RPS Omnibus: Feb 17th- 23rd

All aboard, all aboard. Your destination: everything published on RPS in the last week. Apologies in advance for the bus conductor’s ‘busy hands’.
Features, Opinions & Interviews
Paul Barnett on Gary Penn being his Lester Bangs: plus, Gillen on who your Lester Bangs should be.
Still stunned by Jack Thompson
The RPS Audiosurf Challenges – naming excellent tracks here, and fighting over Kate Bush here
Retrospective: Dungeon Keeper – Bullfrog’s other finest hour
Jim at GDC – Witnessing the announcement of the PC Gaming Alliance, musing on the future of the PC
The Making of Civilization 4 – Gillen talks strategy with Soren Johnson
Ken Levine: but what does he mean? Alternate thoughts here and here, and bonus staring eyes here.
The Making of Stronghold – Big in Germany
Previews
Leisure Suit Larry: Box Office Bust. Abandon hope all ye who adventure-game here.
The Witcher: Enhanced Edition – acclaimed but incoherent RPG to receive much-needed textual nip’n’tuck.
Fez – Awesome dimension-distorting, IGF-winning platformer
American McGee’s Grimm – I demand we just call it “Grimm” from hereon in
Blue Mars – Crysis-powered MMO
Love – Jim gets very, very excited about this procedurally-generated, impressionistic online world
Champions – City of Heroes gets a sequel, and it sounds spectacular
InstantAction – Tribes-powered deathmatch from a web browser
Aliens: Colonial Marines – All right, sweethearts, what are you waiting for? Breakfast in bed? Another glorious day in the corps!
Far Cry 2 – One man on an unstoppable anti-tree rampage
APB – Potentially incredible new MMO from the Crackdown guys
Free games
Avernum demo – turn-based roleplaying just like grandma used to make.
Space Hulk – The classic tabletop game remade in pixels’n’stuff
Grow Nano v3 – A hyper-cute webgame about illness.
News
WoW: the tabletop game
EA can’t spell. And we’re hypocrites.
The 2008 Life. Love. Game Design Challenge – making teen dating violence into entertainment
Overlord expansion incoming – Overlordier and Overlordier
Tablula Rasa tanks?
New Magic The Gathering Game
Mike Stemmle join Telltale – a new hope for Sam & Max
The soul of The Sims – See Will Wright’s original source code for The Sims
IGF winners announced – we gots your best games of the year right here
Game Developers’ Choice winners announced – gaming’s top men pick their favourites of 2007. In comments: inevitable Portal vs Bioshock bickering.
Riddick devs to resurrect mystery EA franchise – it’s probably Shaq Fu
GDC Luminary lunch – Dave Perry and chums muse aloud