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This year has been pretty amazing in terms of cinematic experiences for geeks and gamers. The Avengers was an epic melee of classic one-liners and superhero action, The Dark Knight Rises was a sound round-out to one of my favorite trilogies to date, and Wreck-It-Ralph plucked at my retro-loving heartstrings in clever, meaningful ways that resonated beautifully with its vibrant animation.

And yet, the most definitive experience this year for me came from an independent, two-person team delivering a deep and raw documentary that has been critically acclaimed by The New York Times and is the winner of the World Cinema Documentary Editing Award at the Sundance Film Festival.

The documentary, Indie Game: The Movie, is an exceptional exploration of the struggles small-scale indie developers face, but more than that, it analyses creativity at its very core and examines what people will go through in order to realize their dreams. Indie Game: The Movie is a passion project about passion projects. And the struggle of creating indie games demonstrates that this is the toughest creative medium to commercialize out there.

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Man, where did 2012 go? Must've been all that time I spent playing video games. Anyway, it's time for another round of Bitmob's Big 10, where we feature the most popular stories of the previous month, as written by you, the Bitmob community.

This month's list has a great mix of first-timers and old site veterans, covering topics as diverse as sex, drugs, and Final Fantasy. (OK, maybe those aren't that diverse. Anyway.) Congrats to everyone!

Here are the most-read community articles for October 2012:

10. Far Cry 3 might lead to a new era of first-person shooters by Chandler Tate

9. Video game music just isn't the same any more by Bryan Harper

8. The Legend of Zelda needs to evolve by Brandon Guerrie

7. My completely objective Resident Evil 6 review based on other reviews by Mark Purcell

6. Experimenting with video games as drugs by Nathaniel Dziomba

5. The one Final Fantasy game you should play by Nate Ewert-Krocker

4. A run-and-gun retrospective of three modern-day gaming classics by Jonathan Oyama

3. Stop the witch hunt: Exploits are not cheating by Carlos Alexandre

2. How I sold my soul for sex in the Mass Effect series by Michael Westgarth

1. 5 games you should play for Halloween by Jesse Meixsell

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Do you want to be on next month's list? Here are some tips:

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Developer Electronic Arts' patch for the latest installment in its annual FIFA soccer game series came out for PlayStation 3 and Xbox 360 earlier today (it dropped on PC last week, because PC). Among the fixes is the usual "general stability during gameplay," but the update also eliminates one of the most inconvenient and puzzling glitches this year.

See, FIFA 13 used to have a "rare occurrence" (according to the patch notes) of the ball disappearing while you were playing the game. This wouldn't be such a big issue, except that it's a soccer game, and the ball is pretty much the one thing that needs to remain visible at all times.

So, yeah. It was kind of a big issue.

Regardless, I'm sorry to see EA is squashing this bug, if for no other reason than that it means an end to hilarious videos of people realizing how difficult playing a sports game with an invisible ball can be. I've included a couple of my favorites after the break.

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It's my dream to write for a major gaming publication. I work hard to hone my writing skills and make contacts in the industry. It can be demoralizing at times. But this is my dream, and I want to succeed.

Then, after one Eurogamer article questioning journalistic integrity in the industry, I watched Twitter explode with game journalists defining what "Games Journalism" is. Personally, that opened my eyes a little. Not so much in terms of the ethics (or lack thereof) within the game industry, but in terms of what this industry needs to provide for people like me.

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Standing in the room where the creators of my country drafted a declaration of Independence was surreal. I could feel the history in my bones while I stood in awe. This powerful feeling subdued my cynical outlook on history. Then, as the tour guide spoke, I realized I had already felt this feeling before while playing Assassin's Creed III. 

This was my first visit to Independence Hall. The fact that I would be taking a tour of the building only days after buying and playing ACIII is pure coincidence. I already knew the layout of the building, which, for the most part, is accurate within the game. This experience made me realize that the virtual and the actual do have an emotional connection. 

As part of ACIII’s narrative, protagonist Connor pops into Independence Hall. Connor witnesses George Washington accepting command of the Continental Army, and he sees the drafting of the Declaration of Independence. These events sent a cold chill down my spine. I realized that I was witnessing the creation of my country. Even though it happened in a video game, the event still profoundly affected me. All of a sudden, I had the patriotic urge to join the cause against the British.

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Curiosity is driving me insane. Peter Molyneux's new studio 22Cans just released its first project, a mobile game called Curiosity -- What's inside the cube. The idea is that players around the world are working together to chip away at the layers of a massive spinning cube. Even though it takes a planet to deconstruct it, only one lucky player will see the mystery hidden in the inner-most layer.

While that sounds time-consuming, Curiosity is fairly fun to pick up and put down ... but only when the severs work.

Since Curiosity is available on iOS and Android for free, millions of people can log on at the same time and clear massive chunks of the cube as they go. But the servers on 22Cans' end can't withstand the overload and routinely boot people off or refuse to connect at all. I expect this from such an ambitious online project, but I didn't anticipate losing hundreds of thousands of points and coins because I happen to boot the game up at a bad time.

At seemingly random intervals right now, Curiosity will completely reset your coins (in-game money used to buy very expensive power-ups) and the running total of broken cubelets. When decent power-ups cost upwards of 300,000 coins, suddenly losing hours of progress is very demoralizing. 

What burns more than losing money is that the game will retain the progress you've made without giving you credit for it, but sometimes the entire cube won't load properly and look as if no one has really worked on it. 

I suppose all this crashing proves just how interesting Curiosity is for gamers, but it's frustrating to see so much work vanish at a moment's notice. I hope 22 Cans has a quick fix, since the developers are totally aware of the server problem.

All I want is to fulfull an obsessive-compulsive need to tap my iPad screen to death!

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I’m quite curious to see what it was like for freelance journalist Justin Amirkhani to ingest hallucinogenic mushrooms and play through PlayStation 3 title Dyad. He’s launching a crowdsourced fundraiser to pay for the production costs of making a short film about the experience. Amirkhani even had the game’s creator, Shawn McGrath, reluctantly guide him through the trip. I suppose this is art.

Dyad, available on PlayStation Network, already has quite the psychedelic look to it (think arcade-classic Tempest meets the music-infused on-rails-shooter Rez). Amirkhani wants to show, however, that looks might be a bit deceiving.

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On November 6, 2012, there were two reasons you might've been standing in a long line -- you were either waiting to buy your copy of Halo 4 or about to vote in the 2012 Presidential Election.

Yet every gamer of legal voting age should view the release of Halo 4 on Election Day as a great insult.

Releasing Halo 4 on Election Day has to be one of the greatest outrages to adult gamers since we graduated from high school. Microsoft Studios is implying that their core audience is composed of immature brats who are willing to avoid their civic duty for a simple video game. 

It’s obvious that the games industry treats its audience like 14-year-olds who have just hit puberty, but releasing a major title during the election is a kick in the face while being given the finger.

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OK, the voice you hear in this video doesn't belong to the real Christopher Walken, but it's a good enough of an impression to make this "Walkenthrough" of Dishonored incredibly hilarious.

Of course, it's not really much of a walkthrough. You won't learn any assassination tricks, but you will get to watch Walken try to throw dead whores at a guard. What more could you want?

You can watch the hilarity yourself after the break.

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Had I been born in another age, chances are that I would have been an explorer. Once upon a time, our world was wrapped in magic and wonder. Nowadays, an airplane ticket and a few hours time can span oceans. And, if you’re really ambitious, you might venture a mouse click and a keystroke or two to reveal the particulars of your destination on the flight over.

Perhaps, then, it stands to reason that the biggest draw of video games has been very much the urge and challenge to unravel the mystery of what waits behind the next door, inside of locked chests, or beyond distant mountaintops -- a sort of surrogate thrill in a world divested of secrets.

This seduction of exploration -- if only virtual -- caused me to slip out of bed at 4 a.m. on school days to sneak in a few extra hours of the original Zelda while my need to chart the unknown came up during parent-teacher conferences in the form of maps I had sketched of Metroid’s long shafts in the margins of my math homework. I doubt I’m alone here.

Clearly, games scratch a deep itch for adventure and discovery in an world now containing little opportunity for either. But what happens when the vistas and environments of video games become more familiar than the scenery outside our front door?

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Once again, we demand a recount with our army of paid pundits!

It's here! It's finally here...an end to all the commercials, robo-calls, and street teams knocking on our doors! Today we choose the leader of the free world! At last, the democratic process upon which we founded our beautiful country will leave us the hell alone. And whether we canonize Mitt Romney or extend Barack Obama's contract (with America), you know one lucky winner will strive make our lives better and run the entire country into the ground. Well, that's what my TV tells me, anyway.

What say you, panel of experts? Any plans or predictions for election day?

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"I'm busy today."

- The Master Chief, Halo 4

 

 

 

 

 

 

"I'm voting for the Peace and Freedom Party's one-two ticket punch of Rosanne Barr and Cindy Sheehan. It's like the best Saturday Night Live sketch ever!"

- Isaac Clarke, Dead Space 3

 

 

 

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Fans love the epic, emotionally charged music from The Legend of Zelda role-playing franchise. I recently chatted with Jason Michael Paul, creator of The Legend of Zelda: Symphony of the Goddesses live-concert series, to ask him what makes Zelda's music so special, what his dream project would be, and what the future might hold for video game music concerts.

Louis Garcia: Why do a show focused on Zelda?

Jason Michael Paul: I just think that with a 25, now 26-year, history, Zelda is one of the most [storied] franchises. We saw the success of those concerts [Paul previously created Dear Friends: Music from Final Fantasy and Play! A Video Game Symphony], and it was kind of [a] necessity that we do a concert to continue on. It’s more or less a natural progression. There’s only two franchises worthy of getting their own concerts: Final Fantasy and Legend of Zelda.

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