World maps in video games are usually pretty great. We love world maps! You can use them to track the results of your progression through some grand adventure as new locations become accesible and your control over the world grows. A well-crafted world map in any game is always a sign of high quality.

Plus, many world maps are gorgeous.

We collected some of the most atmospheric and good-looking world maps. Careful, though, mild spoilers abound.

El Nido In Chrono Cross

source: Chronopedia

Dragon Quest V for the Nintendo DS

source: Realmofdarkness.net

Ivalice In Final Fantasy Tactics

source: Final Fantasy Wiki

The Northern Kremisphere In Donkey Kong Country 3

source: Suppermariobroth

Moonstone

source: SignificantBits

The Sword Coast In Baldur's Gate

source: Mike's RPG Center

Gaia In Final Fantasy VII

source: FuzzFinger's longplay

The Island Of Panau In Just Cause 2

source: Maplib

Simon The Sorcerer 2: The Lion, The Wizard And The Wardrobe

source: VGMaps

Skies Of Arcadia

source: Let's Play Archive

The Legend Of Zelda: Link's Awakening DX for the Gameboy Color

source: Link's Hideaway

Fez

source: NeoGAF

New Super Mario Bros U

source: Nintendonerds

Ni No Kuni: Wrath Of The White Witch

source: E3 2012 Trailer [YouTube]

Onett During The Day In Earthbound

Not necessarily a world map, but when you look at it zoomed out, you get the same feeling.
source: Starmen.net

The latest update for DOTA 2's beta now delivers a "Least Played" mode, which will match players who are forced to use characters other the 20 that have given them the most wins. It's meant to get players in the game's closed beta to explore the game's full roster, which now runs 96 character deep.

"Least Played" enforces the top-20 restriction on all sides, so everyone is playing outside of his or her comfort zone, too. "Having an even playing field for everyone in the match will hopefully encourage players to break out of their comfort zone and try new heroes," Valve said on the Dota blog.

More than 3 million are currently participating in the beta; the post said that DOTA 2 has seen more than 100,000 games played so far.

Hello? Is this on? [Dota 2 Official Blog]

Remember last year's super catchy tune, Thrift Shop? It was by Macklemore and Ryan Lewis, and it was about the joys of being a thrifty shopper with a whole lot of swag. Here's a parody of that music video by IGN, only about used video games instead.

For comparison's sake, the original song:

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Great, now I'm gonna have this stuck in my head all day.

Macklemore Thrift Shop "Game Shop" Parody [IGN]

Swapping colorful objects to create rows of three or more is about as simple as a puzzle game can get. After years of playing titles like Bejeweled and Candy Crush Saga, seeing the patterns that make the best matches is almost second nature to me. Match-three games have become a mindless relaxing pursuit. Then came CocoaChina's 7 Elements, changing everything by adding two more fingers to the mix.

With its crisp, polished visuals and familiar layout, it's easy to mistake 7 Elements for another gem-matching game of the 'blitz' variety, giving players a limited amount of time to rack up as many points as they can. At a base level that's exactly what it is.

The best match-three games spice up the basic formula with a healthy dose of spectacle, and 7 Elements certainly delivers on that front. Each of the seven pieces on the playfield represent a different element — wind, water, plants, earth, electricity, fire and gold (it's on the periodic table so it counts). Matching four or more of any of these creates a larger piece which activates a power when grouped. Water cascades down in a line, washing away the pieces beneath it. Trees send out piece-eating roots in every direction. Fire shoots up in a column. Gold, the most important element, drops coins that can be used to purchase power-ups between rounds.

Match fast and frequently enough and the frenzy meter fills, launching into a score doubling special mode, lighting up the screen.

Frenzy Mode took me completely by surprise while recording this video, because playing 7 Elements in a fast and furious fashion isn't easy, at least not without a lot of practice. I've been conditioned to move one match-three piece at a time.

7 Elements lets me move three pieces at a time.

It took some major concentration to wrap my brain around the concept. Initially every move I made was immediately followed by a vulgar expletive as I realized the ten better moves I could have made had I just set the iPad down and used all three digits. My mind was still searching for opportunities to match five pieces, blanking on the opportunities to match seven or more.

The first day I played 7 Elements I ran myself ragged trying to recognize new patterns and spot new opportunities. I worked my brain so hard I actually got a headache. The more I played the easier it got. Soon I was moving fast enough to get that fever mode going. My score grows, my skill grows, and those regular puzzle games lose their charm with every massive match made.

Civilization creator Sid Meier once famously said that a game is "a series of interesting decisions."

Final Fantasy All The Bravest, a new game that came out for iOS on Thursday, has one interesting decision: How much money would you like to give Square Enix?

All The Bravest, a series of micro-transactions disguised as a video game, tasks you with swiping your finger up and down a screen as Final Fantasy characters jump and attack Final Fantasy villains on Final Fantasy backgrounds while listening to Final Fantasy music. It's kind of fun, in that "I don't know why I'm doing this but it's kind of compelling for some reason" sort of way.

It's also less of a video game and more of a massive middle finger to fans. It should really be called "Final Fantasy Fuck You Give Us Money." I can forgive the premium purchases: you can buy new maps for $3.99 each, which is fine, and you can buy 16-bit Final Fantasy characters for $0.99 each, except they're totally random and you don't know which one you're going to get, which is weird, but also generally an okay form of downloadable content.

No, the biggest problem in Final Fantasy All The Bravest is that when you die in battle—which will happen often, because battles are totally random and there's no way to heal, buff, target enemies, or do anything except swipe your finger up and down as your characters furiously attack—you have to either wait for your characters to revive (three minutes per character, or up to two hours), exit the battle and try again (pointless, since again, there's no strategy), or pay Square Enix real money to revive your party.

Let me repeat that: in order to make progress in the game you just spent $4 to buy, you have to pay more money to Square Enix.

I can only imagine the English translators at Square Enix hearing about this, sighing, shaking their heads, and wondering if anyone will ever get to enjoy their work—which was stellar. Probably not. It's hard to play this game without getting angry.

But Final Fantasy All The Bravest is not an anomaly. This betrayal is nothing new. Square has spent the past half-decade picking away at our passion for their ubiquitous, once-beloved series. All The Bravest is just another limb rotting off the bloated, mangled corpse that was once Final Fantasy.

As someone who grew up with the adventures of Cecil and Terra, I find it depressing to even write, but here we are. It's 2013, and Final Fantasy is on its last legs. The 25-year-old RPG series is a shell of its former self. When we see a new Final Fantasy game, our first reaction is no longer "awesome!"—it is "shit, how are they going to ruin my childhood next?" I've written before about some of the problems facing Final Fantasy, and even drawn up wish lists of things I'd like to see Square Enix try to do, but All The Bravest is yet another piece of disturbing evidence that this company no longer cares about its fans.

It's easy to pinpoint exactly when Final Fantasy started to die. In 2001, not long after the cinematic financial disaster known as Spirits Within, series creator Hironobu Sakaguchi left the company to go off to Hawaii and surf and make games where you surf. A couple years later, Square merged with Enix, and it's all been downhill from there, especially for Final Fantasy, which has had to stumble through a series of awful missteps over the past few years.

Final Fantasy XIII was loved by some but hated by many more, Final Fantasy XIV was an unequivocal disaster, and many of Square's other decisions are totally baffling. Why make a sequel to FFXIII, a game that sold well but may have irrevocably damaged this brand forever? Why make yet another sequel to that? Why dedicate so many of your resources to an MMORPG in an age where MMORPGs are all slowly eroding, or going free-to-play when they realize they can't survive on the traditional subscription model anymore? Why make a direct sequel to Final Fantasy IV that does nothing but directly reuse FFIV's images and storylines? Why release a Final Fantasy game without any sound? Why force us to pay so much money for mobile Final Fantasy games?

Well, I guess we know the answer to that one. Cash. Delicious, delicious money that pleases Square's stockholders even as it ostracizes the company's biggest fans. Final Fantasy All The Bravest is currently sitting at #25 on the iTunes top 100 list for paid apps. Sickening. I wonder how many people regret that purchase?

So what's next for Final Fantasy? On the horizon we have Lightning Returns: Final Fantasy XIII, a game that continues a story that nobody really cares about. There's Final Fantasy Versus XIII, a game that may or may not actually exist. And then what? Does anybody really trust Square Enix to make another great console RPG? Why does the thought of a Final Fantasy XV fill me with more dread than excitement?

I don't know what the next generation will bring for Final Fantasy, a series I could once rank among my favorite. And nothing will ever diminish or erase my fond memories of sneaking through South Figaro to figure out what the Empire is planning, fighting my way to the moon to take down Zeromus, and getting the CROWN to trade for the HERB to trade for the CRYSTAL to get the KEY to find the TNT that would let me explore the world. Even today, I can replay old Final Fantasy games and have a blast doing it.

But it's time for fans like you and me to accept that Final Fantasy isn't Final Fantasy anymore. The series we once knew and loved is never coming back. We'll have to satiate our craving for great JRPGs elsewhere—and they are still elsewhere! By the end of February, we'll have Ni no Kuni, Fire Emblem: Awakening, and Etrian Odyssey IV, among others—not a bad haul for the first two months of 2013. But our love for Final Fantasy is unrequited. The series has been dying for years now, and money-mongering bullshit like Final Fantasy All The Bravest is a reminder of that.

Final Fantasy might not be dead yet. But it will never be the same.

Random Encounters is a weekly column dedicated to all things JRPG. It runs every Friday at 3pm ET.

Glee made its name on enthusiastic unoriginality. The hit TV show, in which high school teens sing syrupy-sweet covers of famous pop tunes, has never really relied on new musical material. But the cover arrangements on the show are often very original—smart, interesting reharmonizations and mash-ups that often make even the tiredest pop tunes sound fresh.

However, with one of their arrangements for next week's episode, Glee appears to have flagrantly stolen an arrangement from geeky songwriter Jonathan Coulton.

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Coulton, well-known for his now-classic video game anthem "Still Alive" from the game Portal (as well as for performing on our roof deck that one time), tweeted about the song this morning: