JonCole

It actually looks exponentially better, by my estimation. I'd say the improvement is much more substantial than most HD remakes of this generation, like Halo Anniversary or God of War Collection.

Banner Saga might get lower in a daily or community choice deal, I think the other two probably won't.

How about a Thumbs-branded snuggie that makes you look like a wizard?

http://www.gog.com/game/the_chronicles_of_riddick_assault_on_dark_athena To save you a search and a couple clicks.

If you go to http://www.bitly.com/gs-xbox-one and have a Facebook account, you get a free $5 credit for Xbox from Gamestop.

No. I still haven't played Witcher 2, but I imagine she doesn't get much better in it. I pretty much can't like Triss knowing her relationship with Geralt from the books and how she uses his amnesia to her advantage.

Cool, they actually do have a little game going on for this sale. I honestly don't fully understand it (the fact that Steam's servers are being destroyed right now doesn't help) but I'm glad there's something.

Just read her articles. Aside from those appearances, every time I've read her content she's seemed super solid. Her articles appear in mainstream publications like The Atlantic and Slate with relative frequency and I find her to have a fairly authoritative voice for the industry in that kind of media. I've been listening to some new stuff lately from recommendations made here. Isometric was okay, but I stopped listening to it after I felt that the views seemed a bit archetypal ("Bri, you're the only one of us that's actually made a game so speak with authority on this topic"), Steve just seemed to exist on the podcast to keep things moving, and Bri talked a bit too much. I took to Indoor Kids pretty quickly, but I guess that's not all that surprising because I listen to a lot of podcasts produced by comedians. That said, Kumail and Emily actually know their gaming stuff and have views on movies and television that I generally agree with. Good stuff! You Are Not So Smart is probably my favorite new podcast to listen to. It has content similar to something like Radiolab or even TED Radio Hour, but I feel like the host David has a much less slick, polished voice than the hosts of those shows. I actually like it because his interest and excitement for psychology and science in general seems very genuine. Plus, his cookie tasting segment in the middle of the show is solid gold.

I'm probably going to buy exactly zero games because I can't afford to with a $480 Destiny PS4 console pre-order in the pipe. On the bright side, I'm playing all the games I got in previous sales. I'm sure I wouldn't have actually saved more money if I had simply bought them when I had time or interest to play them!* *I'm actually sure I would have :-(

You can use the long link, just break the hypertext in the forum text editor so that the YT link is black, non-underlined text and it'll automatically embed.

OnLive + Mad Catz = You Win! also Mad Catz + OnLive = AWESOME thus You Win! = AWESOME I really need to unsubscribe from OnLive's dumb newsletter.

I think YouTube is a success because it's a higher fidelity format of delivering raw information about a game. Formats have superseded each other in terms of this fidelity: Magazines + printed media - screenshots printed in ink Gaming websites - screenshots presented natively in pixels Modern gaming websites - reviews presenting small bits of gameplay video with commentary over top YouTube - longform gameplay video with commentary Each subsequent format delivered more and more of what the game is, and I think that's why YouTube and to some extent Twitch are winning so big lately. As always, the previous form can keep relevance if they provide some kind of context for that raw information, but I think there's something essential about getting that sort of stream of consciousness of watching someone play a game versus a game being described to you. Not to mention each subsequent form of media has seemingly brought content at a faster and faster rate to consumers.

This is basically what I was going to say. I guess I'd also just say that your desire to feel good should be balanced with your own conscience. Women's status in the gaming industry should make you feel bad. You shouldn't decide that Polygon's coverage of women's rights is too much because it makes light of something that rightly makes you feel bad. I think it's alright to still enjoy games despite elements of games not responsibly treating women or any other cultural class, you should just be aware of it and be discerning when something breaches your personal barrier of tolerance.

I don't know if "antagonistic" is the word for what I want their relationship to be more, but it certainly is too cozy in many cases. I was a little bothered by this recently Polygon article about Ouya, which seems pretty much like free advertisement - http://www.polygon.com/2014/6/14/5808536/ouya-ceo-julie-uhrman-thralled Now, they're certainly welcome to cover Ouya and I do think that a new exclusive game on the platform is news. However, did we really need to hear Julie Uhrman say again that Ouya is doing great and really giving consumers and developers what we want? Frankly, if that was true she wouldn't be announcing one promising exclusive in a quite favorable "interview" and would instead be holding an E3 Presser with developers on stage saying how much they enjoy making games for the platform.

Seems like disabling hardware decoding worked! I haven't seen the issue in a few days now, except for when I stupidly used Internet Explorer to watch a video that was acting up in Chrome. Now I've disabled hardware decoding in all my browsers, yay.

I would feel a little more sympathetic to "journalists"/Campbell if I didn't see that Campbell shotgunned every visible Mojang representative on Twitter to ask questions about this policy and sent such blatantly pointed questions to Notch specifically. The questions almost seem the gaming equivalent of what paparazzi would shout at a celebrity on the street after some controversy put the celebrity on the front page of some tabloid. The whole "sharing a private email is in bad taste" thing seems like a red herring, because this seems so damn far from private and in no way a personal correspondence in tone or content.

This is one of those controversies that happen completely out of my sphere of knowledge or interest, so it's really hard to get a grip on how I should feel. Ultimately, it's hard to feel sympathy for anyone who builds their business upon the back of another business's lax enforcement of EULA/TOS. I've seen this happen a handful of times in online MMO-type things, where out-of-game economies crop up for certain items and people complain when their accounts get disabled for buying items with real money or whatever the case may be. Even if the rules aren't being enforced well and even if you feel your actions may be moral, you're still breaking rules and morality has little place where clear lines of business are concerned.

I don't think I'll participate because I'm horrible at keeping up with this kind of stuff, but I will put in an endorsement for Bing Rewards as well. I've used it for about 1.5 years and I've gotten $45 worth of rewards (mostly $5 Amazon GCs, also a couple 400 MS Point cards while that was still a thing). And in exchange, Bing really isn't noticeably worse than Google except when you really would prefer Google results. So, don't search for a video that you want to watch in YouTube on Bing, search for it on YouTube.

Sweet voice! I concede to some extent that the performance isn't killing it, but it's hard to know what Dinklage was instructed to do in the booth. I mean, if they said "give this line really flat like a robot" then he had to do that. In some ways though, it may be interesting if the AI voice actually sounded deliberately human. Kind of apply the mannerisms of the AI in Her to an action game, where lines are acted with emotion but from the point of view of a lifeless intelligence. Halo 4 pulled that off to some extent, but Cortana's origins of a more rigidly defined AI still meant that she spoke and acted in a certain way.

Yeah, I did notice that somewhat extreme depth of field/focus effect in the E3 video. Can you just install the mod, disable DOF, and get the best of both worlds?

Ah, here's the wizard moon thing:

Watch Dogs already destroys my year or so old $900-ish PC, so as nice as that "mod"/E3 texture and effects look I don't think I could handle it.

Man, so happy my wife doesn't care much about handbags and enjoys games as much as I do. Not that it means she's super excited about me burning $480-ish on a PS4 and game, just that she can appreciate my needs and may get something out of my purchase in the long run.

I'm basically swearing off buying any video games or eating out of the house until this game comes out so I can afford the bundle.

Destiny is huge because 1) no mainstream shooter in the last year has captured my interest for more than a couple weeks, including Titanfall and 2) an MMOFPS that actually seems to be a good FPS with potentially good fiction is practically unheard of, at least by me. Not to mention the game's design is impressing the hell out of me and there doesn't seem to be a better candidate in my mind for the first visually impressive game to make a next/now-gen console purchase feel justified.