Luke, this is a :) of a post about a :) of a thing. Thank you.

thirded strongly

oh my G*d we’ve passed the Turing Test

I’m so grateful for this take, though I know it is wrong, because it firms my resolve not to spend $60 on this hot spanking new game till I’ve beaten at least a couple of others I already own in the ol’ endless backlog.

they really did; and it felt so cool to have one! like having a jump on the post-CD, Next Big Thing.

completely agree; but this is the one I fell on most often, maybe in part _because_ it’s so peaceful and lilting after all of the rest

correct, Brian. This song is the best.

argh I’ve been effing her name up, apparently. Glad to be set straight.

That’s a good point; I agree to a certain extent. But I think the two— interface/design vs. console hardware—are also coupled. On the Wii, I remember laughing out loud the first time I raised the motion-sensitive controller to my ear as a “phone” and story came out; I had a similar laugh the first time I blew on the…

I agree, and I’d go further and say that the super-intuitive-ness is useful even for those of us who play other games, with the menus and controllers and craziness. I love playing _Witcher 3_ on my PC; heck, I love struggling through trying to play _Witcher 3_ with a Steam Controller on my PC. But then coming back to…

thanks for sharing this, Luke. It’s a lovely note, and also gets at something special that I think gets overlooked with the—as you say—understandable ‘grown-up’ assessment of the console.

This is so freaking lovely. Thanks.

Phil, thanks for posting about this. Literally until your stewardship of the site this weekend, I hadn’t heard much interesting or thoughtful stuff about CoD campaigns; I’m glad to be learning about them. TOTILO WAS RIGHT.

Stephen, thanks for this article. It’s really informative for those of us who pretty much share your views on all this to get non-scorching insight into people who, in good faith, have pretty different ones.

new wallpaper.

These pixelations are so beautiful! I’m not trolling. I may be just crazy, but _I_ don’t think so.

Best ludonarrative dissonance ever.

no moar sad plaintive dead selfless robots preeze. too sad too sad.

i electrocuted the man in the cage!!! :( :( :(

if your "mountain" is a Steam library queue that's a month+ of consecutive play high: my friend, I am right there with you.