Game of the Week

Here's what we were picking from: Out This Week.

Let's be honest; our attention was elsewhere this week. At Eurogamer, we weren't living in the here and now, but gazing into the future!

The not-very-far future. In fact, the incredibly near future. Tom concerned himself with Call of Duty: Black Ops (out next Tuesday) and Need for Speed: Hot Pursuit (out in two weeks). Look out for his reviews of both on Tuesday.

Christian was, as usual, the most intrepid, venturing all the way into 2011 at this week's EA preview showcase and returning with strange tales of flying cars, thinking machines and a mythical pleasure dome full of wonders and theme restaurants. Meanwhile, most of the rest of us were busy moving furniture to make room for Kinect, a device so futuristic it's not out in Europe until next Wednesday. We are the controller!

So it was left to Simon and Dan to pick up the pieces as they tackled this week's James Bond double feature. Dan drew the short straw and dashed our hopes that Bizarre (one of our favourite developers, PGR2 4 eva!) could capture the spy's spirit in Blood Stone.

GoldenEye fared better: "This is a robust FPS, comfortably the strongest on its platform and, while derivative of its strongest rivals, it's still able to compete," judged Simon of the Wii shooter, although he had to manfully set aside his love of the original to appreciate a game which owes much more to Infinity Ward's work than Rare's.

He was a little more impressed but a little less moved by God of War: Ghost of Sparta on the PSP, and the result was the same – a 7/10. Dan wore himself out, as well as they "5" key on his keyboard, with The Fight; probably the best thing you can say about the Move brawler is that it's not Fighters Uncaged.

Our copy of Fist of the North Star arrived late, so look out for a review of that next week, along with SingStar Dance. Ellie likes the latter quite a lot, so it seems every console now has its own great motion dance game, which makes us happy, even if you lot don't care.

The best thing in the shops today is certainly Football Manager 2011, which Martin reckons is a significant step forward for a series that's been resting on its laurels. After Vanquish and Sonic 4, that's an impressive three 9/10s in a row from SEGA. What next for the resurgent publisher? Next week it brings us... Sonic Colours and Sonic Free Riders. Oh well.

But despite Football Manager's excellence, our game of the week comes neither from the present nor the near future, but the recent past.

Game Dev Story

You probably got there before we did; that's the way of things with the unpredictable App Store, where hits are driven by word of mouth rather than PR hype, and the press is often left playing catch-up to the community. But just because we're late to the party doesn't mean we shouldn't toast the host.

Keza found herself captivated by a management game that may be an awful lot simpler than Sports Interactive's opus but makes up for it with blistering pace, merciless moreishness and a witty celebration of the industry we all love to hate to love. Including ourselves.

"I've been trying for ten game-years to develop a Super Mario Bros. or a Deus Ex or an Ico, you see, but I'm foiled at every turn by the damned reviewers," she complained. "Those miserable, ungrateful, mean-spirited bastards! Don't they know how hard we worked on that? Don't they care?

"Game Dev Story is easily the best thing I've ever played on the iPhone... There's no other game that offers this much depth for £2.39, and it's so adorably packaged that it's impossible to resent it even when it dominates your entire Sunday. I'll get that 10/10 yet."

She gave it 9.