Just before I took my summer break, you may be aware that IGN was forced to fire its Nintendo editor Filip Miucin when it was alleged that he had copied the script for his video review of Dead Cells from a review by YouTuber Boomstick Gaming.

I won't recount it all, when plenty have already done so. I mean, I could just copy-and-paste what others have written, and change a few words here and there, which would be totes funny. But anyway.

Miucin posted an apology video in which he made excuses, and later added the mistake of daring people to find any further examples of his plagiarism. Presumably, intending to imply that they wouldn't.

They did.

Since then, many more examples of Miucin apparently slightly rewriting the work of others have come to light, with much hilarity ensuing when parts of his Linkedin profile seemed to have been cut-and-pasted from a sample template. IGN is now reviewing all of Miucin's work for the site, having taken it down at least temporarily. 

Many have been amazed at how little Miucin changed the pieces he allegedly cribbed from, but in my experience the plagiarist is blatant.

I've certainly had people rip off things I've done, and the worst time it happened was when I was a struggling screenwriter, and someone more successful, influential and powerful than me borrowed fairly liberally from a script Digitiser's Mr Hairs and I had written, and put elements of it into a broadcast pilot.

Years later I found out that said individual had a bit of a TV industry reputation for doing this, but - at a time when we were trying to get a career off the ground - we were fairly powerless to do anything about it. Similar things happened to me a further two times (that I know of) in the early days of my TV writing career, and always by people you would expect to know better. Each time I felt the same sort of impotent anger and frustration that Boomstick Gaming must've done.

In sort, it happens more often than you think it might, even though plagiarism is one of the worst creative and journalistic crimes a person can commit. And - hold onto your scandal-pants - it's a crime of which I too have been guilty...

Back in my day, there were about three game genres; the jumping one, the shooting one, and the fighting one. And the driving one and the puzzle one. And the strategy one. And adventure games.

Whatever, brah.

Anyway, the point is... we had a manageable number of genres, and those genre labels pretty much accurately described the game they were applied to.

Nowadays, young people games journalists - you know the sort - in addition to using the word "agency" about 20 times per paragraph, and in-between cribbing from other people's reviews - have added two new sub-genres to the list, and every time I see them used, it's like rusty nails down the blackboard of my spine.

The two biggest offenders are "rogue-like" (named for the long-forgotten 1980 dungeon-crawler Rogue), and "metroidvania" (a portmanteau, obviously, of the sprawling, side-scrolling, action platformers Metroid and Castlevania). I know what these two terms are supposed to mean. I know what they relate to. I just don't like them. What's wrong with "randomly-generated" or "action platformer"? That's what we used to call these sorts of games back in the day. 

I mean, where do you draw the line? Release a game that's a bit like a cross between Assassin's Creed and Dark Souls, and decide it's a new genre called "AssSouls"? 

Do you see? It's a real good joke!

Because I'm a walloping great moron, I bought Skyrim for my Switch last week. I'd played it when it first came out some years ago, and stuck with it long beyond the point where my interest had condensed into animosity.

I remember the moment at which I finally snapped; I'd ascended some mountain or other, and kept dying. Eventually, the final, fraying thread of my enjoyment came apart, and I admit that I may have sworn like a taxi driver as I quit the game in a blind convulsion of rage. 

Everything up until then had felt like a slog, reminding me of the times my parents would drag me along to their friends' houses for a gruelling marathon of smalltalk. I'd sit there, minutes tightening into weeks, while they intoned about, I dunno, wallpaper and work. Typically I'd retreat into my own head for respite.

On one occasion, I became so lost in some ridiculous imaginary scenario that I burst out laughing and spat a mouthful coleslaw all over the hosts' dinner table. Which, on the plus side, so embarrassed my parents that they concluded subsequently that I was old enough to look after myself while they went out.

Frankly, if that's what I'm doing while trying to play a video game, then I have to accept that the video game might not be for me. Indeed, the most fun I'd had up until the point I stopped allowing Skyrim to ruin my life, was running around a village in my pants... having thrown all my clothes and armour onto the roof of a house.

"Art" imitating life...

Following the release of Sonic The Hedgehog, Sega's Sonic Team - headed up by Yuji Naka - became a byword for real sweet stuff. Unfortunately, that reputation gradually withered, until it reached a point where the perception was that Sonic Team would just pump out any old shit with Sonic's face on it. 

Nicely, Sonic Team is undergoing something of a re-evaluation in the wake of Sonic Mania - which it supervised, probably. That must be especially nice for them, given that their most recent fully-developed game, Sonic Forces, was about as much fun as forcing a push-pin into your own forehead.

But hey - Sonic Team isn't all about Sonic. Here are 10 Sonic-less games - barring the Puyo Puyo sequels it has worked on, because... reasons - which were produced by Naka's heirs.

Ha ha; knacker hairs.