I hadn't seen that, DDD, so thanks for pointing me to it. Man, what an incredibly healthy attitude. I'm a little humbled by his gracious response.

Ha, that's right.

We do only review games that have escaped alpha/beta/whatever stage. My thinking is that if the developer isn't ready to put his/her name behind the game, it's not fair for us to evaluate it.

Gravity Hook, Hook Champ, Super Quick Hook … what else is in there? That's all I've got.

He was introduced in III, but the Alucard in Harmony Of Despair is the one from Symphony Of The Night (i.e., same sprite, similar abilities).

Wow. Just looked up Death Worm; it does look extremely similar. We take pains to screen cheap Flash rip-offs from the column, but this one might have slipped through.

Exemption granted.

Sounds like you pretty much have to play, to prove your faith.

I think the storyline is promising, too, Dixie. I do agree with ILSP, though, in that I'm not sure yet whether it's an act or not. Speaking a foreign language proficiently and understanding a fluent speaker perfectly are a ways apart. If it is a Sammy Sosa-type act, though, it's a good front, albeit one that Heidi…

I had resigned myself to the sorry fate of "literally" in the language, but Freddy, your argument got me all riled up again. Good point. "Really," "seriously," "truly" are all stock intensifiers, but "literally" was our last bastion of non-figurativeness.

I'm not up on my supermodels, I guess.

I agree, Gretchen's model is much more arresting than those of her competitors, to the point where I think it does give her a bit of an advantage. I would have rather seen her on the billboard than Famous von Neverheardofher.

The frame bit was a really weird piece of editing. I'm guessing that almost all of the discussion of Abdi's piece was praise, and the editors decided that they had to include something negative to balance it out. (Otherwise we might guess in advance that Abdi was the winner!!! As if it weren't obvious.) I wouldn't…

Props to Samantha for playing the game nonstop the past few days, at great risk to her personal health.

You're right, Lavoisier, the change is permanent. Wow. I have to echo Pontifex's sentiments. We'll see how this goes.

Thanks for the kind comment; I really appreciate it. I think it might be worth checking in on the show again. This episode had some of the verve that the show had lost in the post-Bravo era. It was a good challenge, the judges were feisty, and it seems like a decent crop of designers (although it's pretty hard to tell…

I didn't know about the season premiere, either, until the TV Club email was sent around to the writers earlier this week and Project Runway was on there.

I think Jaclyn probably had a solid rationale for the mirror, but they edited her explanations too much for any of us to grasp it. I like your take a lot, camipco. Makes sense to me. I wish that Miles had allowed the mirror to stay.

The "I can't believe you just asked that question" preening was pretty awful. I think having Ryan McGinness on the show this week worked out, though, because it reminded us that Miles' acting like a self-absorbed douche is not a unique phenomenon among successful artists.

Thanks for posting this. I'll include a link in next week's recap for anyone who missed it.