2011: A Year In Review – News Posts

Given that you read the site each and every day, we know it’s not very likely that you missed any of our best articles in 2011. Still, on the off chance that you may have overlooked any of our most popular items over the past year, we’re spending this entire week counting down the most popular stories and videos we’ve done all year. Yesterday, we showed the ten most popular feature articles and most popular columns and comics. Today we’re showcasing the top ten news stories, based on reader interest. Be sure to come back tomorrow and all through the week for more.

Portal‘s GLaDOS wasn’t always evil. Well, I guess she was, but she hid it really well at first. This we know from a portion of Valve’s official Portal 2 comic which has now been released in its entirety. Valve teamed up with IGN Comics to release the comic in two parts, both of which are now available. The comic follows Doug “Ratman” Rattmann, an Aperture Science employee otherwise known as the guy that scribbled all those helpful messages on the walls of the test chambers in Portal. (Read More)

A Japanese artist has taken the pre-Pokemon Black & White roster and turned every single creature into an anime girl. No, I don’t know why, but it’s pretty impressive from the standpoint of how much work had to be done. The artist represents all of the popular Pokemon like Pikachu and Charmander, but doesn’t forget to include fan favorites like Mankey and Psyduck. The concept of Mankey is a little thrown off, but there’s no reason why a girl can’t dress as a man that is also a monkey. Even all of the throwaway letter-shaped Pokemon are here. (Read More)

The alternate reality game Valve is currently running for Portal 2 is incredibly dense. It involves mysteries hidden in 13 Steam games from the “Potato Sack” bundle along with a series of emails sent by Gabe Newell. Trying to understand it right now is like trying to understand why dogs have tails. Thankfully, those of us without brains like Sherlock Holmes can still enjoy one aspect that has come out of it: concept art. (Read More)

If you read the story about Bethesda not fixing amusing bugs and wondered what sort of bugs it was talking about, then try this one for size: a recent bug in Skyrim caused the game’s chickens to report crimes to the town guards. Bethesda’s Todd Howard said that the design team started getting caught for crimes more often than they should have, and that it wasn’t immediately obvious what was going on. “‘Why are we getting caught?’ (Read More)

Geohot, aka George Hotz, firmly believes that he has done nothing wrong. When he and the hacker group known as fail0verflow posted the PS3 rootkey online, allowing saavy consumers to install any operating system on the game console, he was not breaking any laws because he paid for Sony’s hardware and doesn’t have to follow their EULA. On his website Geohot claims that Sony is trying to use his case as a warning and has a team of five lawyers ready to rake him in court to send a message to other hackers. He also points out that other hackers have lost court battle not because they were wrong but because they lacked the money to mount a defense. (Read More)

The six choices have the same body, so all BioWare is asking people to choose is a face. The differences between some of them are rather subtle – just changes in hair and eye color – while others are much more obviously different. Not every choice is Caucasian either, which fits in rather nicely with BioWare’s efforts to make the Mass Effect games more inclusive. People can vote for their favorite by heading over to the Mass Effect Facebook page and clicking “like” on the image of their choice. While BioWare only mentions the game itself, presumably this choice will also affect which FemShep ends up on Mass Effect 3 collector’s edition box. (Read More)

Back in 2005, Blizzard decided to go back to the drawing board on Diablo III and scrapped much of what it had under development. What you might not know is that the studio already had a capable version up and running. Newly discovered screenshots show off what it looked like, and how different it is from what we know of Diablo III today. Kotaku writes that Blizzard had planned Diablo III as a battle through hell, as expected, but also heaven. Some of the screenshots show areas called “Heaven” and the “Angelic Lands.” In these areas, the player faces snakes, snake-men, and gritty winged creatures. (Read More)

A lot of time and attention has been given over to the different characters that people can make in Skyrim. But if you’re not in the mood to make your own character, Bethesda has dozens of characters that it’s made for you. What’s more, it’s released a veritable horde of images, so you can see if any take your fancy. (Read More)

It’s no secret that Oblivion‘s character creator wasn’t the easiest thing in the world to use and that characters tended to have a certain “roundness” to their faces. Skyrim looks to have eliminated that problem, allowing players to create interesting characters, and not balloon people in armor. None of these characters are the result of hours spent tweaking and refining either, as the journalists only had an hour to make them and play as much of the game as they could.(Read More)

When it comes to making a final stand against the hordes of the risen dead, practicality is paramount. Function must trump form if you want to avoid having your face chewed like an undercooked steak. But that doesn’t necessarily mean you have to sacrifice aesthetics, and there’s certainly nothing that says you can’t have a nice view while you await the undead apocalypse. (Read More)

Be sure to return tomorrow so that you can enjoy even more Top Ten amazement.