I'm not sure why you think this is exclusive to YA writing.

It's a really two-dimensional take on the material, though.

I'm imagining a crossover between The Guest and The Perfect Host. It's…. bizarre.

Coming at this from all the expertise of an American tourist, but there was a pretty marked difference between my visits in '01 and '05. I never heard anything but English being used in conversation, but there had clearly been a concerted push to save the language, to the point that basically every piece of official…

I can't believe you've done this, Internet.

No interaction with players does limit your exposure to crazy assholes, but it raises a big question. Namely, "Why would you make an MMO - a genre literally defined by a huge playerbase - and prevent players from being able to interact with each other?" Most of what I'm hearing about Destiny is that it's bland, but…

Oh god, the romances. Good call on their part making Kinzie's the first one. It's definitely a tone-setter, and in true Saint's Row fashion, has all the subtlety of a shovel to the face.

Oh jeez, I completely do not remember. I'm downvoting my own comment here just to reinforce how completely unhelpful this is.

If you've been out of the RPG loop since 2E, I think 5E will go over well for you. It's a pretty good polishing of the 3.5E rules that strips out some of the bloat. (There's still a ton of bloat. D&D is a chunky, rules-heavy game at its core, and 5E is a baby step forward, not a giant leap.) It'll look like D&D, but…

Rolling an actual d100 is basically the same thing as rolling a golf ball, isn't it?

It's a great reminder that, as many D&D-based video games have become classics, "uses the D&D rules" was a positive in exactly zero of them.

I really enjoyed Wii Punch Out! until partway through the Title Defense playthrough, where I ended up hitting a difficulty wall that I admittedly made no effort at all to climb over. But it's really a slick game, and having watched LPs of the last segments, I can say they did a really good job with the grand finale.…

Yeah, I've been playing almost exclusively in pubs, and I've been honestly surprised at how effective it is. It probably helps that most of the player base is reasonably experienced by now, but just a quick chat of "You two get the paintings and chuck them to us, we'll run them back to the truck" tends to be really…

Cthulhu Saves the World and Breath of Death are… not great. I'd throw them at the bottom of the to-do list.

This weekend is probably more Payday 2 for me. Having now beaten most of the heists a couple of times, I've got to say that I'm impressed with the steps forward they've made since the first Payday. There's a great variety of levels and a lot of variation within them, and the implementation of physical bags of loot to…

Forget "Tank!" and go with "American Money." It's important to send a message, and in this case the message is "You are going to feel completely ridiculous when I beat you."

You take that back! There is nothing satisfying about rolling a d4. They don't even roll! You just chuck them in the air, they land on the table, and stick! And then they're hard to pick up afterwards. And god help you if one falls on the floor, because you will step on it and swear bloody vengeance on whoever…

I have less than zero interest in Minecraft, but Kerbal Space Program is a pretty similar itch that's been sitting at the top of my Steam games for a while. But for the life of me, the one or two times I've booted it up, I'd launch a completely terrible rocket, screw up the controls, die in a fire, and call it a day.…

I mean, they got rid of that stupid fucking wheel. That was enough for me.

Re: Demerits. It's regarding the 1st Witcher, but I've been enjoying this retrospective (link below) on just how badly it bungles basically everything about sex and sexuality.