In David Mitchell’s Ghostwritten – or perhaps it’s Cloud Atlas, I can’t remember now – a character remarks that there’s nothing so tiresome as having things of interest pointed out to them.

His argument is that half the joy is in the personal discovery of good and interesting things – take the search away and the reward is greatly lessened.

I think about that a lot, as somebody who earns part of their living from pointing out good and interesting things to others. I agree to an extent but there is such a great body of output to work through these days that we all need filters. So here, as a tiresome filter, I present my favourite songs of the last twelve months.

In contrast to last year I’m embedding each track separately for you to listen to in isolation below. I’m not confident writing about music and, unlike when talking about videogames, I don’t know much of the scenes and histories each of these tracks inhabit which makes me a less informed and informative filter but, hopefully, still a useful one nonetheless.

So, this is the music I liked this year. From the androgynous, pocessed vocals and skittish beats of Burial’s Archangel (which really reminds me of teenage rainy midnights on the South London Underground) to the Daft Punk: Revenge of the Discovery-esque blam that is Justice’s record, it’s pretty wide-ranging in style and niche.

I’ve put it up here without images nor blurb. Just hold your breath and click the play button sans preconception. That way you still get a little sense of discovery, right? Anyway, I hope you find something you like. If you do, google will tell you where to go next.

CFCF: Raining Patterns

Burial: Archangel

Frightened Rabbit: The Greys

Fiest: So Sorry

Blonde Redhead: 23

Battles: Atlas

Low: Murderer

Justice: D.A.N.C.E.

MGMT: Time to Pretend

Oh, and if I don’t see you before, have yourself a very merry Christmas and happy New Year. This next one’s going to be a goodie.

Yes, I’ve seen the future and it’s Nintendo-branded. At least for now.

The video’s like, tum-tee-tum for two-and-a-half-minutes then KAPOW! OMG WTF OMG?

I’ve seen a few of Johnny Chung Lee’s Wii-based tech projects and they’re all impressive but this one is off the scale.

“[I] don’t believe there’s any difference between a monogamous and a polygamous relationship. Those are all just big words, like ‘gymnasium.’” — Gene Simmons on open marriage

New York magazine posts a heartwarming collection of the best sayings of the year. An awesome selection of wisdom and not-so-wisdom.

-5 for writing ‘quotes’ (vb) and not ‘quotations’ (n) in the headline though.

Something that often gets forgotten in the endless discussions over what a videogame review should or shouldn’t be is the reader’s desire to read something that’s well-written and enjoyable.

I like reading good writers and the question of whether they’re being subjective or objective in a review is way down my list of cares.

What are their ideas like? Can they make me laugh or look at something in a new way? Do they express themselves in exciting and perspicacious ways? Sure, most kids just want their game reviews to confirm expectations and validate preset opinions but, as you get a bit older and wiser, that matters less I think. It does to me at least.

With that in mind here are my favourite ten videogame reviews of 2007. I’ve picked things that are viewable online only (I’m too lazy to type out other people’s work from magazines – apologies to the old school) and there’s an obvious bias towards things that I’ve actually read which means there’s a bias towards those sites I read over those I don’t. So, sorry about that.

I’ve not picked anything I’ve written because that would be a little too narcissistic (although if you’re interested, on brief reflection I’m most pleased with my Anno 1701 and G1 Jockey Wii reviews for Eurogamer and a Blue Dragon review for Edge this year) and only one entry per writer. They’re not in any particular order because doing that would be silly.

Annoyingly, I’ve also failed to represent some of my favourite game writers in the list because I couldn’t find an appropriate link or piece from memory. To make up for that: Oli Welsh, Alec Meer (of Rock, Paper Shotgun fame) and Jon Blyth are all writers I enjoy.

If you’ve not read the pieces cited then please do, even if you’re not particularly interested in the game they’re talking about. Good writing should engage and entertain, even if you’re not au fait with the subject matter and I think that most of these pieces manage that.

Kieron Gillen: Earth Defence Force 2017

The structural conceit is super cute/ super annoying (dependent on whether you like or loath Kieron’s inimitable style): systematically list all of this cheap and cheerful B-movie-style game’s faults (most of which can also be viewed as positives if you’re of a certain mind-set) and close off the review with a smart reveal.

“You may believe that videogames should be making a serious attempt to become the primary narrative voice of the twenty-first century. Because Earth Defence Force 2017’s plot would be summed up by its title if you added the rider “shoots an army of invading ants”. There’s minor cut-scenes and voice-overs about what area of the planet the invaders are trashing at the moment, but it’s not exactly Tolstoy.

Except it’s actually the perfect plot for the game. It’s a game about shooting. It tells you what to shoot, and the real narrative of the piece is How On Earth Am I Going To Kill That Thing With Legs The Size Of Manhattan Before It Steps On Me? And as far as stories goes, that’s pretty compulsive.”

Tom Chick: Assassin’s Creed

Not a review in the orthodox sense but I enjoyed Tom’s thoughts on Ubisoft’s twelfth century Middle Eastern GTA. He ably conveys the incredible sense of historical wonder when you first encounter Damascus stretching across your widescreen (I also found walking through the tight and busy streets of Jerusalem a revelation as to how narrow and pedestrian most of videogaming’s 3D settings have been thus far).

Tom’s discussion of how conservative the game’s themes and activities are in contrast to this graphical vibrancy is thought-provoking.

“But the revelatory moment in Assassin’s Creed is in this overworld, on the road to Damascus. Just past a loading screen, you’ll come to a hill looking down into the city. And there it is: a 12th Century Damascus, no cheating, no skyboxes, no faked geometry, no facades. You’ll scarcely believe your eyes. It’s all there. And you’re about to plunge into it.

This is the moment you first realize that Assassin’s Creed is not, in fact, carefully built mountains fortresses and canyon-shaped overworlds. It’s going to bust out of the conventions and give you actual cities, with actual crowds. The moment is positively Pauline.

Ben Croshaw: Medal of Honour Airbourne

Thanks to Alexa.com, Ben ‘Yahtzee’ Croshaw’s effect on host-publication The Escapist’s readership figures has been well-publicised and discussed.

His short and snappy video reviews are usually published some while after the game hits stores (a canny move as viewers have often already experienced the games for themselves and so approach his reviews with a different mindset) and they play off voice-over jokes with visual humour.

They’re all good,funny and unexpectedly universal in appeal but I liked this one the best so far. Almost too good.

John Walker: Slitherlink

Sure, the 10 was an attention-seeking move (in a good way: this kind of obscure Japanese import required a total, headline-grabbing recommendation to get it noticed) but Walker’s review also competently deconstructs what makes this simple puzzle game so hopelessly addictive.

It’s personal but also universal in tone and, importantly, has voice.

More peculiar is the anthropomorphism I’ve developed when I view the numbers. Numbropomorphism as someone suggested (I rudely forget who, so fail to award credit). 3s are greedy, boisterous, and definitely male. They bully the other numbers, barging their way through queues and spilling pints. 2s are the very opposite, prim and polite, sensible, and certainly female. They are business-like, efficient and tidy, but remarkably clever. They tolerate the 3s, but find the 1s tiresome. And indeed the 1s are tiresome. Needy cowards, they feebly sit in the way, refusing to help.

David McCarthy: A History of Abuse

David’s increasingly frequent features for Eurogamer have received mixed reactions from the readership. However, I think he’s nailed a Quite Interesting, short-and-punchy feature style that sits very well on the site. This history of gaming’s historical gaffes is a good a place to start. It’s wry and blog-like and, while readers wanting a comprehensive rundown on the theme will leave disappointed, those after an entertaining five minute read in their lunch break are well-catered for.

In fact, the dawn of Civilization is as good a place to start as any. You might think that Sid Meier’s opus is an innocuous enough strategy title, with the potential benefit of giving gamers a grand overview of the course of mankind’s history on Earth and providing counterfactual historians with a sandbox in which to test their theories.

You’d be wrong. Quite aside from the obvious ridiculousness of primitive warriors taking out tanks and gunships with little more than spears, the most idiotic thing about the game is the way it endorses a Whiggish view of history, in which progress is inevitable, and any sort of national difference in technology or culture is suppressed.

Rab Florence: God Hand

Videogaiden is what happens when BBC Scotland offers to put the irreverent internet show Consolevania on the telly. Rab’s review here does things that you could only do in this medium and, what it lacks in dry instruction-manual reference points, it more than makes up for in vim and personality.

Also: I find Rab’s voice immensely comforting.

Jim Rossignol: S.T.A.L.K.E.R. : Shadow Of Chernobyl

In my mind this was the game Jim was born to review. Its bleak and apocalyptic setting, premise and execution seems precision-designed to appeal to his various tastes and interests.

While the game’s obviously flawed and ramshackle, I love the way Jim lovingly takes his reader through the world like a war-correspondent tour guide.

This is a singularly bleak vision. The game takes place in a kind of radiation-warped ramshackle apocalypse. It’s a world that constantly exudes feelings of gloom and dread. This particular experience is practically unparalleled in gaming. If you thought Half-Life 2’s derelict environments were evocative then this is like a Ukrainian mind-bomb. Stalker’s terrain is, of course, ripped directly from the real-world decay of the Chernobyl exclusion zone.

The tract of Soviet-era Ukraine that was cordoned off after the nuclear disaster of April 1986 has been transformed, with a potent dose of artistic licence, into gamespace. It’s been chopped into a slightly more game-friendly geography, so that the most interesting areas of Chernobyl mapped by the team make up the game’s numerous vast levels. Each of these areas is littered with the wreckage of life before the disaster – buildings decomposing and collapsing, trees withering and disintegrating, the clouds rushing wildly overhead. You Geiger counter crackles ominously, and occasionally even your vision begins to suffer. So yes, this is what is most crucial: atmosphere. No other game broods and rumbles like Stalker.

Edge: Super Mario Galaxy review

I’m not sure which member of the team wrote this and, even if I did ask they wouldn’t want me to tell you (I’ve had my wrist slapped for that before). Such is the glory-less existence within the hive mind. Anyway, it’s an excellent piece of writing that effortlessly meets what must have been a sheer and imposing challenge of critiquing one of the year’s most important games in one of the world’s most scrutinised publications.

Communicating joy without sliding into hyperbole is the trickiest of things: here’s how it’s done.

Since a fourth dimension of space doesn’t exist, Nintendo has found it necessary to invent one. It has wrapped Mario 64’s bas-reliefs around spheres, cylinders and lozenges. There are planets with prongs, planets in the shape of a mushroom or of Yoshi’s head, planets made of interlocking beams, planets that double back on themselves, planets that are just globes of water you can swim through. The ground keeps shifting, your faith keeps being challenged, the sense of amused wonder at each rewiring of your brain never fades.

Tom Bramwell: Portal

Even gamers who had already been wowed by the ex-student team’s Narbacular Drop, must have been surprised by the astounding quality of Valve’s mini-adventure. The cool-kids’ game of the year, it combined a unique and interesting core mechanic with a bar-raising storyline and deliciously witty dialogue and execution.

I enjoyed Tom’s review because, in the first paragraph, he succinctly communicates what is so special about the game’s core idea and why Valve has (thus far) elected to keep it separate from the mainline Half-Life series.

The portal gun is the most exciting thing to happen to FPS games since the gravity gun, and it’s no surprise to discover that Valve is agonising over whether to give it to Gordon Freeman. Its function is simple: bridging gaps. But, in doing so, it alters the way in which you approach an FPS environment so radically that it’s hard to think past it. Give it to Gordon, and Half-Life will never be the same. Better to keep it in the family, but away from the action. That’s what Portal does, and the results are interesting.

Tom Francis: Call of Duty 4

My feelings on Call of Duty 4 are mixed. I’m still playing and greatly enjoying the mutliplayer but the single player experience was, in equal parts, brilliant and excruciating. PC Gamer’s Tom Francis takes some time to unravel some of the wider issues the game throws up. It’s interesting and well-expressed.

The setup for CoD4 amounts to: “There’s some kind of conflict in a Middle-Eastern country LET’S GO!” It’s no less than we’ve come to expect from games, but it’s a little less than we’ve come to expect from Call of Duty, and it’s hard to get emotional about a conflict this vague.

Your enemies are referred to as ‘Ultranationalists’ but for a country that’s never even named. Hilariously, your pre-mission briefing screen keeps telling you you’re heading out to ‘THE MIDDLE EAST’, while news reportage yaks about fighting in ‘the capital’. The capital of THE MIDDLE EAST?

You know, I think I might go on holiday to THE WEST next summer – I hear it’s nice in THE MIDDLE YEAR. There’s something cheap and cynical about this kind of non-specific design: as if we’ll be happy to blast away at a generic Arab-looking country. Is that what we’re like?

Any time the World War II incarnations of CoD made you think “What are we doing here, why are we fighting?” it was a profound reflection on the madness of war.

Because that war happened. When you’re wondering the same in CoD4, they’re not rhetorical questions. No really, guys, what am I doing here? What’s my beef with the 900 people I’ve killed so far? In fact, where am I?

So there we go. I’m sure I’ve missed a verbose mountain of excellent games writing (for which I apologise: perhaps you could recommend some in the comments and I’ll do a readers’ list) and I’m aware that it’s a Brit-weighted selection but then, I like reading weighty Brits.

I put the list together because, despite this year’s awkward foray into awarding non-crap/lazy and industrious gaming journalists in the form of the GMAs, those of us working out of this smelly niche nestled in an unsightly wrinkle of entertainment/arts journalism don’t get nearly enough (any) praise when they do something well. These are people who did something well and that was me applauding.

Browsing Amazon today for Christmas presents and I stumble across this.

Which, unless you’re one of those historical reenactment type people, is pretty funny in and of itself (just imagine how any of your nearest and dearest would have to mask their horror upon unwrapping that).

Then I notice that, while it’s currently out of stock, you can buy it via the Amazon marketplace as a ‘used’ experience.

Also:

Boxed-product Weight: 454 g

That’s some light horse and chain mail right there.

You often hear videogame reviewers bemoan the fact that their publishing lords and masters require them to reduce a 1000-word piece of incisive criticism down to a number on a 10 point scale (or 19 point scale if you’re gamespot) for the review’s conclusion.

Here’s a Q&A session I held with myself to outline my thoughts on the subject and to pin down why exactly scores at the end of videogame reviews are pointless, unhelpful or, at very least, misleading.

Where did the idea for product scores or percentages out of a 100 originate?

It’s a system borrowed from those publications that review and rate consumer products like televisions and toasters.

Look at this review of the Canon EOS400D camera. It’s 25 pages long and is the most objective dissection of the camera as it is possible to create.

Every aspect to the product is pulled apart, rated and weighed with statistical graphs and comparative data. By the end of the review you know every single detail about the camera and how it empirically compares to other rivals.

It’s a huge exercise in absolute objectivity and, at the end of the gigantic review the author sums up the good points and the bad points and there is no shadow of a doubt that everything he says is ‘factually correct’.

Additionally, there is a place on a defined scale of quality upon which the product sits at that moment in time.

In other words, if all of the cameras on the market were arranged into a ‘truth’ line of quality, with the ‘perfect’ camera sitting at 100 and the worst at 1 it would be possible to place this camera somewhere along that line, thus communicating to a consumer its relative and inherent qualities in a single representative digit.

That was long and over-wordy but it sounds sensible and useful. No wonder videogame magazines adapt the same system!

Well, you’re right in that what’s outlined in the camera example above is exactly what a lot of videogame consumers want from their reviews.

The average reader (even if they don’t know it) is after a complete objective, scientific comparison between game x and game y with data and statistics and, finally, a numerical point on a linear scale by which they can compare, for example, Mass Effect with Bladestorm and see which one is empirically better.

I can feel a ‘but’ coming on…

But, of course, if you think about it for two seconds, videogames don’t work in the same way as toasters or digital cameras do. Sure, they have mathematical elements and measurable mechanics and I could compare the polygonal data between this one and that and spin out ten thousand graphs detailing how two specimens compare.

But, unlike with the Canon EOS400D I would have no idea at the end of those 25 pages which game was better or where they would sit on the ‘true’ scale of quality.

Games are experiential and it is impossible to be wholly empirical or objective about them.

Wait. So you’re saying that it’s impossible to actually ‘review’ a videogame then?

Yes and no. Game reviewers are essentially critics, not reviewers. They present their experience of the game with, hopefully, lots of reference points and their weight of experience behind them.

They might make empirical comparisons between game x’s framerate and game y’s framerate but they will also argue whether they think this in any way effects the experience.

They have to argue their points because there isn’t data on the overall, indefinable quality of a game.

Not true. I can compare, say, Chuckie Egg and Call of Duty 4 and clearly see that one looks better than the other. They both exist on a scale of quality and so a score can be extrapolated from that position, no?

Well, for starters you’ve pulled out a single element of a videogame to ‘review’ which is cheating.

You could argue that if you broke a game down into all of its constituent parts (graphics, sounds, ‘lastability’ etc), scored each on a comparative line of quality and then gave the average of those scores as the game’s overall measure of quality you’d have solved it (and, indeed, this is the system lots of early videogame magazine adopted).

However, you’re presuming that it’s possible to put each of a game’s constituent parts on a definable scale of quality. The truth is that gauging a game’s graphical appeal is a subjective pursuit in the same way that trying to comparatively score a Monet against a Picasso would be. Call of Duty 4’s competent stab at sunset-drenched realism has a certain a appeal but then so does the 8-bit elegant simplicity of a Chuckie Egg of Geometry Wars.

Secondly, games are more than the sum of their parts. You could have a visually astounding videogame with a gut-wrenching soundtrack and astute, nuanced voice acting and it could still be terrible to play and vice versa.

So why not just score a game on how fun it is then?

OK, we’re getting somewhere now.

The problem with wanting a purely objective ‘review’ of a videogame is made doubly complicated by the fact that their purpose is never so narrow nor so easily defined.

Consumer goods have a very clearly defined job to do. A digital camera is there to take the best possible photographs, a toaster is there to make toast to whatever specification the consumer requires in the shortest and most efficient time. And because their purpose is tight and the measure of the product’s success easily calculable, they lend themselves to ‘review’ and ’score’ testing.

In contrast, the purpose of a videogame is much less narrowly defined. Most game ‘reviewers’ would say that the purpose of a game is to be fun and to entertain. But actually pinning down such abstract concepts is tricky as there are as many criteria and understandings of what is entertaining and fun as there are humans.

Thus, reviewing a videogame in the same way as you’d review a digital camera or other similar consumer product is inappropriate or, at very least, misleading.

But surely these scores are just signifiers of a game’s general quality. Nobody expects a game critic to actually place the game accurately upon an abstract scale of universal truth?

You’d think so, huh? Here are two quotations (plucked from the gamespot thread linked to above about their new scoring system) that reveal otherwise.

Wow Gamespot…You took the one thing that made your reviews better than every one elses, how intricate and specific they were, and dumbed it down to a system I would only expect from some 16 year olds freewebs site. This is horrible. Now I won’t know how much better a 9.5 game is from another 9.5 game.

Now if i want to know how good a games graphics were compared to another game, I’ll have to read 7 paragraphs of text instead of looking at a simple, easy to understand interface that creates a well weighted average gamescore.

Ok, I’m bored AND depressed now.

There’s one last thing to point out. Because there is no ‘true’ scale of quality by which all videogames are judged review scores have come to mean something entirely different.

Um…fine: go on if you really must…

A score has come to represent whether a game over achieves or underachieves on the preview hype that was generated by the publication ahead of its release.

As previews in videogame magazines are so heavily influenced by advertisers (after all, a preview is offering no judgment on the quality of a game so a magazine can print riotously positive spin in it with a clear conscience) this weighting of preview coverage sets imbalanced expectations in readers.

Rather than focusing on the most interesting, promising or innovative games coming out, readers are made to get excited about those whose publishers pay the most for.

This is why when a game like Bladestorm gets 8/10 in Edge this month, the internet goes into uproar. Their expectations for the game haven’t been set that high because they were being fed Kane and Lynch or whatever game whichever publisher was paying to get everybody excited about.

Then, conversely, when Mass Effect scores an 8/10 on Eurogamer they equally go into uproar the other way – because that’s far below what their expectations for the game were. Remember: in both cases nobody but the reviewer had played the game at the point the reviews came out – why then were people so quick to damn each respective score (for opposing reasons) if they’ve no hands-on experience with the games?

Scores then become a reference to a game’s preceding hype. An 8/10 for a game that was hugely hyped by the magazine is a punch in the stomach for excited fans (witness the comments thread over at Eurogamer). Conversely, an 8/10 for a game nobody cares about is viewed a gross over-generosity (witness the reaction to Edge’s score of Bladestorm on any amount of America videogame forums this month).

And that, is why videogame review scores are meaningless in that they actually answer a question that nobody was asking.

A bit like this post then.

7/10.

The videogame movie tie-in introductory paragraph has been written ten thousand times in the last ten years. ‘They all suck!’, ‘Why do developers continue to do this!’, ‘ Publishers should be told they can’t get away with this irresponsible money-laundering!’ ‘All except Goldeneye of course!’

It’s videogame critics’ Pavlovian response except, of course, there’s a lot more to the issue than those broad brush stroke, lazy touch-points. So here’s a critique of The Golden Compass movie tie-in (a videogame I’ve never before seen a publisher so loathe to send me) that is also a review of the wider issues of the genre. I hope you enjoy it.

While no doubt some critics relish the chance to tear into a development team’s latest creation with a firework display of cruel adjectives and poisonous put-downs, games journalists should always be reminded that behind every shoddy release there are many man years’ worth of hard work, unpaid overtime and neglected families.

Nobody but nobody sets out wanting to make a bad game. When you’ve tried your best with the limited resources, assets and time available, carefully balancing your design ideas with a movie studio’s agenda in a precarious compromise, rushing against all odds to get your game out on the same day as the movie, having some oblivious critic gleefully walk all over your efforts must sting. Imagine being asked to create a game that identically follows the events and aesthetics of a film that hasn’t even been shot yet? It must be development purgatory. So, before we get started, know this SEGA and Shiny: we understand. We sympathise.

But we also remember that on the other side of this sorry equation sits Timmy, a twelve-year-old 360 owner hoping for Skate or PGR4 this Christmas. His mother, nervous about videogame stores and their sweaty clientele and chunky staff, instead walks into Woolworths, scans the shelves for a suitable present for her son and settles, naturally enough, on the warm familiarity of The Golden Compass. He liked the book and she’s seen the film’s advertisements on the side of the bus and, besides, it’s got Nicole Kidman and James Bond in it, so it must be good, right? She doesn’t know how these things work. She doesn’t know the rules and little Timmy will have a rotten Christmas because of it.

The development team and Timmy: two very different people at either end of this game’s life, experiencing curiously similar feelings of frustration and letdown. When it comes to videogames of movies, nobody wins. At least, nobody Eurogamer cares about.

You can read the rest here.

Disney’s forthcoming movie , Enchanted (which released in the US two weeks ago), is a tale of a traditional fairytale princess who finds herself magicked away to a modern day New York.

It’s a well-trod premise with the comedy pulled from that inevitable clash of her knights, castles and daydreams outlook on life with the grime and liberal bustle of contemporary American coastal city.

As if to further spell out the narrative mix-up of traditional and modern the film is also a mixed media project, starting out in the 2D animated style by which Disney made its name in the last century before slipping into a live-action and CG aesthetic for those parts of the film set in New York.

The last new-IP 2D animated feature that Disney made was the mediocre Home on the Range, a film that marked the end of this artistic tradition for the studio, who were now supposedly moving wholly into the 3D CG animation made popular by Pixar’s movies.

The decision was reportedly made by Michael Eisner, Disney Studios head, who argued that 2D cartoon-style animated films were no longer viable, before laying off all of the 2D animators at the studio and selling off all their associated equipment.

This act of wrong-headed stupidity (at least from an artistic point of view, perhaps from a business point of view it was a sound call) reinforced in the public mind the idea that 3D CGI is the natural successor to 2D animation.

How utterly depressing. As if 3D CGI is somehow the 2D form evolved; as if Shrek is more beautiful and expressive than Fantasia; as if photographs are watercolors all grown up.

But that was 2004 and this is 2007 and apparently people think there might actually be room for both forms of animation. Redfaced, Disney has had to outsource all of the ( beautiful) drawn elements to the film to an external studio (James Baxter Animation), an animation agency staffed by many ex-Disney emplyees.

If Enchanted demonstrates Disney dipping its toes back into the 2D form (and let’s not forget that the film’s central message is essentially ridiculing the 2D fairytale world of the lead character as being outdated and laughable when set alongside (post)modernity) it will be interesting to see how long it is before they find their future lies in their past after all.

Meanwhile, the first Street Fighter 4 image leaks onto the Internet: 3D models, 2D gameplay…

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I wrote this a few weeks back and, reading today on publication, it seems a little dry and clinical. That’s probably because for the past month I’ve played Disgaea at every available opportunity, my enthusiasm deepening with each level up. It’s the first game that’s managed to get me reaching into my bag for the PSP daily.

Still, as I have tendency to be Captain Hyperbole at times, perhaps the more reserved tone is a good thing. I wrote the Edge review of Disgaea back when it was first released on PS2 in 2003 and, while playing through before anyone really knew anything about the game and there were no associated expectations was desperately exciting (and an increasingly rare privilege), playing today when I have some tactics and plans for my team right from the start is even better.

That the PSP should receive heavily embellished ports of two of the greatest strategy RPGs ever made within weeks of one another is, at once, cause for wild celebration and cause for mild irritation. Celebration because both Final Fantasy Tactics and Disgaea are astounding achievements of intelligent design, assured form and delightful function; annoyance because the proximity of their second comings will force free time-impoverished players to choose one over the other when, in all honesty, both are fiercely individual games and both make for essential playing.

Disgaea is the younger game by some stretch. First released for the PlayStation 2 in 2003 (as Disgaea: Hour of Darkness) it arrived without fanfare, the creation of an obscure Japanese developer, Nippon Ichi, known only to the most dedicated importers for the musical RPG Rhapsody. Until Disgaea’s arrival the SRPG was a genre deeply entrenched in tradition, the grid-based mechanics – where games play out like two generals moving toy soldiers across a tactical map in a battle for domination – solid and immovable, nobody willing to venture far from their strict rules. Indeed, following 1997’s Final Fantasy Tactics, the near perfect expression and realisation of ten years of preceding tradition, virtually no developer or publisher tried their hand at the genre.

All of which made Disgaea’s arrival all the more of a surprise and goes to show how meteoric the rise of the game and its developer’s reputation actually was. Rather than trying to compete with the strait-laced storyline and aesthetic of all that had gone before, Disgaea instead opts for an irreverent art style and storyline in the style of a universally appealing comedy anime show (Excel Saga springs to mind). Set in the esoteric Netherworld, the game pulls back the curtain on the prissy but loveable anti-hero Laharl as he awakens from a two-year sleep in the belly of a hellish castle. Heir to the underworld kingdom, Laharl’s slumber has meant he missed his father’s passing and, with it, his chance to take the throne. Within moments he’s off, tracking down the usurping rival demon Vyers, who comes to be disparagingly known as ‘Mid-boss’ as the game progresses.

You can read the rest over at Eurogamer here.

I’m sure you’re all up to speed with the rumours surrounding the departure of a Gamespot editor last week. If not, pop over here for helpful rundown and commentary on the ‘story’ so far.

The ‘news’ of Gerstmann’s firing was initially spread by absurdly popular webcomic Penny Arcade – a weekly, 3-panel strip that provides commentary on the videogame industry and its subcultures.

While the comic receives over 2 million visitors a day (according to Wikipedia) opinion is split over its quality and worth.

One poster over at forumopolis, who apparently worked on the Kane and Lynch advertising campaign upon which the Gamespot controversy pivots, is clearly a big fan:

I worked on the K&L ads personally, and I had a front-row seat to the whole debacle.

The ads were originally supposed to point to the GS review page, as they sometimes do. When the review came out, Eidos was understandably upset, and yes — they did threaten to pull the whole campaign — but they eventually simmered down and kept the campaign. They had us change the clickthrough URL from the GS review to the official site, but other than that little changed…

I think the whole thing is likely a combination of factors, the biggest being poor timing. Gerst gets canned just two weeks after the K&L incident, so people blame it on that (especially when backed by PA, the gaming journalism equivalent to The Daily Show).

Woah there! Videogame journalism’s equivalent to The Daily Show?!

I don’t read Penny Arcade other than when it’s linked to in forum posts etc. When I do happen to see it, it’s always a disappointment.

Penny Arcade seems to me to be afflicted by a problem common to many comedians/ satirists who work in small niches solely for the audience within that niche: their humour is based on people recognising the thing to which they are referring, not on an actual joke.

It’s nod, nod, wink, wink, ‘did-you-notice-that-thing-in-that-game-well-wasn’t-that-funny!’ stuff. Readers enjoy it because they feel like they are in the know, because ‘Yes, I DID notice-that-thing-in-that-game-and-wasn’t-that-funny LOL!’

Sure, it’s tough to provide incisive or perspicacious commentary on a news event in three short panels AND to provide the funny but Penny Arcade rarely manages either, existing instead as a kind of broad brush stroke thematic shorthand for gamers devoid of their own thoughts or ideas to cut and paste into forum threads.

This is the case with the Gerstamnn strip (where there is no discernible joke at all) as it is with the one from the week before (where I have literally no idea what it’s on about).

Apologists might say you need to read the accompanying blog post to get the meaning, or you would have had to be reading the strip religiously to understand it (despite the fact Penny Arcade doesn’t really do meta-narratives). But these are weak excuses for what is a weak strip designed to make kids feel like part of a big club of cognoscenti rather than to effectively satirise or comment on the videogames industry.

Comic strips based on current events should still be accessible and enjoyable to people who don’t necessarily know the issue or story intimately.

I’m sure that a mean-spirited but witty commentator could perform a kind of Marmaduke-explained style website that pulls the strips apart for what they are.

Then again, as CNET is finding out, 2 million angry Internet kids bound together by the solidarity of indignation are, on reflection, probably not worth the hassle.