Roderick

Cool, Erkki! Good luck and, you know, try not to punch Wim Wenders, if that's a thing that might happen.

I powered through that to see the Switch and Miyamoto being embarrassed in the audience (with Bill Trinen next to him as a sort of guard against fanboys, perhaps?). Fallon was his usual 200% All Enthusiastic American self. That's usually the reason I can't watch him, but I did buy his extreme enthusiasm in this regard, which made his antics borderline tolerable. The couple moments where he can't believe he's going to play Zelda in the most bashful way were even cute. Seeing the Switch in action was cool. I was struck by how thin the device was, for some reason. Reggie has only one mode, I think: "E3 presentation". He does it well, even if this called for maybe a bit more of a casual approach. Still endearing though! Reggie can do no wrong.

I wonder what the implications of the additional power are going to be. So far the only thing that's reported is that the additional fan in the dock allows the technology within the Switch to safely overclock. Ergo, it's not that the dock offers 'additional power'. It allows for 1080p output, which might be superfluous in handheld mode considering that 720p on such a small screen is already super sharp. It wouldn't a case of devs having to create multiple versions of their game, if resolution is the only difference. (This is all conjecture on my part, by the way.) Dark Souls on the Switch is an amazing prospect. Again, they're really hitting that nostalgia we already have for the best games of the last five years. It's pretty crazy how attractive it is just to say: 'Hey, want to replay those amazing games, but this time also on a smaller screen on your lap?' Yes. Yes please, I would.

This is the topic for discussing all things Christmas. And that starts with https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4GOzuP0EOyc dammit. I win, Ben, I win. The year is mine!

I admit that I did not post entirely according to the spirit of Christmas. I am willing to cede this year to Ben.

Just tell your colleagues it's the goddamn spirit of Christmas. But in the interest of preventing unwanted Christmas joy, I've put it behind a URL.

Pretty sweet! The close-up of Ben looked so smooth. It lends itself to an HD treatment quite well.

Superb visual callback to Cabin in the Woods there.

I was halfway through speaking that out loud before I realized what I was saying. Classic.

Here's something that happened this morning

Well, you're in luck, since the latest hot scoop is that there'll be a version on the Switch called Pokémon Stars. If that's true, it's HD Pokémon gaming on your TV (or lap).

Good advice, Miffy! There's a transcript on the NYT about a meeting they held with Trump and it's... they are asking reasonable questions and he is just bloviating his way through. It's tiring to read the way he speaks [without managing to say anything yet repeating everything twice or three times]. It's preposterous the way the staff tries to interest him into questions about climate issues by tying it into the state of his golf courses - the way you'd goad a child into caring. Not that they do this, but that apparently it's the only way to engage him.

More rumours from so far dependable sources: the Mario we saw shots from in the trailer will be full on 3D affair (more like Sunshine and Galaxy than 3D World) and set for launch. The same goes for Skyrim, which was teased but not confirmed by Bethesda. I'm particularly happy about that, I've been meaning to replay the game in a solid way and the remastered edition on the Switch seems like the best fit right now. Then there's a Ubisoft game in the make for launch day that's apparently a turn-based Mario RPG featuring... the Rabbids. If anything, this might indicate that Ubi at least is seeing this as a return to the halcyon Wii days. Don't know what to think of this yet. The premium SKU for the Switch will feature Splatoon. This may be good for some people, but I'm not really interested in a multiplayer game. Was hoping for a Mario bundle at launch, or Breath of the Wild, but the latter's been pushed back. Final bit of news: Gamefreak are making a third edition of Pokémon Sun and Moon, calls STARS, and it'll be on Switch. That's huge. The first main-game Pokémon title on a home console. I wasn't planning on getting the game at all, but if it's on Switch... Someone recently told me that Nintendo had better bring a couple of huge bestsellers to the Switch if it wants to make it a success. I don't think it gets any bigger than the first home Pokémon game. (Only thing left is a new Animal Crossing, or at least an HD New Leaf port.)

It had been on my list for a while: I watched Jauja, which Erkki once described as 'Viggo Mortensen walking on rocks, what more do you want?' Turns out, not a whole lot more. It's a wonderful, dreamlike experience. The very very very barebones story confounded me after the viewing (as it seemed to do the very characters that inhabited it), but after giving it some consideration I stumbled upon some very fun possible answers that endeared me to the film even more. Fundamentally, this is a gorgeous, truly stunning set of shots of Argentina's nature, framed in a spectacular rectangle with rounded edges that I'm almost sure is even squarer than 4:3. The characters are boxed in by this aspect ratio, its claustrofobic quality made ironic considering the open wideness of the desert they're in. What's more, the movie chooses to let literally every action the characters take (for instance, picking something up or choosing to venture to a nearby bush) breathe and stand on its own. A typical shot lasts at least thirty seconds and might consist of ten seconds of empty wilds, then a character wandering in and doing something in their own sweet time, exiting the frame, and then twenty more seconds of the now-deserted place. What happens is that your mind gets all this room to start thinking and dreaming away, without really ever estranging from the movie because it's so damn hard to miss anything (due to the small size of the frame and how little happens at all). From a story angle, I was first puzzled by the story of this Danish officer struggling to find his daughter, but I managed to make sense out of it in the end.

What I mean is that Nintendo wouldn't dare dip below 3.5 hours as the minimum advertized battery length. It hasn't made a huge difference over the DS for me, since I rarely travel for more than two hours anyway before I reach another electric socket. And I don't expect to be playing the Switch a whole lot outside the house anyway - I just look very much forward to playing it tucked onto my lap on the sofa. Handheld gaming is awesome, it offers the same intimacy as a book.

Nintendo boss Kimishima already confirmed that they would not be taking a loss on the hardware. That's basic policy for them and it's why they're still in business (and will likely remain so). The price is, in my eyes, very reasonable, also for a console. It's what the Wii cost. From the Switch we can expect the same qualities: a very soundly designed bit of hardware that is by no means technologically superior to others, but in many cases better designed. For battery life, it'll be a minimum of 3,5 hours, the same as the 3DS. So far, that lifespan has worked out fine. Anything beyond this should be considered extra.

Report from Let's Play Video Games: the basic Switch SKU to cost 200 Britpounds (or 250 dollari and, I expect, 250 metaleuros). A bit more unconfirmed but nonetheless within the range of expectations is a premium SKU that'll cost 250 pounds, which comes with a packed-in game (not known which one just yet, hopefully Zelda) and apparently a trifle more in-game storage. Loose Joy-Cons will be 40 pounds each. If this is true, it'll be a lot better a deal than the Wii U. The Switch will follow in the footsteps of the Wii as a relatively affordable console straight away, though every tenner they manage to slash off the price will increase its chances. Source: http://letsplayvideo games.com/2016/11/report-uk-retailer-game-to-price-nintendo-switch-from-199-99/

Disheartening that so many people have switched off from such an important election. Also a weird thought is that apparently it didn't matter that Trump had the lousiest, most slapdash train wreck of a campaign ever. He screwed up wherever he could, the tv debates were embarrassing to watch and he insulted so many groups of people. And yet, none of it mattered. No matter how many millions Clinton spent on ground work and solid campaigning. It makes me think this was perhaps inevitable. Maybe people just vote for someone's face, their meat and bones and its strange seduction, after all, and all the stuff around it is superfluous. Maybe America just needed an orange face right now.

That's basically what wild-eyed philosopher Slavoj Zizek said: he hoped that Trump would win as a shock to the system. We'll see. I'm slowly getting used to the idea. The world is one big cartoon SNAFU right now anyway. It's just baffling how this could happen after eight years of Obama that, at least on a symbolic level, seemed a forward move towards liberal values and inclusiveness.

Also, much in the vein of the reaction to Brexit in the UK, I fear for violence against Mexicans, muslims and immigrants now that Trump has won and his supporters feel they are justified in 'taking back the country'.

Sickened. Is this real? Trump, a grossly underqualified hate-machine, wins against Clinton? Rape culture in person has taken a seat in the White House. Wake me up in four years when the world has been restored to sanity. I have to eat my hat here, because not in a million years did I think people would actually go for such an obvious buffoon, the person most removed from any sense of humanity or what 'ordinary people' live like. The upshot is that none of his insane plans will work out (politically or economically) and he'll be blocked at every turn by both the Democrats and the GOP, who will want him ousted and made harmless and checked as soon as possible. His own campaign managers took away his goddamn Twitter account last weekend, when he proved incapable of managing it. They're not about to let him blow up the world. Good lord, humanity is really, really, really showing its dumbest and most egregious face this last year. First shooting down the Ukraine trade agreement in Holland, then Brexit, and now the worst of 'em all: Trump. How much more proof do we need that as a whole, we are far too susceptible to populist bullshit for any sort of direct democracy? It's not just the president that needs to be checked: it's us. It's people. We cannot be trusted. We cannot choose the right thing. We are pathologically incapable of resisting the call of powerhungry madmen and seeing the bigger picture.

Okay, American friends. Say that I wanted to follow election night from the internet. What would be a good place to do that from? NY Times?

I saw Return to Oz yesterday and I loved it. It has taken the place of 'children's movie that is actually the scariest fucking thing ever'. I thought The NeverEnding Story was a frightening sit for a kid, but imagine a ten-year-old seeing this: The Emerald City in ruins, everyone turned to stone or beheaded Occupied by freaky, long-armed wheelpeople one step removed from featuring in a Silent Hill game The Gnome King, playing games and wearing the ruby slippers, also eating some of Dorothy's companions I haven't mentioned that the film opens with Dorothy's aunt and uncle thinking she's lost her mind and sending her to a mental institute for electroshock therapy. It's the darkest thing ever. The whole world feels like it's dying. I remember seeing parts of this when I was younger, but I think I switched it off because I was freaked out when the wheelers appeared. I wonder if this might have traumatized a generation of children. So glad I watched this.

After trying out VR tech demoes in events in the last years (the usual stuff with rollercoasters and swings, the things that aim for a quick visceral thrill), I just now demoed the Playstation VR with a Drive Club level. The experience was underwhelming. Was it just with me that the world seemed hazy and blurry? And perhaps the device doesn't suit the fast-paced racing gameplay of Drive Club, since I found it difficult to race at all. Now I'm thinking the whole VR thing might not really be my cup of tea. I'll try out other games as the opportunity arrives (some friends have the device), but I can just about see myself not liking most of it. I won't be spending 400 euros on a set any time soon.

Without ever having replied in this topic (I think), but reading it now and then, can I say that you are really into this genre, Ben? You're playing so many of these games, and every week it's a new one. That's in incredible drive you have. This is, for real, the 'big' fps playthough. You weren't kidding. Bravo.