"Middle East" is one of those vague geographic/political terms that people use to mean "majority Muslim countries" without necessarily having a firm idea of which countries make up the region (see also: Central Asia).

I definitely agree. I think it's interesting that, as the series went on, it became less "kid friendly adventures" and more "mature works that have characters from a children's book in them." Nothing embodies this better than the way the Groke is handled, going from evil monster (seriously, "She was not particularly…

I'm of two minds about this. In Mass Effect, Dragon Age, etc. where the game is essentially "kill things - moral choice option - kill things - moral choice option," I tend to go with my heart. The bonuses for going full renegade or paragon tend to be some slightly changed dialogue in various spots.

A bad egg, even!

Warren Zevon - Lawyers, Guns, and Money

Because I enjoy being upset at things that other people do, I suppose.

Fool, the AV Club comment section isn't nearly photorealisitc enough to cause people to feel REAL emotions!

"A train-wreck where you root for all the passengers to die miserably." Perfectly describes my feelings about every Noah Baumbach film I've ever seen. There's a line between "prickly" and "prickish" that every single character seems to cross, and I recall spending most of the runtime of Greenberg hoping for a part of…

And Jews as well!

Yeah, I was gonna say…

Sander Cohen has enough buckets full of crazy to supply at least four games.

The obvious solution is to make one path and pretend that "oh wow, you just happened to pick this one thing!" Same deal with how every tavern in a town just happens to be the one with the drunk merchant you need to talk to.

Yep. I haven't played the original. Is there anything to recommend it over Stone Soup?

Most likely, I will be continuing to play Dungeon Crawl. Last night, I came close to actually managing to kill a god. I felt like Lady Uboshi, if Lady Uboshi were a nine foot-tall minotaur breserker. I ended up dying along the way, laid low by a variety of slime demons, but goddamn, a game where you can literally…

"Had Insomniac Games instead swapped out its garish palettes for shades
of black and white and dressed its hero in natty three-piece suits or
flapper dresses and incorporated a 1920s jazz-era soundtrack" I would play that game until my thumbs bled.

I'm going to be trying my hand at Ultima Regio Regium, a roguelike-like that aspires to be cross between Dwarf Fortress, Europa Universalis, and Invisible Cities. However, at present, it is a very nice "walking into trees" simulator with a difficult-to-access interface. Still, the idea is cool, and I could use…

I can see that, I think. As cool as it was to watch pro-bending, the stakes were so ridiculously low it was a bit dumbfounding. However, I totally disagree on the development of the world. While it would have been nice to see the late-Qing-era Earth Kingdom earlier on and get some world building outside of the United…

I also think it captures the atmosphere of the game perfectly. Sleazy, neon, and subtly OFF.

My favorite part of each level is actually at the end. The throbbing, fever dream techno is totally silenced, replaced with a horrible, unearthly droning as you're made to walk over the masses of shot, bludgeoned, and pool-cued nameless goons. It feels like the game is really rubbing your nose in it. "Oh wow, what a…

Definitely my first and favorite Zelda game. I remember having my tiny eight year-old brain blown by the reveal in the bit before the Face Shrine when you find out what's going on with the island. The ending was probably the first time I was ever emotionally affected by a game. I watched it, put down the Gameboy, and…