TwinIon

I read this, but completely forgot for most of my game time, but you can turn off the QTEs under the accessibility options. I found the cutscenes much more enjoyable when they weren't pausing and waiting on me to push a button.

I agree. They felt like a chore to me as well. I appreciated that some of them told the story from a different perspective, but many of the sections didn't. They didn't move your understanding of the characters or the plot forward. Really though, those sections are failures because the gameplay is just bad. This action packed, dynamic, fun and exciting experience grinds to a halt for some half baked stealth sections with extremely limited gameplay.

With the PS4 remaster of 7 probably still coming out eventually, it's hard to be interested in that. I've played through X a couple times, which is rare for me, but I don't really have any desire to do it again. I never did play 9, maybe I'll give that one a chance.

How are they so bad at this?

I buy physical because they're almost universally cheaper, I can lend the game to a friend, and I can sell it when I'm done. Even if I'm getting ripped off buy Gamestop/Bestbuy/etc., if I know I'm not going to play a game again, I'm better off just trading it in. I've been bad about that in general, but I recently just took a bunch of relatively recent games in for $120 worth of credit. I'll buy digitally when it's a game I know I'll come back to and I know I won't get a better price on, but those have been few and far between.

I started by taking a tour of the map, knocking out most of the towers and a few missions of various types along the way. It ended up being a good amount of game time, and I think it was worth it because I never felt in need of tokens as I progressed, and it took a big chunk of the seemingly endless amount of stuff everywhere. Even with how much I cleared, I still had more than enough to distract me while I ran around the map doing story missions. You unlock other types of side missions as you progress, so even if you cleared the map before the first story mission, you'd still end up with plenty to do.

I watched the video in this article and they show swinging above buildings, but I guess that footage is from Spider-Man 2002. My bad.

It's been something like 14 years since I played Spider Man 2, but I think you guys are crazy if you think the swinging mechanic worked better in that game than it does this one. If nothing else, this one does a much better job of seeming to actually attach to something. I imagine it still cheats sometimes, but the old game would let you swing above the building around you. Spider-Man 2 was a great game for it's time, but I don't think it really compares.

It is a pretty big deal that Apple is the first to market with a 7nm chip. Apple's chip design and fab are the best in the business.

If I didn't prefer my Android phone, I'd be all over the Apple watch. I know there's zero chance it happens, but it would be a real bold move for Apple to make the watch work with Android.

He just can't help himself. He can't praise others without inserting himself. He just has to lie. God I hope we see him on the stand some day.

If we're going to nitpick about stupid things that exist purely for gameplay reasons, I think the enemy AI while in stealth is right up there. It's bog standard for sure, but it's hard to believe in the actual stealthiness of my actions when I interrupt a conversation between two guys, lure one away, string one of them up to a floodlight that's not particularly high, and his buddy doesn't notice or care when he comes back to finish his thought. I can have a dozen men strung up 12 foot high light poles and no one will notice that all their buddies are MIA, "hidden" in plain sight. Still, like I said, this is in no way unusual, but it can sometimes be a little less immersive. While fighting, it's easy to believe Spider-man really is taking on all comers, but the stealth, while fun enough, lacks that mild believability. Also, I mentioned this before, but it sucks that if you stealth takedown the entire first wave of guys, the second wave arrives and instantly knows where you are. I doubt I'd have the patience to regularly take out an entire base without being noticed, but I might have tried once if it was possible.

If there's something to pre-emptively be upset about with this round of iPhones, it's the names. Apparently we're getting an iPhone XS, XS Max, and XR. Yuck. As usual I'm more interested in the iPads than the iPhones, and I doubt we'll see those today.

So they've lost their Superman, they've maybe lost their Batman, and we're about to see the stand alone Aquaman tank (we all agree on that, right?). There shouldn't be anything left of the DCU. Reboot it all, but make another Wonder Woman or two.

New Lara >>>>> Old Lara I think these games have greatly benefited from having a character rather than a caricature. Thankfully, the Tomb Raider games have grown up with the times, and a lot of the platforming that was so core in the old titles just doesn't work as well anymore. At least I can't think of any good recent examples.

So Games revenue accounts for ~75% of mobile app revenue, and they seem to expect that not to change for at least the next three years. I do think it's a somewhat unfair comparison however. When I look at what I personally have paid for on my phone, so many of those apps are services. I pay for my Google Music subscription and for Netflix and for Office 365. While Netflix and Office 365 are certainly not just apps as far as I'm concerned, Google Music pretty much is. I get about 98% of my usage from it on my phone (if you don't count the YouTube part of it). Also, I think there are people that primarily think of some of those types of services or things like Evernote primarily as apps. Still, I suppose it also works the other way, since the mobile game I've put by far the most time and money into is Hearthstone, and none of that money would count towards mobile gaming revenue, since I've always bought my packs on the PC. I guess my only point is that as mobile becomes the default computing platform for so many, this might be overestimating the value of games as compared to other things because of the way that we consume productivity or other media services. Still, I think it's clear that games are certainly where the money is. Also interesting, is that according to this same source, this is the first year that mobile gaming is bringing in more revenue than the PC and console markets combined. They expect PC and console revenue to grow very slowly in absolute terms, but slowly shrink as a percentage of the overall game market.

J-E-T-S

Wow. That's pretty transparent.

I can only play one big single player game at a time. I'll play Hearthstone on the side, and if there's something else very different, I can play them concurrently. For example, I was playing Jurassic Park Evolution and now I'm playing a little bit of Two Point Hospital. I used to have a multiplayer game in the rotation, but other than Hearthstone, there's not much I've played in a while.

What concerned me about that clip wasn't the joke, but pretty much everything else. I know none of this is a surprise, Trump is, if nothing else, entirely transparent. Still, he talks to his inner circle in the same way he talks at his rallies. He's baselessly boasting, he's rambling and nonsensical, he's factually incorrect (or at least greatly stretching the truth), and he's bringing up Hillary out of nowhere for no real purpose. Again, none of this is a surprise, but it reinforces just how little there is to this man and how dangerous he is as President. Making bad jokes is the least of it.

I just finished season 2 of In the Dark and it was excellent. It's another in the true crime genre, but I think this one does an excellent job of setting itself apart. There was real dedication, with reporters moving states and working for a year on the story. It's also a rare case where I finished it and felt some amount of closure. Not entirely, because the case is still ongoing, but I think there's a decent chance the reporting done here will help decide what happens. It centers around a man who has been convicted and sentenced to death six times for the same crime. I'm also listening to Slow Burn. Season 1 examined Watergate and was really excellent. Season 2 is about the Clinton impeachment and still worthwhile, but not quite as mind blowing to me as the first. Still, they're short, well done episodes easily worth your time. I listen to film reviews on the /filmcast, Fighting in the War Room, and The Treatment, and The Vergecast for tech news. I also quite like Freakonomics and Intelligence Squared US, which has experts formally debate issues.

DaVinci Resolve. If you're not using it for commercial purposes it's free and it's as capable as anything out there. I used it to do some simple stuff for some vacation videos recently. It's not super easy to use, with a complexity much more like Premiere than Elements.

Was this game actually any good? Wasn't it the one where you needed a bunch of GBAs to play with friends?

While playing Spider-man I keep thinking about the first Assassin's Creed. The first reason I keep thinking about it is obvious. The last time I felt so excited by just getting around a game was 2007 with that first AC. Obviously there are significant differences, but as clunky as AC could be at times, was a revelation. It felt like I could really go anywhere, and be awesome while doing it. More than just the ability to go anywhere, I actually wanted to. I wanted to run seamlessly around the city and parkour up buildings, escaping from the hapless guards. It felt like a rare opportunity to be as cool as I wanted the character to be, to move as fluidly as they might in cutscenes, but to do so in real time. The other reason that I keep thinking about Assassin's Creed is it has something that Spider-man really lacks: improvisation. Spider-man is very old school in its approach to completing goals and boss battles. There's a prescribed way to do things. In some encounters you can decide to take out a bunch of enemies in stealth or not, but even that has its limits. In one recurring circumstance you can clear out a whole wave of baddies stealthily, but the next wave will automatically appear and know exactly where you are. In other scenarios stealth is essential, and there's no salvaging the situation if you're seen at all, you just re-try the mission. When you're in a brawl, it's all good. There are a so many abilities, environmental elements, gadgets, and suit powers that you'll never use them all in one combat scenario. You can rely heavily on webbing or almost forego it entirely. Strip enemies of their weapons or turn them into projectiles. Outside the combat itself, the only real choices you make in Spider-man are the order to do missions in. The game gets away with it because it's so fun to fight and fly around the city. Peter's always making jokes and running into familiar characters and the whole world does a wonderful job at feeling alive. It's an incredible game all told, but I hope that the sequel sees a bit more improvisation make its way in. Spider-man, of all characters, should be right at home salvaging a situation where things don't go according to plan, so I hope they go more in that direction now that they've nailed the fundamentals. It's an evolution we've seen from Solid Snake, so hopefully we'll see it here next.

The world works in mysterious ways. Armando Iannucci is absolutely the filmmaker to make a movie about Trump, though I'm less sure about this particular pitch. The biting reality and comedy of Death of Stalin seems a natural fit for telling the story of Trump's presidency.