I remember when L4D came out and I had the momentary flash of inspiration of starting out Co-Op in Advanced rather than Normal difficulty. There is no way it would have been my favourite online game of all time if I hadn't - all the tension of not knowing if you were going to survive the next wave, the frantic search…

"it’s a shame to see this extremely expensive folly… bomb so badly."

Can't deny that there's aspects of that in him but, for some reason he's working for me thus far - perhaps it's that (at least by mid-season) I find him more inscrutable than Malvo who, now that I think about it, I started objecting to as I was nearing the season finale.

I'm halfway through myself so you may well be right, I just love the villain so much in this one - he's over the top, but not in the cartoony way that put me off Billy Bob Thornton's character in the first one. Season 2, along with Louie, is probably ma favourite television of the last five years or so.

Still good but Fargo (esp. seasons 2&3) wipes the floor with it.

This is the most interesting thing that has happened for at least a couple of years in a game I haven't played for that same amount of time.

NieR is definitely my GOTY so far and I really can't see anything surpassing it. If you're yearning for more existentialist despair & horror of meaninglessness, however, you should take a stab at SOMA (and try to ignore the boring first couple of acts - it will compensate for them).

Harley's facial expressions -especially how she transitions from mocking, to angry, to hurt- are just out of this world.

Moral consistency high five!

I'm usually the least offended person in the room, but isn't anyone else miffed that Yusuke becomes part of the gang with nary a mention of the fact that he tried to blackmail someone into posing nude for him?

Isn't it a sad commentary on the state of humanity (or my own unyielding pessimism) that it genuinely cheers me up when an internet disagreement is resolved like that?

I'd argue that the original statement is far from unambiguously stating the intended meaning you -quite lucidly- describe above, but yes, if that was what you meant, it makes perfect sense. (and hopefully another great internet argument resolved without anyone calling anyone nazis - yay!)

I neither missed, nor invented your point, I just corrected an inaccurate part of it: you claimed that emulators "do it literally exactly the same" (whether with the original or the Mini NES is irrelevant - both are inaccurate). I both understand and agree with your broader point.

"Emulators don't do it "far better," they do it literally exactly the same."

Exactly, the whole "because of Switch" line of argument makes little sense. If you're not playing the games on something resembling the original system (and for a decent price) you might as well opt for the emulators.

Breakfast of Champions. That's the one

It's the body part that stops functioning properly when you enter the cool stage of life

This echoes my experience with Snake Pass - frustrating to get to grips with at first, quite rewarding when you're slithering up those bamboo scaffolds like a natural-born reptile. Enjoyable game, even if the camera isn't always helpful. Nice catch about David Wise too, I wasn't aware of his involvement. It's the…

Actually, while this may seem like a mostly comedic aside, I think it has a central function in the game's narrative as a whole, in particular relating to our understanding of the robots as something other than mindless enemies. Also it sticks much closer to the Shakespearean play's themes than a superficial reading…

True, keep in mind though that subsequent playthroughs in NieR are not NG+ type repeats, they're vastly different. Mildly spoiler-y example: every fight in the second run (including boss fights) you can do as a minimalist, overhead, single-screen shoot'em up. And the third run I'm currently in, is in fact the…