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Two Thousand And Late

At some point, Ubisoft - which had theretofore been enunciating the annual release deathmarch decreed by the Market Elders - decided to release a game and then stay awhile. They also paused Assassin's Creed, but I don't know if they did as a corollary to the new policy or because they needed to plant legumes there because the soil was out of nitrogen.

Shivering In The Jeweled Dark

Sometimes my friend Amy Falcone says that something is "a lot," and now Gorborath has adopted it. Generally something is "a lot" when you "can't even." That's the threshold.

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Aspirational Truths

I feast on spoilers; I actively seek them out. I typically read the last page of a book first - just one more way in which I am an iconoclast, whose zesty street wisdom is incalculable by the undifferentiated Norm. The problem is that there exists a kind of Reverse Market for this type of illicit information, and it's generally flooded with nonsense.

Drumroll

(Here's the strip. I've never had a single interaction with Geoff Keighley that wasn't good, so there's no beef; I just do a lot of public appearances too and it's a very fragile time. Here's today's Acquisitions Incorporated: The "C" Team fic, with art by Kate Welch, that is to say, Rosie Beestinger.)

Form Arms And Torso

I've wanted to see The Last Jedi ever since I got out of the theater for The Force Awakens. Arguably, I've wanted to see it ever since I knew there was such a thing as Star Wars. You know me; I've wanted people to ask hard questions about these fucking Space Wizards from the jump. It seems like we might be getting there? Anyway, it's out next week and that seems a little crazy, but I am "not mad at it."

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Weaponized

As is firmly established, I really, really like it when reviews for a game do not generate consensus. It can mean a few different things: for example, it might be a bad game game whose fetishists tolerate (or even laud) its worst tendencies. I'm certainly guilty of this; that fact that I don't "see art" means that there's an entire band of data I don't perceive and it leads to tension between myself and my friend Glob. In my defense, I played text adventures and games I had to load from cassette tapes, and my aesthetics haven't really changed that much.

Xenoblade Chronicles 2

I picked up Xenoblade Chronicles 2 for the Switch last week and have not been able to put it down. Yesterday on Twitter I mentioned a Reddit post that I found super helpful when it comes to the combat. Even if you’re not playing Xenoblade it’s a pretty funny read. The combat system is so completely bonkers you end up having to say shit like this while trying to explain it: Bursting 1 orb extends the Chain Attack for 1 round. You can burst multiple orbs in 1 round and that would extend the Chain Attack to the number of orbs burst.

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Happy Holidays

I always try my best to maintain Christmas Posture, to run along the authorized channels, but Christmas is dark time literally and also figuratively. It's dark. I looked out my window last night into the kind of darkness that would make a man invent God.

Worse For Weir

Gabriel "rides" books; he straps in and they take him places. He got in because he wanted to go somewhere and he's pretty determined to get there. I stopped being able to do that for some reason. Now, I read a book the way a contractor might walk through a house, trying to assess its stability. I'm looking at the joists. I put a laser level on the floor and scrunch up my chin. And then, while the owners look on, I click out the tip of my pen and drop some bleak science.

The F Word

I wouldn't play a Bethesda open world game without mods; it's a truth universally acknowledged and so forth. I typically install mods before I start playing to make it so the inventory UI makes sense at all on a computer. I doubt this is even perceived as insulting to the people who made it. And even if it were, they're the ones who put all those Goddamn brooms everywhere. We gotta find a middle ground.