Rock, Paper, Shotgun

Hark, another sunny day here in the Isles, and also a national holiday for all the Britons. We should spend the day guzzling gin and smoking our pipes. Consequently it might be a bit quiet on this here computer gaming blog feed. In fact it would be quiet even if it were not a holiday. John has the pox and is abed. Alec has abandoned us to head abroad, and Quintin is posting about puzzles games. Well, at least there’s that. I’m just finishing off some thoughts on Darkspore, which I spent some of the weekend playing, and then I shall return to my return to Call Of Pripyat and the lovely Complete mod. Ah, lovely.

All of which leads to you telling us a bit about your weekend! Did you do computer games? If so which ones, and why? Points will be awarded for the best reasons, and the obscurest games. Speak!

For my money, überpuzzler SpaceChem is still the best indie game we’ve seen in 2011. You can read Wot I Think here, but don’t just take my word for it- even renowned X-Men author Kieron Gillen said that it’d been a long time since he’d played something “so obviously genius”.

As of this weekend, developer Zachtronics has just upended another frothing beaker of content into the deadly vat of entertainment that is SpaceChem. By which I mean they’ve updated it. I’m talking Team Fortress 2 tie-in items, I’m talking 12 new levels, I’m even talking about a new level editor and inbuilt sharing options to make sure there’ll always be some hateful new puzzle that will paralyse your mind like a King Cobra. Details after the jump.
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Sundays are for remembering how bad hangovers can actually be. Is it true that they cause light to be poisonous? I think it is. Perhaps the virtual light of my screen will be a comfort. Beautiful screen. Let’s ask it displays soothingly clever words, so that I might think I still have language.

• Thing of the week is most certainly Kirk Hamilton’s review of Portal 2, the best parts of which are photographic. Here’s a textual bit: “Playing Portal 2 made me feel good about myself, and good about the people who designed it. What’s more, I couldn’t shake the sense that the designers felt similarly about me, about the players for whom they designed the game. It’s odd that a videogame should earn special recognition just for respecting its players, but Portal 2 does exactly that.” But really you should go read it.

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