The good, the bad and the ugly of the last week! Brought to you by McVitie’s Smile Edible Smile Bones! Yes, it’s a jar of flavoured teeth and don’t ask us how we got them!

It’s not exactly illegal to want to rule the world, but it’s the methods that a person uses to accomplish their goals that makes all the difference.

After flip-flopping from one disaster to another, you have to wonder if the Oscar organisers even know what the industry it is supposed to celebrate is about.

This is the gaming industry’s future. We’re powerless to stop it. All we can do is watch.

We’re sorry to report that due to Stage 2 intro-shedding, Crit-com will have to initiate rolling blackouts on introductory paragraphs.

A post so darn good, that it doesn’t even need a proper intro and I can write whatever I want here hurpde durp look at me I’m a magical unicorn who discovered how to wRiTe iN SpOnGeBoB MeMe tExT I Am tHe bEsT.

But you tell us: what bands and artists are on your see-before-you-die bucket list?

Welcome to the weekly wrap-up! You asked for it, we hired a flunky on Fiver to write it and I put the backbreaking effort of putting my name on the byline to complete it!

Celeste is an emotional game, one that uses visuals, writing and music to really invest the player in Madeline’s story. Yet what I think makes it special is that it offers an important message through something that only a video game could achieve: A playstyle. Mechanics are something so unique to the video game medium. Just like great poets experiment and challenge the form of how language is written so too do great developers challenge how we interact with their art and when a developer takes advantage of this, marrying interactivity with conventional storytelling...well, you get something incredibly powerful. Something like Celeste.

A new year means new games. And new hypemachine cycles in which to sell those games, am I right? By now, you’ve seen it all in every game ever released. You’ve read the interviews where developers gush over just how authentic the Perforate 2.0 Engine is in Ace McStab Yo Face 5: Days of our Knives, you’ve watched a trailer where big bold font tells you that a kajillion weapons await you on a hostile planet and something something blockchain. Yawn.

By now, anyone interested in the local esports scene would have heard the story surrounding Orena and Electronic Sports World Cup (ESWC). Earlier this month ESWC announced its African qualifiers for its CSGO tournament and South Africa was a noticeable omission to the lineup. Which is just the tip of the iceberg of this particular story.

2018 may have been a brilliant year for gaming, but here’s the thing: Nobody wants to remember the good times. Instead, we’re hardwired to automatically complain when given the chance, and the year that was had no shortage of absolutely valid complaints. You look back at the last trip around the gigantic ball of flaming gas that gives us life, and there was plenty to hate on.