This week in gaming, millions of male gamers still found a way to wax their poles to the new, gritty Tomb Raider; Sim City went into complete shit-ridden meltdown and I continued to play a tonne of Metal Gear Rising: Revengeance. The only thing that comforts me after typing that ridiculous name is the unrelenting entertainment value of tearing out cyborg spines. Third playthrough down and I’m still digging the most violent method of electrolyte extraction known to man.

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Big Al down the pub told me that he’s seen the PS4. He said it’s sort of shiny, round and floats towards you ominously with its protruding spikes and blades. I told him that was one of the spheres from Phantasm. To be fair: I should have known better, Al is renowned for being full of shit – he once even told me that dogs can’t look up.

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Perhaps I expect too much, or maybe I’m just not as connected to the world of contemporary gaming as I want to believe I am, but something about the reception towards Sony’s PS4 announcement strikes me as being particularly lukewarm. Sure, I’m old enough now to realise that the promises of seas parting and maidens flocking aren’t ever true, but I did expect a little more fan-fare than “well, it’s not completely shit…”

Beyond the lacklustre offerings of the Wii U and the PS Vita, or the lingering promise of something from Valve or Apple, gamers have little to feed upon lately. As the next generation begins to rise from the embryonic fluid of shadowy development houses we get to weigh up the merits of a blank canvas against the fear of unfulfilled promises. So, let’s join hands and embark upon this adventure together.

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Sometimes, leaving the intro until last is to my benefit. Well, yours too really, as I’m now able to provide you with ample warning. I think I’ve talked about butts quite frequently, and roughly 50% of the whole piece is just completely made up. So, in advance, sorry about all that.

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This week’s pressing questions in gaming are:

Why don’t more women play games? Probably doing something productive whilst I jerk it to polygons.

Why did they delay GTA V and does this somehow relate to rumoured plans for Rockstar to form a Bioshock-esque rogue state?

Just how powerful is the new Playstation going to be and is it going to include the Fleshlight extension that I’ve been petitioning for some months now?

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Video games are great and all, I don’t want you to get me wrong, but sometimes you just have to disconnect, you know? Really take a look at your surroundings and the people closest to you: learn to appreciate the real things in your life.

Of course I’m kidding, we all know that other human beings are fuckers and that reality is a hugely overrated series of crushing failures and missed opportunities. Let’s get virtual.

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It’s perhaps only in retrospect that we can see just how contemporary Devil May Cry was upon its release in 2001. The frantic, accelerated combat mechanics represented an industry pushing hardware to have games play as we’d so often wished they would. It was fast, brutal and responsive. It also introduced the series’ main protagonist, Dante, into the gaming public’s consciousness. This smart-assed, pizza-loving, sharp-dressing demon hunter went on to become the archetypical ‘cool’ video game hero. Fuelled by perceptions of the contemporary taken directly from the worlds of Anime and perceived notions of western ‘cool’: Dante was a product of his time and being contemporary was his nature. So, what happens when your contemporary character isn’t quite so cutting edge any longer? You reinvent him, of course.

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Welcome to Press Start! It’s a column about my intense self-loathing, eating and masturbatory habits, cleverly disguised as a week in the events of video game culture. Come on in.

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Hey you know that kid who writes about video games sometimes? Yeah, The Fucksbot? Something like that. Check out what that douche consumed this year.

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It’s no surprise that most of my favoured games this year are download-only: games free of the constraints of large publishing deals and the costs of physical media. I like those physical artifacts as much as the next self-respecting hoarder, but when it comes to gaming and the creativity that I’ve seen flourish within the digital marketplace, it seems all the more difficult to pine for the past. The future of gaming is increasingly digital, independent and passionate: a fact well-displayed by some of the better releases this year. As Bobby Kotick plots to overthrow Steam, kill Gabe Newell and eat his heart to gain his strength, let us celebrate the games of 2012.

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