miffy495

When extolling the virtues of meditative, abstract gameplay, keep in mind that you're saying this to Chris "Meteos" Remo. I too really like Super Hexagon. When I finally caved and replaced my old flip-phone with a smartphone earlier this year, it was one of the first things I bought upon opening the store. It's great for little windows of idleness in an otherwise busy day.

Third post by me in a row? C'mon guys, this game is fantastic. I know I'm not the only Wii U owner on here. How is no one else playing this?

Wait, what? Man, I did not get that AT ALL. Damn.

Actually, from what I've heard from various outlets, Catherine reputedly has a very moving story about emerging into adulthood from a lifestyle-prolonged adolescence and a character's reluctance to enter the "real world" when their time to do so has arrived. This is, of course, under all the sexy anime ladies. Patrick Klepek's enthusiasm for the game was enough to motivate me to buy it when it was super cheap on PSN+ at the end of last year. Still haven't played it, but it's on my radar. Anyway: Gone Home. How's the multiplayer?

Or, if you're voting with your dollars, you could just not play it? That doesn't mean you're ignoring it. In fact, you could be quite vocal about saying things like "Oh man, this game looks really good. Too bad I can't bring myself to support its publisher" and maybe send the publisher a few emails to that effect. Individually you may not have any impact, but if they get enough of that it would be harder to ignore. I really don't get the "I like putting my money where my mouth is, so I'm going to pirate it" argument. If you want to put your money where your mouth is, do that. Games are an entertainment product and there's plenty more out there. You don't need to play this specific one, and if you really are THAT desperate to, then swallow your pride and pay for it. It's good to buy games from people that you want to support, regardless of rather you actually have the time to play them or not. I do the same thing. I don't think that that would give you the license to go the other way and NOT pay for things that you do play though. It's not really a zero-sum game like that.

If Messiah turns out to be a particularly conventionally attractive person, the amount of "hot Mess" jokes will no doubt be infuriating.

It'll be out in the year 3000, March 82nd. (We will have converted to metric months by then, thus the hundred day/month calendar)

This is all very surprising to me. Maybe it's the smaller cast or less flipping back to footnotes throwing me off or something else, but I'm finding GR way easier than IJ. I'm also laughing at it way more. Maybe it's just more in tune with my sense of humour. I found IJ, even during it's "funniest" moments, to be more intriguing than funny. GR has moments of poignancy and also moments that are having me chuckling out loud to myself fairly consistently. One more option: maybe it's that I read IJ as my first book back into recreational reading after a long period of only reading academic stuff for my degrees, while with GR I have an extra year of reading for fun under my belt and thus am more used to it. I'm kind of wondering about that last one now. I should re-read IJ next summer or sometime soon after to see if all this reading for entertainment is actually changing the way that I read books. I still probably remember too much of it now to put it back on my "to read" pile, but there's only two scenes that still REALLY vividly stick out in my head IJ SPOILERS: so I need a bit more time. Still, it'll be a re-read sooner or later, I can feel it.

I'm roughly 100 pages into Gravity's Rainbow. This was chosen because I really like Lot 49 and Infinite Jest, which I read last summer. So far I'm actually finding GR to be a lot smoother of a read than I expected. Go for it, Nappi!

Hey! I found a "plant your feet" button after all! I don't think they say it in any tutorials, but if you hold right bumper, you can move the cursor independently of your dude. It's pretty good.

Yay! Just as I was nearing the point of giving in and ordering a copy for a console, I have enough hope that I can continue to wait for new PC news!

In fairness to him, that boss took me two tries. The first time, I was doing fine, but the day ran out when he still had 3/4 of his life bar left. Dude was sturdier than I thought he'd be. I had to take a second run at him, and it still took me half of the day in which I was successful and I had to come back the next day to grab the loot. Dude was not easy, and I'd assume that trying to explain mechanics while fighting him would have made him harder. I was referring more to Alex's dwindling juice and that it took him an extra two days of game time to get to the same point I'm at with less supplies. The on-camera stuff I can always understand, but that all his off-camera play doesn't seem to have got him anywhere either is a bit harder to take. That's not a knock against GB at all, by the way. I don't give a shit if my journalists are good at video games or not. I'm interested in their opinions and insight, not their abilities. Alex Navarro is still rad (despite sometimes reminding me uncomfortably of a slightly younger version of my stepfather) and I enjoy his stuff.

I just spent a couple of hours playing this. At the end of Day 4 now, with a backup of 6 days of juice if I have a few rough days of no-fruit. Already further than Navarro was at Day 5 in the quick look on Giant Bomb, so I must conclude that he's really bad at this. God DAMN this game is beautiful. From the first second it hit my TV, I was in love with it. The Nintendo art team did a fine job with NSMBU and Game and Wario, and had some great moments of show-off-ery in Nintendoland, but every single thing you ever look at in Pikmin 3 is absolutely gorgeous. Not a graphics snob at all, but holy shit is it pretty. Quite fun so far too, though I do find it somewhat frustrating that both movement and pikmin aiming are both on the left stick. It's nice to have the camera control on the right, but that makes aiming a weird thing. Maybe there's a "plant your feet" button that I'm missing. I guess I should look into that. The other option would be to play with the Wii remote and nunchuck, which would have the same control scheme as the Wii ports of Pikmin 1 and 2. The thing is, the stuff on the second screen is super useful. The map is actually really useful, and not having it with the levels as relatively open as they are (as in, they're maze-like but have pikmin-type-specific gates all over the place to keep you from getting to parts of them too early) does not feel like a good trade off. Again, if there's a plant your feet button, I'd be happy with that. Fought my first boss as well. Dude was rough, and fighting him took fully half of a day. In fact, I beat him just as the sun was setting and had to come back the next day to retrieve his corpse and the item he spit up. Luckily, boss corpses seem to be persistent. I have no idea if the same is true of lesser enemies. Yeah. Check this game out, people.

It was a bit of a letdown for me as I'm a huge fan of the Paper Marios up to this point. The new one was fine, but relied too heavily on solving puzzles by needing a very specific arbitrary sticker that takes up way too much of your inventory. You don't know you need this sticker until you hit this point in the level, at which time you need to exit the level (negating all of your progress in it) to go and find the sticker you need from another level you've already completed. The bosses also work this way. I liked a lot about that game, but man did those puzzles and boss fights make me hate it for a while. ...and then I realized that you're probably talking about the ACTUAL Mario and Luigi RPG, not Paper Mario Sticker Star. Mario and Luigi is on the way from Amazon, and I'm stoked.

Last night I got the "get over 200,000 points in a song with all the notes invisible" achievement in Rocksmith. Technically, there is still the last half of the highest rank to get as well as the "play an entire set from memory (but get whatever score. It's ok)" achievement, but if there were a moment in this game where ROLL CREDITS could appear, that would be an appropriate time. I'm far, FAR from done with this thing, and 2014 is due out soon too, but I'm incredibly happy with that event. Going from last summer's "I still have these two guitars from when I was a teenager. I should really either learn to play them or sell them." to today's "holy shit, this guitar instruction program can just tell me to get a high score from memory and I nail it" is something I feel great about. That, and the guitarcade mini-games are actually teaching me something about technique and theory. From little things like showing me that the reason that tremolos were always such a huge pain in the ass for me could be fixed by a small adjustment in the way I held a pick to turning scale practice into a high-score drill chase. Man, this game. Dear everybody: It's great. Also, for my own pride, I should point out that this is far from the first song I've had the chance to do this with, but it is the first one that I've bothered to try it with. The other ones are super easy and didn't really do much for me, but this one actually required enough from me that it remained fun to keep playing long enough that this was something I wanted to do, not just something I COULD do.

Hooray!

This will make an amazing surprise gift for my partner. I will then attempt to borrow it when she is done with it. Thanks for the heads up!

I once worked with a guy who lived in a place that was tracked. His life consisted largely of WoW raiding while having Nickelodeon on in the background for noise. I concluded from this that ratings are total bullshit.

I was drinking a beer when I saw that image. What do I win?

Yes. I always feel happiest when I'm wearing either my bright teal shorts or my pink shorts. Either of those are instant mood-relievers. Of course, I also work at a job where I'm required to wear black collared shirts and khakis, so any colour means I'm on a day off and therefore happier, but still. Do it.

Man, I go away for 5 days and look at all this crap that happens. Congrats, synth! Also, Subbes and Shammack, I'm really happy that Cabot looks like he'll be ok. I never had a pet lose a limb, though I did have a one-eyed cat and the degree to which he did not give a fuck about the operation was always astounding to me. I'm sure he'll adapt fine after a bit of practice.

Also on board with the "Paul Verhoeven is actually a genius" train. Love his stuff.

On the way from amazon!

Today when I got into work a 16 year old girl I'd been training had made me brownies to thank me for being nice to her while she was learning. Adorable. It's been a heartwarming day.

I feel like I just watched a very intelligent meta-commentary on the nature of twitch. That, or Nick was drunk and felt silly.