Journey is a beautiful game. The ending was equally beautiful, but also sad and heartwarming somehow all at the same time.

But this alternate ending? This alternate ending is something else.

Sometimes it seems as if the end-all-be-all metric we use to determine if we will purchase something is "fun." In actuality, there are things about a game that might make someone think twice about purchasing it—and they have nothing to do with how the game plays or how fun it is.

Recently I noticed a lot of talk on Twitter about Far Cry 3, and how some people didn't feel comfortable about how it depicted race. Some of these folks were declaring that they wouldn't purchase the game for that reason, though they admitted that the game otherwise looked good.

As you might know, the premise of Far Cry 3 sees a group of white kids partying on an island, when suddenly things turn bad—and that's not just because pirates take them captive.

John Walker delves into the issue of race a bit over at Rock, Paper, Shotgun.

Because Far Cry 3, well, it's a bit racist, isn't it?

I said, rather flippantly, that the people of this island are the race they are, because it's the island they're native to. It is what it is, essentially. And that's the case – that's really not the issue here. It had to be set somewhere. The issue is the horribly worn tropes it so lazily kicks around when it gets there. As it is, you have the simple-folk-natives, and the immigrant white men with their mixture of South African and Australian accents. And one black guy. White people ask you to get involved in enormously elaborate machinations, ancient mysteries, and local politics. Locals ask you to help them kill endangered species, find their missing daughters, and point out when their husbands are gay. Essentially, the locals behave as if they're helpless without you, but when you wield their tattoo-based magical powers then true greatness appears. And it's here that the problems really kick in.

There's a term for it. It's "Noble Savage". And it also falls under the remit of the "Magical Negro". The trope is that the non-white character possesses mystical insight, magical abilities, or simply a wisdom derived from such a ‘simple life', that can enlighten the white man. And it's pretty icky. The premise relies on the belief that the individual's race is in some way debilitating, something their noble/mystical abilities are able to ‘overcome'.

Walker doesn't think the "spoilt rich white kids having their worlds fall apart" is a bad thing, and he talks about this a little between both of his pieces on Far Cry 3.

Still, this got me thinking: what does a game have to do to make someone reconsider buying it? Ideological things that trump fun, I mean.

I decided to ask Twitter. Here's what they said.

And now I must ask you, dear Kotaku readers: what sorts of things will cause you to boycott a game, and why? Should this ideological stuff matter at all when you're making a purchase?

ChefVille and Cafe World already share plenty of traits due to the simple fact that they're both Facebook cooking games. But the former retained a limitation from Cafe World that should have been scrapped: a counter limit. Instead or removing this limit entirely, allowing players to cook as many dishes as they'd like without waiting for counters to clear, Zynga has instead released a new kind of spice called Rapid Rosemary. We're here with a look at the game's four Rapid Rosemary quests, thanks in part to Zynga.

Make Room for Dishes
• Place Rapid Rosemary Crates
• Complete Rapid Rosemary Crates
• Tend Rapid Rosemary Crates 1 Time

The Rapid Rosemary Crate can be placed for free via this first quest, and it requires three energy to unwrap. After that, you'll need to collect seven Herb Pots via a general news post on your wall and seven Watering Cans via individual requests sent to your neighbors. To make faster progress, you should try to play the game on Zynga.com before making any news posts, as this will allow you help from strangers as well as friends. For the record, you can collect from the Rapid Rosemary Crate once every six hours until it runs dry. When you complete this first quest, you'll receive two Asparagus, five XP and 15 coins.

Crusts are in Right Now
• Get 8 Herb Baskets
• Serve 4 Calzones from the Brick Oven
• Use 1 Rapid Rosemary!

The Herb Baskets can be earned by posting a general news post to your feed. Meanwhile, the Calzones can be cooked in the Brick Oven using one Tomato Sauce, one Dough and one Mozzarella Cheese each. Once a dish is on a serving counter, you can simply click on it to be given the option of using a Rapid Rosemary. Rapid Rosemary will clear the dish away, and you'll receive double the coin payout when you use one. When you finish this second quest, you'll receive two Eggs, 10 XP and 15 coins.

Salad Days
• Cook 8 Times with Salt
• Craft Ranch Dressing 5 Times
• Cook 7 Caprese Salads

A single Caprese Salad requires five Tomatoes, two Pepper and one Mozzarella to cook, and the recipe takes five minutes to finish. As for the Ranch Dressing, a single batch can be prepared on the Mixer using two Milk, four Onions and two Garlic. Each preparation of the Ranch Dressing takes 10 minutes to finish. Completing this quest gives you a One-Hour Thyme, 10 XP and 15 coins.

Flavor Facade
• Cook 3 Meatball Sandwiches
• Complete 5 Neighbor Visits
• Gift 15 Chef's Services

The Meatball Sandwiches are prepared on the Grill using five Sirloin Beef and one Tomato Sauce each. Unfortunately, the dish takes a full 16 hours to cook, but you should be able to cancel the cooking and start over instantly to still earn credit. If not, make sure to use both of your Grills to finish this task faster. For completing this final quest, you'll receive an additional Pasta Maker for your restaurant, along with 10 XP and 15 coins. You'll only have eight days to finish these quests before they expire, so get to cookin' ASAP.

Play ChefVille on Zynga.com Now >

More ChefVille Coverage from Games.com

• One for the Kiddies Catering Order
• The Cheese Cache Quests Guide
• Soiree Sashay Quests Guide

What do you think of the new Rapid Rosemary in ChefVille? Do you see yourself spending real money on this spice in the future, or will you just use it when you earn some for free? Sound off in the Games.com comments!

Republished with permission from:
Brandy Shaul is an editor at Games.com

Announced today during a Nintendo Direct broadcast, Game & Wario bundles together 16 mini-games where players with the Wii U gamepad and Wimotes will compete against each other. One game called Fruits will have players stealing edibles while the others try to catch him. In the video above, Nintendo president Satoru Iwata snatches an apple and challenges you to spot him. Who figured it out?

Untethered to any movies, comics or TV shows, the Wii U's Lego City Undercover will be -gasp- an entirely original Lego game from Traveller's Tales and Nintendo. We saw it at E3 and today we've got a new look at it. Pretty nice, huh? It's slated for an early 2013 release, though it's unclear if that means it will still be released in the system's "launch window", which ends at the end of March.

The rhythmic combat game HarmoKnight will be coming to the 3DS in North America "soon," Nintendo said today. The most interesting thing about the game? It's the first non-Pokémon game that Pokémon creators GameFreak have made since Drilldozer on the Game Boy Advance.

The game was released in Japan this past fall. See it in action here.

In today's Nintendo Direct, a release timeframe of Q2 2013 for Pikmin 3. During the broadcast, viewers got a look at the in-progress version of the latest entry of the strategy action franchise.

The sequences showed Captain Olimar and a troop of Pikmin wandering through lush garden environments, battling with a giant crab enemy. From there, nocturnal levels were shown where fiery threats and bioluminescent creatures showed off atmospheric lighting.

Eurogamer reports that a new installment of single-player content is being made for Mass Effect 3.

The add-on is being crafted at BioWare Edmonton—as opposed to BioWare's new Montreal studio, where the Omega DLC was created—with all the writers who worked on Mass Effect 3 coming back.

A post by designer Jos Hendriks on BioWare's forums calls the new DLC an "all hands on deck" affair and tweets from various talent who've had a hand in BioWare's sci-fi series make it seem like this new chapter will be a big one.

'Tis the season for snowball fights, at least if you're lucky enough to live in a part of the world that gets below freezing. Grab some friends, put on your snow-pants, ball up some icy white residue from the sidewalk, and let it fly.

Video games have a history of great snowball fights, and Uppercut Games' SnowJinks hops on that bandwagon with goofy gusto. It's a simple action game for iOS devices that works a bit like the Xbox game Gears of War, but with kids, and snowballs.

Each level is something of a shooting gallery, where your character, a rapscallionish boy or girl in snow gear, rolls up on a whole gang of neighborhood kids determined to take him or her down. They'll shellack you with snow, ice, hose-water, and hailstones, and you'll have to quickly duck and roll behind cover while picking them off one by one. As you progress, the kids get tougher to take down, and come up with all sorts of ways of driving you from cover.

The game is a juggling act where you'll constantly be shifting between ducking, dodging, and shooting, and it all comes together very well. It helps that SnowJinks looks great—it's another bright, colorful iOS game based on the Unreal engine (a version of the same engine, as it happens, that powers Gears of War). The bobbing camera, cartoonish colors and smooth animations make this one of the better looking games on iOS, and it looked particularly nice on my iPhone 5's high-res screen.

By the fourth or fifth level, you'll find yourself frantically timing your shots to take down an ever-more-complex array of foes, from fast-moving dodgers to icecube-chuckers who take cover to the dreaded water-hose kids, who will freeze you in their tracks if they hit you. There are a bunch of levels to work through, and of course, your scores will be posted on leaderboards so you can compete with your Gamecenter friends.

SnowJinks has a holiday theme, and the levels are also populated with gifts that pop up—if you shoot them, you'll get a bonus item, like a quick health boost or a powerful fireball to throw. Health boosts in particular are very useful, as you'll only get one health bar for each full round. Die and you'll have to start all over again. You can also tap on coins that pop up all over the levels, and if you earn enough you can spend them to unlock different outfits and snowball-types to use, as well as make the present power-ups in the game more powerful.

SnowJinks is a frantic and addictive cover-based shooter that just happens to feature little kids throwing snowballs. And hey, after you're done playing, you won't have to shake the snow out of your pants.

SnowJinks [App Store, $0.99]

It's Game of the Year season. You'll be seeing lots of people name their Best Video Game, Best PC Game, Best Xbox 360 Game, Best Shooter, Best Fighting Game, Best, Best, Best...

And yet I can tell you right now that some games that deserve recognition won't win anyone else's awards, because they don't fit. We're going to prevent that problem, you and I, by creating all sorts of new categories that our favorite games of 2012 can win.

Join me, starting with...

Best Game That Lets You Teach a Rabbit How To Act As Well As How To Trick Shoppers Into Buying Stuff They Don't Need

The winner...

Professor Layton and the Miracle Mask. By a nose!

WHY: The new Layton doesn't just let you solve puzzles in order to solve mysteries as the esteemed Prof. Layton (plus minions). It also gives you access to a variety of nutty side games. There's a little side adventure that involves you guiding of a toy robot through a dangerous land. That would be other games' odd side mode. In Layton, that's playing it stupidly safe. In this game there's a mode in which you select a cute bunny rabbit, teach it new poses and then have to figure out which of those poses it should strike while it is on stage "acting" in a series of plays. You are graded on the quality of the bunny's acting.

And then there's the amazing I-think-there's-a-hidden-message-here shopping mini-game that straight-up requires you to up-sell shoppers and trick them into buying stuff they don't need. It goes like this: here are a variety of, say, fruits. Put them on a store shelf in such a way that the item the shopper comes into the store to buy is similar to the one next to it, in the hope that shopper will buy the one next to it, too; then line up a third item that is similar to the second item so that they impulse-buy that. They came in for a red apple? Put a yellow apple next to that, a banana next to yellow apple, etc. This will fool them into buying all three pieces of fruit. But don't line this stuff up in such a way that the shopper will see two appealing things at once because that will make them think about their purchases and bail. No, line these things up in such a way that they fall for each product in succession and clear the store of all its stuff. Wow! Is Layton also our Satirical Game of the Year??

Professor Layton and the Miracle Mask gets the first nod. Please give out some more awards below.

(We'll be doling out some more traditional awards in the weeks to come. Don't worry!)