Dear lord. Did CCP set out to come up with concept art that's indistinguishable from Mass Effect's? It is a nice cover though.

Looking forward to the Sin & Punishment review. My Wii is seeing a lot more action recently, hopefully this'll continue the trend.

Judging by this review, and the 90% Metacritic score, I'm missing something here. I played through most of the game this week and was resolutely unimpressed. Additions such as melee combat should have probably made the cut for the first game; the new infected (to me) feel game-breakingly overpowered; Valve's 'improved' characters and story really didn't anything to the experience.

As an expansion, L4D2 would be fine, as a full priced game I'd be wary unless you really loved the first one.

Borderlands has single-handedly cured me of a malaise that shared at least five of your six criteria. It's the first game for a long time that has made me anxious to get home from work just to play it.

Great blog, by the way.

That's a fair point, especially regarding cultural programming. Cookery / gardening shows are ostensibly educational / vocational (here's how to cook meal X / stop bug Y from nibbling your shrubbery) but something like the Culture Show offers previews, reviews and (usually) well-informed discussion, much like a good gaming magazine.

Could this format work as a gaming programme? With the right presenters, I don't see why not. But it would be going head-to-head with the internet in a way that the Culture Show doesn't, and that's another problem entirely.

And with regards to your poker example, some enterprising producer obviously realised the inherent drama in the game and worked out how best to present that in a TV format. What would the key elements be for a good games show that could offer something different to the mass of online content on the subject?

Boy, do I ever agree with this. I'm of the seeming minority that think Brooker's 'journalism' is nothing more than content-free causticness, and Gameswipe did nothing to alter my opinion.

Theory: Games on TV will never work because why on Earth would gamers watch programmes about games when they could be playing them instead?