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By Tycho – July 2, 2012

Knowing, as we do, that Gabriel plays games in order to be rewarded with "new art," the fact that Kingdom Hearts 2 ranks high for him - as high as it can, actually - probably isn't a surprise. I find the story fascinating, the sort of game one drains with a FAQ chaser; there are huge ideas all over the fucking place, when the fact their tangle of warring franchises works at all is surprising out the gate.

Innovation

By Tycho – June 29, 2012

Try to follow the sequence of events:

Absolutely Not

By Tycho – June 27, 2012

I keep thinking I'm going to get back into Diablo 3, but it never seems to happen; they inspire new outrage on a weekly basis with everything that surrounds the clicking, but I'm not even running the executable! I'm safe altogether from these fresh horrors. And everyone else beat it and left. If I wanted to get back in, I'd be doing it alone. So that might not happen.

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Good Problems

By Tycho – June 25, 2012

I was an Avatar: The Last Airbender fan, a big one. Perhaps not big enough to refer to it as ATLA or whatever a true enthusiast would call it; I'm also not entirely sure what a true enthusiast might be called. So, now you have the meticulously calibrated threshold. I have been largely unavailable to mass media enterprises of late, but I couldn't wait for the season to end to catch up with Korra. I'd gorged on the previous series, and had similar plans, but no. Gabe kept coming into the office eyes wide, head shaking, desperate to discuss and embroider.

A Virus Named TOM

By Tycho – June 22, 2012

We've been testing builds of different stuff for PAX10 ahead of the judging, making sure everything will function day of, because early software doesn't always behave correctly. Dave and Feh were playing a really cool cooperative puzzler when I dropped in, and I couldn't bring myself to look away. I could have plugged in a controller, it allows for four clever little virii, but I was too mesmerized. I went back into my office and bought it instantly. I don't know what this subgenre is called, or if it even has a name, but this is one of those games where you are trying to light up a circuit. A Virus Named Tom! I'm only one judge, so I can't verify it'll get all the way to the show, but you could (if you were so inclined) buy it for five stupid bucks and grab the very polished beta right now.

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Dichotomy

By Tycho – June 22, 2012

Quantum Conundrum made me very happy for its duration, and then it was over, and it was just me at the menu screen having considerably less fun than I had been having previously. I'd passed through so many distinct states of being during the trip that I had forgotten how to do normal things.

XBLIG Version of Precipice Will Come Out Later

By Tycho – June 20, 2012

You know how when you save your game, and a message comes up that says "Don't Remove The Memory Card"? Well, if you are playing Precipice on an old Xbox with an MU and you decide to pull it out literally as you are saving the game, it will apparently crash. We thought we had accounted for that exact scenario but apparently our failsafes against timed MU pulls were not as tight as we had thought, so it failed Community Peer Review. That's why it's not coming out on the same day as the PC version, which manifests in all its glory on the 25th. We can't resubmit for another seven days, so we (and you, if you want to play it on there) are in kind of a holding pattern. Zeboyd will push another build out on Tuesday; I'll keep you posted.

Anthrophila

By Tycho – June 20, 2012

I was fifteen or so before I'd ever been stung by a bee, so that by the time a bee finally got around to doing it I think I'd sort of forgotten that was something they did. And then you resent it, this fuzzy little flying needle, even though all she's actually doing is just executing her little subroutine tryna get dat pollen. Gabriel managed to make it all the way to thirty-four without envenomation, something he no doubt considers a kind of "score" to be lorded over me next time we must invent a hierarchy.

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A Ripe Kickstarter Morsel: Disaster Looms

By Tycho – June 18, 2012

Post en route, obviously, but since there's only two hours left on this one it seemed worth a mention. I'd backed this before I knew there was an Enforcer working on it; once I found out, I was flush with arcing, eternal power like in Highlander. I say it is "ripe" because they have sufficiently overfunded to unlock an included minigame and the inevitable 5-6 player expansion for anyone pledging at $50 dollars, which is already cheaper than it will retail for. Of course, it's all contingent on your interest; I have a flashing "weak point" where hex-based, build-the-board games are concerned. They've got plenty of videos (and the by now expected Tom Vasel preview) all on the page.

Vacillatr

By Tycho – June 18, 2012

Microsoft has some kind of mysterious something or other today; the rumor is that they're going to announce a tablet of some kind, and we are all by now aware that Microsoft Rumors are absolutely, one hundred percent always true. But in the event that this is the freaky edge case, we've got full coverage on each rhetorical base.

Terribility

By Tycho – June 15, 2012

Gabriel's most recently hatched larvae is a brute, a yeti in miniature, whose knack for cataclysm is already refined after two quick solar revolutions. Neither of us have any experience with "boys," our own sons are nowhere to be found in any of the "accepted" young male archetypes, so it's fascinating. Well, fascinating for me. I suspect that for Gabriel and Kara it's more "aerobic."