rohlfinator

The media really fucked up on a bunch of levels -- giving Trump disproportionate coverage, reporting his statements uncritically ("Trump tweeted this" vs. "he is advocating war crimes"), disproportionate focus on spectacle over policies, huge focus on the Clinton email thing, etc., etc. I'm not so optimistic about any infrastructure stuff happening; he will get pushback from the GOP legislature for that. The GOP donor base doesn't even slightly care about Muslims or civil rights, but they do care about public spending. Same with most of his administration. The only one there who wants to improve infrastructure is maybe Trump, and he may have only said it because it played well at his rallies.

One of my Trumper co-workers said two days ago that he still wanted to wait six months before making up his mind. From what I can tell, he's one of those guys who is pretty much politically ignorant and just liked Trump for his "outsiderness". (He's also a UFO conspiracy theorist and refuses to use electronic banking because then "the government can come in and take your money" so there's that.) Re: this stuff being unconstitutional -- I'm skeptical how much that matters when so many of the people in power are just rolling over for this guy or actively helping him. It's clear that the entire GOP has just been waiting a chance for this stuff to become acceptable and is now ready to run with it.

I really liked Spirit Tracks. Although that may be largely because I'm still a five-year-old boy who loves trains. Also on the Zelda front: I've been playing through Twilight Princess HD, and that game holds up a lot better than people give it credit for. The opening is excruciatingly slow, but past that it's paced rather well, and it has some of the most enjoyable dungeons in the series.

Between the price and the thin launch lineup, most of the current gripes are pretty solvable things, which is why I'm still relatively optimistic about the Switch. The Wii U was kind of a solution in search of a problem, whereas I think the core "gimmick" of the Switch is much more appealing, and by most accounts it pulls off the console/portable stuff pretty well. But man, Nintendo really needs to work on its messaging. Like... they announced their online service by revealing the negatives (monthly charge, ending Miiverse and StreetPass, weird phone integration, the limited monthly game thing) with zero explanation of how it actually works or why anyone should care about it. It's no wonder people are down on this thing.

The Undertale run last night was a great finale to the whole event. The runner did a really good job, and Undertale is a fun game to see people get excited over.

Yeah -- if it truly ends up with Nintendo's full development support behind it, it's hard to imagine the library remaining this thin. With the Wii U and 3DS winding down, they must have some more big stuff they're holding on to. It concerns me a bit that Reggie is saying the Switch won't replace the 3DS, but I'm hoping that's just a "third pillar"-style hedge (and not wanting to step on continuing Pokemon sales).

Mario and Zelda both look really slick. I'm glad we're getting a new Xenoblade too. Still blows my mind that Nintendo continues to make their controller situation so damn complicated (and expensive). What they've said about the online stuff is similarly baffling. Wish they would have shown more handheld-style stuff (Pokemon Stars!) I'll still probably get one, but this event has put my hype in check quite a bit.

I'm terrible at ranking stuff, so here are a few of my faves in no particular order. Dragon's Dogma: Dark Arisen Yeah it's old, but the PC version came out this year and it's still great. The harsh open world and the threat of actually dangerous monsters make even the mundane quests feel like a real journey. And the pawn system does some interesting things with asynchronous multiplayer. PSA: the "Into Free" mod is a necessary addition since it restores the great J-Rock title screen song. Stardew Valley A great modern take on Harvest Moon that's a perfect chill-out game. It's super impressive that it was made by one guy. I keep meaning to get back to this after the big patch that added multiple farm types. Hitman Perfectly splits the difference between self-seriousness and goofiness in a way that makes this style of sandbox-y sim a blast to play. The episodic release schedule was a great motivator to really dig into each of the levels. And it feels tailor-made for the Twitch Era without feeling like it's pandering to streamers. Titanfall 2 A solid improvement over the first game, plus a short-but-sweet campaign. Still some of the most fun traversal in shooters, and the interplay between pilots and titans creates a lot of great moments. It's too bad this series seems to always get overshadowed by CoD/Battlefield. Let It Die I've heard it compared to the Souls series and while it's not quite that, it pushes a lot of the same buttons. It can be punishing, but it nails the "one more run" feeling of a good roguelike-whatever-we're-calling-them-these-days. Plus it's oozing with Suda style. Also, it's free! (with a pretty inoffensive monetization model) Honorable mentions: Egg, Inc. My phone spent most of 2016 with some form of idle/clicker game installed so I could waste time at work. Egg, Inc. is one of the better ones. Animal Crossing New Leaf: Welcome Amiibo Okay, this is just a patch for the 2013 Animal Crossing game, but I was surprised to see Nintendo release a substantial free update for a game that old. And New Leaf is still pretty good! 2016 Pile of Shame (hopefully I can get to these in the new year): Doom Uncharted 4 Overwatch Darkest Dungeon

This sounds really cool -- I've been intrigued by Neptune's Pride and Subterfuge, but I'm the type of person who would ruin his life checking the game at all hours of the day (and night). Co-op seems like it would be lower stakes. I'd be up for a game if you decide to do one!

I am unreasonably excited at the prospect of GameCube virtual console: http://www.eurogamer.net/articles/2016-12-07-sources-nintendo-switch-will-have-gamecube-virtual-console-support Also, if this thing can run Dark Souls 3, it's more powerful than I would have expected.

Origin is doing a free multiplayer weekend right now, for those wanting to try out the PC version.

This is starting to smell like a troll...

Last day to get this bundle, and it's now up to 173 "items" (some OSTs from Danny B were added, along with several more games including Nuclear Throne).

On the other hand, millions of other working class voters managed to not vote for the fascist. It's not as if Trump outlined a uniquely sensible or achievable way of dealing with American poverty that overshadowed his myriad flaws. I'm not unsympathetic to the working class -- for sure, wealth and income inequality in the country are beyond fucked. But... I don't see how a voter draws the line between "the economy sucks" -> "let's elect this guy" without being at least tacitly on board with a lot of his bigotry.

Ooh nice, I've been waiting for Doom to hit 20 bucks. Also! Over on itch, a bunch of devs have put together a bundle of 151 (!) games to raise money for the ACLU and Planned Parenthood: https://itch.io/b/149/a-good-bundle It's pay-what-you-want, with a couple of different price tiers ($20 to get the whole set). Some of the highlights are Proteus, Gone Home, Read Only Memories, Panoramical, FJORDS, Hero Generations, The Novelist, Catlateral Damage, Sokobond, and Catacomb Kids. Check it out!

The newest Retronauts is a Virtual Console retrospective, and they speculate on how VC will work on the Switch, including the possibility of a subscription "Netflix for games" model. There's some exciting potential for the Switch to reboot Virtual Console as a more modern service that finally consolidates everything into a single library that can be played on a portable or console. I've kind of ignored VC since the Wii, due to it being so fragmented and undersupported, but I could imagine a Switch version being pretty attractive.

Unbox I hadn't heard of this one until it was in the last Humble Bundle, but it turned out to be a nice surprise. It's a collectathon-style 3D platformer where you play as a rolling cube. The main mechanic is that you can sacrifice one of your six health points to "unbox" and get an extra jump, which lets you reach some impressive heights, but you have to be careful managing your health since it doesn't refill automatically. Some of the side missions are vehicle segments with kludgy controls, and it spends too much time on its goofy story, but the platforming is rock-solid.

I'm in Iowa and yeah, I think there's a lot to this. And the other part of this is that unemployment doesn't tell the whole story... there are a lot of young people underemployed, and older people who feel stuck in a job with increasing pressure and dwindling benefits. The "America is already great" message was pretty tone deaf. The other thing I'll say about Iowa is that it's reeeeally white. The older generations here (including a lot of Democratic voters) don't even seem to recognize Trump's racism as a problem. To quote @JonathanCohn on Twitter, "Prejudice may not be the motivating factor for all Trump voters, but black, brown, and LGBTQ lives simply do not enter their moral calculus." I think people here were more offended by Trump saying pussy than by any of his racism and sexism.

For sure, Clinton has a ton of problems. But the way and the amount they were covered gave a lot of breathing room to the "both sides are just as bad" mentality that likely deterred a lot of centrist voters. (Also, politics is ugly business. Not excusing what Clinton or her team did, but that stuff happens all over the political spectrum -- we just know about it because Clinton has been uniquely targeted by Wikileaks etc.) Yes, definitely. Will be interesting/sad to see just how much of effect that had.

Honestly, fuck James Comey and fuck the media who ran so heavily with the emails story to generate a "both sides" narrative. We have a lot of barely informed voters (which is a problem in itself) and the media utterly failed those people by failing to give that story the proper context.

Anyone watching the 72-hour livestream? It's been super fun so far, lots of great guests. https://www.twitch.tv/waypoint

I'm optimistic about the battery life since it looks pretty thick for a tablet. Probably to give a bigger surface for the controllers to attach, but it also gives them room to stick a big battery in there.

I'm not expecting much in the way of (console) backward compatibility. ARM instead of PowerPC means they'd have to emulate the Wii U, and I'd be pretty surprised if this has the horsepower to do that to Nintendo's standards. Everything they've shown so far looks pretty rad, though, and I love the idea of consolidating all of Nintendo's development efforts onto one machine. I hope they take advantage of the chance to bring handheld-style games to the big screen, and not just the other way around like they've shown.

Forza Horizon 3 digital code for $20 at Target, courtesy of CAG: Edit: Never mind, it was a pricing mistake and they took it down.

Yep, and The Crew seems to take a lot of inspiration from TDU, at least in the multiplayer features.