Merus

I think the walled-off criminal city was a compromise between actually being in Gotham and not having to actually build Gotham and its civilian populace. (I suspect this is why they inexplicably put Arkham City in Uptown, so you could get a few iconic locations like where the Waynes died). Arkham Knight's doing the same thing, contriving a reason to get rid of civilians so the only people on the streets are bad guys.

Hey guys, imgur's Australian CDN went down last night so I'm really excited to finally see tegan's picture... ...alright then

I think part of it is that Arkham City isn't a metroidvania; they've very much abandoned that in favour of an open-world game that gives players the opportunity to be Batman out on patrol, because the big response from Arkham Asylum was that the mechanics were all great but people wanted a game where you were Batman flying around Gotham.

I would hazard at a guess that Nintendo know people like Metroid and people like Samus and they are spectacularly bad at giving people what they want out of the Metroid series. It's had a perception in Nintendo that it's a Western series; the failure of Other M, particularly over story elements, likely reinforced that. So they're probably looking for another Western team they trust that can have a crack at it.

The idea of police as a militarised force is extremely disturbing to me, as is the idea of the criminal underworld being a paramilitary force. There's enough real-world context to know that at some point the police have utterly failed at their job, and millions of dollars have spent to allow that incompetent police force to cause massive collateral damage. Honestly I can't even imagine organised crime thinking it's a good idea to tear up the city that they rely on for income, especially givne that you have to deal with all the other crime lords who are suddenly extremely concerned about the nutters with heavy artillery getting in the way of business.

Bizarre. If it switches monitors like you describe it's almost certainly the hardware. If your system's running at an appropriate temperature, it's either the driver (that looks like a boot screen and the boot system uses its own drivers) or the card.

Oh man Pi Day, I forgot about Pi Day. Pi Day is terrible. What I find fascinating and valuable about science is that it's carved out a series of questions for which we assume there is an answer, and we should be able to make predictions based on that answer. There's an entire structure that does an end-run around our tendency as humans to take what we first believe and sanctify it, because as a scientist you're trained to question your assumptions and allow your precious ideas to fall based on whether or not they describe the world in an accurate way. It's not perfect by any means, but it's a system that has done us a great service. I think that's why I get my hackles up when people sanctify science in the same way. Science isn't your friend. It will break your heart.

I think I was right with my prediction; the biggest surprise of the show was a remake announcement.

I think Retro wanted to do other things, stretch their legs a bit. (I would love them to take a crack at Zelda by the by)

I should point out that by 'fetishisation of science' I'm far more concerned about things like Portal 2 and Dresden Codak that treat Science as an abstract thing to grease their fantastical plots than I am a Facebook page that posts facts.

True to life!

I was skeptical of the fetishisation of science before it was cool I find it fascinating how quickly we've gone from thinking it'd be really cool to find alien life, to being really scared of either finding alien life, or not finding alien life. Personally, I'm going with "it's pretty fucking hard to have a global civilisation advanced enough to actually spread because you've basically got one shot at getting it right" with a soupcon of "turns out warp drives are impossible". (Incidentally, I think it's funny how I've never heard of humans being a precursor race in science fiction.)

So sounds like that cruel Metroid rumour didn't pan out. Who was the dick who started that?

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I think the Progresscasts got put on the Idle Thumbs feed at one point, so they were no longer backer-only content. The idea is they'd talk about where they were up to with launching the podcast network, but it descended almost immediately into games discussion. I was sad we didn't get more F Nick Breckoncasts, but I can understand if the joke didn't have legs past that first madblast. I feel like it's still basically a little backer attaboy. (To describe it, it's Nick doing a disturbed version of Idle Thumbs in his house where everyone is Nick Breckon, with different tones and personalities, and the main host is inexplicably mean to all his guests. It doesn't have much in the way of Thumbs discussion because it's one joke: Nick went a little insane and they got his equivalent of a manuscript that's entirely "all work and no play makes Jack a dull boy".)

The latter is a good point, but I was thinking more along the lines of "the most emotion this game will ever muster is in the trailer". At least it isn't a WW1 themed Metal Slug, which is what I was expecting. I get the feeling the big sticking point for AC No Ladies Allowed In The Revolution is the various costumes that no-one really finds particularly exciting. Wouldn't be surprised if the big difference between the assassins in co-op was the heads, and the bodies were identical geometry.

It's kind of got an Elite Beat Agents thing going on.

It had a 'Dead Island' effect on me.

Devil's Third looks like a Duke Nukem game except significantly less stupid, and I have a soft spot for games that are channeling the ridiculous beefcake video game protagonist but aren't as goddamn stupid as Duke Nukem chiefly because it lets me fill out a list of games that make Duke Nukem unnecessary. Because it is. John St John still gets plenty of work.

Reason I bring up the mythology of the NRA here, and why I'm specifically looking for delusional, overblown confessions and not merely mythologising, is because there's a pattern to cult behaviour (or, more accurately, totalist belief structures, of which cults are only one aspect of) that the NRA shares some elements with. The confession pattern means that members are encouraged to share their "stories", and the lack of sharing reflects upon their honesty and their commitment to the cause. So when they run out of stories they just make them up. This is important because one of the key controls for totalist structures is to inflict guilt and shame on their members to keep them in line, and encouraging them to be "honest" with their superiors gives their superiors the weapons to wield to ensure their compliance. The NRA generates fear, yes, but that's fear of the other, of outsiders. Does it generate guilt and shame amongst insiders to keep them pliable? That's what I want to know. I'm referring just to burning kittens, here, not wider issues like animal cruelty. The core of the problem is the people that are treating something universally obvious as a brave moral stance, because it means that they are brave and take moral stances, not like those other people. Compare to something like the Holocaust. "The Holocaust was bad" is similarly not an especially brave moral stance, but there's value in reminding people what happened, and there are ways to elaborate on that stance that are illuminating. The Nazis were real, and they were democratically elected. There is comparatively very little to be said for "don't set kittens on fire" because there's no story there about why someone would do such a thing. Someone could run a dogfighting ring for a number of reasons - arrogance, maliciousness, greed - but burning kittens is a petty act of cruelty and that's all it ever is.

Gotham City actually has a consistent map already - if they invent their own I'm going to be pretty disappointed. Then again, they did just that for Arkham City, unless Arkham City's inexplicably in Uptown.

Be still my beating heart.

I think I'd probably need to see it in motion, but as I recall Bayonetta 1 was similarly weirdly proportioned in that regard. I can see a case being made that it's a parody of sexiness, that it's taking a sexy look and distorting it so far that it loops back around into being creepy, and the Samus suit certainly manages that!

More than 4 people is actually a lot of people; like, 3 people shot at once is really quite a lot and yet that's not a "mass" shooting. I can't help but think that there's an entire industry based around capitalising on these shootings, that takes the concerns of the shooter seriously and pushes out all other news to focus on their actions. Surely the navel-gazing and picking over their thoughts posthumously glorifies them, makes their horrific actions all worthwhile? Why isn't it enough to decide whoever did this was a fucker, and get on with things? I'm also reminded of the anti-kitten-burning coalition, who turn out in force whenever there's a story about horrific examples of animal cruelty. What's interesting is that, despite it being pretty non-controversial that torturing animals is cruel and unacceptable, quite a lot of people frame their displeasure as if it's addressed at someone who believes that torturing animals is OK. There's a common thread between that and, for instance, Satanists, who for the most part only exist as a troll group and certainly don't have baby-eating rituals in the woods, where we invent monsters in order to feel righteous in our mediocre and not particularly generous lives. As much as we feel like we should actually help homeless people, well, at least we aren't kidnapping them and eating them. I wonder if shooters fill the same void; we may have fantasised about killing our boss and our annoying co-workers, but at least we never actually did it. Let's ignore the fact that this is a horrible fantasy. I don't know. I suspect there's something desperately wrong with the NRA, as well, but I'd need to find evidence of NRA members making up false stories about being attacked that they tell others to really be sure. I found out about Code White and Code Yellow recently, and it was pretty disturbing - internal jargon that replaces and disguises the idea of being ready for unseen attackers, who are assuredly out there because there's no Code Blue for 'no-one will ever attack me here'. Anyway, gun control worked here, so I'll enjoy my state of Code Blue.

Bayonetta knows what it is and doesn't care who knows it