toblix

You guys got this, right?

I'm pretty excited about what Apple is doing with iOS next week, with the new flat-look design and lots of changed everywhere, according to rumors. I feel like they've been skating along with their cruddy old stuff for a few too many years, and hopefully they're feeling the pressure enough to make many enough interesting changes to make things feel fresh again. If they announce another version with their bullshit notification system and non-removable compass app, I'm selling all my Apple stock.

Sounds like a weird medical shit.

That's really shitty. Hope things turn out well.

What is this? http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-22706896 Is this a tabloid misrepresentation of something fantastic? Is this real life?

I just wanted to add that you'll not be completely safe since there's a bug that can corrupt your save even if you never save in a puzzle room.

Also you should only play VLR knowing that it is pretty buggy, and one of those bugs is permanently corrupting your save game. There are some tips on where not to save, but even following those, know that you might lose tens of hours and progress like that.

My guess is it's both a matter of aerodynamics and weight. But my guess is worthless.

Nice, but was there a point to using oak other than an oak quadrocopter being a cool thing? I guess it's easier to modify than styrofoam.

Yeah, there's no protection around the propellers, so they're absolutely terrifying.

This is out today for iOS, and apparently tomorrow for Android. I've picked away like a million little bricks, and bought and used a couple of disappointing firecrackers. I'd like to know how they go about synchronising state between players – whenever I open the game there are more nice, almost organic looking scratches, but when I zoom in suddenly everything's removed in 16x16 squares – even my own stuff.

As a non-native English user, I'm constantly* torn between British/American written English, and since I don't really know the specific differences, I probably get most of it wrong anyway. *Not really constantly.

I've been to a couple of hotels with bathroom windows, and none of those were classy.

No shit. I tried using it indoors at work, and I bumped into so many things. I shouldn't be alive.

Got the chopper and holy shit.

WEIRD. For some reason my NYTimes Crosswords app started messing up the dates this Monday. Selecting Sunday 26th is fine, but clicking on the Monday 27th box, it says Tue, May 28 instead and gives weird error messages. Selecting the actual Tuesday 28th gives Wed, May 29 and so on. This happens both on my iPad and iPhone. Anyone else have this problem? Deleting and reinstalling the app did nothing, other than removing all my old solutions. Also, the American Values crosswords is just great.

I ordered one of those remote-controlled helicopters with four propellers, and now I'm sitting all day hitting F5 to see it inch its way towards me. My prediction is I'll have it tomorrow, at which I probably have a very limited amount of time to play around with it before it hits a thing and breaks.

Is this for people who want to enter the exciting world, or for those who are already there? Will I need a glossary?

I don't know what this is.

I feel like I owe this game a short, glowing review, especially since I think it's clear it wasn't successful enough to get any similar sequels. If you're after simple two-player coop fun, this is a real gem. It's reasonably complex (upgrades, different power-ups and weapons,) and has a pretty good mix of shooting a bunch of enemies and solving contrived mechanical puzzles. The mechanics are such that you get lots of interesting interplay, like the bombs you can place that are effective against enemies but also hurt your friend. They have a pretty good physics engine that they flat out use as-is for a lot of puzzles, which is nice, and allows you to accelerate/halt a lot of the puzzle-solving using bombs. Traversal requires sometimes complex cooperation which often involves holding your partner's life in your hands. Going for the optional challenges (some based on collection, some on timing and some on trying a bunch of times to cross a river without getting your feet wet) amplifies all of these mechanics. And it's pretty long. The story is dumb.

I'm sorry if I'm breaking some sort of unspoken rule or magical ward, but as someone who didn't start paying attention to video games industry stuff on the web until some time after the Xbox 360 release, could someone explain what makes J. Allard such a thing? I know he wore an Alan Wake costume and there was some other non-video game rumors, but what made him a cult sensation? His on-stage persona? Some other thing?

The new SimCity has a very basic one: it fades in/out the various layers of the music depending on which mode you're in.

Oh, everyone will be mad, but as release day nears, everyone's eyes will glaze over and people will start lining up.