In The Taken King, you can jump into a "Strike Playlist." For the uninitiated, it means that you strap into a kind of electronic ride where you are slotted with your team into a functionally endless string of mini-raids. This roster isn't super deep, but there are a few different ways for them to go down so it's mostly okay. For the players, I mean. They're fine. They get a steady stream of forgotten, borderline mystical hats.

This thing is coming up quick, which means I got to get some information out there. It's like this:

If you have a handle that some people don't like, Riot will give you a new handle. Then, you have two choices. Well, three. You can always keep the new name. You could also give them about ten bucks and change your name. Or, you can subject yourself to a psychological battery, play a bunch of games in the "stocks" of your new handle, and then take the survey a second time I guess to see if you have been rehabilitated.

Hey Pin Pals, here's a look at what we have cooked up for PAX Australia!

So, here's an index of the difference between myself and my friend Mork. If I see some words, I read them right away. I mean, I don't even "read" them as such. I absorb them and they are incorporated instantly. Mork, on the other hand, will buy a game because he sees the cover art and thinks it must be the sequel to Bravely Default when it is actually a totally other game called The Legend of Legacy.

It might come as a surprise to you but we don't have anything to do with the panels at PAX. They are submitted by you guys and we just try and make room for all the things you want to talk about. We are specifically looking for folks who actually want to speak at the show. So if you have a panel and you're ready to bring it to PAX South, let us know.

It's quite true! We were very nearly in Minecraft: Story Mode. I was very excited and told my son, in an effort to condense for him into a physical being, but alas it was not to be. Do you want to see what we would have looked like in there? I think it's pretty cool:

Here's a quick look at all the Penny Arcade content happening at PAX Aus this month.

It seemed like more of a Tycho line, so we gave it to him. Or, me. Whoever. Except that while I like watching the beta of Star Wars: Battlefront, I don't especially like playing it and haven't really sought it out.

Back in 2002 I wrote a news post about the multiplayer in the new Jedi Knight II game. I was apparently not impressed with the multiplayer and I suggested an alternative:

The rumor was that Dislike was en route to Facebook, but I don't think that was ever an authentic option and would corrode the service. It was eventually determined that Liking Things wasn't sufficiently granular, and so there are a raft of New Likings being rolled out. Except they're missing a few key inflections that apply to ninety-nine point four percent of posts.

The full strip and its accompanying postito go out later this month to members, and becoming a member is incredibly easy and is also rad for too many reasons to enumerate here, which is why there's a whole page dedicated to it. I think this one is pretty Goddamn good:

Motherboard merely joins a raft of sites which have, over the last couple years, removed the ability for users to comment on their articles. It's funny; the first thing I did was scroll to the bottom of the page to see what people thought about it. There was no comment section there, which I probably should have guessed. Force of habit.

Tearaway is a game that came out awhile back on the Vita and I loved it. I’m playing through the PS4 version now and it’s even better in a lot of ways. It’s still a ridiculously beautiful platformer with some genuinely unique gameplay but it also has a really cool second screen application now. If you have kids in your house this is seriously something you have to try because they will love it. Let me tell you how it works.

The HBO extras contract for Westworld is fascinating reading, and gives one an idea about what it must be like to have sex with a lawyer. The excerpts you've seen online only represent a portion of the depravity: there are deeper, more erogenous zones.

Today's First Fifteen was a train wreck of a game, but I think it made for a funny show: