What is a "lauren orsini?"

@The Forgetful Brain: It is not sad news when an arch-fiend scum-sucking racist dies. It is sad for his family, but not for anyone else.

@bluetom00: Hey, me, you forgot something! If you look hard enough for a good deal, you could find the 250 GB HDD for just over $100.

If you do some very complicated math, you can't help but conclude that MS's 120 GB HDD is no longer a terrible choice. It works out to less than $1 per GB (floating around $100 on Amazon right now), whereas the best deal on any of these flash drives seems to be in the neighborhood of $3-$4 per GB.

Why is Joe the Plumber selling Windows phones?

Great review, Owen. I've loved the last three iterations of this game. Despite putting in hundreds of hours over the years, I still never feel like I get everything out of it. Good to hear it's worth picking up again.

@Athena's Paladin: I would have said all that, but you put it so nicely. :)

Here's something very off-topic! I'm certain others have already complained, but I don't care to work hard enough to find out!

@sansa: Exactly. Because the games you play now don't have any messages in them. None.

@OzymandiasX: Ooh, cocks, saucy!

@OzymandiasX: Sure, but the end of the year 2004 didn't prompt any "best game of the decade" lists, but the end of the year 2009 did. And it wasn't what prompted Tim's comment. So how's that relevant? Or maybe was your comment meant to be passive-aggressively pedantic?

@Nside: Beard of Zeus, who would have thought this silly point would cause so much hooplah?

@Zac Shipley: There was no year zero CE, but there was a year one CE. Thus the first decade (i.e., ten years) was the years 1-10 CE. Thus every decade that follows would begin on a 1 and end on a 0. Tim is right.

Why's the article written as if the recession has ended? It might be over for Wall Street, but not for Main Street. Unemployment is still at a dire 10% nationally, and much higher in those places hardest hit. The big publishers might have survived the storm— shit, they had all the money to begin with, didn't they?—…

@play_eminence: Well, the pronunciation would be a little... exactly.

Apparently Mario is called "Uncle Mario" in Russia. Or at least that's what "Pacman vs. Dyadya Mario" means.

@Nelson: Someone _has_ a Ph.D. in something of that sort. :)

@Stephen Totilo: It's a great decision, even in terms of narrative. They can play with themes like the "end of the frontier," the rapid advance of modernity, the polyglot society created by turn-of-the-century immigration, the expansion of the nation-state, and the rise of mass production, communication, and…

It's a really interesting decision to place the game in 1910 as opposed to the more traditional Western settings of the 1870s and 1880s. It gives Rockstar a chance to do what they so well: push stereotypes to their extremes in order to break them down and show them for what they are. This game wasn't on my radar…

Fantastic Strangelove reference in the Crackdown trailer.