Charm is a dangerous thing. Some of the worst, most evil people in the history of the world have been charming individuals. Saddam Hussein, Joseph Stalin, Idi Amin, Pol Pot, Hirohito, Adolf Hitler, King Leopold II of Belgium, Satan – they’re all charming devils, one of them quite literally. And speaking of Hitler, isn’t turning one of the most horrific and tragic wars of all time into a twee little anime story about the reds fighting the blues ...

In honour of Sony’s potentially catastrophic failure to put a fully functioning clock inside early models of the PS3, I’ve decided to put together this Top 5 of the worst console faults of all time, just to put things in perspective. At the time of writing it’s unclear whether the PS3mageddon bug has been fixed by Sony or has simply righted itself. Either way, the panic is over and we can all laugh about it now.

As a sneak image and trailer got yanked from 1up.com we also got the news through that Sega's Sonic Team is not responsible for the Blue Hedgehog's left to right return. Development duties are instead being taken up by a studio called Dimps on Osaka. That name may not be familiar to you, but the team there recently worked with Capcom in developing Street Fighter IV and made the Sonic Rush and Sonic Advance games for Nintendo DS and GBA respectively.

Sega has announced the latest Sonic The Hedgehog game, this time making the bold move of sticking a 4 at the end of the name, making this the official sequel to Sonic 3 after a 16-year gap. It’s released on the PSN Store this summer. We don’t even want to go through a list of reasons it might be good this time, it’s becoming too painful. Instead let’s just pretend like it doesn’t matter ...

Some of  you in the world may have felt a little let down by the PlayStation 3 version of Bayonetta. It didn't run as well as the 360 version, as much as we loathe to admit, with a slightly choppier framerate, visuals that weren't as crisp and loading times well beyond those on Microsoft's console. We still loved it, as it's brilliant, but we would like things to be on a more even playing field to our mortal enemies in ...

Sega has announced a little something extra for the upcoming PSP sequel The game's Japanese site has announced that a save file from the original Valkyria Chronicles game can be transferred via memory stick to unlock the character Isara - younger sister to the first game's protaganist. Isara will also be unlockable via a password on the site at a later date. VC2 is due for release in Japan on 21 January.

Update: Turns out this doesn't apply to Europe, and might not even apply to the US. Whoops. Original: Right. We're back. Get on with it. Not only is Yakuza 3 now heading to our shores complete with fully-translated words (written), it's going to be backed up with fully-translated words (spoken) too. Madness. While the second game eschewed any of this English-speaking nonsense we're so accustomed to, it isn't a series first - the original game had English all over it too. Speaking on ...

Hopefully this is the last we'll hear about this, as we all know the fourth part in a saga is never a good one. Regardless: the refusal to give Aliens vs Predator a certificate was overturned by the Classification Review Board over in Australia. The game will be released - in full and uncut - just as Rebellion had always wanted. Darren Macbeth, general manager of Sega Australia, released a statement saying: "It is with ...

Our committed Australian readers who travel all this way to read our site are sure to have heard about Aliens vs Predator's effective ban from the shelves of Oz. Fret not though, as it turns out Sega themselves have asked for the game to be re-reviewed in order to try and get the game a MA15+ rating - the highest currently available to games in the country. The request for reclassification came after ...

After much nay-saying and rumour Sega has finally confirmed that its epic underworld adventure, Yakuza 3, will be coming to Europe and North America. The Japanese game is currently being localised with an expected release date of March 2010, which is very close. In the past Sega had gone so far as to den that Yakuza 3 would ever come out in the west, but thankfully that was all lies.

In the grand scale that runs from 'things you would never see coming, even if you were told 32 years in advance they were going to be coming' to 'you really, probably should have seen that coming' we're going to err on the side of the latter for this announcement. Aliens vs Predator has been refused classification in Australia, meaning it is effectively banned from sale. This demi-ban comes in the wake of Sega flat-out ...

Bayonetta runs better on 360 than it does on PS3, of that there is little argument. It loads faster, looks brighter and is generally the best of the two. Fortunately for us living in the world of Sony-ness we shouldn't have to put up with an inferior version by the time it is released over here in January, as Sony are - apparently - hard at work fixing the game for its western release. An ...

In boob news this week Phantasy Star 2, released for the PSP on 3 December in Japan, is to feature in-game posters of scantily clad young ladies that you can decorate your character’s home with. The images for the posters will be provided by magazines Weekly Young Jump and Playboy. Weekly Young Jump is a kind of Japanese cross between Nuts and The Beano and to unlock its babe posters you’ll need to buy the magazine to obtain ...

Hanging around in the dark. Hugging people’s faces. Drooling profusely. Secreting resin. Acid in the bloodstream. No, we’re not reminiscing about our time on the rave scene back in 1991. We weren’t old enough to go to raves back in 1991. We also technically weren’t old enough to watch Aliens in 1991, and our mums wouldn’t let us stay up to watch it on ITV after the News At Ten. But by 1991 we had video recorders that our mums didn’t understand, so we secretly set them to record it ...

It's been rumoured - nay, known - for a while that Alpha Protocol would not be making it to the shops this year, but it's taken until a couple of weeks before the original release date for Sega to bite the bullet and fess up. Yes, Obsidian's spyPG-'em-up has now been officially pushed back to the new golden age of "Spring 2010", when all the best games in the world will be coming out. Feargus Urquhart, top bod at Obsidian, had ...

The gaming world could well end up imploding in the very near future after Sega announced that Ryo Hazuki, the menial task loving hero of the Shenmue games will be appearing as a playable character in upcoming kart game Sonic & Sega All-Stars Racing. Ryo will be joining a bizarre mix of the great, good and less favoured characters in the Sega roster such as Sonic (naturally), Big The Cat (Yay!) and Shadow (Boo).