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I kept expecting his head to suddenly rotate 360 degrees, like a steering wheel.

There was still some strong tension between storytelling and mechanics in RDR. Most notably, the dueling mechanics allows you to end duels non-violently by disarming the enemy (and shooting off his hat for style points). However, this feature is arbitrarily disabled without informing the player for several story-related duels. Similarly, you can lasso and hogtie enemies to dispatch of them nonviolently, but not all story-related enemies can be hogtied ( ), and I think there were a few sections which wouldn't let the player continue without explicitly killing all enemies. Out of the blue in a cutscene, Marston also kills , which was quite dissonant with the way I was attempting to play. Still, the presence of non-violent means makes this dissonance loads better than the GTA games.

There's a lot of LPs mirrored here: http://lparchive.org/

I haven't read the book, so this might not even be relevant, but just because it might not be clear after finishing the game (and actually this is one of the reasons why I really like the game): .

"I can get over the ones that are just dumb, like , but many of these Pokemon are downright hideous. I love Oshawott, the water starter. I think he's adorable. But then he turns into , who looks like narwhal drunk bear . conveys the image of melted ice cream sandwiches cigarette butts." -- IGN.com (Image in case it changes Sunday: http://img841.imageshack.us/img841/2116/ign2.png) So apparently Nintendo allowed IGN to publish a review of the new Pokémon game before the release date, so long as they didn't publish any details about most of the new creatures, plot details, locations, etc. In his own admirable-yet-stupid way, the IGN reviewer wrote his review without consideration of these restrictions, then uploaded it with all the embargo details self-censored, leading to the utterly ridiculous quote above. Edit: updated the spoiler tags with the actual words.

Where's the twist? Where's the character? This trailer makes it feel really generic. I really hope the reason that the characters are all exposed to a hilarious degree when riding the mechs is that it's necessary to humanize them for the storyline. It's hard for me to see this as anything more than an attempt to capitalize on the Xbox hardcore crowd, but that market seems way too crowded for this to make much of a dent?

Yet another We Dare parody video: u_zf3y23k1E

I've mostly been playing Picross, Picross 3D, and the occasional online crossword while listening to podcasts.

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Demo's out: http://www.gamefront.com/gemini-rue-demo-exclusive-download/

Is ludo-narrative dissonance the right phrase?

Made a short, darkly satirical choose-your-own-adventure game about IGN's hiring process for a two-hour game jam. (Windows, OSX, Linux) http://www.glorioustrainwrecks.com/node/1614

"Groin grabbingly good gameplay!" -- IGN.com

Activision still owns Sierra and hence the King's Quest license, right? Haven't bought an Activision game since Modern Warfare 2 (which was in a moment of weakness). The company has only gotten worse since then. Activision is presumably getting money from this license, so this is one Telltale game I will not be buying.

Spread the word. Not your seed.

Guy kills zombies in reverse while I play unfitting music. If the story elements play out well, this might be on my radar.

Oh man, Lieberman cited Craig A. Anderson? Dude once argued that video games increased a person's "aggression" on the same order of magnitude as gang membership. The paper specifically cited by Lieberman measured aggression "using noise blasts, electric shocks, or hot sauce given to an ostensible partner (in the last case, the partner is known to hate spicy food.)" Doesn't quite seem applicable to the conclusions they give to the tabloid media that violent games lead to real-world violence... Edit: I'm not sure if Walker's really doing the right thing by relying so heavily on the it-doesn't-mention-video games-so-it's-not-relevant tactic. Paradoxically, a lot of these anti-Video game violence pundits rest their claim in part on the notion that games can have an impact on people just like other mediums. I guess he's just speaking to what he knows, but it's a far stronger argument to show how a paper linking film deceptions of violence to real world violence is bogus than to gloss over it entirely. Hell, some of these are old enough that the rebuttals are probably already out there.

I haven't installed any new apps in a while because I am not a trusting person by nature and the permissions tend to scare the living hell out of me. It really feels like we're moving toward an age where developers and companies not only screw us out of privacy, but do so while telling us exactly what they're doing. Simon Tatham's Puzzles: read sensitive log data Allows an application to read from the system's various log files. This allows it to discover general information about what you are doing with the device, potentially including personal or private information. Alchemy: read phone state and identity Allows the application to access the phone features of the device. An application with this permission can determine the phone number and serial number of this phone, whether a call is active, the number that call is connected to and the like. Edit: Apparently log data is used for debugging, but the app doesn't have internet access, so what's the point? Vestigial permission? The Alchemy permissions seem more disturbing, since it has access to your number (and anyone's number who calls you while the app is active), and the internet access to transfer it anywhere.

There's another layer of context in play. Edge Magazine asked David Jaffe about the new PSP. He responded: Jim Sterling blogged about it on Destructoid, and publicly defended this statement (about 3/4 down the page): Daphny took offense to the attitudes of both men that this was both an appropriate thing to say as a game designer and an appropriate thing to support as a games journalist, briefly inspiring her to create the aforementioned two-tweet-mini-slash-fic which inspired the crudely drawn pr0n. She then aggressively drew attention to herself by @ing both men with a link to the lewd drawing. She felt that the "pussy" comment and Sterling's defense were misogynistic attacks on her gender, one of many committed by the games industry and press. Sterling felt that the drawing was a personal attack. I'm not trying to say that this context necessarily provided adequate justification for Daphny's response. I'm just saying that this story didn't start with Daphny's writing. Where have they ever said or implied that they approved of his earlier offensive remarks? Idle Thumbs did this with IGN! (Not limited to misogyny or one author, but still!) Why is "her" in quotes? You can disagree with her views, but are you questioning her chosen gender identity as a rhetorical strategy? Not cool.

It's been so long since I've played it that I totally forgot you can't save after every level on NSMB. Mario 64 felt like the average star time shouldn't be more than a half an hour, although this is coming from someone who has played the original before.

Just on my shelf... Manageable puzzles + quicksave: Picross, Picross 3D Manageable puzzles + save between puzzles: Professor Layton series Manageable levels + save between levels: Rhythm Heaven, Mario 64, New Super Mario Bros., Elite Beat Agents Quicksave anywhere, tangible subgoals in larger context: Phoenix Wright Manageable battles + quicksave in battle: Final Fantasy Tactics A2

I played Retro Game Challenge without realizing it was based on the Japanese show Game Center CX.

Wow, that is the worst-written review I have read on IGN in a while. "[Dead Space 2 features] sound that's so well done I'd find myself trying to figure out if it was a monster making its move or my dog rummaging in the living room." --IGN.com Fake Edit: Oh man, the author responded: http://www.ign.com/blogs/Greggy-IGN/2011/01/24/well-now-i-know-what-reddit-is/ "I hate typos and things that make the site look bad." -- IGN.com

That was actually funnier than I was expecting... Why does it have the Scott Pilgrim vs. the World trailer music?