Roderick

I have the Dark Athena game, but wanted to complete Butcher Bay first. Never finished it though - that is one tough game. Lots of tricky stealth stuff, if I recall correctly. Good luck!

Mario Kart is pretty good on your own and I expect online multiplayer is pretty solid too. But yes, nothing beats couch-based competition. One more day before it's out! Clearplex update: I had it installed last week and I was very impressed. The screen protector is clear as day and very smooth/glass-like to the touch. The only bother was that there was still a single mote of dust trapped underneath and there was a weird horizontal line in the screen, so I had it redone today (at no cost of course) and now it seems perfect. For 20 euros I will gladly do this again for any future gadgets, it's a great service and takes a ton of stress away with the application. So, Puyo Puyo Tetris, eh?

TMS#fe (surprisingly not awful title, once you get used to it) was a really nice, slick JRPG with exactly the sort of UI and aesthetic design that I think oozes 'Persona'. Though it absolutely plays up anime tropes, it's actually pretty novel in how it digs into Japan's idol culture. The Western version of the game is also a lot less creepy, as they cut out some gratuitous (and rather boring) onsen scenes and exchanged bikini outfits (again: fun in theory, really boring in practice) for actual fashionable, interesting clothing. Definitely worth looking into, and it's 100% centered around Tokyo's media landscape - Shibuya, Harajuku and various tv-stations and theaters.

I hear it's fun. Man, there's really a lot of stuff coming out on Switch in the coming period. Getting psyched for Mario Kart 8 Deluxe, but it's too soon! I'm way not done yet with Breath of the Wild, gimme another two months before the next big hitter arrives!

It's funny: I was super pumped during the time leading up to Un'Goro, and then when it hit it completely dropped my interest. The whole run towards it was fun, there were daily incentives to log in and I was accumulating gold for packs. Then the expansion hit, I opened ten-odd boosters, they were filled with crap, and I just shrugged my shoulders and haven't played it since. I'd have liked to build some decks around the quest cards, which seemed fun, but apparently those are legendary and you need to buy a hundred packs to get one. I had fun for the two months I was replaying this, maybe I'll occasionally pick this up again to do some of the singleplayer content, but I've given up any ambition of multiplayer fun and building good decks. Too much effort and cost required.

Well, if you look closely there's a bicycle in the photo, and ET was brought home on a bicycle

ZeroFiftyOne, those are gorgeous pics! Congratulations! (On the quality of the photos as well as getting married.)

I have a new thought on Nintendo Switch screen protectors! The local Mediamarkt offers something [relatively] new called Clearplex: a cut-to-order film they apply with gel specifically on your device. Mostly used on phones, but I asked if it was possible to apply it on my Switch and so it was.Now, it's not exactly tempered glass, but the benefits are that it's applied for you (relieving me of a big pile of stress), there's a warranty of at least two months and Clearplex is apparently some space age material that is also used on car windshields and by NASA. Self-healing, nice to the touch and almost invisible. Only worrysome thing is that there's not a whole lot about it on the internet, let alone anything about anyone using it on their Switch. Inquery: does anyone have experience with Clearplex and would this be a prudent course of action?

I will, thanks!

UHNN, that is exactly what I loved about reading The Spy Who Came In From The Cold. It shows this inscrutible game where the spy's objective is to make themselves seem like a worthless, low-value target that couldn't possibly be relevant/dangerous/interesting. And how utterly deep and all-consuming the act is.

The latest Nintendo Direct was pretty neat. Splatoon 2 has a cool/weird horde mode called Salmon Run and by golly, it looks disturbing.

Third viewing in (a while back), and Tinker Tailor has grown to be one of my favorite movies of all time. I have also never read the book, though I did read The Spy Who Came In From The Cold and really enjoyed it.

Yeah, that's such a weird thing! It feels silly to me, but that's something that I could actually put in my writer's bio now. Award Winning Author. Honestly...

Thanks, everyone! I'm currently debating what my follow-up step could be. I'm thinking it might be a good thing to translate the story into English and offer it to a handful of international publications. There've been a few instances where winning the Harland Awards was a step-up to bigger things. (My life is currently mostly answering emails and social media messages though.)

This weekend I won the Harland Awards for a sci-fi short story I wrote! The Harlands are basically the Dutch Hugo Awards, for best fantastic literature (sci-fi, fantasy or horror) both in short story form or novel length. It was a big ceremony in Amsterdam and it's been an insane couple of days since! I'm the guy in red, and yes my friends, that is an Apollo Justice cosplay I'm wearing. English language report here.

But maybe it's not a problem at all and the Switch is like leather shoes you have to walk in to mold to your body.

You've got to be joking. Whenever I play Zelda it's suddenly 3,5 hours later and time to go to bed. 5-10 minutes is enough to just about nothing at all. Like, run up a hill and then see another hill that you want to climb and time's up!

Never heard of this one before! I haven't noticed anything here with mine. Mostly played docked. Do report back with any new info you might come across on the topic.

Damn, that is a GREAT deal on the Wii U. Is that all throughout France and Belgium or just local FNACs? (Still hoping fervently for a big singleplayer blowout in Splatoon 2.)

Most of the anime I watch is along with my gf, but there are a few series that have caught my eye and some that I'm currently watching with great pleasure: Ms. Kobayashi's Dragon Maid: It's wonderful slice of life whimsicalness. Dragons that change into maids and other assorted anime characters (a school-going child, a co-worker), and it all centers around the mostly quiet, casually dour person of miss Kobayashi, who has won my heart with her down-to-earthness. There's no big storyline here, just cute little nothings with maid Tohru doing her best to please her self-appointed mistress, interspersed with brief moments of gravitas. Very fun to watch. Digimon Tri: Watching this because Digimon is teenage nostalgia. Having said that, boy it starts out rough. The animation quality is not what I expected from a highly anticipated 'several movies split up into episodes' return to the original cast. It looks pretty cheap and it takes the whole first movie before it gets into a groove. The problem is that it's all Earth-based instead of Digimon World-based, and the high school struggles just don't get off the ground. The digimon don't get enough screentime at first, and the drama is so poorly developed that I was yawning throughout. I persisted because it's Digimon, but if you have no nostalgia about it, it's best to steer clear. Gundam Wing: Never watched this before, but I am now because some friends started a shared viewing on Crunchyroll. First two episodes were pretty hilarious. My only reference point to Gundam is the amazing Thunderbolt. Wing, in comparison, is ludicrous silliness. Teenage angst in hyperdrive. Within the span of one episode, characters who minutes ago had never met are proclaiming that they'll kill each other, they're jumping up buildings and crashing down torpedos left and right. But: it's pretty well animated and I adore its 90s style and sensibilities. The overt tsundere-ness of Relena is even rather charming in how clumsily it's pushed.

Yes, logging in currently and doing tavern brawls means racking up free booster packs for Un'Goro, which is kind of Blizzard. It'll be the first expansion I'm witnessing since my return, so it feels like I can finally tag along with the meta game and make some competitive decks.

I concur! I haven't felt this hoisted by my own petard while listening to a podcast in some time!

That is the most lucid reason to play video games I've ever heard, Mington.

Truthfully, the Wonder Woman trailer makes the movie seem so utterly bland and predictable. And, importantly, just not a whole lot of fun. Which is a shame, because I didn't mind the character in V.

I too only ever played the base game, so a chance to have Rebirth++++ on the Switch is good. Once there's a nice deal on it, in any case.