It’s the weekend! It’s time for reading! Well, a little reading. Perhaps. I mean, it’s the weekend, shouldn’t we got out and get drunk or something? No? Fine. Here’s our latest collection of cobbled-together linkage of stuff wot is interesting. And sorry about last week. Please don’t mention last week.

Link magic activate!

• Medal of Honor is out and the reviews are… well, they’re fine. Good, even. (Mini-rant incoming) What they are not is bloody “middling” as this Escapist headline would have you believe. A Metacritic average of 75 is a good damn score for heaven’s sake (Mini-rant over). Anyway, in the run up to the release Ian Bogost used the brew-ha-ha over MoH’s setting and the inclusion of the Taliban (since Talibanned in multiplayer, do-ho-ho) to tackle EA’s handling of the controversy, public reaction and the implications for freedom of speech. It’s long, but well worth the read.
• Still on Medal of Honor (has anyone, incidentally, played it?), Seth Fichtelberg argues that the release of the game is just too soon and downright disrespectful. He doesn’t do it very well, mind, and the piece is pre-Talibanning (I just can’t help myself), but it’s worth reading if only to see just how wrongheaded counter-arguments like this can get.
• Do you ever think some stuff gets reported simply because it might tenuously cast video games in a negative light? The Guardian writes about a recent study at the University of Bristol that might be used to possibly suggest that perhaps some sort of ill-defined ill-effect may or may not befall our children’s psychological health if they spend too much time in front of the TV or their games console. “There’s no evidence one way or the other,” says lead researcher Angie Page. Which means there isn’t a proven link, despite what the Guardian’s headline claims.
• Blizzard went ahead and banned a bunch of people for cheating in Starcraft II earlier in the week, only they banned folks for cheating in the single-player portion of the game. CheatHappens broke the story and they’ve got a write up and a response from Blizzard. It’s all a bit of a mess, with many folks now unable to play Starcraft II at all because they dicked about in the campaign, rather than online.
• And finally, man who can’t distinguish reality from fiction warns technology (games, perhaps?) may cause confusion between reality and fiction.

•