William Zabka’s ability to walk the tightrope of “Playing a guy who absolutely sucks” and “despite yourself, you kind of want to root for him” has been the single best thing about the entire series.

While I’m sure the fake meat alternative is fine, I’m personally of the opinion that the Panda Express Orange Chicken is already ruined by virtue of it being way too sweet.

The appeal of Assassin’s Creed has never been the modern metaplot, the appeal of Assassin’s Creed has been “we pick interesting periods in history and turn them into a theme park for you to mess around in.”   Nothing else really matters- the controls have always been pretty bad. They could drop the Abstergo stuff…

I mean, a big part of why Assassin’s Creed works but Watch_Dogs and the Division kind of didn’t is the aesthetic appeal of being a tourist in an interesting time and place in history.  That’s not really a phenomenon that can be abstracted into something you can repeat in a series of games with a different premise.

Black Flag is the one to start with.  It’s a refined formula, it’s fun, it requires basically no knowledge of the setting or the metaplot, and you get to be a pirate.  The main criticism of the game is “it doesn’t have much to do with the rest of the franchise.”

I played all the ones that were on the 360 (so 1 through Rogue) and I picked up the ancient ones (Origins, Odyssey, and Valhalla), are Syndicate and Unity worth it?  I sort of get the sense that the reason Origins was such a breath of fresh air was that the franchise needed to change some things.

The fact that the well-publicized MJF contract issues became part of the storyline makes me wonder whether part of this is a work. AEW does have TV contracts coming up and nothing’s going to juice ratings like “the backstage beef is so hot, people are throwing chairs and EVPs are getting suspended.”

I mean, ultimately the way this gets done is “Microsoft agrees to continue releasing games they publish on Sony platforms if Sony releases games they publish on Microsoft platforms”.

Yeah, if you look at the art for the Vanara in Pathfinder they very much have a Journey to the West vibe. The lore about them is like “they live in treetop villages, they have their own language and culture, they like to style their hair, they have very dextrous tails, they love to play pranks, but they have a deep…

I guess “Kiwifarms as Russian state media” makes a certain kind of sense.

While it’s fine to have a “monkey people” in your roleplaying game, when doing so one should avoid things like.
-they would not have culture if they were not enslaved and they no longer remember their homeland.
-they are happy in their servitude and just love to sing and dance and perform.
-Elves don’t recognize them as…

It feels like the point of hiring sensitivity readers is that they keep you from publishing stuff like this so you never need to retract it.  If you're actually printing the stuff that makes you embarrassed perhaps you need to hire more sensitivity readers or just replace your editors.

I just read "PC exclusive" as meaning "we have no idea how to make this work with a controller."  Something that needs 2 dozen hotkeys available, for example.

I think these things should be banned. Autopilot should be restricted to contexts where the parameters are really unambiguous like “parallel park for me” or “make sure I stay in my lane.” Potentially leaving anything remotely like “do I swerve and crash or run over the person in the crosswalk” to a computer is just…

I’m going to tinker with your flatbread pizza sauce recipe. I’m going to remove the bay leaf after simmering before blending. Nobody wants to eat bay leaves, no matter how small you chop them up.

I never understood why people wanted an edit button.  If you notice a typo, why not just delete the tweet and repost it sans typo?

Yeah, “people who menstruate” and “women” are not subsets of each other in either direction. In contexts where you are interested in addressing the specific biological process (say, providing menstrual supplies for people who need them) it’s better to just use language that indicates that you’re addressing the…

I thought Willy’s Wonderland was fun.

Well, the thing about horror movies is that you don’t really need a lot to get people who love that kind of thing to buy a ticket.  A funny premise is probably enough for a lot of people.

I own this game because it was part of an Arkane bundle that was cheaper than just buying the Dishonored games, and I didn't actually have any intention of playing it since I thought it was "just another shooter".  Maybe I should give it a chance.