Nappi

I imagine the postman delivering the package will be absolutely terrified.

Nice! By the way, you don't necessarily have to resize the pictures and hide the original. The forum automatically scales down large images.

I may have to buy one of those things.

http://www.pulptheclassics.com/

Ugh.. that is pretty awful. Not quite as bad as the Tom-Hanks-face-tattoo edition of Cloud Atlas, but still. I can see how these covers may appeal to some people, but for me it's just the opposite. I'm still embarrassed by my movie tie-in Solaris with George Clooney in the cover.

God damn I love this game! I have only played a few hours and my biggest achievement so far has been reaching the moon's orbit, but the experience has already been infinitely more rewarding than with any other game I have played in a long long time. The seamlessness of the whole process from launch to orbiting and landing is what makes the whole experience so unique for me. I think I ignored this game for so long largely because the kerbals made it seem like a goofy baby game. I couldn't have been more wrong. I like the little things, though. Much better choice than trying to render dull human astronauts.

Lovin' it.

This has been discussed in various places already, but Tropico 4 is quite an interesting leader simulator. As El Presidente you try raise the standard of living of your people from unbearable to decent by exploiting the natural resources of your island as well as its inhabitants. Mega-corporations will try to use you and superpowers will try to extort you. Even if you do a decent job, you are still totally insignificant and your people are still likely to lead shitty lives (by Western standards anyway).

Assassin's Creed 3 was full of leaders. You were the worst.

Yeah. As far as I remember, Dashiell Hammett used 'tight' in that context a lot.

There are a couple of fun non-linear playground missions still. And a lot of linear ones, unfortunately.

I just noticed the $20 Season Pass but couldn't find any additional information on it. Does anyone know how much content it will add and what is the schedule for the DLC?

Good to hear tegan. Congrats!

I just started reading the book and her "he" has definitely been a stumbling block for me so far. I'm yet to see its benefits. The lack of quotation marks in some of the dialogue is quite puzzling too, but not nearly as disorienting as "he" is.

The point was that maybe it was better that I didn't know. I would probably have tried to set up some kind of defensive perimeter around the thing (instead of just charging at the enemy immediately after they boarded the ship), and ended up with lot more enemies on board at any one time.

Yeah. I'm sure your father would want you to hold on to your principles and choose for yourself. Of course, I can only base that on how I think my father would think, how I think I would think if I was a father, and how things work in dramas. Obviously I don't actually know anything about this, but to me it seems that your father asking you to work with him had more to do with supporting you (and maybe spending more time with you, or something) than ensuring that you continue his legacy after he is gone. Shame to hear about your dad. Strength!

I wasn't paying attention to the instructions and for the majority of the battle I wasn't aware that I was supposed to be defending a very specific thing on the ship. That turned out to work great. I attacked the patriots and other enemies with my machine gun and fireballs as they boarded the ship and took down the enemy ships whenever they got too close. It was only during the last three minutes or so that I realized that the few enemies that had got too close were actually ignoring me and shooting the thing. They didn't manage to do much damage, though. I didn't die once, despite my considerable lack of FPS skills. I was playing on normal, though.

That was pretty awesome. Still not overly interested in the actual game, though. I will probably end up buying it at some point because of the cutscenes and (hopefully) the main menu, but the gameplay videos did cut down my excitement a bit.

Nice! This book has been sitting on my to-read list, as well as on my bookshelf, for some time now.

Has the next batch of Idle Book Club books been announced yet? I couldn't find anything, but there are so many possible channels (site, blog, forum, twitter, facebook, goodreads, podcast, etc.) that I could easily have missed it.

What a depressing read, tegan. I'm really sorry to hear about your situation. No need to apologize for venting, though! I think it will help you, and potentially act as an eye-opener for others. I don't know how I would cope if my family did something like that to me. I find it difficult to even imagine the situation. As Nachimir said, I hope you find someone in real life you can share your experiences with soon. And best of luck with the employment insurance or the unemployment welfare or whatever route you decide to pursue. You will get the situation stabilized eventually!

It's a shame that they just lazily stamped the same logo in all of the alternate covers. It doesn't match the look of the concept art ones at all. The cutting/occlusion is pretty horrid as well, especially in "Booker and Elizabeth 2". I agree that "Falling Art" is pretty neat, though.

Lack of lyrics helps, I guess. Anyway, the soundtrack is fantastic.

Idle Thumbs 102: Jake Rodkin Origins.

Just finished the game. Seems like everything I was about to say has been mentioned already. Oh well.. First of all, I really enjoyed all the AAA+ polish: the superb visuals, the beautiful music, the gorgeous signs and posters - even stupid little things like the creepy twins, the super crisp UI and the sound that marked the end of each gunfight. The areas and encounters were generally well designed, expect for the Comstock house and the Boys of Silence which felt really out of place, in my opinion. The gameplay wasn't nearly as frustrating as I had feared - I actually liked most of the gunfights. I can see how some people may find normal difficulty way too easy, but I enjoyed the relatively smooth sailing and the lack of huge difficulty spikes it provided. I only died a couple of times and always because I wasn't paying enough attention to my surroundings in a regular gunfight. The first Siren encounter, for example, lasted me approximately 20 seconds, thanks to the fully upgraded Devils Kiss and Repeater. That was perfectly fine by me, because a proper Siren fight seems quite dull and frustrating. Early on I found a delightfully racist Voxaphone recording and thought the story might be getting somewhere interesting. It soon turned out that this wasn't going to happen. I started wondering why I was expecting that much from the game. Then I realized I would expect more from a fucking high school play, and felt really sad for a while. After that, the story didn't really hold my interest and I wasn't actively seeking answer to all the questions that I should have had. The city was pretty wonderful though. I'm really looking forward to the DLC!