The Sunday Papers

Sundays are for gathering ancient Ogres to give to my brother in a sinister North-London meeting before he sods back off to Sheffield and compiling a list of the fine (mostly) games related reading from across the week, while trying to not include a link to a new Mix-tape that's tweaking my monkey and a track by the band I went to see last night. Tweaking my monkey? I don't know. I just don't know. GO LIST!

• This ties in amusingly to what's the main game the half of RPS who don't review the sexy new stuff are playing this week. Neptune's Bounty has been picking up a gear and... well, we're wrestling with how on Earth we're going to write about the bastard thing. Anyway! Graham PCG, who's playing an important part in the game in the last 24 hours, writes about his teenage gaming with Planeterion: "At my Secondary School, for a few months at least, our teenaged politics was defined by who was kissing whom, who had insulted whom, and who was sending spaceships to defend or attack whom." We do forget the personal a bit, being grown-ups, I think. Well, mostly grown ups.
• John mentioned this in the podcast this week, but you may have missed Andrew Doull's splendid review of the first Bioshock. The concept being, reviewing it as the Pipemania game was actually the real game, and everything else is an over-elaborate lobby system.
• While we're talking Bioshock... well, here's Alec's Bioshock 2 review for IGN. It's for the 360, obviously. RPS' verdict will be coming early next week. Monday or Tuesday, I think.
• Lewie, as well as bringing you the all-powerful Bargain Bucket, has been busy this week. He interviews relevant people - Direct2Drive, Starforce, etc - about DRM.
• Alaric.ws has been compiling all the google-search results which hit his site which are related to World of Warcraft porn. THE INTERNET SPEAKS.
• Ste Curran on launching Zoe Mode's pretty lovely charity shape-manipulation music-construction game Chime. He's totally still a writer, no matter how the fucker denies it.
• While the link is down at the time of writing, hopefully it'll be up in a bit. Over at Big Money, there's a postmortem of the whole Crispygamer site. As in, why it fundamentally failed, and what happened along the road. This... well, annoyed me a bit. As much as I liked Crispygamer, the general flinging around of general insults at everyone else in the field annoyed me more than a little.
• Craig Pearson over at PC Gamer wonders why he plays the Spy so compulsively in TF2. Because you're evil and treacherous, Craig. Obv.
• Steve Peacock over at the Reticule bravely tries to squeeze some enjoyment out of Dark Void by narrativing it up. "Narrativing it up" is technical lingo, you understand.
• Michael Sterrett over at Resolution writes about uber-splendid kid's TV show Knightmare. I'd have done anything to be on that fucking show, but I made do with the really-quite-good Spectrum adventure.
• Our Mass Effect 2 review is also incoming. Until then, here's Cynical Brit doing so - but mainly wrestling with the enormous mechanical changes the games has made, and why they work. Good to read something intelligent about Mass Effect 2 which doesn't spoiler me to death. I'm actually back playing Dragon Age, so need to stay well clear.
• Big serious piece - and the start of a series - at HardyDev about Adventure interfaces. Strikes me as worth reading if you're thinking about this area. That means you, John.
• Chris W forwarded me some stun stuff. There's apparently a way to alter Steam to make it display the game you're actually playing be different from the one you actually are playing. Hilarity ensues. On a more serious note, Keith Stuart at the Guardian writing about how the indie-game has revived Britsoft.
• The game prodigy has been busy. What can developers learn from Avatar? Bar that spending 200 trillion-illion leads to prettiness and going after the furry-dollar is probably worthwhile? Go see. Also, why was Super Mario Bros so successful? Apart from going after the plump Italian fetishist dollar being worthwhile? Go see.
• I picked this up when Neil Gaiman retweeted it, but it's just about possible that you may have missed it. Psychologist getting angry about the British press. They just make shit up.
• Paying Zero for public services. Fascinating social-protest.
• First Bill Watterson interview in forever-and-ever says everyone. John swears he did an interview 5 years ago. Go read anyway.
• I've two comics coming out next week. Firstly, the penultimate issue of SWORD. SWORD 4 features excitements! Secondly, the final issue of Phonogram. Phonogram 2.7 features excitements!
• Akira the Don's done another splendid mix-tape. I salute it. I also caught the Chew Lips' last night, and only realised half way through the gig that their name was a pun. Man! I'm rubbish. Here's their Solo from last year.

Failed.