Yeah, that was weird. I mean...in Dark Souls, a game which is all about earning every single step of progress you make, are there that many people who actually WANT a big pile of free pre-order weapons?

"It also has an American release date of February 6, and this collector's edition, if you really must."


As much as I'm annoyed by pre-order culture, these kinds of collector's edition incentives don't really bother me. Artbooks, nicer cases, soundtracks, little tchotchkes...okay, sure. I can live with that.

It's the…

Yeah, games with a "period" setting seem to have a much worse track record in terms of making it outside of Japan. Hopefully, this one being set in England will offset that somewhat.

I can kind of understand Sega not localizing, say, Yakuza Kenzan, though I kind of doubt that the audience for Yakuza would really have…

I don't necessarily disagree with you about the character designs, but just to be clear:

Planescape: Torment is still considered one of the best-written games ever. It's a really impressive piece of work.

Unfortunately, it's coupled with an interface that wasn't great even when it came out, a combat system that's merely functional at the best of times, and visuals that are...well, to call them dated is…

I am still upset that we never got the planned Source-engine Arcanum sequel, "Journey to the Center of Arcanum".

As a consolation prize, though, we did get Vampire: Bloodlines, so I can't be too upset.

RIP, Troika. Your games were often a buggy, unbalanced mess, but they were brilliant nonetheless.

This game would really only remind me of SAO if it had an improbably-competent protagonist who seems to suck the competence and agency out of every other character that he interacts with so he can be the sole Super Special Snowflake.

(I kid...kind of. I like SAO, but Christ, Kirito's "I am a super-cool badass who all…

"a 'Swery take' on the ideas"

I still haven't forgiven Capcom for AAI2. I don't hold as much of a grudge against them as I do SEGA, but...grr.

Nah, you're probably right about the year. It's still a pretty substantial time skip, though.

I agree completely about some of the narrative gaps due to the time skip. In addition to missing the death of Rothstein (who was one of my favorite characters on the show) and totally killing the nascent plot thread between…

In fact, just improve the show altogether by replacing it with Carnivale. Seriously. Just do it.

...I'll be over here, sadly waiting for the continuation of the story that we'll never get.

It's a really well put together show with some standout characters (I'm a particular fan of Arnold Rothstein, myself). As with a lot of "prestige" dramas, though, the characters are conflicted, and there's not a lot of black-and-white "good guys" and "bad guys".

That said:

The final season just started a couple of weeks…

Accepted, sure, but it's made clear through Ruka's wish and the alternate timeline that she is actually experiencing a significant amount of dysphoria and unhappiness. Remember, she actually begs Okabe to send the message to her mother in the past so she can be "born a girl".

Ultimately, Okabe has to undo that…

I'm covering animation more broadly (well, primarily American and Japanese), but it's interesting how the only even marginally positive portrayals I can come up with are Japanese. Sure, the bulk of it is still okama-stereotype stuff or off-the-wall, barely applicable stuff like Ranma. You have the whole "trap" thing…

Interesting article. Some of those I would have expected (Utena, Maria-sama), but a couple were a surprise (particularly Noir).

I'd love to see you tackle something about trans characters in anime. I'm in the middle of writing my master's thesis on the subject, and...there's a lot of material to mine there.

Granted,…

What.

What.

Am I dreaming? Is this really happening?

Oh god. This is going to be so bad for me.

"F**k Sharks: The spiritual successor to Hatoful Boyfriend. Coming this summer."

Hey,

Not to beat a dead horse or anything, but in another discussion, some of these sources came up, and they seemed relevant to the conversation. They're a handful of studies showing some positive correlation between misogynistic imagery/sexist portrayals in games and negative attitudes about women.

Behm-Morawitz,…

Your opinion is that they should make the game for you, ignoring what they and other players might want? Odd. I'd expect a lot of pushback if you hold this opinion. And I'm not sure that's a compelling reason for them to change a game or an argument against strippers tbh.

Hey, no harm, no foul. There's a lot of misinformation and second- or third-hand paraphrasing flying around, so it's not hard for that kind of thing to happen.

I admit that, having never played Star Fox Adventures, if there were any inaccuracies, I probably missed them (to be honest, I can't even really remember that…