Gaming Round-Up: February 8, 2016

"The One-Up" by Dennis Salvatier

Interview: Simon Parkin interviews The Witness creator Jonathan Blow

News: Titanfall 2 Will Have Single Player Campaign Says Lead Writer

7 Relationships That Prove Video Games Can Do Romance

Aaron Fox-Lerner reflects on How videogames are changing the action movie.

Carl Sagan's "Pale Blue Dot" Speech synchs very well in GTA 5

Edward Smith examines How video games reflect the right-wing politics of Donald Trump and Ted Cruz.  Joe Köller on Medium continues the examination of right-wing rhetoric in games with "Misunderstanding."

Frida Svensson shares her study on how character creators handle race.

At Giant Bomb, Heather Alexandra reassures readers that "It’s Okay to Feel A Little Guilty About Your Guilty Pleasures" in an article in which she discusses how she learned to critique the games she loves most while still retaining that affection.

Greg Kasavin talks about his transition from Gamespot journalist to a developer on projects such as Bastion.

Here's what League of Legends would look like if it was the Suicide Squad

Is the price of a video game ever really right? asks Simon Parkin: "The creator of The Witness has defended its £29.99 price tag. But how do you measure the true value of a video game?"

Johnny Chiodini continues his Low Batteries series at Eurogamer with a look at anxiety, specifically how games represent it and which games help you cope with it.

Kill Screen's Ed Smith weighs in on the supposed over-positivity of games criticism.

At Medium, Alex Fleetwood discusses What parents need to know about digital games: "I’m a parent. And I’m a game designer. That makes my experience of these conversations quite strange. On the one hand I love videogames and will defend them utterly as an equally useful way of frittering away your time as movies, novels, poetry, fairground rides or taxidermy. On the other hand, I know that I do (and will continue to) attempt to exercise a degree of control over the games my children play."

At Paste, Olivia White writes about “the cloying dominance of the fragile woman archetype”, arguing that the narrative surrounding a woman’s success is too often pitched in terms of hardships overcome and its supposed rarity

At PopMatters, G. Christopher Williams returns to the topic of male nudity in video games with Undressing Kratos: "If you want a man to represent brutality, in the end you're going to end up taking his clothes off."

Star Wars Podracing Comes To Halo 5 Thanks To This Crafty Fan Creation

Star Wars.com's Anthony Gallegos picks The Best Modern Star Wars Games.

Undertale Needs More Gay says Rantasmo: "Undertale's use of LGBT characters is actually the least interesting thing about it... and that, in itself, is interesting."

Watch a Designer Work with the Unreal Engine from Within Virtual Reality

XCOM 2 Reviews: EGM (7.5/10), The Escapist (4.5/5), GameInformer (9.5/10), GameSpot (9/10), PC Gamer (94/100), IGN (9.3/10), Polygon (9/10)