tegan

Note that this beats the human world record by about a third of a second, and also that this robot is made from Lego and a cell phone.

So I've been playing Paper Mario: Sticker Star and didn't want to make a new thread for it, but did want to point out that Paper Mario is apparently now set in the Pikmin 2 world. I keep collecting giant real-world objects as the game goes on, and the game has that Pikmin 2 theme of having a character write descriptions for recognizable objects that completely misinterpret their function. It's so goddamned weird. Miyamoto eventually outright said that Pikmin is set on post-apocalyptic Earth, so where does that put the Mario series now? Also, I am replacing my launch 3DS (one of the ones with the wobbly hinge where the bottom screen edge leaves scratches on the top screen) with a 3DS XL. I recently made bonus at work, so I could totally do it. Is the XL worth the price tag as a replacement?

I once accidentally locked myself out of my apartment with a pocketknife, the receiver to a cordless phone (which I had to be standing within ten feet of the door to use), a paper clip, and a debit card with seventy dollars on it. My brain immediately switched to Adventure game mode when I realized what I had done. (it took me fourty minutes to get back in)

the villain will be anyone associated with screwattack.com, depicted wearing an enormous gold chain emblazoned with the phrase "CONSTRUCT ADDITIONAL PYLONS." their trash talk will be in the form of a top ten list 90% chance it will still use Atari 2600 Pac-Man noises Okay, now I'm curious. I wasn't sold on the series at first (the first two episodes or so are kind of a mess and it took me a long time to get accustomed to how odd the lanky character models look when they're not in a fight scene), but I've really come to appreciate the series and this is the first time I've heard someone disagree.

I'm not sure what Idle Forums general consensus regarding Tron is, but I've been more or less keeping up to date with the animated spin-off meant to bridge the gap between the two movies, Tron Uprising. It's easily the best thing to come out of the entire Tron concept, but it follows the usual pattern of shows that I enjoy, which is that it's constantly hampered by delays and schedule reworkings and it's not really clear when or where new episodes will arrive. It also happens to be one of the best-looking shows on TV.

I feel ashamed for immediately knowing what manga that was in the crazy room escape thing.

Smart TVs don't get any sort of exposure at all, either. I had never hard of a Smart TV until I saw a few store displays for them last summer. I haven't heard or seen anything about them since. Also, the primary reaction to Smart TVs by content providers has been to block Smart TVs from accessing their content.

I have never understood why anyone still tries to predict Nintendo's death when they continue to defy it time and time again. In particular I hate hearing about how the iPhone will somehow rise up and kill the DS line when they've shared the market for more than half a decade now.

Canadian here. We have a pretty good compromise where firearms are permitted, but regulated very strictly. We also have a very very different attitude to the way gun violence is portrayed in the news. I've heard that there seems to be a very direct correlation between how much discussion and publicity a school shooting gets and how likely it is that another school shooting will follow shortly after. I pay a lot more attention to American news and politics than I do Canadian ones, honestly, because it's like looking into some crazy time capsule of all the crap we sorted out years ago, except everyone is louder and angrier.

For a moment I thought that was going to be this: ...Video games really set new standards of creepiness when touch controls became the norm.

I'm still strongly considering getting a Vita, but it almost feels like a waste considering that I largely just want to play Persona 4 and Muramasa, games that I already own. There's always Gravity Rush and Tearaway, I guess.

(there's a video of him with Jake Rodking you should check out)

So I've been considering buying a deep fryer. I made potato croquettes one time last year and loved them, and I really want to nail that recipe, but never again am I going to fry something using a cooking pot full of boiling canola oil. I'm just worried about the two most likely outcomes: Buy an expensive and large piece of kitchen tech and then use it to make only one food, only on certain occasions. FRY EVERYTHING and gain a ton of weight. I need to do more cooking in general. I'm good at cooking and get a lot of enjoyment from it, but I have a very limited pool of recipes and find it difficult to get invested in learning more; so I end up making a handful of dishes over and over. Recently I've been making some pretty stellar chicken a la king.

Rasl never caught my attention the way Bone did for some reason. I keep forgetting to trade in my volume 1. So one of my favourite comics, Rica'tte Kanji, is now available in its entirely for free legally online. It's a lesbian romance about a college student who moves from a small town to Tokyo and chooses to take the opportunity to start dating women, written as a deliberate response to most lesbian themes in manga at the time being depressing stories about "forbidden love" with downer endings. It's very amateurish and so light as to be almost insubstantial, but full of charm. I bought a paper copy years ago but I fully intend to buy the physical rerelease coming later this year. I originally found it during my first stay in a big city after coming out, so I may have an inordinate amount of fondness for it. You can either buy a DRM-free digital copy for five dollars or so or read it for free right here (just remember to flip to the end and then read right to left). My favourite part so far is that the new intro immediately addresses the original printing's gratuitous use of Comic Sans.

Gameplay wise, Other M is a 90% great action game. Most of the combat and movement (and especially some of the boss fights, particularly the secret boss in the post-credits sequence) is smooth and engaging, though anything you do in first-person is going to feel rather clunky. Unlike previous Metroid games you'll be following fairly direct pathways most of the time, but it's still less linear than most sidescrolling action games. And you can always go back to previous areas later with new tools to get more stuff.The writing is a different matter. A few changes could have easily saved it, but it's frustratingly idiotic at times. Consider playing through it on the couch with a friend (it's a fairly short game, 10 hours or so) and just riff on it. Don't take it too seriously and just pretend it has nothing to do with the Metroid series as a whole. Also: whenever you get forced into a first-person perspective to look for something, just use a guide if you don't immediately know where it is, just use a guide. It's not worth the effort. On that note, look up how to beat the last two bosses in the main story (not the secret boss!) to save yourself some frustration. If I had paid full-price for Other M, I probably wouldh ave been angry with it. I paid $15 for it and enjoyed it. You'll probably be fine for $11.

I read best when I'm only reading one book at a time, but I also have a nasty habit of reading more than one regardless. Generally I'll get to a part I grow tired of in one book, so I take a break and start up a new book with the intention of finishing the first book afterward. Sometimes it works well and sometimes I start an unending Matryoshka of unfinished books. ...With the top book of that Matryoshka being Fellowship of the Ring, which I started something like six years ago and had to stop before I bored myself to death.

I also first finished OoT and MM on Gamecube, my only previous experience with the N64 games being less than a few hours cumulatively on a rented copy. The thing about Navi is that you can ignore her. I don't think I've ever deliberately responded to "HEY LISTEN!" Fi was a lot more difficult to ignore, though I can't remember exactly why (did the Wiimote vibrate or something? It's been a while). The other thing is: Navi never gave you advice on the game unless you asked her to. Fi is constantly pointing out that you'll need to find keys for doors and advising you to investigate whatever the camera's pointed to. She deliberately makes puzzles less fun by telegraphing the answers to you constantly throughout the game. Pointing out how low your hearts are as if to say "you're awfully bad at this, aren't you, master?" was just the icing on the cake. Also: "Master, the Wii remote seems to be running low on batteries."

I don't think I've ever felt as self-conscious buying a comic as picking up my pre-orders for Message to Adolf. Not that I don't love the cover treatments that Vertical gives their Tezuka books, but geez. Alternate joke: You ever see the deleted scene from The Pagemaster with Mein Kampf in it? I actually read the first volume of Kurosagi Corpse Delivery Service at one point and remember liking it, so I'm not entirely sure why I stopped reading. I never looked into MPD Psycho though.

A friend of mine gifted me a DOTA 2 invite for my birthday on Steam. It was like getting an ugly Christmas sweater, except it takes you six months to learn how to wear the sweater, and the sweater is also racist. I left that thing unopened for a week before I worked up the nerve to tell him I'd rather not take it.

One of my college instructors knew a guy who got some Chinese text he saw somewhere as a tattoo. He discovered some time later that it meant "made in China."

I know that a Chinese manufacturer developed colour e-ink last year and right now I'm waiting to see where that technology goes before I make a commitment, since I like comics and illustrations as well as prose.

Off the top of my head: To top it all off, the sword controls just plain never worked properly for me and it was really beginning to grate by the end of the game. Just to avoid pooping all over the game, here are some things that I really liked: In conclusion, The Legend of Zelda: Skyward Sword is a land of many contrasts. I'll probably replay it again eventually for the parts that I enjoyed, but my overall experience with the game felt fundamentally soured.

From what I know, it's a hardware issue, not a media format issue. The original PS3 could only play PS2 games because they literally built a PS2 inside the damned thing. When they redesigned it, removing the legacy components meant that they no longer had to spend a ton keeping up production of parts that were obsolete by nearly a decade.No joke: Complaining about backwards-compatibility makes me feel spoiled. Keep in mind that the only dedicated game console that was backwards-compatible between the Atari 7200 and the PS2 was the Gameboy line (and the Gameboy Micro dropped that) and now it's an expected feature despite getting cumulatively difficult for hardware producers with diminishing returns on their best interests. Yeah, it sucks that I can't play Gamecube games on my Wii U, but Nintendo kept making Famicoms until 2003. Obviously they care about their old consoles, they're just trying to keep costs down for everyone instead of adding features for only a few.

Your Journey playtime will vary a bit depending on your companion. The longest session I've ever gotten out of Journey was three hours, and that was mostly alone and on my first run. I had a whitecloak player guide me on my most recent run and we did everything there is to do in about two hours.

I hang onto my old consoles, but it's not an elegant solution. I don't like keeping them constantly plugged in, so they're mostly in storage and need to be lugged out and hooked up whenever I want to use them. Of course, there's the obvious solution of console manufacturers doing exactly what they've already been doing for ages now: backwards-compatibility with physical copies of last-gen games, with all previous generations being handled via digital library. Of course, there are obvious flaws (having to buy multiple licenses for the same game like the NES games on both Wii and 3DS Virtual Console; lots of games missing from services, especially licensed favourites like Ducktales or Beetle Adventure Racing; the disturbing recent trend of removing games from services without warning or reason; old games that use specialized hardware like the Centipede Trackball or the Steel Batallion Clusterfuck; etc), but it's easily the best solution available right now.