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I finally got around to playing the Dutch freeware game, De Blob. In it you take control of the titular blob, who is a crashlanded alien charged with absorbing the rainbow-coloured denizens of grey Dutch cities and transforming the city into large blocks of primary colour. It's a purely mouse-controlled game and feels similar the single-button 16-bit era games. In fact it almost feels weird to only use a single button in a game these days - I'm so used to keyboards and gem-encrusted twenty-thumb gamepads.

It also made me motion sick for the first time in my life. I'm 29 and motion sick at last. I assumed that years of videogame abuse had immunised me from such effects, but perhaps the mad camera twirling of De Blob has finally got to me. Does this mean I'm getting old? I need to lie down.

Despite nausea I can earnestly recommend De Blob. It's weird and cute, and really nothing like Katamari. You can download De Blob's English version right here. Please post reports of motion-related illness in the comments. Eugh.

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Being a big ol' list of the big neat things on RPS you may want to read if you're a newcomer. Or a particularly inattentive oldie. ULTROMEGAFEATURES: Features so big we give them a silly name. The Go Team! Team Fortress 2, class by class. The RPS 2007 Game-O-Calendar: Looking back at the best games of 2007. Games For 2008: The year preview in full.

INTERVIEWS: Developers with high talkosity verbospeaking. Raph "Theory Of Fun" Koster talks MMOs and Metaplace. Ron "Monkey Island 2" Gilbert talks Deathspank. Soren "Civ4" Johnson talks about PC gaming. Eric Wolpaw on writing for Valve, and writing Portal .David Speyrer on making Half-Life 2: Episode Two. Kim Swift and Jeep Barrett on making Portal. Ken Levine on the Making of Bioshock. The Splash Damage story: Paul Wedgwood on how they got to make Quake Wars: Enemy Territory. Robin Walker and Charlie Brown on Team Fortress 2. Part 1. Part 2. Professor Henry Jenkins on games and academia. Nathan ‘Oveur’ Richardsson on Eve Online. Adam 'Cargo Cult' Foster on Half-Life 2 super-mod MINERVA: Metastasis.

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As you reach out to open the door, the Calendar throbs and quivers, its surface rippling in an uncanny, fleshy manner. A low growl comes from somewhere within and as the tip of your finger reaches the door, you feel something very much like a vein, pulsing beneath your touch. Recoiling in horror, you stumble and would fall to the ground if there were nothing to support you. But there is. Somebody is in the Calendar's chamber with you, though you entered alone. He folds you into his arms, his robe softer than fog. His beard bristles gently.

"The time is not yet right." His voice is like the cracking of thin ice on a lake and the breath that carries it smells of spun sugar and mulled wine. "You must obey the rules for the Calendar has been known to punish those who do not respect the passage of time. That is, after all, its purpose. To chronicle the end of things. The last person who pried open a portal before its time is still lost somewhere within the calendar, behind a door with no number. When no creatures are stirring in this house, I sometimes hear the scratches as he tries to find a way out, lost in the dark. Ho ho ho."

You turn to see this nocturnal visitor but there is a clattering of hooves, a cold shudder of frosty air, and you are alone in the chamber once more.

We rather puzzlingly haven't written anything else about that game yet. Sorry! But we will, one day. Probably.