Roderick

I actually find Awesomenauts relatively easy to read, because there isn't an insane amount of lords/abilities. Fairly quick to learn what the variables are.

Nope. Nice try, Valve!

I'm only now getting to the press shows that were aired during the night here in Europe. So far, Ubisoft has blown EA and Microsoft clear out of the water. The presenter was enthusiastic (if a little 'American', so to speak), the games were almost all of them really good, the presentation was slick. Watch Dogs, The Division, AC Black Flag, Rayman, those are really promising games. Now onto the Sony thing, which I already hear has been a big win over MS.

Well, that takes the cake for grossest Dutch metaphor!

...choking in a bushel of tulips, getting knocked on the head by a windmill.

The question is whether they've amped up the combat for this specific E3 trailer and the rest of the game is like the first; lots of parkouring with a hint of fighting, or an evolution towards more fighting. I'm guessing the first. Stoked to play this.

Really? I've... never really had any situation where I had to fight over some scrap of solar. It's plentiful, and you get it by killing dudes too. Oh well.

NICK REMO. Also Dark Souls 2 official soundtrack by Linkin Park.

Yeah right. An obvious trick. Nice try, Valve!

I have not encountered an XP orb yet, so my guess is no. You level up by gaining Solar currency, and you don't really 'level up', you just use it to purchase new abilities that are then always available. No consumables, no XP orbs. It's a pretty loveable system.

(Get a PC!) (Don't you have a PC with Steam somewhere lying around?)

Well, that's a scar torn open afresh.

Due to the Humble Bundle, Awesomenauts is back on the menu! I'm playing this for the first time and having a blast. It's such a loveable game! Iconically I am drifting towards the creepy crawly classes (Gnaw and Genji), which have amazing visual identity but are hard to play. Never mind, it's so much fun. I can't wait to start playing again after work (and after the E3 shows)!

If I've figured out the time correctly, for the Netherlands the Microsoft conference starts at 18:30, conveniently right after working hours. This might actually happen! Raah raaaaah!

I've started playing my first Lords Management game... and it's Awesome. Nauts.

Yes, but you'll do it anyway for us.

Well, we do come from the same batch of clones, so it's not surprising.

That's very good. That's you putting forward a different, yet totally valid, aspect of yourself that enables you to meet & socialize with strangers.

Tegan, have you tried meditation before going to bed, to deliberately relax? Might help, dunno.

You mean Elder Scrolls? I have a hard time parsing what scrolls we're talking about without some helpful adjective to steer my thinking.

Frenetic Pony, you had me at 'the economic depression in the EU is caused by us not giving companies enough freedom'.

OK, thanks. I forgot though that I can't pay on Amazon because they insist on something called a "credit card", which is apparently a horribly outdated method of paying online.

The QWOPper.

I love the term 'genre ossification' and totally agree with Chris' thoughtful nuancing. I have a history of disliking JRPG's for much the same reasons, though my emphasis was always on figuring out how it came to be that the genre incorporates all those weird elements (random battles against invisible enemies, overblown storylines, seperate battle arenas). I see those as coming from the founding days of the genre, when Japan got heavily influenced by the western Wizardry series. At the time, technology was not advanced enough to create a super detailed and sophisticated world, so many of these aspects were developed to work around those limitations. Then they got set in stone by tradition. Having those same self-imposed work-arounds nowadays, when there is no need for them at all, is such a jarring experience. However, after a while I felt like I was barking up a very large, impregnable, buttressed tree, so I've just accepted the damn genre for what it is and have learned to enjoy its idiosyncrasies every now and again. Currently I'm engaged in a playthrough of Tales of Vesperia with a friend, running now for over 2,5 years. It's a profoundly silly game, but I love it because it's so light-hearted and convoluted. To me, its worth lies way more in that I am doing it together with a friend, rather than for the game it is. It's a fun game to mock relentlessly as it throws ridiculousness at you. But that might not be how most fans would play it... As for the naming thing... you know, I fully agree with the assessment that Gunpoint has an immediacy and appeal that The Swapper doesn't. And yet, I also think Gunpoint is an incredibly uninteresting moniker. It feels like a dime-a-dozen name, that conjures up images of ten thousand shooting galleries and FPS's. The Swapper, on the other hand, tickles me, because it's jarring and surprising and it makes my mind wonder what it could mean. That's really valuable for a science fiction experience that asks you to enter with an open mind. So, I understand the argument from a market place reality (no way that 'The Swapper' gets any attention), but for me personally I think it's the other way around.

I'm going to scream like a little girl if they pull that one out of their hat. "Oh, and finally, you know when you have a machine that plays games, and you buy a game on it and it plays your game, always, regardless of what big companies want? That's US now." BOOM.