Oh, neat! My friend misled me and I didn't check. That deluxe edition sounds cool, but it seems like the hard part of a Vincent cosplay would be the horns, not the boxers!

Sif's intro animation might be the funniest part of the game. You get to the tomb of Artorias, you see his giant great sword and you figure "time to fight the undead hero!"

In my experience, the compellingness of the story is inversely related to the compellingness of the gameplay. Eventually, the story starts getting more interesting and the game itself becomes a serious slog (but the reason it becomes a slog is strongly related to why the story becomes interesting!).

I want a Death Note fighting game, where two characters square off and then whip out their notebooks and see who can write the other's name down first. Because of the 40-second delay, everybody winds up dying in every fight, but whoever survives long enough to see the other person drop wins!

Indeed it is! Thus far I've only managed to unlock Ruto, but I'm betting that by the end Adventure Mode will give us Agitha, Volga, Zant, Ghirahim… basically everyone who has a battlefield presence in the main campaign!

I've definitely played a fair bit of 7, I'm just not sure if I beat it… probably I didn't. Okay, it's on my list of things to accomplish!

In my experience, the XBox360 controller is so close to perfect that it just bothers me even more that the D-Pad is such hot garbage. Many a Dark Souls death have I died because my character thought I wanted to put away my sword in the middle of the fight when I was just trying to toggle spells or items!

Well, she didn't need much persuading. I texted "Gameological consensus is you should play the whole series." She texted back "Trip to EB after work?"

I am really enjoying it so far! The voice acting and dialogue are well-executed, the puzzle gaming is fun (though, like I said, playing with the fucking XBox D-Pad is not ideal), and I'm a sucker for crazy, distinctively Japanese concepts like this.

Question: the girlfriend has pre-ordered DA: Inquisition. Is this the kind of series where I should be encouraging her to play the first two before diving in with the third one?

Congratulations! At this point in my life, I can't remember if 8 is the only one I haven't beaten, or if 7 & 8 are the only ones I haven't beaten.

Holy shit, thanks for sharing that Shadow's Theme cover!

Competitive Hearthstone does not sound like a spectator event I would enjoy. Hearthstone itself sounds like a brilliant solution to how shitty Magic is when you're the kid in your group whose parents aren't going to be giving him chores he can do for money or buying him Magic cards. I think my interest in Magic lasted…

I'm basically just repeating what Medrawt said, but your parenthetical comparing Shane to Kurt Sutter is so perfect that I don't think you ever need to write another word about Sons of Anarchy to be one of the best critics of it.

Season 8 has plenty of great episodes, but it's also where "eh, just end the thing in some stupid way, it'll be like a parody of shitty endings" starts to emerge as the show's primary approach to plotting.

It certainly does! Though, in fairness to your brothers, it's buried in the configuration menu and they may not have known about it!

Haven't reached Manus yet. I just found and saved Sif, who I think I heard is now a summon Artorias was tough! I had to give up on beating him with the Dragon Tooth, but once I returned to my trusty mace I did alright. My victory was pyrrhic: we dealt simultaneous death blows to each other. Fortunately, it actually…

I love Joe and Mac! Although that may be a mix of nostalgia and the fact that it was one of the first games I bought for myself as a kid without having to save up for months on end (sold raffle tickets at a family reunion to win the right to cut off my enormous rat tail! Ah, the 90s…)

I'm just swearing to myself that, once I finish my latest parallel playthroughs of both games, experiencing all the DLC and optional content, I am going to stop. I will. I will stop. I just have to.

I find the story is enjoyable enough if you just relax your critical thinking skills and let the fan service wash over you. If you don't love at least two of the three Zelda games they're referencing, though, I can see that not being a viable strategy.