Gwardinen

I don't recall ever seeing Geoff Keighley pitch a hardball. That's not how one gets exclusives. "So stick with Xbox 360, is what you're saying?" was a relevant and rather tame response. I actually thought the stick with 360 concept was a joke until I saw that clip - the flowchart of decision making for wanting a new console and not wanting or not being able to use an always online system is not "buy a 360 instead"; it's "buy a PS4 instead". I presume Microsoft knows that and is bullshitting, but hey, maybe not.

Lu plays Monaco.

Do we have any plans to steal things again tonight?

I would love to play but I don't have the money to get the game yet. I really want it, though, so let me know whether it's worthwhile and I may try to scrounge it up from somewhere. Edit: Toblix is a king among men! And hilarious hijinks abound in Monaco.

So, I've decided I want to see how all these online asynchronous multiplayer hooplah really works in SimCity, if you have a group of cooperating people in a region. With that in mind I've set up a private region on North America East 4 for the use of Idle Thumbs. I picked this server because it currently has low population (less queueing) and is roughly in the middle of where most of the Thumbs are. The region is 16 cities, as big as it gets, so that the most people can join. Initially I'd like to look for just Thumbs so they all have a chance to join, but if we don't fill up friends of Thumbs would be totally welcome. I believe you have to be invited to join the region, so please add me on Origin if you're interested - my username there is Gwardinen.

I am currently unable to send invites because EA has disabled my SimCity game on Origin for god alone knows what reason. Currently on hold with EA support to attempt to sort it. Bug toblix!

I doubt it. I'm also from Europe. The server stuff doesn't seem to affect the moment-to-moment gameplay a great deal, and even if data from the server came a full 5 seconds slower, since that data would likely be telling you that my garbage trucks had stopped coming to your city because a monster destroyed my dump, would those five seconds make a big difference?

EU copies don't technically go live until Friday, but the European servers are already up. All servers are functionally identical, it's just when you login to them you can only join regions hosted on that server. It's merely a question of playing where you think you'll get the best ping/where your friends are.

We should have a Thumbs region. I'm currently playing on European servers both because that's where I live and because they're less active (and therefore more stable) than the North American servers. That said, you can change which server you login to at the launcher at any time with no penalties that I know of. My username is Gwardinen on Origin, though I've no idea how to link to it or anything. Add me if you have the game and want to start setting up a region, or have a good region going already that I could join.

So I can't remember if I found out about it here or elsewhere but a little while ago I was made aware of a turn-based asynchronous multiplayer strategy game for iOS called Hero Academy. Penny Arcade then reminded me yesterday that it is actually out worldwide now, so I have downloaded it. It seems decent so far, and would probably be more fun with people I know or at least have heard complaining about things on the internet. It's freemium so I encourage others to give it a try also. If you wish to play me my username is Gwardinen.

I heartily recommend trying SpaceChem, an indie "design-based puzzle game" with a demo on Steam now. It has two layers that I know of so far, in the proper production levels you start with a macro view of a landscape with tanks of various molecules on one side and specific required molecules on the other, so you connect things up with pipes and reactors, basically figuring out which reactors are going to combine/split up which elements within the molecules to get the right end molecules. The other layer is programming the reactors themselves - it's not as simple as saying "strip out oxygen and add carbon", you have to basically design a couple of interconnected assembly lines within the reactors to bond, debond, move around and submit atoms in order to get the right molecules into the output. I apologise for this rather poor description of the game, but frankly the game itself doesn't make all that much sense until you play a couple of worlds into it. I can only say that everyone I have recommended it so far has found it at least intriguing, and it has a free demo after all, so why not give it a go?

I have the HD release and have done the first few colossi. I'd be up for listening to your stories of dealing with those and then joining in once it gets to the stage I'm at - I've wanted an excuse to finish that game for a while.

The "Exstra Hvitlok" is presumably the aforementioned extra garlic (I bet you're glad the chef didn't take you at your word) and I'm guessing "Levering" is delivery, because it's similar to the German and that would make sense. Which leaves me with one question; what the hell is "Med" and why is it free?

Just kind of quoting this for emphasis. I couldn't agree more and I liked the part of the Feminism thread that evinced the opinion that feminism isn't really about promoting women's rights in the same way that oncologists aren't really doctors who exist to drug and irradiate their patients. Much like oncologists are doctors who fight cancer, and chemotherapy and radiotherapy are just the fronts on which they fight at this time, feminists could (and hopefully should) be viewed as people who fight inequality and women's lack of parity is just the symptom they happen to be combating at the moment. It's etymologically suspect, but I like the philosophy behind that definition. Sorkin... man, I wish I had something to contribute to the discussion about his work because it really interests me. I freely admit he's one of my favourite writers, and I adored the Social Network and (as far as I know) every TV series he's ever made. That said, the guy says some weird shit sometimes. Particularly around the Newsroom, there have been some very strange intimations that he would like to go back to the age when men were men and America was the promised land. I dunno... it's made me kind of uncomfortable and has me questioning the sentiments I so responded to in things like the West Wing. As has been pointed out, the women in that show were almost always competent, intelligent and well-rounded. Also, they did not all have the same personality! So yeah, I love Sorkin's work but in recent times I've been getting a little worried by what kind of a guy he might actually be. As for Infinite, it seems like rather a token gesture to do the reversible cover, but it doesn't seem like a bad one. Giving customers the option to have a slightly more customised (at least through the medium of voting and then being able to turn the cover) box doesn't strike me as anything but a good thing. It just also doesn't really matter. The cover is still the cover and it's the cover for marketing reasons, which entirely makes sense. It's just a shame that it looks kind of dumb and doesn't say very much about the game.

I feel like that question is getting off point, but there are plenty of males in games who are shirtless some or most of the time. A few that I can think of include Kratos, Monkey (from Enslaved), Thane, Big Boss, Kain... and Raziel in vampire form now that I think about it, Dante and the Prince (of Persia). I'm deliberately not mentioning any fighting game characters because there are so many of them and arguments can be made about the validity of martial artists not wearing shirts. I'm also not mentioning the many fantasy characters that are shirtless, which basically includes all non-humans in games like Warcraft. Again, though, that feels rather off topic. There being many shirtless men in games and other entertainment media doesn't make sexualised women better, and I don't think Pony was trying to make that equivalence. It was a minor notation in his post at most, I think.

You're basically a strange and mystical creature to me, because I cannot for the life of me figure out how not to go 0/18 as Dragon Knight. I like to think I'm not a terrible player most of the time (though the one time I played with Sean I had an awful game as Slardar and was very embarrassed) but I just do not get that guy.

I... wow. Holy crap. I actually just exclaimed "oh my god!" out loud because that is fantastic. At some point in my life I must find a way to experience a brownie made that way.

I was pretty quickly convinced that I needed to play this after seeing Giant Bomb's Quick Look. I should be around a group of people with iDevices on Tuesday and can't wait to actually try it out.

Also which game modes? Some are significantly more popular than others.

I must admit to finding some of the bullet sponginess troubling in the Infinite trailer shown at the VGAs. But that's something that was true in the first BioShock as well.

This is actually pretty cool. I really should start busting through my backlog.

War for the Overworld By: Subterranean Games Type: Game about: "A mix of real time strategy and god game. Influenced by Dungeon Keeper, Overlord, StarCraft and Evil Genius." Why You Should Care: I've been mostly staying out of the Kickstarter furore, but I am still hoping for a good spiritual sequel to Dungeon Keeper. Some Overlord and Evil Genius thrown in certainly wouldn't disappoint me. Worth watching? Link: http://www.kickstart...r-the-overworld

Can't it be both?

I think you mean Homeworld. If there's anyone who has a good excuse for having Homefront on the brain right now, though, it's you. Great article, by the way! I have enjoyed every Relic game, although the Outfit and Space Marine less so than the strategy games. So I don't have any particular worries about them. But this Creative Assembly Warhammer game could really either elevate me to new heights of joy or disappoint me greatly.

PiratePoo and I managed to do some of the coop, after a bit of a rough start. It's weird. It doesn't really feel like Far Cry in any sensible way. We mostly just wandered along a straight path, shooting guys until we were told to stand still in an area for a bit and shoot guys. The only genuinely entertaining bits were interstitial competitions between the players - in one case we were driving ATVs around trying to grab and plant bombs faster than each other, and in another we were just plonked on a bridge and given sniper rifles while enemies milled about in a village below. All in all one has to wonder why so many parts of this game (the multiplayer, the coop and the campaign missions specifically) seem to be actively working against the interesting open world systems that make the rest of it enjoyable.