Clean is signifcantly heavier than Lush, and I think Clean is a far superior record, but yeah, they’re pretty similar, and not just superficially.

If you’re into indie rock, then Soccer Mommy’s record is great. As for stuff not mentioned in the article, you might dig Happiness Hours by The Sidekicks, The Future and the Past by Natalie Prass, and The Make It All Show by Skating Polly.

+1 for the Mastersystem record. It’s really good.

Holy shit, you’re the only other person I’ve seen mention Scandal’s new album as one of the year’s best. Heck, it’s probably the best album of their career. I don’t know if I’d go as far as to say that they were being held back by having most of their music written by external songwriters, but now that they’re…

Exactly. The MCU needs more Darcys!

Completely agreed. The other thing that makes Automata special is its willingness to not only pose these questions at an individual level, but also at a societal level: Can a society built by artificial beings survive? Is the only way to achieve stable society to allow it to evolve organically instead of basing it…

My top 5 of the year so far:

Yeah, that was a weird thing to base the blurb on the game around; the fact that Ghibli wouldn’t be directly involved in NNK2 was a pretty significant announcement. Joe Hisaishi did compose the score, though.

Here’s what I’m looking forward to:

Sadly, with Obsidian having been burned hard by both Sega and Bethesda, I think they’re happier being completely independent. I don’t see them going back to making AAA 3D Western RPGs. And that’s a shame, because with BioWare putting all its energy behind Anthem, only CD Projekt Red is operating in that genre space.…

Not much to report on this week. Currently making my way through Hellblade: Senua’s Sacrifice for the Gameological Revue Club. (I don’t like it so far.) I have Mario Tennis Aces waiting for me in the mail. Hopefully that’s more fun.

Milk alien is fucking hilarious. I want more milk aliens!

No more violinist? Booo.

Merve’s E3 Top 5 Hype list:

Or, to put it even more bluntly, it’s a 10-hour game stretched into 20.

I recall a really bizarre, creepy, sexist interview he did with Yvonne Strahovski a while back (during the third season of Chuck, I believe), and there was enough of an outcry that he actually apologized for his behaviour. I put that in the back of my head as a one-off lapse in judgment, but now it seems as if creepy…

Yoku’s Island Express is a short game (~5 hours), but that just means it doesn’t overstay its welcome. The relatively short runtime allows it to be charming from top to bottom, and if you’re really craving more, you can jump back in to 100% it.

Your feelings on JC3 are very similar to mine. I think the biggest frustration for me was that most of the game was knocking down barriers to progression; there was very little in the way of main story missions. After a while, it just turned into repetitive open-world sludge.

I spent last weekend with my university buddies, and though I’m a responsible, mostly mild-mannered adult with a full-time job now, you can bet that I regressed to my inappropriate, foul-mouthed college self when I was around them.

This is a still from the film; it might look less obviously fake in motion.