Links!
I fucking love links I do. It’s been ages since I’ve done a little round up too, mainly because I can’t be bothered reaching for my keyboard nearly often enough these days. However, there’s been lots to inspire me this fine day (and not just because I’ve managed to avoid playing the Left4Dead demo through just one more time for shits and giggles), nor is it because I’ve just spent an hour with the NXE and I’m trying to distract myself from writing things about the community titles available during the beta. Or the avatar system.
Onwards with the linking before I say something out loud like “I prefer my Mii”. Whoops, too late!
Do Games Reviewers Really Understand Innovation? Keith Stuart from fine UK news establishment The Guardian discusses some of the scary aspects of the recent spate of Mirror’s Edge reviews and makes a good case for “game reviewers should stop being armchair designers” as an aside and points out that perhaps, we should be reviewing games on their own merits and what they’re trying to be rather than what everyone else does. The IGN review he links to is (being generous here) poor but the closing comments are embarassing. “The list of moves could be more expansive — maybe by adding a fourth button to the mix — and the world feels entirely too constricting for what could be a huge open city”. Some people don’t deserve games, never mind being allowed to review them.
Don’t Start With Story! - Ste Pickford. All of this and more. See also: Don’t make me watch the same sell up routine on completing a demo that is designed for multiplayer replayability. That’s a really annoying thing to do, Valve. Still, the game is fucking superb and I’ve had many comedy laugh out loud moments from it. None less than last nights glorious “caught by a smoker whilst a zombie repeatedly punches me in the face” incident which had me guffawing a bit too much.
World Of Goo vs Piracy - dubious stats but an incredibly level headed attitude from 2d Boy. Shame the piracy discussion is so utterly circular. However it was nice to get through all 14x comments so far on RPS without one car analogy. Well done commentators!
Geometry Wars Retro Explained - where the headline makes it sound more interesting than it is. I must admit I’d gone in wondering if there’d be an explanation as to why, still, in GW:RE2 things fucking well spawn as good as underneath you thus rendering the game more like a fruit machine than an absolute show of skill. The fact that it remains a great game in spite of itself probably says something, I’m just not sure what.
Nintendo WiiSpeak, A new front in war against used games - You didn’t really think Nintendo were your friends did you? Did you? Some worrying stuff alluded to by Mr Capps linked off in the article which makes me wonder which part of “stop hurting your legitimate customers” some of these folks don’t understand. Oh, that’s right - all of it.
Randomly Timed Links Round Up
Time for a quick look at some stuff that’s interested me and in some cases just plain irritated the gubbins out of my backside. I’ve long given up on making this regular as clockwork as I’m rapidly discovering that running RR and dealing with a small muppet takes up an awful lot of your time…
Let’s roll anyway whilst I idle the time away waiting for Mr UPS Man to return my 360 to me.
RROD Whistleblower gets the sack. As much as it’s not entirely surprising that this happened, I’m utterly befuddled by the news article here. It’s all in the last segment. I don’t know, it just seems like a complete cunt attitude to take. Sucking the corporate cock doesn’t begin to cover it - we all know that breaking an NDA is not a good thing to do if you want to keep your job, but fuck me, presenting the guy as an idiot for not towing the corporate bullshit line and standing up for something he clearly believed was the right thing to do seems well off the cuntery scale.
The TIGS Demake Competition - All the entries over a couple of pages. A couple of pages made up of pure awesomeness. Sterling stuff. I’ve already posted on RR frontpages about my love for Macarena Of The Missing but it bears repeating. It’s fantabulous and scarily has better voice acting than most of the mainstream games I’ve played in the past couple of years.
Space Giraffe - finally gets a long overdue guide over at Chez Llamasoft. Everything you wanted to know and more. Including the fact it’s not Tempest. Just in case you hadn’t had someone point that out to you yet. Bonus points for the Gridrunner+++ instructions on the announcement page: “move with this stick, aim with that stick, and collect the sheepies”
RPS on Mighty Jill Off - fab read for a fab game and it’s always ace to see RPS cover indie games (even when they’re not mine!). One step closer to the revolution, brothers.
WAH! Last night at Erics. - Peel Session wonderousness from the lovely Pete Wylie, rock star, treasure and genius that he is. One of my favourite moments of last year involved a conversation with Mrs Bob over the telephone which consisted mainly of her saying “you’re standing outside talking to the Pete Wylie and you’re ringing me?”. Bless her.
Club Penguin GDC Stuff - courtesy of GameSetWatch. Linked to mainly because a friend of mine has hell with his sisters daughter being obsessed with the place. Interesting stuff anyway and if Disney would like to buy MR for a rather whopping sum, feel free!
Part 3 of The Gruniad Peter Moore interview - “we were trying all kinds of classic Rare stuff and unfortunately I think the industry had past Rare by”. Dude, I’m sure that happened around 1985 and no-one actually noticed that since then, they’ve just been sticking big eyes on things and hoping it’d sell. Incidentally, I miss Uncle Clive.
Colours - Dear fucking god, it looks like we got off light from the Gizmondo charade. Lord knows who writes this shit (the game, not the review), but they must have been pissing themselves surely? Please don’t tell me it’s serious…
Links Round Up
Been a while since I’ve done one of these, but it’s either that or a massive fucking rant about how shite Bionic Commando:Rearmed turned out to be, so I’ll choose the happy option anyday 
Uncle’s 3d Starstrike released - around 3 years in the making and although I’ve had a rough copy since Xmas (as have RR subscribers) it’s finally out in the wild. It’s also fucking fantastic. As I was pointing out in a thread on RR with regards to Blaster, my 3d shooter time line of importance goes Star Wars/Blaster/3d Starstrike/Fuck all/Rez. Needless to say, I’m a happy bunny with it. Must try for high scores when time allows.
Developing for PSN and for Windows, Linux and Mac - following on from the handy guide to XBLA development, Alex has bunged up further articles shedding some light on the trials of choosing your platform to develop for. Excellent stuff as usual.
Cliffski vs The Pirates - I love a story with a happy ending.
The State Of The Casual Games Industry 2008 - scary stuff really. “Tetris wouldn’t be released today in the casual games space unless it had a story mode about you working your way across the world looking for clues about your missing uncle one Tetris round at a time”
TIGS Demake Compo - if all goes well, I should have an entry. Providing I clear up a few RR compo loose ends in time.
The First Week Of Braid - stats, stats, stats and well deserved success.
Luc Bernard vs Destructoid - RLLMUK thread because The Goring is on fire.
Tutorials Are Hard - Ste Pickford once more on the subject of user friendliness. Vaguely related, I think Braid got it just about bang the fuck on.
Lithium Leaf - to remind myself that I really must add them to my link list of places I read. You should too.
Links Round Up
Back once again with the renegade linkmaster, or something to that effect anyway. Once again, a little semi irregular meant to be regular look on stuff that’s taken my interest this past week or so. And, more usefully, finally pushing the “testing” post off the front page…
The Day Of Random Links
I give up trying to ensure I put this out on a Sunday for the time being, so with no further ado may I present “The Day Of Random Links”, formerly and soon to be again “Sunday Linky Sunday”. After the jump, find the joyous links of doom, a bit more wordy than usual too…
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