There is a new Mario Party, and apparently it's "good," but Mario Party is almost a genre unto itself and as a thus may be considered an exemplar in a self-defined context. Rhetorically, it's a sundered condition. But! It's fast and crazy, and bright, and gravitational in a way, like a Welcome Sign. People who are actually good at games don't necessarily like operating in contexts that don't recognize their virtues. Or, as sometimes happens, games simply arrive at the wrong time.

There is a lot about the Horizon Festival that probably seems very good at the time, but will eventually lead the kind of televised documentary with a lot of scary music that often flashes between full color and black and white very quickly.

I almost never play games on phones anymore, unless I'm on a plane and it's literally all I have with me. The last one I investigated deeply was Paladins Strike, which is not new by any means, and that was only because I happened to be into other Hi-Rez shit at the time and Michael can be very convincing. It was cool, but requires Internet, which makes the primary usage case questionable for me. A lot of phone games require Internet, even if you think they wouldn't, or shouldn't necessarily given the content, but here we are.

These fuckin' pets, man. I'm not even a regular player and I want to get a piece of this hound.

Gabriel hates Kell's Grave as a Gambit map. I mean, I have maps I'm scared of: Cathedral Of Stars, the one that got unlocked on the raid completion, is mostly a suite of opportunities for me to look at the underside of the map. But I don't carry motes unless I pick one up on accident and then have to get four more just to make it worth the trouble. Gabe carries motes. And, apparently - I'm getting all this second hand - falling into the acid with fifteen motes feels real bad.

Mike and I receive Tattoos very differently. This fact is discussed in today's strip, but there is another way you can become acquainted with it, and that is to watch the video embedded tastefully below these words. The tattoo artist terminology for someone who takes a tattoo in this way is "A Box Of Cats."

So much stuff going on today. Yeesh! Okay. Let's go.

I feel like a sweatshop that the worker willingly enters constitutes a kind of labor market endgame.

We knew that including the actual image I received in the comic would provide delight purely as a hidden object game, but I wasn't a hundred percent prepared for how viscerally people would feel it. In the past, I've either helped him build a computer or he's bought them online. This one isn't even technically for him, it's for Gabriel the Younger, and they put the whole thing together… together.

I've had a chance to check out Cody Blorpfor (esq.) on PS4 and Xbox One X now in Blackout mode, and I've had fun everywhere I've played it.

My feed is jam-packed with amateur, yet still somehow amazing Spider-Man photography. Technically, I do own it. It's one of about three PlayStation 4 discs I own. It came with the Pro when I upgraded, but I upgraded for Destiny 2, so the box still has plastic on it. Hopefully his hands and feet will remain sticky until I have a chance to get back in there.

I was there when the miracle happened. Indeed: I was the vessel that carried it.

Dear Australia, I am very sorry but I will not be at your PAX this year. You might remember that I had to cut my trip short last year due to my anxiety. I wrote a big post about it at the time and apologized for the inconvenience. You can still read it right here and it’s all still very true.

Most of the levels I've gained since the Forsaken expansion are from Gambit. It's early days for the mode, which is the part I like generally for new systems, where the continents have not yet cooled and it's possible to succeed with great communication as opposed to Raid-like mechanical rigor.

I don't know if he actually brought it home or not. I do know that he is a different person when he's wearing it. There's something about him raising up his left hand to tuck back an errant hair that is so out of place it doesn't even get filed like extra stimuli; it just coats the top of my brain unabsorbed.