Don't let the name fool you. Game Week is serious business. Sure, we get to play tons of cool games for hours on end, letting deadlines slip past, drying out our eyes, staying up late, killing the batteries on our iPhones. But still. Serious, serious business.

Besides, who ever said serious business couldn't be fun at the same time? Some jerk, that's who. So have a little bit of serious fun with the Mac|Life team – we might just let you go first on Mario Kart.


Features:

- The Mac Users Guide to Cool Things You Can Do With Steam - Okay, you know one of the biggest knocks on Macs is "no one's making any real cool games for them." And we'll admit it: some of the biggest and best games are PC only, but all of that is about to change. That's right, Steam is coming to the Mac platform and it's bringing all your favorite Valve titles with it. Aww yeah, it's butt kicking time!

- Oscar Nominated Documentary Film Makers Talk About Their Films and Final Cut Pro - Okay, so some things that happen aren't game related. Like the Oscars. We nabbed a few of the nominees in the Best Documentary category and had them sit down with us and talk about their films and, ahem, how nine out of ten of the nominees in both documentary categories just happen to edit their films with a little software package called Final Cut Pro. You might have heard of it. Little company named Apple puts it out...


How-Tos:

- Setting up Parental Controls on the iPhone and iPod touch - So you bought your kid an iPod touch for his birthday, but you don't want him running up your credit card bills at the App Store downloading tons of first person shooter games. We understand. Really, we do. So here's a little tutorial on setting a few limits to just what Junior can get his little paws on with his new toy.


Game News & Reviews:

All right, we're just chucking out the news section for this week, because all the news this week is GAMES GAMES GAMES! You know it! So without further ado, let's bust out some titles:

 - Independent Developers Show Off their Mac and iPhone Games - Sure the big boys are making lots of headlines and noise this week with their announcements, but the indies that come out of nowhere with a smash hit really steal our hearts. Aaaa!!! A Reckless Disregard for Gravity is one of those titles that is clearly designed around accelerometer fun. Why else would you play a game with the object being to jump off buildings?

- Stair Dismount - Speaking of jumping – or rather pushing – here's a game that lets you slap your friend's faces on a dummy and shove 'em down a flight of stairs. You know you want to.

- Bullet Candy Perfect - A shooter with a thumping techno backbeat, this laser blasting spaceship game can be had for a dollar (or more!), but we wish there were a few keyboard shortcuts to make things easier.

- Telltale Announces Sam & Max: The Devil’s Playhouse for Mac - If you like episodic gaming and you go for six foot tall pooch detectives and their trigger happy rabbit sidekicks (and who doesn't?), then Telltale's got you covered. They've just released a full season of their addictive The Devil's Playhouse for Macs, PCs, and the Playstation 3.

- PopCap Discusses iPad Gaming Opportunities - Of course the big boys aren't just resting on their iPhone laurels. No, they're plotting their next step iPad strategy, and PopCap is no different. While they were cagey about giving away too many details, we did get Andrew Stein, director of the company's mobile platforms, to give us a taste of where they're thinking of going. Short answer: we like how they think.

- Chuzzle - Speaking of PopCap, we've been wondering for a while why a hugely addictive game like Chuzzle hadn't shown up in the stable of iPhone games. Well, wonder no more because the Tribble like creatures are here and ready to play. We hope it doesn't take as long to port these babies over to the iPad, because this kind of fun you shouldn't have to wait around for.

- Icarus Studios Releases a Mac Compatible Platform for Fallen Earth - We wonder if it has much to do with the upcoming release of the iPad, but it seems all these previously PC-only gamemakers suddenly want to make nice with Apple users. Icarus Studios brings their MMORPG, Fallen Earth, to Mac users everywhere, bumping up that number of suddenly multiplatform compatibles one more.

 - Capcom’s Street Fighter IV Arrives at the App Store - Fans of the old school joys of beating the crap out of an opponent will rejoice to hear that Capcom's making all their dreams come true with the drop of Street Fighter IV at the App Store. And when this baby makes its way over to the iPad, we hope to see tons of "man breaks iPad punching it in the face" news stories.

- OnLive Launching Mac-Friendly Consumer Game Service in June - Speaking of multiplatform, the cloud comes through for gamers of all stripes as OnLive announces the very first cloud-based, on-demand, instant-play video game. And they don't plan on a stripped down service either: they promise gamer tags, user profiles, friends, chat, and the tantalizing sounds of an “evolving slate” of exclusive features. Where do we sign up?

- Scene It? Movies - It's usually pretty awesome when a game we know well shows up on Macs or the iPhone, which is why Scene It? Movies sort of made us sad. We wanted that same raucous party experience but the mostly single player (or pass around trivia) iPhone version of this is a good start. Now get cracking, developers.  We want the world and we want it now.

- Razer Expanding Mac Support for Gaming Peripherals - What good's a game on the Mac platform if your equipment is full of FAIL? Luckily, Razer is promising a basketful of driver support for all their products for Apple fans. Have we said "sweet" yet? Because this one's pretty sweet actually.

- The Abbey - Fans of Italian semiotician Umberto Eco's novel The Name of the Rose will find much about this game eerily familiar. We're digging pretty hard on the Don Bluth-like animation, but game play bogs down in too much story and too much exposition. Kind of like semiotics, now that you mention it.

- Minibosses -- This Song Is for All the Geeks Out There - Lastly, if there's a lesson to be learned here, it's that geeks love to have their culture sent up, highlighted, and remade all over in a fun new form. Meet Minibosses, a hard rocking quartet whose covers of classic Nintendo game scores have made them the surprise hit of the party.