Mr. GOH!

I love strategy games with persistent squad building and management; I'll put up with a lot of nonsense narrative if it plays into how the squad develops on the battlefield. I've played a few of the older fire emblems and really liked the idea. I loved Ogre Battle, tactics Ogre and Final Fantasy Tactics. I'm more amenable to JRPG anime cliche subplots than you guys probably think (though I don't see myself playing any Japanese visual novels any time soon), especially if they're not the center of the game. I mean, I've played all the big Bioware WRPGs and melodramatic nonsense doesn't begin to describe the romance subplots in those games. On the other hand, upon reflection, it probably isn't worth ~$200, especially since I'm not very excited by any other 3DS game I've seen.

A streamlined and standard form factor for building modular PCs would be nice if it were industry-wide and not restricted to motherfucking Razer products. I mean, *I* wouldn't use it, but some folks might.

Pete Hines just tweeted that the new platforms for Skyrim were the result of a technical glitch with the website.

Next iteration will be Windows U.

I hate Windows 8, too. Never used it, off course, but 8 is an unlucky number. I hate unlucky numbers.

Will stream to fucking phones and tablets, but not PCs? Fuck you, Sony.

Financial news sites have some of the most ridiculously bizarre and/or intrusive ads, I've found.

The Wii U continues to be a flop, despite the good sales numbers in Japan in December. http://www.dailyfinance.com/2014/01/06/nintendo-is-going-to-miss-its-wii-u-target-by-at-l/ Edit: PS4 is ahead of the Xbone by over a million units sold. It also sold more units in a month and a half than the Wii U did in all of 2013.

Baldur's Gate: Enhanced Edition for the PC, as God intended. I fucking love this series.

Maybe Sony will someday allow mods, opening up their content gulag to the masses. Hahahahaha, nope, they'll never do that because you can't monetize player mods.

TME: yes, every state has subjective DUI laws; if you're too fucked up to drive due to the use of any substance, you have committed a crime. What folks are pushing for re: marijuana is a per se law that says regardless of any reflex tests, if you have X amount of index substance Y per a blood test/breathalyzer/follicle tests/etc, you are committing a crime regardless of actual impairment. Alcohol is very, very convenient to test this way as it has pretty similar effects on everyone for a given BAC percentage. Other drugs, including marijuana, are not so cut and dry, whether because the index substance is too attenuated from the mechanism of inebriation or because people have radically different tolerances. I imagine laws will get passed saying that any amount of marijuana in your system will make you guilty of a DUI, even if you are no longer feeling the effects of marijuana. This is unjust because it is possible to have THC in your blood days after you smoked.

Weed doesn't impair drivers as much as alcohol does, but it does slow reaction times. Being very high and driving has been found to significantly increase the likelihood of being in an accident. On the other hand, stoned driving laws don't seem to be effective in reducing stoned driving. I'd be interested in seeing a comparison between weed and over-the-counter drugs that impair driving, like some allergy medications and pain killers. I suspect there are any number of legally-available substances that impair driving as much or more than marijuana.

DUIs are indeed an issue. It's good that the police are vigilant. The police do NOT need to do a whole car search to charge someone with a DUI, nor make pretextual stops. I'd be okay with mandatory checkpoints on main roads out of CO, too, if DUI is really the concern.

Uncharted 3. Prettier than Uncharted 2, and better combat, but seemed significantly shorter. The boss fight at the end was not that interesting, either. Salim and Cutter seemed perfunctory and shallow, sadly. I really liked Cutter and wished the game had done more with him. The art design of the France levels in UC3 really, really seemed like a test of the style used in most of The Last of Us. I thought the overall goal of the villains was very stupid in UC3, worse than the supernatural stuff in UC2.

Possession of legally purchased marijuana does not threaten public safety. And it's a waste of police power.

Illegal dealers will not be able to undercut legal sellers for long. Marijuana is a bulky (and therefore risky to grow, transport and store) and low-margin (at the retail level, at least) illegal drug. It's also just so much more convenient to buy from a legit store than from a dealer. The biggest pressure on prices in CO at this point is that not all areas have legal retailers and not all retailers are operational at this time. I think pot sales will remain fairly high (ha ha) for the foreseeable future.

Papers, Please because it was the most interesting marriage of gameplay and narrative this year. Few games are as funny, as soul-crushing and as good a rumination on morality. Last of Us, because of all the reasons previously given. It's only major weakness is the lack of enemy variety. Tomb Raider was unexpectedly good, but it's not a masterpiece. Felt like Uncharted, but with some of the sloppy open world systems of Assassin's Creed. For a first installment of a reboot of the franchise, it was phenomenal, however. Bioshock: Infinite was the ne plus ultra of style over substance. It was pretty, though. GTAV is impressive in many ways, but fails to hang together as well as it should. There is greatness in it, but its failures in writing and worldbuilding hold it back.

The Uncharted 2 story and characters are at about the level of a cheap 80's action flick. Which is pretty good for a AAA video game.

Uncharted 2, which has been on my backlog since I got a PS3 in 2012. Thought it was a pretty fun B-movie-like adventure game. It's jarring how Drake is a mass killer but makes light-hearted quips as if he were a man with very little on his conscience. I fucking hate using the bumpers to aim and shoot.

BASSETS FTMFW.

Wait, what? What's happening with the old Fallouts?

Never played Lego Star Wars, but I hear that Lego Marvel is the best Lego game yet from folks that seem to know.

TME: Lego Marvel is worth more than $20. I'd suggest you get it for PC for $12 or whatever on the Amazon sale, but I assume you want to play it with your wife. Been playing, and finished, the first episodes of Walking Dead: Season 2 and The Wolf Among Us. I like them both quite a bit. Just started a new fighter/cleric in Baldur's Gate; Enhanced Edition to fool around with over the next few months. Hopefully BG2:EE will go on sale before I finish BG1:EE.

I know, right? I chose that article because the others I found were either worse, or didn't clarify that the sales numbers were from Japan. Reading between the lines, it seems like 109,000 Wi Us were sold in Japan and and 10,000 were sold in the rest of the world that week. I've found that there are quite a few overeager Nintendo boosters writing blog posts about Wii U sales figures. They all seem to live in their own separate reality.