Sundays are for waking from dreams about how international finance is an abstract mess based on superstition. Thanks, unconscious, we already knew that. What do you want me to do about it, exactly? But perhaps we can divine some truths among the entrails of another pseudo-science, that of writing about the strange family of activities we call games.

• What does Quintin Smith do these days? Well, he writes odes to in-game menus: “I love this stuff. And if you do pore over it like some bizarrely specialised future archaeologist, it loves you back. The range and depth of talent packed into Arkham City’s menu, where characters are caught mid-fight, in the rain, as the camera pans past them, got me more excited than anything in the game’s marketing. There was no risk of disappointment anymore. The game would be a tour de force from start to finish.”

(more…)