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Halloween is over, but that doesn't mean you can't drink in the coolness of this custom-painted Castlevania Game Boy. French artist Oskunk used a damaged first generation model for this design. It's a shame that the screen is broken.

Considering how much I loved Castlevania: The Adventure when I was a kid, seeing a handheld like this would have blown my six-year-old mind. So what if you climbed ropes in that game rather than going up or down stairs? It was still Castlevania in my hands that wasn't the horrible Tiger Simon's Quest LCD system that my grandmother picked up at a yard sale years before.

So, given my first handheld Castlevania experience, those quirky Game Boy titles were amazing. 

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Recently on Bitmob, the integrity of games journalism has come into question. I found this amusing because, frankly, there’s no such thing. Now, who am I to talk about this subject? Well, I’m a journalist in Canada. I’ve covered elections, city council, tragedies, triumphs, and sports games.

I’ve also written reviews on my own time and hosted a current affairs web series. So I have some knowledge and experience to back up my claims.

There’s journalism and video games, but the two don’t go hand in hand in the way some may think. These “games journalists” are actually reviewers, commentators, columnists, and (at the end of the day) entertainers. 

I don’t think anyone confuses Daily Show host Jon Stewart for a journalist.

Just to be clear, reviewing a game isn’t journalism. That’s an opinion. Being critical is fine, but it isn’t what makes you a journalist.

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I've just finished killing all of my friends.  

Ragdoll physics make for entertaining conclusions to their brief lives. They'll get over the ass-kicking that I have just delivered, I'm sure, but not before I'm able to enjoy it.  

I'm at a LAN party. We have sixteen players shooting at each other between four Xboxes, and tonight I'm wielding the Duke as if it's a seamless extension of my mind. Halo 2's shrink wrap has only been off for a few hours, but I've established a clear dominance among my competition. My sensitivity is cranked up to a billion, and I've turned on my ADD; Twitch-Gaming is the only thing keeping me alive. 

 Well, that and a badass energy sword. 

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I mostly remember Descent for making me sick, but a lot of fans look back fondly on the PC shooter series. We havn't seen a new release in the franchise since 1999's Descent 3, but one enthusiast, going by Mad Max, is trying to re-create the original inside the modern Unreal Engine 3, which powers games like Gears of War and Infinity Blade.

The video after the jump shows off his work, which is enough to make any lover of the classic series yearn for a playable version. You can find out more about Mad Max's project at his website.

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The current generation of consoles (that being the seventh) currently holds the record for the longest running life span of consoles to date. Microsoft's Xbox 360, Sony's PlayStation 3, and Nintendo's Wii have been the dominant video game consoles for seven years -- much longer than most people expected and longer than many have hoped.

With year 2012 finally reaching its end, gamers have been anxiously awaiting any sign of eighth generation consoles to ease their minds of any further speculation.

So far, Nintendo’s Wii U remains the only confirmed entry, slated for release this November. As for Sony’s next PlayStation and Microsoft’s successor to the Xbox 360, rumors floating through cyberspace are about all any of us have read, with no confirmed release dates of any sort. 

Commentators, however, have predicted that these two elusive consoles will show up some time around 2013 or 2014.

As we're talking about the eighth generation of video game consoles, it's logical to assume that they both will feature some of the most capable processors the gaming universe has seen thus far, allowing for the usual advancements in graphics and sound that we experience with every new generation. But the few actual mentions of a new PlayStation and Xbox, from various sources, have not exactly been the most reassuring.

In fact, two of the most vigorously spread rumors have been instilling a sense of anxiety in gamers more than anything else and have us asking: "Why the hell would they even think about doing that?"

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I downloaded Corpse Party for the Sony PlayStation Portable to prepare myself for Halloween. Anything with gothic violence and cute anime girls wins in my book.

The Corpse Party narrative soon gripped me with more scares than many other horror games ever threw at me.

Corpse Party is an unusual indie throwback to old text-based horror games. It focuses more on the visceral horror setting rather than relying on intense action. The nasty deaths in the game shocked me with agonizing screams and detailed, bloody descriptions. Although the characters could literally talk for hours on end, I enjoyed every second of the experience.

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Dennaton Games' grimy, mysterious murder fest easily has the best soundtrack I’ve heard all year. A lot of the indie rock and hip hop jams in Hotline Miami are ones I'd listen to normally. But in the context of this hyperviolent PC title, these songs do something special: They help to flesh out the the minimal storyline with emotion. 

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All I've ever wanted was to have a real actor trapped inside my iPad. Not really, but if I did desire that, performer Warwick Davis is ready to offer his services in his quirky iOS game Pocket Warwick. 

You might remember Davis from movies like Willow and the Leprechaun horror series, but he's been in tons of other films portraying unexpected roles. He was in Labyrinth, for example, but he was one of the many actors inside the goblin soldier costumes. Davis also played several characters throughout the Harry Potter adaptations. 

Well, digital Warwick isn't nearly as experienced as his real-world inspiration and depends on players to help build his career. You'll have to feed, clean, educate, and entertain Warwick as he tries to move up the celebrity ranks from Z to A. You'll also get a chance to put him in tons of ridiculous costumes.

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To many gamers, the soundtracks of the Final Fantasy series are holy writ. Er, holy music. Whatever.

But Square Enix hasn't been afraid to let remixers try their hands at composer Nobuo Uematsu's classic creations. Last year, they released the album SQ Chips, which took classic tunes from across the Squeenix pantheon and added all the bleeps, bloops, and 8-bit sounds you could wish for.

Based on the success of SQ Chips, the Japanese RPG giant has issued a whole series of chiptune albums centered on the post-SNES-era Final Fantasy titles.

Check out this well-known opening track from Final Fantasy 7, newly chip-ified, after the jump. And if you want to purchase these discs, they're not for sale to us Yanks yet, so you'll have to import.

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I’m going to be straight with you all about this: I’m very much a PC gamer at heart. Consoles provide me with a more affordable way to game at a decent level, but it’s PC gaming that I love.

I grew up in the 1990s when gaming was really finding its feet. The homebrew programming scene on the Apple II and early x86 machines was where I had my first experiences. Commander Keen, Wolfenstein 3D, The Secret Of Monkey Island, and Wing Commander were the whole world of gaming for me.

It’s not just the games, though. That spirit of experimentation, openness, and determination defined the industry we see today and fuels the amazing modding and indie development scenes on the PC that you just cannot find on a home console.

Where else can one man make a zombie mode for his favorite first-person shooter and have it played by over a million people? You certainly won’t find that on the Xbox or the PS3 because Microsoft and Sony simply won’t allow it.

It is the dawn of a new age for Microsoft. No longer the dominant tech company in the world, it has been superseded by the slick, relatively closed, and ruthlessly proprietary Apple. Microsoft’s attempts at control over Xbox Live have left indie developers frustrated and forced it’s ability to bring unique titles to Xbox Live Arcade fall behind that of the PlayStation Network and Steam.

With Windows 8, it is attempting to impose the same kind of control that Apple has. Unfortunately, things are not looking good.

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Brentalfloss, who makes a career out of writing and singing gaming parodies, teamed up with retro-gaming video blogger Pat the NES Punk to create "Nintendohemian Rhapsody," a spoof of the famous Queen song "Bohemian Rhapsody."

I especially like the NES cartridge puppets, pictured above. You can see the video for yourself after the jump. It's even better than the original!

OK, that's a lie, but you should listen to it anyway.

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I played Metro 2033 to completion for the first time more than a year ago. It had been on my radar (and my Steam list) for quite some time, and I finally got around to actually playing it. I’d heard so many great things and was very excited to play.

It didn’t quite grab me in the way I wanted. The voice acting was laughably bad in spots. Character models have some of the deadest eyes I have ever seen. The shooting was stiff and didn’t give me the control I wanted during intense moments.

By the time I reached the end, I wasn’t having much fun. I even downloaded an FAQ to help me power through the last few levels in peace. Quickly, I moved to the next game, not really thinking about the experience I'd just had. I had more games in my backlog to "slog" through.

Recently, I had an itch to play the game again. Part of me still wanted that experience I was expecting the first time through. I decided to try a few things to hopefully strengthen the game.

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