don't get to post a picture of the soldier, nor any info beyond their name and rank.

2K has added a new layer to things, allowing players to add their fallen comrades to a regularly updated Facebook memorial. It's a start, though it still fails to allow players to add pictures of their soldiers, so there's room for improvement.

Though of course, if you've got a lot of screenshots and a printer, you can always build your own shrine to the fallen in your living room. Not that I did that, or anything.

XCOM Memorial Wall [Facebook]

Last Friday morning, my words on this site told you that BioShock Infinite, the long-in-the-works first-person shooter from one of the most respected game development studios in the world, was coming along very well.

On Friday evening, if you were watching Spike's Video Game Awards, your eyes might have told you otherwise.

What can you believe?

An old friend has long said that we see games with our hands. That's pretty much the problem at the root of last week's divergent reactions. Words from reporters and critics are nice, but they can't replace the feel of a game. Graphics and sounds convey a lot. But if you could get an accurate feel for a game just by watching it, you probably wouldn't mind if I dropped by your house, sat down on your couch and played the new game you just bought for you. You wouldn't have fun just watching me play?

Your hands couldn't get to BioShock Infinite last week, and therefore you're left with my words and your eyes, two inherently imperfect tools for the job of you discerning in advance if a new game is any good.

Let's get specific.

I played BioShock Infinite for more than four hours on Thursday afternoon, under the supervision of people from the game's publisher and development studio. I played from the start. (In case you're wondering, there will be no spoilers in this piece.). I essentially liveblogged my experience, but didn't publish the liveblog until Friday morning, since that's when the coverage embargo set by the publisher lifted. That's when it was ok for me to write about it.

From my not-quite-liveblog you can discern that the game is very much like the first BioShock. It is set in a fascinating, exotic place that is fun to explore. It puts the player in a lot of firefights. It gives the player an unusually diverse set of tools and tactics to use directly and indirectly against enemies. It's very much a character game and gently tugs at the player to care about who the people in the game are—including the one you're controlling.

I'd come into the event leery. I'd enjoyed Irrational Games' first BioShock. I liked BioShock 2 which most of the people at Irrational weren't involved in. I'd marveled at BioShock Infinite's live E3 2011 gameplay demo. I then lamented the game's delays and grew concerned regarding departures from Irrational, word of cut features and an overall sense that what some might call business-as-usual in the complicated craft of creating games was, in this case, a flock of red flags warning that Infinite was in trouble.

The day last summer when we ran our report about the troubles facing the game, Irrational's chief game creator and the mastermind behind BioShock, Ken Levine, told me that I'd soon be able to play the game and judge it for myself. And so I did. From the start. For more than four hours. And I'll be damned if that wasn't four of the best hours of gaming I've gotten in this year.

On Thursday night, I wrote:

I wasn't going to lose sleep tonight if BioShock Infinite was a stinker. But I'm nevertheless happy that it showed so well.

It plays more like the old game than I'd expected.

It looks nothing like the old one, as I'd hoped.

Both of those are very good things. Be hopeful. They might nail this one yet.

Then you saw the trailer Friday night.

• Kotaku reader safjx: What's with all the 20 FPS trailers recently? It's like they're running this stuff on 6 year old hardware!
• Kotaku reader Nicholas Payne: "I was really disappointed with this trailer. It had the same vibe as the new cover art for me, which was gritty explosive action shooter #492. That's not what BioShock is, which is why I love BioShock."
• Kotaku reader Shakespeare: Very poor showing. Awful framerate, the same gameplay, 2nd-class animation. And how many freakin' times do they have to design Elizabeth!?
• Kotaku reader Jester Bomb: Iron sights, the "X" hit indicator, the frantic first person story telling, yeah I think us Bioshock 1 fans still have the right to be worried.
• NeoGAF reader g35twinturbo: "...I like how one of the AI went dumb, and was literally standing there while he was attacking it. Right before the big mech dude."

  That last one is presumably in reference to the moment at 2:08 of this video.

  
  

I've seen comments from people who were excited by the trailer. I've read reports from people who liked it. But I saw a lot of negativity out there, certainly more than you'd expect a VGA-closing demo presented by Ken Levine himself to have generated.

So much for my words. Your eyes got many of you worried.

Watching the trailer, I can see why. It's got a ton of action. It makes the game seem like a shooter that has more combat than character moments. It feels more Crysis or even Call of Duty, and I think it's fair to assume that this was intentional. Ken Levine knows that his critically-acclaimed series isn't commonly known by the average fratboy Call of Duty gamer. He now also knows it won't have multiplayer, which is what often hooks many of the shooter fans out there. This kind of trailer is one way to grab their attention.

But what of the enemy who soaks up bullets? And the framerate? And the iron sights? The enemies were plenty tough and aggressive when I fought them. The game ran fine on the PS3 hardware I used during my session with the game. The iron sights? I forgot I had them most of the time but appreciated them when I needed to snipe.

Just about anything in the trailer can be explained away by those of us who played the game, though that isn't to say the game we played was perfect. I didn't like that enemies sweated hit points, Borderlands-style, when you shoot them. That's a new option, but as I learned later, it can be turned off. Once, when I went the "wrong way" in a transitional level that was supposed to connect one major area of the game to another, I got the framerate to chug. And for all I know, the game nosedives in quality after its first stellar 4 1/2 hours. Hey, it could happen.

***

There are many ways for me or you to be dead wrong about an upcoming game.

We recently declined to send one of our reporters to an EA preview event. We didn't have the time to get someone out there, but I was also worried. Dead Space 3 would be there. I'd seen Dead Space 3 a few times since May and I kept seeing it in just five or 10-minute chunks. In those instances, I'd seen the game with my hands. I'd played it. But I'd played it briefly. Too briefly, I think, to accurately size it up.

That's the other wrinkle here: brevity is the enemy of appreciating a game. Most games need more than 30 seconds or even five minutes to reveal to you how good or bad they are. Before that, you can be tricked.

On Friday morning, my headline read: "I've Played 4 1/2 Hours of BioShock Infinite. I'm No Longer Worried About This Game." That much time with a game in my own hands, playing it from the start, makes me feel confident. But I understand why your eyes can make you doubt. I understand that even my impressions might not discover something horribly flawed later in the game.

***

In early 2010, I attended a speech by one of the great game designers of all time, Will Wright. He introduced an idea I'd never considered before, that we compare real games to the idealized versions in our heads, and that we do this before we ever play the real version of the game. This is how I wrote it up:

Wright brought in an example from the lives of video gamers. This one involves a gamer going into a store intending to get a game. Maybe they've heard of the game. Maybe they've read about it. Maybe they know just what the back of the box they're holding in the store tells you. But as soon as they're thinking about it and considering it, the potential gamers are... playing the game. "They are already playing this low-res version in their imagination of what the game is going to be like."

If they then buy the game, and play the higher-res version that shows up on their computer or TV screen—and if it's not as good as the one they played in their head—that's a problem.

If the game they play is prettier or better version of what they played in their head, that's great.

In a way, we've all already played BioShock Infinite , mostly in our heads. What we're waiting for next is a chance to play it in our hands, all the way through, to know how the BioShock Infinite we imagined compares to the one that we'll be able to buy and play on March 26. It's a miracle that any game can stand up to our hopes of what it can be.

This is how it is with any game: there's the version we imagine, the one we see, and the one we touch. For now, for BioShock Infinite, I'm trusting my hands.

If the Video Game Awards are actually an awards show, and not just a keynote for promoting upcoming games, then the big news from last night was The Walking Dead: The Game. Eminently quotable analyst Michael Pachter said before the show that if this title, a downloadable self-published game, took home Game of the Year, he'd eat his hat. To his credit, Pachter later tweeted out a request for one, presumably to consume.

But the surprises don't just stop there. The Walking Dead won Game of the Year coming out of the Best Adapted Game category. Except for 2003, the first year of the VGAs, when things were very different from today, only two adapted games have even been nominated for GOTY: Batman: Arkham Asylum and Batman: Arkham City, and neither won. This is a different time in games development, with publishers looking for games whose characters and stories they fully own.

Some might look to a licensed or adapted work and consider that the game derives its significance, or at least the attention given to it, because it draws on some other franchise in popular entertainment. So it's strange that a licensed, adapted work reminds us that story, and characters, and choices, and the memorable experiences they create, matters most.

Here's another surprise nugget: The Walking Dead: The Game earned its makers five Video Game Awards. The next big winner? Journey, with three (including a nomination for Game of the Year.) Borderlands 2 also took home three awards, the best haul for a traditional boxed console game.

So if you're thinking this might have been a different Video Game Awards, in its 10th year, you're probably right. Had the show given more attention to that purpose—only a handful of these awards were actually presented in the broadcast—we might be pondering it as a landmark year. The VGAs are often accused of being an industry popularity contest, but maybe this year they acquired recognizable critical heft. We'll have to see what happens next year, and the year after.

So here are the 25 winners of the 2012 Video Game Awards, plus the Game of the Decade. Two fan-voted awards gave Character of the Year to Claptrap from Borderlands 2, and Most Anticipated Game to Grand Theft Auto V.

Game of the Year

The Walking Dead: The Game

Telltale Games

Also nominated: Assassin's Creed III, Dishonored, Journey, Mass Effect 3

Studio of the Year

Telltale Games

Also nominated: 343 Industries, Arkane Studios, Gearbox Software

Best Xbox 360 Game

Halo 4

Microsoft Studios/343 Industries

Also nominated: Assassin's Creed III, Borderlands 2, Dishonored

Best PS3 Game

Journey

Sony Computer Entertainment/thatgamecompany

Also nominated: Assassin's Creed III, Borderlands 2, Dishonored

Best Wii/Wii U Game

New Super Mario Bros. U

Nintendo

Also nominated: The Last Story, Xenoblade Chronicles, ZombiU

Best PC Game

XCOM: Enemy Unknown

2K Games/Firaxis Games

Also nominated: Diablo III, Guild Wars 2, Torchlight II

Best Shooter

Borderlands 2

2K Games/Gearbox Software

Also nominated: Call of Duty: Black Ops II, Halo 4, Max Payne 3

Best Action-Adventure Game

Dishonored

Bethesda Softworks/Arkane Studios

Also nominated: Assassin's Creed III, Darksiders II, Sleeping Dogs

Best Role-Playing Game

Mass Effect 3

Electronic Arts/BioWare

Also nominated: Diablo III, Torchlight II, Xenoblade Chronicles

Best Multiplayer Game

Borderlands 2

2K Games/Gearbox Software

Also nominated: Call of Duty: Black Ops II, Guild Wars 2, Halo 4

Best Individual Sports Game

SSX

Electronic Arts/EA Canada

Also nominated: Hot Shots Golf World Invitational, Tiger Woods PGA Tour 13, WWE '13

Best Team Sports Game

NBA 2K13

2K Sports/Visual Concepts

Also nominated: FIFA 13, Madden NFL 13, NHL 13

Best Driving Game

Need For Speed: Most Wanted

Electronic Arts/Criterion Games

Also nominated: Dirt: Showdown, F1 2012, Forza Horizon

Best Song in a Game

"Cities" (Beck) for Sound Shapes

Also nominated: "Castle of Glass" (Linkin Park for Medal of Honor: Warfighter); "I Was Born for This" (Austin Wintory for Journey); "Tears" (Health for Max Payne 3)

Best Original Score

Journey

Sony Computer Entertainment/thatgamecompany

Also nominated: Call of Duty: Black Ops II, Halo 4, Max Payne 3.

Best Graphics

Halo 4

Microsoft Studios/343 Industries

Also nominated: Assassin's Creed III, Dishonored, Journey

Best Independent Game

Journey

thatgamecompany

Also nominated: Dust: An Elysian Tail, Fez, Mark of the Ninja

Best Fighting Game

Persona 4 Arena

Atlus/Arc System Works/Atlus

Also nominated: Dead or Alive 5, Street Fighter X Tekken, Tekken Tag Tournament 2

Best Handheld/Mobile Game

Sound Shapes

Sony Computer Entertainment/Queasy Games

Also nominated: Gravity Rush, LittleBigPlanet (PS Vita), New Super Mario Bros 2

Best Performance by a Human Female

Melissa Hutchison for The Walking Dead: The Game

Also nominated: Emma Stone for Sleeping Dogs; Jen Taylor for Halo 4; Jennifer Hale for Mass Effect 3

Best Performance by a Human Male

Dameon Clark for Borderlands 2

Also nominated: Dave Fennoy for The Walking Dead: The Game; James McCaffrey for Max Payne 3; Nolan North for Spec Ops: The Line

Best Adapted Video Game

The Walking Dead: The Game

Telltale Games

Also nominated: Disney Epic Mickey 2: The Power of Two, LEGO Batman 2: DC Super Heroes, Transformers: Fall of Cybertron

Best Downloadable Content

Dawnguard for The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim

Bethesda Softworks/Bethesda Game Studios

Also nominated: Leviathan for Mass Effect 3; Mechromancer Pack for Borderlands 2; Perpetual Testing Initiative for Portal 2

Best Downloadable Game

The Walking Dead: The Game

Telltale Games

Also nominated: Fez, Journey, Sound Shapes

Best Social Game

You Don't Know Jack

Jellyvision Games

Also nominated: Draw Something, Marvel: Avengers Alliance, SimCity Social

Game of the Decade

Half Life 2

Valve Corporation

Also nominated: Batman: Arkham City, BioShock, The Legend of Zelda: The Wind Waker, Mass Effect 2, Portal, Red Dead Redemption, Shadow of the Colossus, Wii Sports, World of Warcraft

At the 2012 Video Game Awards, Ken Levine of Irrational Games previewed the latest trailer from BioShock Infinite, which is now releasing on March 26. This appears to be entirely in-game footage, with 75 seconds of that being straight gameplay and not cinematics.

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BioShock Infinite: VGAs Trailer

We hear all the time that video games are a young medium, that they've still got so much untapped potential to wow us in unique and meaningful ways. And while it may seem like it's been just another 12 months of sequels, remakes and disappointment, there have been signs that video games are maturing. Some of those baby teeth are shaking loose.

Video games probably made more people than ever cry this year, for whatever that's worth. Experiences like Journey made players connect with each other in memorably profound ways. Meanwhile, Thomas Was Alone drew on nostalgia, great platform puzzle mechanics and retro styling to comment on what it means to make something. Thomas wasn't alone in that regard, either. Titles as varied as Dear Esther, Little Inferno and The Unfinished Swan offered their own little windows into human nature.

So, yes, there may still be a few pimples on video games' collective face. But the games and events below are evidence that its voice is changing and getting deeper, too.

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Assassin's Creed III's take on history

Ubisoft's threequel wasn't without its flaws. But one of its biggest successes was in its meticulously researched and well-delivered portrayal of Native Americans, arguably amongst the best in any medium. Not only that, ACIII's creators made a game about the American Revolution that didn't make George Washington and his fellow patriots look like saints. The ambiguous treatment given to the politics of the time resisted the easy trap of flag-waving, making Assassin's Creed III feel like a step forward in how games can look at history.

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Miiverse's social optimism

A year ago, it would've sounded like the most naïve kind of pipe dream: a virtual gathering place on a game console where people were helpful and, shocker, even polite to each other. But, barely a month into its lifespan, the Wii U's Miiverse has players offering each other tips, sharing fun doodles and, in general, exhibiting behavior in line with the golden rule. Maybe it's because it's a neophyte community of owners who want a new console to succeed. Or maybe it's simply because it's from Nintendo, a company that sees spreading fun as a holy mission. Things may yet change but for now Miiverse seems like an oasis from the slur-happy, cynically dismissive interactions that gamers endure when they come together online.

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Papo & Yo's magical memoir realism

Games have drawn from the lives of their creators before, but none as explicitly and poignantly as Minority Media's Papo & Yo. Based on studio head Vander Caballero's life, the PS3 exclusive functioned as a playable diary of what it was like to grow up inside an abusive relationship. Caballero and his team drew on his painful experiences with his alcoholic father and layered them with a thick slather of magical realism and whimsy. The result? A game that shows how joy and crisis can be irrevocably intertwined, while reminding us that we have the strength to embrace or jettison what we need to make it through.

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Anna Anthropy's anyone-can-do-it manifesto

This year saw the continued diminishment of major corporations' domination of the creation of popular video games. The tools to make and distribute games are cheaper than ever, which, as Anna Anthropy celebrates in her book, Rise of the Videogame Zinesters, broadens the pool of people making games and thus the themes that games are about. All of this portends a more thematically diverse array of video games in the future.

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Spec Ops: the Line's inglorious battlefields

For all the body counts that a player racks up in an average shooter, those games' characters don't show much in the way of psychological repercussions from all that killing. Spec Ops: The Line distinguished itself from 2012's other shooters by exploring the grey areas between duty and survival. At the end of it all, you didn't feel all-powerful or even like you always did the right thing. You just felt wrung out. A lot more like real war—and real life—than other action games.

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Journey's quiet co-operation

Take out the screaming, k/d comparisons and dog-eat-dog mindset from an online game. What are you left with? In the case of thatgameompany's Journey, something pretty damn special. Journey players didn't have to help each other reach that mysterious peak in the distance but, when they did, they learned a little bit about the nameless, faceless strangers who traveled with them and a lot about themselves.

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Wreck-It Ralph's love letter to video games

Not only did the folks at Disney get the appeal of video games right, they nailed it in two distinct ways. First was the creation of made-up game characters and franchises that felt lived in enough to have possibly existed. And, trickier than that, Wreck-It Ralph integrated actual game icons in ways that made them feel like more than just cheap punchlines. Kids got to bathe in a recreation of the thrill they feel when playing games and grown-up gamers got a well-crafted reminder of why they kept on pressing buttons even when it wasn't cool.

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The Walking Dead's harrowing take on survival

The zombie apocalypse presented in Telltale's games wasn't the wacky kind of romp you get in a Dead Rising game. No, in the spin-off of the popular comics series, players were confronted by gut-wrenching choices that made them think long and hard about what to sacrifice. Then you had to live with the consequences of those choices. The Walking Dead was fun only in a self-flagellating way but it did what great artistic creations do: make up a reality that illuminates the ugliness and beauty of how we live in this one.

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Australia's R18+ rating

Fallout 3. Left 4 Dead 2. Mortal Kombat. For all too long, the list of titles turned away from gamers Down Under included some of the most anticipated releases of the year. Could Australians still get those games? Sure, they could. But the process was made all the more annoying by the lack of a mature rating for video games in the sprawling country. So, when the R18+ classification became law this year, you could hear the sigh of relief all around the world. Video games haven't been kids' stuff for a long time and the Australian government finally decided to acknowledge that fact.

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Have some evidence of your own that video games did some maturing in 2012? Share your images, thoughts and videos in the comments below.

Here's what we know about BioShock Vita: Ken Levine announced it was a thing during last year's E3, and planned as an entirely new universe. Not a port, but they might need outside developer support on it.

What we don't know if it's actually going to be made. In the video above, you'll see Irrational Games' creative director speaking with Machinima about the potential Vita title. He explains that the fate of the Vita title is now outside of his hands, and up to the business minds at Sony and Take-Two.

Levine told Eurogamer something similar, adding that he's still interested in making it happen so long as the two companies can iron out the details.