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The lack of a colon before the Lost World part of the title gives me strange and uncomfortable feelings.

Here's what's going on at Talk Amongst Yourselves, Kotaku's reader-written blog: Heigham offers regrets for disposing of old console games, while keeping the consoles. And The Geek Empress compares the evolution of games' visual sophistication with that of classical art's. And you can always go join the voices talking about video games and life in TAY Classic and in the TAY: Open Forum.

Fuse didn't light up Dave's life. He gave Insomniac's latest just two stars out of five in our review, deeming the game "satisfactory at best and frustrating at worst, and a bare-bones shooter without any personality or flair."

Of course, we're not the only outlet you can wire into. Here's a brief meta-view of the mixed review-verse discussion sparked by Fuse.

• Escapist (80/100): "Some of Fuse's flaws, like the grindy boss fights and a storyline that takes itself a little too seriously at times, can harm the experience, but it's a well built third-person shooter that's fun to play solo or on a team."
• GameSpot (70/100): "Fuse is calibrated for people to play together, designed in such a way as to be merely serviceable for solo players, but solid fun for groups of gung-ho mercs."
• Polygon (65/100): " The core of a great third-person shooter is present in Fuse. The team-based insanity offers a unique take on the genre, and Insomniac's reputation for inventive weapons and creative combat helps too. But Fuse only comes together with three or four players, and even then, the late game combat design and boring-to-fight enemies stand in its way."
• Giant Bomb (60/100): "Fuse's bland art design and overall lack of personality are disappointing in the context of that initial reveal trailer, but under the hood it's still a generally well made third-person shooter with a clear emphasis on co-op and the imaginative weapons Insomniac is so good at dreaming up. But there are too few of those weapons, and a few too many irksome issues, to lift Fuse significantly above the many, many other cover-based shooters it's competing with."
• Destructoid (40/100): "Whether it's true or not, Fuse does feel every bit like another victim of the heavily focus-tested, leader following, perpetually terrified mainstream game industry. It's every cloying and desperate element of the retail console market, brought together -- fused, if you will -- to create a factory standard example of a game that tries to be everything the hypothetical mainstream consumer drools over, and ends up as nothing remarkable...That's Fuse in a nutshell."

A white version of Google's flagship Android smartphone is now available in Hong Kong, with a global rollout planned for the coming weeks.

Scotland's Bryan Henderson may be the god of all gods in Godus, but for all his godliness his godly status isn't eternal. As revealed by 22 Cans' Peter Molyneux to Rock Paper Shotgun, Henderson, who won the Godus prize by discovering what was inside the Curosity cube, will dictate the god game's rules for something "approaching a year" after its release, as well as earn a portion of its income.

After that time, developer 22 Cans will reveal how he can be usurped, and someone will indeed usurp him. Also, the length of Henderson's reign may depend on Kickstarter backers' impressions of the god game and how all this madness comes together throughout alpha and beta testing.

"It didn't seem right to me that Bryan would be god of gods for all time," Molyneux told Rock Paper Shotgun. "It seems right to me that he has a period of time to be god of gods, and that can't just be a few days. It needs to be substantial. And in that time, many things could happen. And of course, the amount of physical money he gets depends on how successful the game is."

Racing might be fun, but Ryan and Jeff demonstrate that there's still room for safe and courteous driving.

I always get excited for Nintendo Direct—not just because of the possible announcements, but because Nintendo boss Satoru Iwata always makes some adorable or funny thing that's totally unexpected from a company president. Even if it's a video game company. Here's a look back at some of these memorable appearances, which show Iwata has a good eye for games, memes, and GIFs. Now that E3 is around the corner, we can only wonder what funny moments are in store for the June 11 Nintendo Direct. It might take the GIFs a few seconds to load. The giggles will soon follow. Iwata's Brain Training With Game Center CX's Arino Iwata and his hair Year of Luigi interrupted Iwata's J-pop group Iwata and a banana With Sega boss Toshihiro Nagoshi Iwata and a few Luigis Iwata & the Tomodachi Collection sources: hitmeupman, herronintendo3ds, Radio Sega To contact the author of this post, write to gergovas@kotaku.com

Diablo-like super hero MMO Marvel Heroes is having launch troubles. Namely, the game not being ready to launch yet. Early access players found that they were unable to log in, even though it was seven days before launch day—the advertised date Ultimate Pack buyers would have been able to start playing. On their blog, the developers confirmed that a few serious bugs had to be fixed before anyone could play. Later, they posted on their Facebook page saying that they're making progress, and recently tweeted that they are still working, and are "committed to going live tonight." We're keeping an eye on the game, and will update this post should there be any further progress.

Iron Man? More like Medicine Man. Or in this Chinese TV spot, Kang Zhi Ba Man. In China, Kang Zhi Ba is a brand of pharmaceuticals, and this commercial is for Norfloxacin capsules, which are used to treat urinary tract infections as well as typhoid fever, intestinal infections and gonorrhea. As recently noted by MIC (first by ChinaSmack), the commercial debuted earlier this spring, around the time Iron Man 3 was released. In it, the Iron Man inspired character fights bacteria that are plaguing a family. Hope the old folks don't have gonorrhea! The spot is clearly inspired by the Marvel superhero. The suit's colors aren't just similar, but the commercial also references numerous iconic Iron Man scenes. Since first airing, the commercial has racked up nearly 800,000 views on Youku, China's version of YouTube. While Iron Man is popular in China, Iron Man 3 made some Chinese moviegoers totally unhappy. This super hero will hopefully make them healthy. 白云山制药总厂——抗之霸15秒 [Youku via ChinaSmack via MIC] To contact the author of this post, write to bashcraftATkotaku.com or find him on Twitter @Brian_Ashcraft. Kotaku East is your slice of Asian internet culture, bringing you the latest talking points from Japan, Korea, China and beyond. Tune in every morning from 4am to 8am.

Big hair. No, like, really big hair. Tanned skin. And incredibly long nails. Meet the young women of Black Diamond. They're keen to go worldwide. In Japanese, this style of fashion is dubbed "gal" (ギャル or gyaru). The look flies in the face of traditional Japanese notions of feminine beauty: pale skin and black hair. The subculture has its roots in 1990s Japanese youth fashion, when teens began dying their hair brown and hitting the tanning saloons. Often, Westerners think this look is trying to copy foreigners; however, a better way to understand it is how teens in the West will dye their hair green to rebel. That's what is happening here. Also, be aware that this fashion is not necessarily designed to appeal to Japanese men. Many men in Japan find the trend incredibly embarrassing (save for those fellas who dressed in the dude version of this fashion). Instead, this has largely been a subculture of women appealing to other women—something that is evident in the more extreme iterations, like "ganguro" (ガングロ), which was short for "intensely black", and "yamanba" (ヤマンバ), which referred to mountain witches! But in around 2001, there was a "pale skin boom" in Japan, and the tanned gals seemed even more marginalized. The female subculture that Black Diamond is spearheading seems to be both a revival of the ganguro movement and a reaction to the decade long pale skin trend. Black Diamond, though, doesn't consider itself ganguro, considering the word somewhat old-fashioned. Instead, the 100 member plus group calls itself a "kuro hada unit", with "kuro hada" (黒肌) meaning "black skin" or "dark skin". Interestingly, Black Diamond doesn't really use the term "gal circle", which is what these gal groups or clubs were called during the last decade. During the 2000s, the biggest gal circle was a Tokyo gal group called "Angeleek", which actually made members apply and interview via telephone to join. Angeleek held events at dance clubs where members would perform drill-team style dance routines. Angeleek seems to have fizzled away, and Black Diamond is the spiritual successor, with members across Japan, meet-ups in Tokyo, and regular trips to Shibuya shopping spots and arcades for sticker picture fun. Elements of their fashion, like say the giant flowers in their hair, are reworkings of 1990s gal trends. Black Diamond, however, doesn't seem content with just appearing in gal fashion magazines like Egg or simply appearing at Tokyo dance clubs. Via its Facebook page, the group sells gal fashion to those outside of Japan and actively tries to recruit non-Japanese members. This week, Black Diamond announced it was planning to make "an original song and music video" to broadcast all over the globe. The unit is even trying to crowdfund the production costs. Currently, on Black Diamond's YouTube and Facebook pages, the unit is holding "elections" for people to vote for their favorite singers in Black Diamond. Will this be the group that truly takes gal fashion global? Is the world ready? Are you? GalUnitBlackDiamond [Facebook] Photos: Black Diamond To contact the author of this post, write to bashcraftATkotaku.com or find him on Twitter @Brian_Ashcraft. Kotaku East is your slice of Asian internet culture, bringing you the latest talking points from Japan, Korea, China and beyond. Tune in every morning from 4am to 8am.

Remember The Neverhood? The all-clay adventure game from 1996? Doug TenNapel, its creator, is joining forces with Pencil Test Studios to bring you Armikrog, a spiritual sequel starring a crash-landed alien and his talking dog. They're raising $900,000 through Kickstarter. Good luck to them!

More than half of Xbox users watching Netflix this past Sunday were streaming the new season of Arrested Development, according to a report from bandwidth management firm Procera published by Mashable.

The return of the long-awaited fan favorite not only claimed up to 36 percent of Netflix's traffic on some networks, but created increases in Netflix watching in general by as much as 10 percent, with the Xbox 360 and the PS3 leading the charge on devices used to stream Netflix video.

Video game consoles have been major Netflix viewing devices, and Arrested Development's premiere made that tie even clearer. Just over 40 percent of all PS3 users watching Netflix on Sunday were watching the Bluths; just over 20 percent of iPad users were in that crowd as well.

Additionally, about ten to fifteen percent of all Netflix viewers, says Procera, went on a binge, finishing off all 15 episodes by Monday morning. Watching all of those intricately laid jokes all mushed together in one late-night run? Sounds like a huge mistake.

You are looking at a replica 92FS built entirely of LEGO. Impressive, right? Well, you too can put together your own. Here's how. This how to is from Jeff Boen's The BrickGun Book, which is a building guide for life-sized LEGO handguns, including the 1911, the BG22 with Magazine, the Desert Eagle, the MAC-11, and the 92FS. Boen runs popular website BrickGun.com and is well-known among LEGO builders for his incredibly accurate brick replica guns. For Boen, this is his favorite BrickGun creation, noting how it even looks like the real handgun when the slide is back. "When I built the first BrickGun model it was just to see if I could come with something that looked vaguely like the classic 92 pistol," Boen writes on BrickGun.com. "Once I decided to add moving mechanical functions I never dreamed where it would lead. I had no idea that it would become the thing that I'll probably be most known for." Above, you can how the 92FS, a gun that has appeared in numerous video games, compares to its brick counterpart. Here's how to build yours: Note that the brick handgun replica does not fire projectiles—nor is it designed to do so. LEGO or not, this subject matter might not appeal to all tastes. But, if you are interested in replica guns and like LEGO, you can find out more on the book's official site. The BrickGun Book [Official Site] To contact the author of this post, write to bashcraftATkotaku.com or find him on Twitter @Brian_Ashcraft.

Artist RJ Palmer has taken his "realistic" series of Pokemon illustrations and put them all on the one image, which is available as a poster. I am so in love with the "human silhouette for scale" bit it's not funny. You knew you were onto a good thing as a kid when a dinosaur book had them in it. You knew you were onto a better thing when there was also the silhouette of a bus. Pokemon [RJ Palmer]

You love your PC. It's a place you can work at, but more importantly, it's a place you can game at. The thing is, if you're using a traditional desk-and-chair setup, the more you game on the PC, the bigger the problem you're creating for yourself. I don't want to sound like your mother here, but sitting - or, as many of you probably do, slouching - in a chair at a desk for a massive session of DOTA 2, or Skyrim, or whatever, isn't exactly the healthiest thing for you. Especially if you're doing it for hours at a time. That's why workplaces give you breaks. It's why airlines recommend you move around every few hours. Indeed, in terms of everything from blood circulation to food digestion to calorie-burning, sitting down for extended periods of time is one of the worst things you can be doing to your body short of putting poison in it or having something hit you very hard. But it's OK. I'm here to help. You don't need to stop your ten-hour gaming sessions to save your body. You just need to change the way you're sitting. Or, well, stop sitting altogether. Sure, you could just get a really good chair and remember to take breaks, but good chairs are expensive, and taking breaks is for cowards (or, more seriously, something even those with the best intentions can easily forget if they're immersed in a game). So last year, I went a little further and jumped on the standing office bandwagon, partly because I was about to lose my office to a newborn child, but mostly because I was finding it detrimental to my health. Because I work 9-10 hour days, then spend most of my gaming time at the same PC afterwards, I'd get a sore back, a sore neck and pain in my hips. I wasn't overweight, per se, but let's say that despite being fairly active outside of work hours, I wasn't exactly fighting fit. Worst of all, sitting down all day just made me feel horrible. Like I was ending my day in a thick fog, having been in the same position, in the same room, for most of my waking hours. Having looked at various internet guides, I found most to be either too crummy for my needs (more suited to the occasional user) or prohibitively expensive. Ignore those guides. If you feel like getting a little more active and trying this out, you can go to IKEA and get a kickass desk for under $200 (around $170), meaning most of you, regardless of where you live, can easily do the same. Below you'll find the various components for the desk I put together a few months back which you can see above. It's a Frankenstein's Monster approach, I know, but it still looks pretty good! DESK Vika Kaj adjustable legs ($15 ea.) The only way you can get a standing desk this cheap is to improvise, and the only way to do that at IKEA is to get these legs, which extend enough to accommodate all but the tallest of you. Linmon Table ($25) Because you're just putting a piece of wood on some legs, you can opt for any tabletop, really, but I liked the Linmon because despite the gloosy white finish, it was super cheap. STORAGE Ekby Alex ($55) Pricey for what it is, since it's really just a little box with some shelves inside, but you need somewhere to put a monitor and speakers, so you may as well put them somewhere you can also store miscellaneous crap inside as well. Signum ($10) This standing setup doesn't have the luxury of letting you dump 17 cables and power adapters in the corner, so you need something tidier. This does the trick. Just bolt it underneath the tabletop. Summera ($20) Basically a cradle for your PC, it lets you sling your computer under the table and keep it off the ground. Not a necessity, but it sure makes cleaning the area - and accessing your PC - a lot easier than most traditional setups. One more thing you can't get from IKEA, but which you'll definitely need, is a mat. They'll be called different things depending on where you live, but you know those thick rubber mats security guards stand on? Yeah, you'll want one of those. —- An important thing to note is that this isn't for everyone. Maybe you've got a bad ankle. Maybe you've got nowhere else to put that fancy office chair but under a desk. That's OK! Nobody is forcing you to do this. I'm just saying it's something you could totally just try. Another thing is that if you do try this out, as my colleague Kirk Hamilton's butt will attest, there is a little adjustment period. Usually around two weeks, while your legs and back get used to all the standing. Once that's done, though, as insane as this sounds, your body really won't mind. You should be able to stand for hours at a time and be totally fine, because you will have guns, only not on your arms. On your legs. And your body will thank you for it. Got questions? Concerns? Drop 'em below. Howtu is Kotaku's guide on how to get the most out of your gaming.

This is AIO's DRN-STN. It is bonkers. Pitched as an all-in-one solution for a gaming PC, it's essentially a desktop case (one that fits all standard components) with a 24" monitor crammed in one side and an exterior designed like something you'd find in a multiplayer round of Battlefield. So, yeah, it's PC gaming's ugly answer to the iMac. More info and pics, price excluded, below. DRN-STN [AIO]

One of the newest playsets in LEGO's Lord of the Rings line is the Council of Elrond. A key moment in the events of the trilogy, it's notable not just because it brings the Fellowship of the Ring together, but because the internet has transformed one line into perhaps the series' most memorable. It's crazy, then, that LEGO's set immortalising the Council doesn't include a Boromir figure. I mean, on the bright side, it does include a mechanism where Gimli can be thrown backwards after trying to whack the Ring with his axe, but that's small consolation for the lack of a contemplative Boromir. Those happy to have Arwen and Elrond in his stead, the set is going for $30. The Lord of the Rings 79006: The Council of Elrond [Review] [Brothers Brick]

Vinny dives into the sordid world of voice-acting for toys and grapples with gophers, Jeff shares his first weekend with the Oculus Rift, and we all discuss FUSE, Valve economics, next-gen aftermarkets, The Swapper, the dark side of Star Trek, and more!

In Ocarina of Time, heroic Link had a musical instrument that let him change day into night. But what if he'd had an iPhone? That's the question asked by Texts From Zelda, and the answers they supply are outstanding. And of course... You can find more over at their site. (Thanks, Alex!)

Insomniac's new game Fuse is out today in North America. We'll have more in our full review later, but for now here are a few of my immediate impressions of the game — how it plays, how it looks and where it left me a little cold.

Alien lifeforms aren't always just non-player characters, enemies or simple decorations. From time to time some games let us slip on creepy, gooey and downright ugly alien suits to play as cool aliens and extraterrestrial races. These alien simulators can usually be put into two categories. It's always under the context of either a serious, fearsome, advanced galactic civilization (of which you are often a member of), or a completely stupid one who crash-landed on Earth by accident. Let's take a look at the games that let us play with these characters. Alien vs. Predator (arcade) Let's forget Aliens: Colonial Marines for a second, and think back to one of the best games with aliens and predators where you can pick predators as playable characters. It's the arcade beat 'em up from Capcom: Alien vs. Predator circa 1994. ToeJam & Earl series Released in 1991 for the Sega Genesis, Funkotron resident alien rapper crash-lands on Earth, and we have to collect missing spaceship parts in order to leave the planet. Xenophage: Alien Bloodsport This one's one of those rare PC fighters from the 90s with an alien theme. The playable characters include reptilians and all kinds of weird anthropomorphic shapes and blobs. Destroy All Humans! Made as a parody of the UFO frenzy of the 50s, we have to harvest brain stem cells from mankind with Crypto, a warrior of the Furon empire. StarCraft II: Heart of the Swarm After the terran campaign we are finally able to crush everything in Heart of the Swarm with the zerg with Kerrigan and maybe infested terrans as the only beings that resemble humans. Alien Hominid Originally an indie flash game, Alien Hominid is a side-scrolling shooter that probably has the nuttiest alien protagonist on this list. The Feeble Files The Feeble Files is from 1997—an era when 2D adventure games still counted as a booming genre—and featured a scientist alien called Feeble as the main character. Stupid Invaders The animation series Space Goofs featured five completely nutty aliens who crash-landed on Earth and have to try to get home. Interestingly enough the 2001 adventure game based on the series is quite a long and decent one. Alien Soldier That is some awesome armor and character design! Alien Soldier is a pretty insane run and gun game—with 31 boss battles—from Treasure, released for the Sega Genesis. Oddworld series The Oddworld games let us control characters from various races like the mudokon Abe—who's definitely the most adorable alien video game character—as well as the gabbit in Munch's Odyssee and a creature from the steef race in Stranger's Wrath. Ascendancy The 1995 turn-based strategy game Ascendancy had a whopping number (21) of super-weird and unique playable extraterrestrial races. Ever wanted to conquer the galaxy with a race of flowing fibers? Yay! You can do it in Ascendancy! Master of Orion series The godfather of turn-based strategy games, first released in 1993. The first game introduced 10 playable races—all with their own advantages and disadvantages—including humans that later expanded in the following two sequels. Storm the comments with visuals if you played any great games that have alien playable characters! sources: vgjunk, HardcoreGaming101, Alien Hominid, sc2gifs, aliens wiki To contact the author of this post, write to gergovas@kotaku.com

Gunpoint, an upcoming stealth game by PC Gamer writer-slash-game-designer Tom Francis, earned a "this is pretty cool" judgment from our own Luke Plunkett. But you don't have to take his word for it: The PC game, which comes out next week, has a free demo you can play right now. If you're curious how Gunpoint works, you can also check out the video up top, in which Francis walks through a level. I haven't played the demo yet, but this looks pretty fun.

In the popular consciousness, "Tecmo Bowl" usually means the 1989 NES port, if not 1991's Tecmo Super Bowl. Today, The Onion, satirizing White House sports photo ops, shows off its gamer cred by going back to the game's original arcade version, which featured only the "Bulldogs" and "Wildcats"—coached by BOB and ASS.

The new season of Arrested Development is out on Netflix—all fifteen episodes of it. You're not "supposed" to, but you could watch the entire season right away if you wanted. I'm guessing at least some of you did just that. Binge-watching something on Netflix isn't uncommon. If a show hooks you well enough, and you have more episodes left to watch, why wouldn't you watch them? If possible, people will watch through entire seasons of a show in a weekend. I've done it. Still, if you read through interviews leading up to the release of season 4 of Arrested Development, you'll find that the people behind the show hope you won't do that. Here's Mitch Hurwitz, creator of Arrested Development, in an interview with Wired: I think of it more like writing a mini-series than something [for] binge watching… I think that people do sit down and watch it all at once. Personally, I think [that] will be very fatiguing and will lose some of the fun of being able to mull on it. But I think that with the majority of binge watchers, it’s a modified binge watching, just like the majority of novel readers. You know, you don’t read it all at once. But you are in control of when you feel like going back to it… I personally hope people don’t sit and watch it for, you know, 500 minutes or longer. Here's Hurwitz again, in an interview with Vulture: “You’ll get tired!” says Hurwitz. “One of the producers came by when I was in post-production recently, and he said, ‘Can I see some of them?’ and I said, ‘Yeah, we’ve got seven episodes.’ ‘Great.’ And I heard him in the other room laughing and laughing, and then I heard him laughing a little less, and then a little less, and then later I saw him getting a drink of water and I said, ‘What do you think?’ He goes, ‘I’m just getting a little tired. I love it, it’s great, but you can’t really laugh the whole time. You have to take a break. There’s so much material.’” “You can’t take it all in at once. It’s like the selective-attention test. The whole show is like the selective-attention test. No one sees the gorilla! I’ll give you an example: When I was at the last sound mix with our editors and there was one of our bigger sight gags in the background of one of our more absurd conversations, nobody saw the sight gag, including me. And all we were doing is staring at the screen! What I like about the show is not that gimmick but that it gives fans something to pore over if that’s fun for them. If they want to go right back and check out the Gob episode and see how that was set up, they can.” “Don’t feel obligated to watch it all at once. It’s a comedy! It’s not like Lord of the Rings. Comedy takes a lot out of you.” I had read these interviews going in, and I promised myself I wouldn't shotgun the entire season this weekend. A few episode, tops. While I didn't watch through the entire show this weekend, I definitely feel like I watched more than I 'should' have. Those against binge-watching would probably argue I didn't take in as much as I could had I taken it slow, had I taken more time to reflect on what I've watched. Heck, they might argue that I was tempted to binge-watch not because the show is good, but because it's potent escapism. Wired contributor Grant Mccracken argues that TV has become our "second home," and binge-watching is a way of providing ourselves with "a sense of security" which can create "comfort" and makes "the world go away." A description which could just as easily be about video games—another medium which "suffers" from binging. It's not a topic of heated discussion in this space in the same way it is for television—I've read like a dozen editorials that explore binge-watching on Netflix—but it's definitely something that I know people do. I for one, by nature of having a job that requires me to review games on occasion, will sometimes play through a game at what feels like an unnaturally fast pace as a means of meeting a review embargo. An eight to fifteen hour game will be played through in a weekend, easy. Of course, binge-playing isn't something exclusive to game reviewers. One of the reasons that we have day-one DLC is because developers know that at least some players burn through games at an absurd pace, and the extra content is meant to meet that demand. I expect games to let me gorge on them as much as I'd like It wasn't until I started playing Animal Crossing: New Leaf this month that I realized that I expect games to let me gorge on them as much as I'd like. This is completely anecdotal, but I've heard it said that the best way to play through Animal Crossing is to treat it like a chore that you devote no more than about 30 minutes per day to. And playing it, sure enough, there's only so much new stuff you can do on a daily basis—pull out weeds, find fossils, do some errands, capture some fish and insects, make some money. Maybe I'll do something exciting that day, like buy turnips or start a new project in town—but these are all things that won't take me long to do. So I could play for more than 30 minutes daily, but Animal Crossing's design encourages me to take it slow. It's a design decision that feels jarring when I live in a world where I can watch an entire show in a weekend. If given the option, I'd probably pay money so to be able to experience more of Animal Crossing every day—I mean, that's the basic business strategy behind a lot of social games, isn't it? Pay so you can keep playing, pay so you can see more? Except I have a feeling that Animal Crossing would be extremely different if I could play like that—and probably not for the better. Animal Crossing's efficacy as an idyllic game hinges on how much I can play at a time, in the same way that the comedy in Arrested Development hinges on how much I sit down to watch. Which makes me wonder: even if I'm not playing through an entire game in a weekend, am I changing the core experience for the worse if I don't take my time? My guess is yes, though I also know that realizing this is the case sometimes makes no difference. I knew Arrested Development shouldn't be something I binge on, and I did it anyway. I suspect I ruined some of the experience for myself, and will likely go back and re-watch in an effort to soak more of the show in. It's easy to chalk it up to a lack of self-control, but I'm not sure that's the only culprit to blame. When that's the fray I jump into with most games, Animal Crossing feels like a reprieve. How often do you see a game referred to as a "roller coaster"? I see it everywhere, often used as a shorthand that denotes when a game takes you on a high octane ride. Games are designed so that you keep playing: a roller coaster is not something you get off of, after all. It's purposeful, that roller-coaster feeling. So of course you'll keep playing, even though the prospect of a real-life roller-coaster lasting the length of a typical game sounds exhausting. I will never be able to say that Animal Crossing is exhausting—on the contrary, it feels meditative. Calming. Contrast that to barely pausing while playing through Fuse this weekend—that's a 9 hour game! I'd go from one huge gunfight to a cutscene and onto the next mission, never really taking the time to let scenes or events linger. This sort of thing isn't a rare occurrence. When that's the fray I jump into with most games, Animal Crossing feels like a reprieve. It took some time to look at it that way, though. At first I disliked the pace of Animal Crossing immensely, but now I'm learning to appreciate it—it allows me to take a step back and look at things differently. I feel like I'm taking more out of my playthrough with Animal Crossing, despite the short amount of time I'm spending with it, than with games I pour hundreds of hours into. Developers can't force you to play a game a certain way—heck, I've never seen a developer urging players to pace themselves, like Hurwitz does with Arrested Development—but even so, I hope more games find ways for players to take it slow. If nothing else, it feels good to step off the roller-coaster every once in a while.

Tired of TouchWiz or Sense? Here's how you can get the true Google experience on your Android device.

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Welcome to Wetware, an upcoming 80s-tinged cyberpunk strategy game from Reality Council that puts you in charge of a "megacorporate network" and tasks you with, well, taking over the internet. From the description on the Reality Council website: Hire elite hackers to attack other networks, steal information, crash their nodes and protect your assets. Get involved in corporate espionage, corrupt officials and prying journalists. Carve out a networked empire, neutralize your competition and dominate the Net. Dominate the net, baby! There's a LeBron James joke in there but I'm not quite pulling it all together. Wetware be out this summer on Windows, OSX and Linux. The soundtrack will be out of my head in approximately one day. (Via Rock, Paper Shotgun)

Hollywood sure does love a good video game reference, as evidenced by this remarkably thorough supercut of cinematic video game references and arcade appearances edited by Travis Greenwood and Brett Roberts for Slacktory. I cannot even begin to imagine the research that went into this. That must've been fun. They even managed to get The FP in there!

Keeper of the Light sez: Have Boots of Travel, will travel!