The Lie-In

Good morning, videogames. Except it's not morning. I have finally failed to deliver this article on time, as I'm away from home at the moment doing other things. Forgive me. We'll add an extra tier to our new subscriber goals at which I will be flogged. In the meantime, a collection of links awaits you below.

The second collection of Metal Gear Solid re-releases is arriving next week, and Polygon's Giovanni Colantonio revisited the fourth game in the series to talk about what's aged well, and less well.

But the poorly aged stealth action is far from the most shocking thing about Metal Gear Solid 4. Instead, it’s how direct Kojima is about tackling political issues without mincing a single word.

I love brush-based level design. Brendon Chung loves it too, and his opinion matters more as the maker of 30 Flights Of Loving, Quadrilateral Cowboy and Skin Deep.

It’s intentionally and specifically not a general-purpose tool designed to do anything – and I think that’s great. It’s built from the ground up to focus on authoring geometry for 3D game levels, allow you to make it as easily as possible, and allow you to iterate as easily as possible.

Jamie Hore went in search of the most remote gamer for This Week In Videogames.

Those people all reside in Tristan da Cunha’s one and only village – the gorgeously named Edinburgh of the Seven Seas. You cannot take a flight there. The only way to get there is by leaving on a boat from Cape Town, sailing for around a week, and then praying that sea conditions are calm enough for a smaller boat to collect you and take you to shore.

The Truman Show has just been inducted into the National Film Registry, giving Oli Welsh at Polygon cause enough to write about the film's "deeper prophetic resonance".

The Truman Show’s commentary on the media’s commercialization of the individual was trenchant at the time, bolstered by its broad appeal and strong, universal storytelling. But its impact has been followed by a series of long, deepening aftershocks as social media has turned its precept into a universal way of life.

The scurvy-carrying seadogs over on the sinking galley ship RPS took a break from posting IGN videos about console games on the homepage to write about the pirate-themed citybuilder Corsair Cave.

I want to stress how much of a production game Corsair Cove is because to look at it, you might presume something that's more genre light. However, if you don't master the interlocking parts of your pirates' economy, as you move into the mid and late game, you will find your people frequently on the brink of an outright revolt.

Eurogamer have been running a collection of uplifting articles under the Optimism Week banner, like a youth pastor trying to get the moody teenagers to cheer up. I am too much of a hater to get in the spirit, but I did enjoy this collection of small things in games that spark joy.

That Quake announcer's adulation

Unreal might have had this too, but it's the cinema-trailer-voiced announcer in Quake 3 I remember, probably because I played Quake the most out of the two series. You know the lines I mean: "Impressive" after hitting two railgun shots in a row, or "excellent" after killing two opponents in quick succession

Have I featured this Portishead track, and this exact live performance, in this spot before? I can't recall, but I am currently near Portishead on my travels, and so here it is anyway.

Sleep well, videogames