Zac Gorman's been doing video game-centric comics for Kotaku for the better part of a year now. He's riffed on everything from Dishonored's stealth to what makes people jealous in Journey. So, it's only fitting that he lets everybody know what his favorite playable experiences from the last twelve months were. It's an eclectic—and damn pretty—list.

Want to see more of Zac's work? Head over to his personal blog and game-themed site Magical Game Time. If you're feeling commercial, you can buy prints and shirts here. He'll be back on Kotaku with a new comic same time next month!

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Sorry about the lack of quantity this week. Like the rest of us, cosplayers are on holiday too! Luckily, those that have been sticking with it and uploading new images have been knocking it out of the park.

As seen on LexiStrife.
As seen on DeadlyNinja.
As seen on Sweet-Empathy.
As seen on naokunn.
As seen on vaxzone.
As seen on PedroTpredator.
As seen on xAtashix.
As seen on Ryoko-demon.
As seen on TixieLix.
As seen on Torremitsu.
As seen on xRikku-chanx.

Comic artist Tyler Kirkham took website CBR behind the scenes of his home/workplace the other day. There were pencils, couches, posters, bookshelves and... oh, yeah, an enormous customised Skyrim-themed dungeon.

You'll have to scroll a fair way down in this gallery to hit the basement, but once you do, you'll know it. Just look for the objective marker.

NOTE: One of our readers pointed out that Kotaku has already posted about the basement mentioned in this story, back in October. That's correct! However, since then, new shots have been published in the original Bethesda forums thread where the photos originate from—hence the current post.

Shelf Porn Saturday | See where Tyler Kirkham works and plays [CBR, thanks Rick!]

That's a question PC Gamer asked themselves over the course of the last week, re-imagining 2012 blockbusters like Mass Effect 3, Far Cry 3 and Assassin's Creed III as primitive text-based adventure games.

The results are sometimes funny, sometimes cutting, and quite often both.

You can read through four of them below.

The Text Adventures That Never Were: Far Cry 3 [PC Gamer]
The Text Adventures That Never Were: Assassin's Creed III [PC Gamer]
The Text Adventures That Never Were: Mass Effect 3 [PC Gamer]
The Text Adventures That Never Were: Hotline Miami [PC Gamer]

Over the past week, hackers have made substantial progress in their efforts to hack Nintendo's 3DS handheld. While, yes, this will have negative consequences for things like piracy, I'd like to think you, dear reader, can see the more practical benefits of getting under the system's skin.

Like getting around the 3DS' region locks for game cartridges.

Hacker Neimod claims to have got "full control" of the 3DS via kernel mode, with one of the benefits of this being able to run a game from any region on any region's handheld.

This is important to those importing games, as well as those who'd like to get a 3DS in a fancy colour scheme that's not yet available in their region.

Nintendo will of course fight moves like this every step of the way, but if you're a regular Joe who would only use this kind of thing to give Nintendo more money, I wouldn't let your conscience weigh you down too heavily if you're excited for this progress.

More Nintendo 3DS hacking progress [Tiny Cartridge]

Still regarded as one of the finest strategy games ever made, Ensemble's 1999 classic Age of Kings has long been dead as far as publisher Microsoft is concerned.

As far as fans are concerned, though, it's all stations go, as a new expansion called Forgotten Empires has just been released, which introduces new campaigns, maps, units and entire civilizations, like the Magyars, Incas and Italians.

You can grab it at the link below.

Forgotten Empires [Site, via Reddit]

Seeing as I post a Fine Art feature almost every day, it's only right that we take a minute to honour some of the best concept, production and promotional art the world got a chance to see in 2012.

Due to the nature of the field—one in which art can be locked away for years—and also the fact I often share images from older games, I'm not going to simply post the best art (both concept and promotional) that's appeared here in 2012, because it's been from all over the place. Nor am I going to assume to be posting the best images drawn in 2012 because, as explained above, most of those are probably still under lock and key for a few years.

So I'm going to post the best pieces of art for games that came out in 2012. That seems the most fair!

The gallery above features art from games like Mass Effect 3, Syndicate, Assassin's Creed III, Halo 4 and Guild Wars 2, just to name a few. I've only selected one piece from each game; the links to the credited artists in the gallery will take you to a lot more.

Assassin's Creed III, by Remko Troost.
Diablo III, by Duncan Fegredo.
Dishonored, by Sergey Kolesov.
A Game of Thrones, by Cyril Tahmassebi.
Guild Wars II, by Daniel Dociu.
Halo 4, by John Liberto.
Hawken, by Khang Le.
Mass Effect 3, by Matt Rhodes.
Syndicate, by Brad Wright.
XCOM, by Piero Macgowan.
ZombiU, by Morgan Yon.

They're from ThreeA, so your loved ones will need the time to save up, but look at them. They'll be worth it.

We've seen these before in their unpainted prototype state, but these painted models are just to die for.

Still no word on a release date or price.

ThreeA x VALVe Portal [ThreeA]

There was, once upon a time, a serious plan to bring a Metroid movie to the silver screen. With John Woo directing. Seemed like a good idea at the time, but various things conspired to sink the project, chief among them Nintendo itself.

As former producer Brad Foxhoven tells IGN, while Nintendo at first surprisingly gave its blessing to the project—being big John Woo fans, apparently—the company was also aware of how badly it could be burned when Hollywood takes liberties with its characters.

"Nintendo was definitely discouraged by [Super Mario Bros.], but felt that with John [Woo] they would be in better hands," Foxhoven told IGN. "The challenge for us was that it felt that the biggest lesson Nintendo learned from Mario was to hold onto their rights even tighter, limiting collaboration when it came to translating Metroid to the big screen. Our entire development time was spent exploring the Metroid world, and what we could—and couldn't—do within it."

The biggest of these problems concerned Samus' back-story, which the producers would need to explore if they were making a movie about her. "What are they doing when they are NOT fighting? What is their daily existence and relationships?", he adds. "What are Samus's aspirations, history, and fears? Nintendo appreciated the questions, but had never thought about them before, and ultimately didn't have a lot of answers. In the end, they felt uncomfortable with our team being the ones to propose those answers."

The Metroid movie project eventually fell apart in 2007, with Nintendo and Team Ninja doing their own Samus back-story in Metroid: Other M for the Wii.

Whatever Happened to the Metroid Movie? [IGN]

NBA Live 10 is one of six EA Sports titles that will lose online support on Jan. 11., according to a notice from Electronic Arts. While retiring online features for sports titles more than a year old is not uncommon for any sports publisher, killing multiplayer support for NBA Live 10, which released in 2009, is noteworthy as it symbolically means the end of any professional basketball simulation offered by EA Sports.

A scan of NBA Live's multiplayer community on PlayStation 3 just before publication showed 377 online and 36 playing a game in progress.

NBA Live 10 released in October 2009, and when EA Sports' NBA Elite reboot failed to launch in 2010, the label still kept the game active and offered roster updates for that season. EA Sports moved its NBA development to Florida following the NBA Elite 11 debacle, and then sat out 2011, a year that opened with the league's owners locking out the players and canceling two months' worth of games.

EA Sports intended to deliver a reconstituted NBA Live 13 as a downloadable title this year but failed to meet that goal. In September, it canceled the game and put NBA Live off until next year, if it even releases then.

No EA Sports NBA product has appeared on retail shelves since 2010's NBA Jam, which released for the Wii in October and was later hustled into service for the Xbox 360 and PS3 to cover for Live/Elite's absence. NBA Jam's 2010 retail release also is affected by the server shutdown, and will lose online support on the same day, Jan 11, 2013.

Other EA Sports games affected include FIFA 11, NHL 11, Madden NFL 11 and NCAA Football 11, all released in 2010.

Online Service Updates [Electronic Arts]