The RPS Omnibus

Lawyers, politicians, pilots and unreformed chauvinist meatheads: that was the week that was in the joyful province of PCgamingland. In case you're a lazy or forgetful reader, here's the best bits of the last seven days. All aboard!

• Goblin War Machine, yo. That's the way to do it. And by 'it', I mean 'crushing everything'.
• The inevitable Minecraft/Portal crossover.
• Quintin vs the politicians. Or, Quintin cowers in front of the politicians. As well as embarassment, this piece rather charmingly conveys the curious quandary inherent in why and how gamers defend games to non-gamers.
• Tim Stone salutes the lost (and perhaps, hopefully, about to be unlost) art of the classic flight sim manual.
• Carpe Fulgur tell Alec just what went so right with shopping/fighting hit Recettear - and what's next on the cards for their curious line in translating ace Japanese games for the West.
• Splendid 10-minute roguelike Desktop Dungeons triumphs against the sinister forces of game-cloning.
• Skyrim's new engine, then. Sounds like we should be finally free of the singular horrors of Bethesda's take on Gamebryo.
• OMG Cannon Fodder 3 OMG. Only a) John Hare's not involved and b) we don't get to play it. HMM.
• Jim tweaks Iron Helmet's nipples until they tell us all about currently betaised strategy title Blight Of The Immortals. RPS is playing this amongst ourselves at the moment. It's not going well. BLOODY ZOMBIES.
• The World of StarCraft saga was messy and embarrassing for all concerned, I suspect. The law is an ass. Still, didn't turn out too badly for the modder, all things considered.
• John bullies a middle-aged ex-MTV presenter.
• Last week, DotDotDot. This week, the return of the other greatest audio recording in history.
• Paper Half-Life: awww.
• A new era for Mod News: "there’s only one mention of a Half-Life 2 mod, and it doesn’t even have guns in it!"
• John gets behind the wheel of Test Drive Unlimited 2. The second screenshot in this preview unsettles me in ways I can't quite explain.
• It's John again, this time in an interview with the remarkably smart creators of the Dream Machine. Developers: please always be this interesting.
• The sad, strange tale of the lost proto-Minecraft.
• Quintin injects the creators of the lovely Space Chem with a truth serum. This means they tell us things.
• A raft of contradictory comments and unhappy insider goss means no-one's left entirely sure what's going on with David Braben's The Outsider, but it's certainly not looking 100% alive right now. Sad news.
• Alec displays breathtaking insight and hitherto untapped reserves of philosophical analysis in his scene-by-scene breakdown of the latest Brink trailer.
• Duke Nukem Forever is really, actually, properly, truly, genuinely, definitely happening now. There's a release date and tons of in-game footage and everything. What is this I don't even
• Esoteric MMO Love is evolving in important and wonderful ways. Quinns meets up with its creator to find out why now's the time to give it your love.
• Finally, we send Dan Grilioioioioioioioioioioioiopoulos to beat up some Orks for us, in a hands-on bout with the new Dawn of War II expandatron.

And finally, THERE IS NO FINALLY.