By Kieron Gillen on December 21st, 2008 at 11:10 am.
The Sunday before Christmas is for wrapping presents. Assuming of course, you’ve bought some presents. Which I may not have. Man! I may as well distract myself from the horror by making a list of the best pieces of games writing across the web for you to read while trying to not link to the greatest Christmas song doesn’t get played in every shop across the land.
- Since this is me linking to someone else’s compilation of best writing, we’re perhaps getting a little meta. Let’s ignore that and press on. Simon Parkin compiles his annual list of his favourite writing on games of the year. If you’ve been following games discourse over the year, you’ll have read some of them. But you won’t have read all of ‘em, and you really should. Go!
- I suspect we got distracted by making jokes about the Halo MMO in our 2008 September feature, because we failed to mention anything about Ensemble’s closure. Which is a major failing. Trust Troy Goodfellow to give one of the most prominent and successful PC developers of the last decade a proepr send off in an enormous three part retrospective over at Crispygamer.
- I haven’t linked to anything the Escapist has published for a while, which is probably an oversight. Let’s make up for it by pointing you in the direction of When I Was A Sex Goddess where Amanda Yesilbas talks about her erotically charged experiences in the land of online text.
- I was almost tempted to do a post about the Spike awards, since World of Goo won an award. But then I remembered that I don’t exactly approve of the Spike awards. As did the famously un-prudish Miss Sex of videogames Leigh Alexander.
- I enjoyed this critical analysis of Audiosurf. You may too.
- The Reticule continue to get interviews with developers we want to. The Chilean mind-wrongs behind the forthcoming Zeno Clash chat to ‘em.
- Oh yeah – and RPS has a Last.fm group. Join and let’s see exactly how messed up the weekly charts of videogame players music taste is.
- Just Like Christmas – Low.
Failed.
Great song, but the link didn’t work for me.. this one does tho’ :D
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Fixed!
KG
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And finally, Kieron, you’ve linked to a song I truly love! Happy Christmas to you, sir!
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I haven’t bought a presents yet, due to a Space Rangers 2 renaissance after buying the Reboot expansion.
It won’t be a problem though. Everybody’s getting a jar of spit this year. Nice and easy.
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Aww, I like you too Kieron. <3
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That article about Audiosurf was very interesting. I’ve often thought the problem with Guitar Hero, and other games like that, is that I kind of have to block out the song and play to the dots on screen, because its never a perfect representation of the actual song.
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Re: Guitar Hero, to be fair once you get to the expert difficulties it *is* pretty much a perfect representation of the song (especially on the drums :) ) One of the things it does a lot better than Audiosurf is link your performance to what you hear, with a closer link between the things you’re asked to do and what you’re hearing, and the track muting when you mess up.
Obviously though Audiosurf does a fantastic job of taking in whatever you can give it and providing you with a great experience, though. Once the Guitar Hero / Rock Band find a way to do that with their style of game, good times would be had! Whether this would completely destroy their business model, however, is another matter…
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Indeed, the Spike VGAs do appear to have been a trifle odd.
Also, cheers for the ACE interview Reticule people.
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Thanks for the Low link – gorgeous.
Merry Christmas!
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That’s probably my favourite Christmas song ever, so I’m pretty sure this isn’t a ‘fail’. And thanks again for the linkage!
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Man Raised By Puffins: I dunno, that clip was so obscene it came out the other side and ended up being quite good. It’s difficult to claim that Tim Schafer being pulled in a chariot by bikini-clad ladies while Jack Black fires off a flamethrower and screams his name could be taken at face value. Then again, perhaps American TV genuinely is that insane on a normal level.
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Most of the audience was probably just confused by that. The thing I hate about these award shows (okay, one of many things) is the cuts to the audience where everyone’s laughing at the jokes and clapping because the camera’s pointing at them and they’d look like an asshole if they didn’t join in.
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@ Gap Gen: I guess the tone for that particular bit is sort of fitting given that Brütal Legend riffs off Metal excess, it’s still a bit cringeworthy though. My main thoughts when watching that clip are towards the poor health and safety guys and the conniptions they must have had in the planning stages: “You want to give Jack Black a what?”
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Heh.
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I’d really love to do a clever transition from this topic to what I’m actually posting about, but instead I think I’ll just flat out ask if anyone at RPS has heard anything new about Borderlands yet.
Anything?
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That was a very nice list of this year’s games writing by Simon Parkin. I agree with him about the Time Extend feature in Edge: it makes the Edge subscription price worth it all by itself.
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Not hugely aware of Spike TV, I don’t think we get it in the UK, at least not on freview. It sounds somewhat like Nuts or the like. What disapoints me most about something like that a) it tries to tie itself to my hobby in a way which is just embarassing as much as it is offensive, b) that Schaffer got involved.
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Yikes. What I saw of that. Yikes.
I’m glad I didn’t put any effort into seeing it.
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Finally, a song that KG linked to that I actually like, and one of my favourite Christmas songs ever.
If there was any justice, this would be number one this Christmas (and not the usual X-factor dreck).
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Very satisfying Sunday Papers. Great song, read half of Parkin’s favorites (including the Planetside article that probably seemed too long when I originally saw it), read the whole great tribute to Ensemble and all of Leigh’s thing, plus I read the escapist thing earlier this week.
Just saying because I haven’t been reading as many articles lately as I used to, but these were all so very irresistable.
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I must agree. I spent a couple of hours reading lots of good stuff, this week.
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@Jamuel Scones:
Same here.
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