For me it has to be the Civilization series. I have played them all since Civ I (including Alpha Centauri), and I find myself always going back to the latest iteration and losing myself for hours. There is always more to learn and experience (new leaders, different maps, difficulty levels, scenarios etc), that it…

All the games published by Paradox Interactive (Victoria, Europa Universalis, Crusader Kings)

That evolve jump-rope is amazing and creative.

no kotaku review of kotaku reviews?

I completely agree with your scoring system. Having a numerical value to such a wide media is just not healthy to the industry. It's simply insane to say things like "The Stanley Parable is 50% better than Just Dance 3", because those items simply don't compare.

gibs. Lots of gibs... or you can bundle this with Meaningful Enemy Feedback...

This gives me the opportunity to post my favorite sigur ros song

Look underneath the illuminated 10key pad. Those are two honking big black buttons. Perhaps the numpad is a trackpad that probably goes from one mode to the other with a button press.

only if it's the original Red Alert.

I remember the first time I figured out I could not only change my laser shot pattern, but also the orientation of my shields I was speechless for the next fifteen minutes. Then I found out you could change the Engines/Lasers/Shields levels, and wondered if I'd somehow peeked behind the curtain and seen the face of…

That's definitely not where it belongs, in fact...it's a far cry.

I have followed this advice, as I have seen it before. If you are grilling the burger, I find that it tends to fall apart very easily when using this method. I appreciate the idea, but in practice it is difficult to keep these extremely loosely packed patties together, especially during the tumultuous flip.

Exactly. Though when I find a game that manages to scare me even a little, it instantly earns points with me. Isolation, Outlast are two good examples of recent games that worked for me.

Of course, playing with the lights off, sound up, at night (and alone) really, really helps.

See, I'm the opposite, I'm a huge horror movie buff, and I also love horror games. But I jump like an absolute beotch every friggin' time a decent jump scare happens. Doesn't matter if I know it's coming or not. Part of that is actually why I love jump scares, but it's somewhat embarrassing in a theater with friends =/

Uh, no. What are you, an IDIOT? You're supposed to walk into some food to heal your wounds ya big dum dum!

It gets easier with practice. Honestly the game isn't too hard if you use a shield with a 100 block rating. Dodging is more efficient, lets you do more damage, and is more satisfying, but there's nothing wrong with using a shield.

I loved Contrux as a kid after legos they were my 2nd favorite building toy.

I agree; and I think there are two kinds of "features" we're talking about here: software features (like OpenVPN), which are useful if you need them, and "hardware" features, for lack of a better word (like processor/tri-banding) that fall a bit more on the useful/not useful side. Is that a fair comparison?

On my ASUS router I love the built-in support for OpenVPN. I know that's probably not a widely used feature, but it should be. I know you can put DDWRT or Tomato and get VPN support, but to have it right out of the box with the free ASUS DDNS service is really nice.