Pushing Buttons: The one game my kid will play with me
In this week's newsletter: Give kids time, and they'll find a game that captures their imagination - and yours too, if you're lucky
Tis the season, folks - the season of lists. All around the media world, 2022's games, albums, films et cetera are being coralled into contentious rankings for everyone in the office (and the comments section) to argue over. Our own Guardian games list is prepped and ready, but I want to hear what games you've been enjoying over the past 12 months. Hit reply on this newsletter and write me a few sentences on your favourites, and I'll compile them for an end-of-year special issue.
If you've been reading for a while, you'll know that I have not been the luckiest when it comes to introducing video games to my children. My stepson, now 17, always loved games, but his taste diverged so massively from mine that we rarely intersected, bar a few treasurable months when Minecraft first came out, and a year of shared Destiny adventures before he got good enough to comprehensively outplay me. These days I'm constantly hassling him to try something like Bloodborne, when all he wants to play is first-person shooters.
The games-of-the-year lists have begun! Longtime Guardian games contributor Simon Parkin has picked his for the New Yorker. It's a thoughtful and varied selection that includes several of my own favourites, and a few games I'm keen to play before the year is out. (Hello, Strange Horticulture!)
The Game Awards - which its organiser Geoff Keighley pitches as the video game Oscars, glossy and ostentatious and redolent of money - are happening on Thursday in LA. Expect a couple of announcements and new trailers peppered in among the handing out of gongs, including one from Epic Games and 505 (I'm betting on an open-world crime game, based on the teaser site).
Former golden-age-of-Rare composers Kevin Bayliss, Grant Kirkhope and David Wise have released an unbelievably cheesy Christmas tune. If you want to hear the people behind the brain-infesting tunes of Banjo-Kazooie in the like sing I want a video game for Christmas!" while low-key lamenting the tragedy of ageing, here you go.
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