Sundays are for waking from dreams about how international finance is an abstract mess based on superstition. Thanks, unconscious, we already knew that. What do you want me to do about it, exactly? But perhaps we can divine some truths among the entrails of another pseudo-science, that of writing about the strange family of activities we call games.

• What does Quintin Smith do these days? Well, he writes odes to in-game menus: “I love this stuff. And if you do pore over it like some bizarrely specialised future archaeologist, it loves you back. The range and depth of talent packed into Arkham City’s menu, where characters are caught mid-fight, in the rain, as the camera pans past them, got me more excited than anything in the game’s marketing. There was no risk of disappointment anymore. The game would be a tour de force from start to finish.”

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Hello youse.

I missed Fortress America first time round. It was originally released as one of the MB Gamesmaster series, alongside games like Axis & Allies and the brilliant Shogun. For years, I’ve heard it called one of the purest examples of the “Ameritrash” style. It’s a game that features a map of America, lots of little plastic units, and a handful of dice. It’s one of those games I’d always hoped to find in a charity shop one sunny day, on a shelf alongside the Aliens board game and a working Dark Tower.

Fantasy Flight Games has spoiled that dream by releasing a new edition of the game and making it available in shops all over the place. And not a penny goes to charity. There’s no charity in Fortress America. Only ruthlessness. Let’s rock. (more…)

Ready for something to come out of nowhere and hit you right in the nose? OK, here it comes. Get ready, brace yourself, and… it still hit you. Because that’s how things that defy the law of conservation of energy to suddenly materialize on our plane of existence work. I believe a more succinct term for it is “surprise.” Anyway! Turns out, it’s an announcement – as things we report on often are. Something Valve-related is making its way to famed purveyor of cartoons with curse words>, Adult Swim. But what could it be? WHAT?

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Have you been good boys and girls this week? Do you think you deserve a treat? Why not use your pocket money to purchase some of the many varied and delightful cheap bits of digital entertainment software that have been put on sale across the internet’s digital distribution retail outlets this fine weekend? As usual, in addition to my regular duties charting the best prices for games across all formats over at SavyGamer.co.uk, I’ve been sorting through the special offers on PC games to see which offers are the specialist, and thus deserve your attention. And look, here they are now: (more…)

The first time I ever played Portal was damn near magical. Each room I walked into held promise of some diabolical new assault on both my brain and the laws of physics, but I made them look like child’s play. At the time, I was certain it proved I was a genius with an IQ so huge that even my bulging genius brain couldn’t count that high. Of course, I soon came to find out that everyone> experienced Portal that way. So I wasn’t a genius. But the puzzle designers at Valve were.

To this day, Portal stands as the most masterful example of invisibly intuitive teaching I’ve ever discovered. It slowly builds upon itself – sneaking new techniques into your repertoire until you’re snoozing through puzzles that would’ve short-circuited your synapses maybe 20 minutes earlier. Is it a fit for classrooms, though? My first inclination would be to think not. I mean, it’s not exactly a hyper-accurate physics simulation – even with science jokes making up the bulk of both Portal 1 and 2′s brilliantly witty dialogue. That, however, is precisely the point, according to Valve director of education Leslie Redd and designer Yasser Malaika. It’s how> Valve games teach – not what they’re teaching – that could help save a rusty, way-behind-the-times education system.

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Oh dear, this is getting out of control. With 28 tabs open on one screen, and a blank page on this one, Kickstarter Katchup is getting busy. Do keep sending in suggestions to the email linked in my name above. That doesn’t guarantee they’ll be featured, of course. And being featured here doesn’t mean we endorse the projects. It’s your call what you choose to fund. Lots of new games added this week, with just one previous mention finishing unfunded, and three success stories.>

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Once upon a time, I believed the dreaded Ubidelay was finally sharing a suffocatingly packed grave with the publisher’s other incredibly misguided ideas about how PC releases should work. After all, Far Cry 3′s bucking the trend, so I was allowed to hope, right? But alas, Eurogamer‘s uncovered some rather convincing evidence to the contrary, at least, in the case of Assassin’s Creed III. Specifically, our blue, platform-agnostic cousin got its hands on a promotional image that prominently states “PC version out on 23rd November 2012.” That puts Connor’s eagle-scream haystack dive onto our hard drives roughly a month after the console versions. Boo.

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For me, Spec Ops: The Line is like watching a child play with a balloon. Like, I want it to be good, and I think it definitely has the tools to do so – but I’m still tensing every muscle and waiting for a deafening POP. Maybe it’s a sign of early onset cynicism, but plenty of other shooters have promised non-black-and-white moral choices and a “true” battlefield experience. Also, while probably purposefully bereft of those things, the demo didn’t exactly make a believer out of Richard. So now, on the eve of the eve of the eve of the eve of the eve of the eve of Spec Ops’ release, 2K calls for another supply drop of big promises. But will Yager deliver?

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It hasn’t been a good week for League of Legends. Between all the ups and downs and incredibly long (multiple hour) queues, Riot’s flagship has been looking less like a MOBA and more like a theme park rollercoaster. North American servers, especially, have been out-and-out unavailable for hours at a time, and players, naturally, have felt quite a tingling in their pitchfork-and-torch regions. To its credit, however, Riot’s gone on record explaining the situation in full.

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You may not have heard, but the Mass Effect trilogy tried to end earlier this year. It was all like, “OK folks, that’s our show!” And then everyone held hands and bowed at the same time. As the curtains closed, I even briefly caught a glimpse of Shepard and Harbinger hugging. They had quite a run together, those two. Fans, though, weren’t so keen on the space odyssey’s final moments. Perhaps the krogan dance number lacked ‘zazz>. Maybe the one-fourth scale replica of the Normandy that ran on doves and confetti was a bit much>. Regardless, BioWare decided to have another go at it. Just, you know, better this time, apparently.

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