Game/Cultural Issues of the Week

This week month has been a busy one... excuses abound about why I haven't stayed true to my humble principle of writing more regularly, but, to be completely honest, it doesn't really matter. So I'm going to ignore my own self pity and talk a little about what's been going on in the realm of computer games! What follows is an amorphous mass of writing on the issues of sexism and violence in computer games. Oh god...

It seems that socio-cultural issues spread like wild fire in game journalism. First it was the issue of violence which found itself most cohesively expressed in the demos of E3 - that now much derided convention/colossus of a sales pitch. Much was said about Usher, dubstep and all round disappointment/bewilderment, but more importantly there has been a general backlash surrounding the fetishistic insistence on violence and realism still dominating the big budget game releases. Then this was coupled with some serious criticism coming from journalists apparently finding themselves agasp at gender issues in mainstream computer games, meaning that there has been some really interesting and heated web-debates going on in computer game journalism.

Superbrothers: Swords & Sworcery EP

I've failed this fortnight in writing a 'game of the week', which is a shame because I've actually been playing an awful lot. Unfortunately all this game playing is related to articles so it doesn't seem quite right to use the material elsewhere. The only game which isn't related to an article is The Witcher 2 for 360, which has been fun, but I've only played a few missions so I'm not entirely qualified at the moment to comment. Anyway, here's a review which was previously published by the wonderful website Critical Gamer. Its for Swords & Sworcery for the PC, which is a 'good' game I think. The review is very positive, but be warned that the game, for all its style and uniqueness visually, kind of lacks what the original iOS game had - gameplay. Or at least anything which the average PC gamer would consider had any depth. However the game is lush - so yeah, review over...