Merus

I liked the crafting system - it did seem pretty grindy, and the 'skill cap' is very low because it's not difficult to optimise, but it does seem like the best-integrated crafting system I've seen outside of A Tale in the Desert (I particularly like the touch of having 'crafting stats' so the equipment system was also relevant for crafting, and it allows them down the line to introduce something like crafting dungeons. However, I was getting a very same-old-same-old feeling from the world and the combat system. (I have to stand still to cast?) The Secret World has a more interesting story, and Guild Wars 2 has more interesting gameplay, and both don't need me to spend money to play them now that I own them. Down the line, there's WildStar, which seems more progressive but is apparently a bit janky, and Everquest Next, which looks really progressive but will probably be dialled back three months after launch when players start complaining about rewards and progression.

Well considering it's burning down a bunch of houses I'd say you missed. And a tourism railway that was just about to reopen. I hope that amazing orange moon was worth it.

There has been a pumpkin orange moon outside my window for the past two nights now. Did any of you do this? Did you light those bushfires that have been blowing smoke over Sydney, making the moon appear orange? If so, I'm very disappointed and a little alarmed at your dedication.

I've found a few things that are easy to miss - there are special endings if you The only thing I found a little disappointing was

The only thing that would be a bit weird are the race missions, which track how far you've gone, not how long you've been out. And, of course, the assumption in the game narrative that you're running, scooping up supplies as you go.

I have gotten the best town ever, and today a pugilistic kangaroo moved in, so I'm pretty sure everyone else in town is correct. I've still got a few Main Street updates to go, and my house is nowhere near fully upgraded - I have two rooms, but in those rooms I'm scoring about 83,000 points so whatever I'm doing I'm doing it right. I still find things to do more or less every day, once I realised that I'd have more fun if I set my own goals, so I've flipped into my sandbox mindset and started trying to breed odd-coloured flowers. I have a lot of pink roses and my other villagers keep stepping on my orange tulips (which have taken over the residential district), and I think I'm close to having black roses which will be badass. Having the best town ever will help because I'll soon get a gold watering can, which makes flower watering so much quicker, apparently. And yet, my biggest goal remains unfulfilled: a modern wardrobe. Haven't seen a single one, even in the streetpass stuff. (Wouldn't mind a modern wall, either.)

Oh god that whole episode was worth it thank you

While Australian English is (famously) idiomatic, we really don't go in for euphemisms. It took me a while to think of some. "Kangaroos in the top paddock" and "toys in the attic" basically mean the same thing: they be loco crazy, man. An internet hangout I used to attend liked 'double meat' as a euphemism for sex, derived from a story one regular told about a Subway employee that kept giving him free double meat on his subs for some reason.

So I'm on a fitness kick because a) I'm pretty overweight, there's an awesome new waterpark opening up in my city this summer and c) exercise is important for keeping me sane apparently. I have been playing Zombies, Run! and I'm reasonably sure it's one of the few gamification things that feels motivating and fun instead of creepily coercive. (The only other one I can think of is Stack Overflow, mostly because its gamification is so light and in the background.) It is a zombie thing, but it has some thought put into the setting as opposed to just being a thing you can shoot that's not going to kick up a fuss. During a run, it plays a radio drama with you involved as 'Runner 5'; as fuel is not exactly abundant, the most effective way for the town to gather supplies is for runners to go out and grab things. In the regular game, as you run you gather supplies semi-randomly, and it'll intercut your playlist with the storyline. You can also set it to randomly trigger zombie attacks, which require you to move faster to get away from them. When you finish, the supplies are used for a relatively simple base-building game to expand the town (and apparently add new beats to the storyline). I'm doing the 5k training thing, which takes place just before the regular game and has a different storyline more closely tied to a training program. Because there is still a story, the prompts will reflect what's going on - you'll be told to start running, but sometimes it just so happens that there's a zombie on the radar so you really should try and run as much as you can, or someone you're escorting will have toddled off in another direction and you'll have to catch up to them. The workouts have more variety than the typical couch-to-5k apps, with stretches and freeform running to let you adapt to variable weather, fitness and energy. It's a fair bit buggier, I've found - some prompts fire way too late, and I can get it to reliably crash if I unlock my phone during a workout. Nevertheless, what I got it for is present and correct so that's good. Honestly I feel a little thrill when the game's telling me there are zombies behind me that is completely irrational but the idea that it makes running fun by playing a little story that matches up with what I'm doing in real life instead of trying to make it fun by giving you points to grind is one that I feel way more engaging. Edit: apparently Margaret Atwood has a cameo in it. Yeah, that Margaret Atwood.

I had no problem whatsoever with the audio diaries - the game makes clear what the context of those diaries are, and while we as the audience get that information early, and in a form that Katie will never get, Katie gets that information as well and has fifteen years of experience with her family on us. Something I think does work better here than in Gone Home's ancestors is that because most of the things to examine are in some way relevant to why we're here, exploring is significantly more interesting than it is in, say, Bioshock Infinite. There are story beats to find in the world in BI, but they're few and far between and most of the time what we find is $13 and a hotdog.

I think the point that Gone Home doesn't really reach very far is an important one, though, as it suggests the narrative limitations of the medium. It has strengths, and while we're still discovering them, we've known of a few strengths for a while (games are very good at horror, for instance). But there's a tax you pay on what you're capable of covering in a game that you don't have if you're working in a novel, for instance, so you'd better hope you're getting something you need in return. I think Gone Home trades some nuance in Sam and Lonnie's relationship for the ability to have a front-row seat for someone you love coming out. Which is really the strength that we already knew - no other medium is able to put you into a situation like a game can. It's why games are so good at horror, movies and books have to work really hard to put you into the world, whereas even a mediocre game manages it as a matter of course.

See, no-one asks why Wartune needs Male Gamers Only. http://the-toast.net/2013/10/15/male-gamers/

I felt like I knew where the game was going about about a minute in; admittedly I did know about Lonnie so I had a heads-up, and while there was lots of texture to uncover I basically was always in the mindset of working out where Lonnie had gone because it was obvious what had happened to Sam. The actual storyline is pretty straightforward, and if this story were in any other medium I think the arcs would feel way too truncated and underdeveloped. On the other hand, three days later I'm still turning it over in my head, which I think is rather more indicative of how effective it is.

Probably what I'm going to do next time I go to the US is find out what the average is in the city, round it up a little, and then tell the server when I order that I'm tipping that no matter how bad the night goes, that I'll let them know if I need anything, and to relax and have as good a night as it's possible to have while working.

I am pretty sure I'll never actually play Modern Warfare 1. I feel, on the one hand, like I should, that it apparently does interesting things with the medium; on the other hand it's so goddamned po-faced and surely everyone's stolen any neat tricks it once had and put them in games that aren't military fantasies.

Do you know what the difference in tips was between what the worst server got and what the best server got? I'm curious. Anyway, the thing I am reading is this, written by the owner of a restaurant in San Diego that charged a standard 18% service fee and refused tips. I'm curious to read your take on it.

I am reading about tipping and it is making me so mad you guys. For example: did you know that, despite the popular conception, tipping actually encourages worse service? It's true! Because most people will tip the standard amount unless things went balls-up (because they rightly don't think it should be their responsibility to pass judgement on their server) there's only a very weak correlation between good and bad performance. In a restaurant, good service requires help from the kitchen, who are of course not being tipped; making great food quickly requires a skilled, experienced chef, who is almost certainly not going to appreciate working for tips for the years required to become an excellent chef. And for waitstaff, the most effective ways of increasing their take-home pay are: a) upselling their customers on food they didn't want to buy anyway, increasing their bill and thus their tip; bullshit little things like kneeling down and drawing smiley faces on the back of the bill, to be more memorable (and not, notably, getting food over to the table soon after it is ordered); and c) taking on more tables than normal, which means they're dedicating less attention to each table. Tipping is not something I have to deal with day to day because we are a nation of takers apparently, but I know if I ever moved to the US despite food being so much cheaper I'd hate eating out.

I love how often I see people say the game has a British sensibility to it given that the writer's an American and the only real British aspect to it is the Narrator's voice actor. I could draw a long bow and go 'American absurdist satire is like this while British absurdist satire is like that' but I won't.

You can be Baron Baron. You must be Baron Baron.

We have pumpkins, but we don't hollow them out, cut holes in them, light them on fire and then put them out to rot for a month. It's like if Rasputin were a gourd. We usually just cut them up and then cook and eat them.

toblix = to blix look to blix Hans Blix was the 3rd Director-General of the International Atomic Energy Commission atomic energy = half-life 3rd half-life half-life 3

Silent Hill 2's a good example of this sort of thing, because the 'bad' ending most players get fits much better, narratively, than the 'good' ending.

I immediately started trying to work out what this says about what's been changed in the full game, given I played and enjoyed the original. I noticed the 'pick up can, put in bin, get achievement' being presented as a game, which is in line with the subject matter of the original, but I also noticed how little control the Narrator had over the content - not just what players did. The HD Remix is, apparently, attempting to incorporate a lot of the responses to the original, and the biggest one is that games are just really hard to make and some of the expectations the original had were unreasonable. So maybe the Narrator not being able to wrangle everything in place to tell the singular, shining story he wants to tell is part of the parable now? That the impulse to give the events in the game meaning and relevance, rather than just walking in pointless corridors, leads to some kind of daft dilemma where you're either forcing the player to look at this wonderful thing you made for them or having the game immediately undercut its own meaning with some stupid confluence of events (for instance, many of the stories Idle Thumbs love).

Sexy Count Duckula?! Anyway, I will celebrating Halloween in the usual way, to wit, going 'huh, it's Halloween'. I am more well-disposed to Halloween than I used to be, once I realised that it's early spring here so the idea of kids trick-or-treating is actually feasible, but it's still way too American a holiday for people to really want to get behind it. You could try removing the Americanisms, like jack-o-lanterns, but that would almost certainly kill the host. For some reason, people don't find dangerous monsters and spiders all over the place particularly entertaining in Australia.

I've heard the City Watch TV series referred to as Hill Street Octarines before; I knew it was coming, glad to see it's still ticking along.