A Gamer’s Week: January 27

This week we deliver one review, for The Republic, an expansion for the grand strategy title Crusader Kings II that allows players to experience the medieval world as a merchant prince interested in gold and glory more than in holding territory.

We also have a Quick Look for the recently launched demo version of Metal Gear Rising: Revengeance, which offers some pretty over-the-top action sequences, and one for The Cave from Double Fine.

The Incoming Games 2013 series is also going strong, giving all players a taste of the video games that they will get to experience during the rest of the year.

As always, we also deliver two Weekend Reading features: one that deals with the way virtual violence and real world aggression mix and another about the legacy of THQ.

Our gaming plans for the weekend are laid out in the EndWeekGame piece and we also have a selection of the news that drew our attention in the last seven days.

On Monday, Mojang revealed details about the new Minecraft Xbox 360-based Update 8, while EA suggested that beta testers for SimCity might get bans if they failed to report bugs, a statement that was then retracted.

Tuesday a set of specifications for the Microsoft Durango leaked and an analyst believes that the Microsoft hardware division might be sold to Sony.

Wednesday developers revealed that the PC version of Dead Space 3 was a simple port and Obsidian offered more information on the classes introduced in Project Eternity.

Thursday THQ was sold off at auction, with SEGA picking up Relic and Ubisoft also getting access to a few studios, and leaked info appeared about the Orbis.

On Friday Ubisoft announced it would deliver The Tyranny of King Washington during February and the Griffball list of Halo 4 was announced for Monday.

Saturday a new patch was launched for Black Ops 2 and the development team talked about the newly introduced Peacekeeper SMG.