Another site that I took my eye off, re: excellent features, is Eurogamer, who seem to be doing a few more in-depth pieces in addition to their customarily feisty reviews, and a recent gem is 'The Bluffer's Guide to Xbox Cult Classics'.

Kristan Reed cannily notes in the intro: "'Cult Classic' is such a dirty term. People's association with them normally extends to something really obscure that a few beardy hardcore followers insist is the Best Thing Ever, but is usually a bit too quirky, too left-field and simply not accessible to the mainstream for very solid reasons. What it should mean is 'here's a bunch of stuff that didn't sell for one reason or another, but, trust us, it's really really good.'"

Looks like a lot of the obvious stuff is jammed into Page 1, but scrolling later on, it's nice to see kind words for Battle Engine Aquila: "A gloriously chaotic mech warfare game on the Xbox that limped onto the market in early 2003. Our Rob was a big supporter of this one, and still has nice things to say about it almost four years on, especially the bits about how well it renders scenes of massed battle."

Also - something I like about Eurogamer is that it feels like their editors are long-running and knowledgable enough to contextualize games. A lot of other game reviewing or commenting sometimes feels like it's checklisted against a null background, as opposed to a rich tapestry of titles with which comparisons can be made. Does anyone know what I'm going on about here? Oh well.

[Bonus link: our boy Rossignol has a Eurogamer-hosted account of his trip to Iceland to the 2006 EVE Online Fanfest, which "hosted five hundred gamers and at least half a dozen bored-looking girlfriends in a splendid Eve-draped convention centre." Sounds delightful!]