I am definitely a mid-season writer. The stuff they used to burn off opposite a big American Idol episode.

I can't speak to the show's quality, as I haven't watched it, but as a cultural touchstone, I think it's about to take off. It's too aggressive tonally to reach Walking Dead or Game Of Thrones levels of ubiquity, but I think it'll get big-ish.

Thanks for pointing this out, fixing!

Has anyone else felt themselves getting sucked into PlayerUnknown's Battlegrounds? I get lured in by Polygon's Awful Squad videos and bought it yesterday, and I can already feel the hooks. Just need to find some folks to squad up with to get the full "you and your friends, torn apart by strangers" experience.

Scipio would probably contest that last point.

So we did! Although Politico's collection and presentation of the data is still an interesting twist, I think.

That's interesting, and not implausible, given the Roman love of good old-fashioned character assassination. He's such a good character as the incestuous horse-appointing tyrant, though. Blame I, Claudius.

"I saved Bieber…What'd you ever do?"

Dang, figures I'd miss one. That was a big "afternoon TV movie on the local channel" movie for me when I was a kid.

This is the second one I've written an obit for, personally. Jerry Doyle was only 60. (To say nothing of Stephen Biggs and Andreas Katsulas.)

To be fair, it's not like there's not a slight link between the history of American political violence and the theater.

Fair enough. Went with the bigger name on the bill, but you're absolutely right.

Same boat. That Ray twist is a perfect swerve.

Thanks for the heads-up!

No thanks to…

The argument is that they did it to get performance bonuses, which, reading the New Yorker piece, comes off as pretty ludicrous.

2015, amazingly enough.

Ghost Trick has some of my favorite "You can guess it if you're paying enough attention" plot twists. They don't affect the gameplay, but they're clued really well.

I use it a ton, but when climbing Duma's Tower—the bit that inspired that rant—I ran out of uses, because it's just so brutal and long. I don't like "Marathon Fire Emblem" as a concept very much.

For me, it's that they actually work as pretty good mystery stories. I hate the characters and 90 percent of the puzzles, but the central mystery in the first two games (and to a lesser extent, the third) always grabs hold of me hard. I also think they play with some pretty fascinating themes, in terms of human…