One of the most bizarre (and well designed) fighting game franchises ever created, Guilty Gear, is finally getting a proper sequel after nearly a decade of remixes.

Mainstays will be here, including bitter rivals Ky Kiske and Sol Badguy, who show off the game’s graphical features in the above teaser trailer. New 3D environments bring a different level of gameplay to the franchise’s traditionally 2D, sprite-based style.

Now, the best part of a new fighting game announcement, especially one that holds such a cult status amongst fans, is the introduction of new characters. Unfortunately, no new ones have been confirmed yet.

Damn.

Disclaimer: There’s a whole lotta dadbutt-rock in the trailer. You’ve been warned

We finally get a taste of things to come as the new trailer for Arkham: Origins is released after a frustratingly short teaser whet the appetites of fans. Origins delves into the fledgling years of Batman, immersing players in a kind of “Year Two” storyline. The trailer features appearances by Black Mask (!!!), Deadshot, and Deathstroke; the firearm-savvy assassin/sometimes-hero/fulltime asshole.

According to Eric Holmes, the creative director of Origins, the story will take place on Christmas Eve, which put a nice twist on the absolute hell that is Gotham. Due to conflicting project schedules, writer Paul Dini of Batman: The Animated Series, won’t be on board for Arkham Origins. Instead, some younger blood has been snatched up to steer the ship.

Hit up the 5-minute trailer and witness one of the best fight-scenes I’ve seen in a long time. And check out that shipping dock setting. A Batman Begins reference, maybe? Either way, I might have to fork over the cash to get on that console steez again. My PS2 just wants to sit on the porch and feed the birds in the park now, poor girl.

A lifetime playing video games hasn’t just taught me that I’m a fat, slovenly dork who prefers his own company and staying indoors. Far from it: games have allowed me to come to all sort of bizarre, self-therapy conclusions. See for yourself.

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Animal Crossing taught me how to make my own fun.

If you’ve never played one of the Animal Crossing games, than I strongly suggest that you keep it that way. These all-consuming, soul-destroying and life-ruining titles will disconnect you from reality in a way you never thought possible. That may even sound like an enticing prospect to some of you, but I urge you to take heed of my warning. There is nothing good about spending a whole day fishing only to catch shitty carp whilst you contribute to the town-wide monopoly of one Tom Nook. This wolf in sheep’s clothing not only sold you the fishing rod, but also holds a spiraling mortgage debt over your head for months of gameplay. Truly frightening. He controls the fish prices, too.

It’s not all misery in Animal Crossing, though. There are fleeting moments when I managed to ignore the crushing reality and find time to make amusing distractions for myself. Townsfolk will often write you nonsensical yet sometimes eerily relevant letters. I abused this system wholeheartedly when I started regularly inviting my neighbours to meetings for ‘The Cult of The Gyroid’. It took a while, but eventually they started to crack and before you knew it, without anybody really noticing, I had become a virtual Jim Jones. Soon, my plan would come to fruition. OK, so I had to settle for bullying people until they moved out as opposed to mass-murder, but it was still fun.

The point of all this is no matter what is getting you down in life, you should always take time out for fun. It’s important and often, free.

Street Fighter taught me to play to my strengths.

Street Fighter, in most of its iterations, provides one very important life lesson. Through its focus on a balanced character roster it showed me that everyone has their strengths and weaknesses. Discovering these and adapting to them is an important skill, both in life and in street fighting. So what if you can’t keep a dude at bay with fireballs, or you’re not that great at subtraction – perhaps you’re better up-close and personal, or long division is your thing. Point is, we can’t all be great at everything and you know when someone picks Ryu, nine times out of ten you yawn because you know he’s the safe bet. Who wants to be an all-rounder anyway? Not me, I’m happy being deeply flawed with hidden talents and as soon as I figure out what they are, this paragraph will make even more sense.

Bonus lesson: Chun-Li largely contributed to my penchant for thick-legged broads. My tracked Tumblr tags speak volumes about me.

Metal Gear Solid taught me that I probably enjoy hiding too much and I am weird, but not that weird.

I remember playing Hide & Seek as a kid. I remember how excited I’d get when someone would walk right past your hiding spot with no clue that I was under their nose. Full disclosure: sometimes I’d get so excited that I’d really need to shit, often resulting in me blowing my cover to run home and lay some fresh kiddy log. I can’t quite explain this bizarre biological response, but it’s a feeling that came back years later when I first played Metal Gear Solid.

I can’t believe that guard didn’t see me in this box! Now I have to go shit. It wasn’t so debilitating that I needed to shit frequently, but at least once per play session. Admittedly, this is probably the weirdest thing about me, so I guess the real lesson is that I’m clearly a freak. What is reassuring though is that at least hiding didn’t result in either me actually shitting myself or, worse, getting a boner. I know there are people who get boner’d over such things and I thank God that my bizarre biological response is connected to the rear rather than the front. Amen.

Borderlands 2 taught me that I am a compulsive hoarder.

One look around my current abode is enough of a giveaway that I’m some sort of compulsive hoarder. Toys, pin badges, t-shirts and video games that I don’t even have the correct systems for all fill my shelves to capacity. Even so, my collecting habits have never really forced me to confront the truth, as I’ve never been put in a position where I have to get rid of any of it. Borderlands 2 and its crippling inventory system brought me to my knees – forcing me to decide what to keep and what to sell on a regular basis. My worst nightmare. The anxiety sets in and I start to run through all the potential horrors that will emerge if I don’t keep hold of the correct item.

How the fuck is a man meant to decide between the rare acid rifle and the not-so rare but still incredibly destructive electrocuting SMG? Those occasions, when I found myself out in the middle of nowhere, having to decide which weapons to keep and which to throw in order to keep my inventory manageable were some of the toughest I’ve ever experienced. I can’t (won’t) imagine what would happen to me if I found myself faced with a similar situation in the real world. I can already feel my palms getting sweatier and my heart-rate increasing as I imagine having to let go of the Monsters In My Pocket Volcano Pack to make room for something grown-up: say, a filing cabinet or something. Yeah, grown-ups have those, right?

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It’s fair to say that not many games are designed with introspection in mind, but if you’re anything as narcissistic and analytical as I am, you’ll probably find that some of your most cherished virtual experiences have taught you things about your very real, fleshy self, too.

Option two: writing ideas are thin on the ground at the moment..

The Lego series of video games have been a fun and cute way for small children (and high adults) to enjoy entirely G rated versions of popular series like Star Wars, Batman, and Indiana Jones. They’re perfect for keeping little brothers and sisters occupied, while indoctrinating them into classic fantasy and sci-fi stories. But, what if you wanted to get your 4-year-old niece into the world of meth dealing and murder, at an early age without having to risk her being killed by Mexican Cartel assassins? If that’s your goal, then we need to petition Lego to make this Breaking Bad video game designed by Brian Anderson, so kids can learn the essentials of drug distribution and moral relativism, before they learn to count.

Personally, I don’t have any small children in my life, but I do know that kids cost mad money. One of the only sure fire ways to recoup the crazy amounts of cash you invest in rearing a child is to prepare them for a career that makes wild money. Being a doctor, lawyer, professional athlete, or meth kingpin; for example. Remember, the children are our future, teach them well and one day they’ll bring home more money than you can spend without getting the attention of the DEA and IRS.

Grand Theft Auto V is coming sometime later this year—we won’t fuck around with a specific date, because everyone knows Rockstar Games is on that extra CPT—and it’s looking like the joint should be the most accomplished criminality simulator ever made. Shoutout to dudes for putting three trailers inside one, with the choose your own adventure opening. Watching all of ‘em together looks a lil bit like someone decided to re-edit Casino, Menace To Society, and Deliverance so they were all in the same universe. I don’t know if that’s the worst idea ever, or some innovative novelistic storytelling. We’ll have to wait til this drops to actually find out, how well Pulp Fiction narration plays out on PS3.

As with other incarnations of GTA, there’s the requisite violence, cursing, and polygon generated T&A. If it says anything, the asses look a lot more smoother and lifelike than they did in GTA IV. Chalk that up as an advancement in computational power that can only lead to the eventual downfall of the human race via infinite, moraless, pornographic 3D environments. Terminator never mentioned Skynet taking over because we were all fappin’ to death.

Somewhere out there, unbelievable as it may be: someone is surprised that Dead Space 3 wasn’t a resounding success. Whoever that may be clearly doesn’t see the issue with watering down a great horror game so much that it becomes a tepid co-op shooter with faux-RPG elements. In fact, if you think of all the meetings and work hours this game went through in order to get made, it’s startling to think that nobody suggested how fucking awful an idea the game was. In actuality, they probably did, but they then met with some sort of comedic ejection procedure (my money is on tossed from a first storey window by two burly security guards).

Thank Dead Space 3 for fucking up horror gaming for the rest of us: no doubt convincing investors that the genre is a lame duck. Next, thank Bethesda for being confident enough to get Shinji Mikami making a proper horror game. Dreams can come true.

I honestly never though that I’d see this happen. I was convinced that horror gaming, after taking it in both ends from the double-stacked shit-parade of Dead Space 3 and Resident Evil 6, would be well and truly dead. No doubt, Mikami had his fill of seeing the genre he so effectively defined treated like a shameful jizz sock and decided that enough was enough. Strapping on his Devilman costume, Mikami storms the Bethesda board room and demands that they finance his latest project, so that he may restore honour to this once mighty genre. Admittedly, the whole process was probably a bit more business-like and formal, but the result is still the same. The master has had to come out of the shadows to show these dick kids how it’s done.

Mikami’s return to the genre doesn’t just excite me for the possibilities, but also brings with it an almighty wave of nostalgia. After all, this is the man who brought us Resident Evil 4 – a game so perfect in its execution that I wonder why anybody else ever tries anything other than copying it wholesale. RE4 is a masterpiece, for many reasons, but above all else, it is the balance between fear and empowerment that makes it work so well. Reassuringly, Mikami acknowledges this horror formula in the following video: single-handedly breaking it down for Visceral Games and the dicks so intent on crushing his legacy over at Capcom. Let’s hope that they’re taking notes so we get at least a few more decent horror games before the impending nuclear holocaust finally reduces our world to ashes.

For a second though, let’s just remember that the legacy of true fear in video games is not quite as dead as I’d like it to be (for dramatic purposes). From Software’s Souls series pretty much holds the monopoly on terror right now. They aren’t games that strike fear into the player’s heart through cheap shots and scare tactics, but rather it is the gameplay that has players on edge. So whilst I don’t actually defecate onto my cheeks like some grim fold painting, the gurgling sensation in my colon is always there. Fear works in the Souls series because it dictates the way you play: it forces you to watch the corners, proceed with caution, creep precariously and hate yourself for each and every stupid risk you take. For me, though, the fear that came from playing both Dark Souls and Demons Souls was actually too effective. Certain bosses became too intimidating, certain areas proved totally impenetrable and the fear, more often than not, stemmed from the possibility of a two-hour play session resulting in nothing but death and failure. The Souls games, along with their relishing of multiple player deaths have never made any bones about their punishing nature, so I’ll forgive them. I knew what I was getting into and I know that there are millions of players out there who crave this kind of game and the time investment it requires. More power to ‘em: but I just couldn’t stick it out.

What the Souls series lacks is that panic-induced sense of fear. It misses out of the raw thrill of a last-minute headshot that just barely saves your life. As Mikami is keen to mention, it’s this unique sense of empowerment that makes horror games so much fun. It’s beyond reassuring, comforting even, to hear Mikami talk about this because it is such a fine and temperamental element, yet one that is integral to the enjoyment of a game such as Resident Evil 4. You can’t exactly place this sensation into a game, it’s not as simple as combining sound, visuals and controls to create a perfect formula for satisfaction, but you can work the elements in such a way that those last-minute headshots, those instances of unforeseen empowerment can be made to feel completely natural. The head pops like a ripe watermelon, your heart rate calms as you stare in disbelief at the corpse now disintegrating just to the left of the ominous, red zero on your ammo counter. You feel like a fucking badass. It’s the ability to hinge a game’s design upon moments like these that makes Resident Evil 4 such a fantastic game, and gives Mikami the master status that he so rightfully holds. There’s a good reason that dorks like me get so excited over him making a new game: it’s because his control and direction of a game’s elements is something akin to a conductor, an artist: making each particle work to create something so perfect that you start to question whether you’re dealing with straightforward, digital information any more. If Mikami remembers his legacy, then The Evil Within will be the Survival Horror game that fans so desperately need.

Week in, week out, I find that I give fewer and fewer fucks about my greatest love: video games. Something about the world has changed recently: perhaps it’s a winding down as the console generation nears to a close, or maybe the industry has just plain run out of ideas. Whichever the case may be, I can’t help but wonder why anybody other than dedicated, pathetic losers like myself would be inclined to care. Abruptly, he slaps himself across the face with a force that ejects two fillings and a week’s worth of shitty debris that previously resided underneath his grubby fingernails. God-fucking-dammit, man! This is your one-true, your reason d’etre! C’mon, surely I can muster up a handful of halfway adequate reasons to deter any other would-be quitters. Here goes.

The People

Whilst Keita Takahashi is lost to a world of artistically driven obscurity and 16-button custom arcade machines, we can still rely on a gathering of ingenious and passionate creative minds that are dedicated to keeping gaming interesting. Alongside heavy-hitters such as Suda 51 and Ken Levine, we have the lesser-knowns; Phil Fish; cult star Swery 65, as well as the teams over at Dennaton and Capybara Games. Don’t ask me why the nick-names include numbers. My best guess, though: android model numbers.

Gaming is also fortunate enough to have such exuberant personalities as Yoshinori Ono and everybody’s favourite bro, Cliffy B, a.k.a Dude Huge, a.ka. Cliff Bleszinski. And where would we be without Hideo Kojima? A man, who now into his fifties, has yet still to recognise just how mental he is. This tentative grip on sanity has benefited game design for decades so far and I hope more in the future. Whilst the gaming landscape may look a little bleak and undernourished right now, it’s my faith in the creativity of these people, along with the ones that I forgot to mention, that has me believing it won’t be too long before gaming flourishes again.

The Future

The future of gaming is increasingly independent. As bigger budget games collapse under the weight of their own pomposity, smaller, more focussed and importantly, cheaper, games will swoop in to fill the gap in gamer’s hearts. I’m not suggesting that kids are going to have formative, record-store-style moments like that time the rubenesque goth from Spiller’s Records introduced me to Bad Brains, at least not yet anyway, but there is going to soon come a time when the independent market is a viable alternative for nearly every type of customer.

Perhaps naively, I hold out a lot of hope for the next generation, too. Gaming has become so stagnant lately, that I’ve pinned my hopes on the new console generation giving the whole scene an almighty kick up the ass. Like, I want that foot lodged right up there and the boredom to come shooting out of its filthy mouth with gusto. So, let’s just blindly hope that this new coat of paint will make everything better, you know, like when a struggling couple foolishly brings a child into the world to kick-start the relationship, when really all it does is drive them further apart and make some poor little sod bitter and resentful for eternity. Life sucks, but gaming may not.

The other possibility that the future brings is the kind of gaming we were promised in the 90′s. If I asked that chubby little turd that was my ten-year-old self what did he think gaming would be like in 2013, he would have probably come up with something close to what you see in this video:

Shit just got real. This is a omnidirectional treadmill prototype being used in conjunction with an Oculus Rift headset. Not everybody wants to be flailing and jiggling along with their favourite game, except me. Working out and playing decent video games at the same time sounds like a match made in heaven. When this technology becomes affordable and practical, I’ll probably be too old to give a shit, and definitely too old to write another self-convincing post like this. I’ll just watch on with glee as my bitter and resentful children enjoy a five-minute respite from my over-zealous and unflinchingly sterile parenting style.

The Past

Whenever the future, or present lets you down, you can’t beat a bit of good old-fashioned nostalgia. The MTV neon-liquid-shit face assault getting you down? Man, Netflix has whole series’ of Dexter’s Lab. Chill. The same goes for games: there are some constants that we can always rely on. I’ll take playing Street Fighter until death if I have to. Fuck it. I’d be a machine without the distraction of new releases anyway. My Balrog would be the stuff of nightmares.

It’s often been the case that gaming’s intrinsic relationship with technology has allowed games to feel dated, old before their time. But, as the medium matures and more of us come to appreciate the essential mechanics that go into making a good game, then the past becomes a lot easier to fall back upon. Nobody’s criticising Monopoly, Scrabble or Risk for being out of date. Sure, the boxed product formula may not always be here, but those solid, well-formulated rules will always remain. A good game, in whatever format is just that: a good game and luckily for gamers there is a tear-inducing wealth of content to be pillaged.

What gaming’s past also affords us is a wealth of certifiably rad creative content. Tumblr in particular is full of gif-makers, comic artists and writers all celebrating the age of pixels and scan lines. Nothing makes me happier than seeing my favourite Capcom background character getting a dedicated animated gif. There’s something special about being able to re-purpose and enjoy this kind of minutiae and it’s something that’s almost exclusive to gaming. Follow VGJunk: trust me.

So, go play the classics. Repent for your sins, accumulate some cultural capital and play cult favourites. You have until the end of the world, after all.

If all else fails, just remember that Far Cry 3: Blood Dragon is coming out any minute. Have you seen the trailer yet?

This game looks, frankly, fucking ridiculous and is just the kind of thing I never imagined actually getting made. The designers were only allowed to create costume items of around $100 real-world value, it has Michael Biehn in it and is full to the gills with VHS nostalgia goodness. Hip though it may be, there’s little denying how much fun this looks. Far be it from me to pin the hopes of a medium on a single title, but it’s hopefully a good indication for things to come. As the landscape grows increasingly stale, perhaps more designers and major studios will take the time to flex their creative muscles and at least try to make us laugh.

If we’re going to pin our hopes on a single title, let’s make it GTA V. After all, these games induce years of hyped-up cock rubbing and lust. They promise the earth and usually, just about deliver. I swear, that if I don’t come out of that game with a new, hopeful outlook and some relentless positivity, then I’m going to quit. I’m going to piss all of my hard-earned money away on Warhammer 40,000 models. I’m going to gain fifty pounds, switch out water for full-fat cola and retreat into a nerdy wank-cave for the next ten years without even questioning my life’s total lack of direction. I’ll do it, video games, I really will. Don’t create that monster.

“N64″ is the third single off Denzel Curry’s highly anticipated “Nostalgic 64″ album, which is coming soon and is surely going to be epic. The lyrics on this track are so on point and send chills down my spine every time I bump this track. I’ve been a fan of Zel since the beginning and it really is a beautiful sight seeing an artist grow with every project, which to me is what it’s all about and he has definitely hit Super Saiyan level on this one. I truly can’t wait to hear what the whole album is going to sound like.

This song sticks to the topic of Nostalgia with lyrical topics and punchlines that vary from D.I.T.C., Rocket Time, OJ’s, The Joker, Samurai Jack, Casey Anthony and plenty other cultural references, and there is nothing boring about this track here. Zel is going beast mode all over the Nuri & POSHtronaut (of Metro Zu) aka N/P instrumental and the production level is most definitely top notch. I predict “Nostalgic 64″ to be one of the hottest albums of the year and Zel and all the BRK are definitely on the rise to stardom. Bump this loud and put all your friends on it too because Denzel is soon to be a household name and then you can say “I told you so”.

Without question, Bioshock Infinite has proven itself as incredibly troubling to the novice reviewer (played by myself). It’s not that the game is overwhelmingly challenging, or so perfect that I find it difficult to find fault and give a balanced account, but more that every element has been considered and given such attention: making just about everything worthy of mentioning. It’s an overwhelming game to process, but I’m going to try for you, though, because I fucking adore you. Seriously, you don’t even know.

Right from the beginning, perhaps before anything else, the sumptuous audio of Bioshock Infinite envelopes you in a world rendered with stunning amounts of detail. In the opening ten minutes you are treated to an original score that ranges between the discordant, to the playful; through intriguing and majestic. The opening moments of the original Bioshock’s introduction to Rapture are paid homage with a heavenly ascent that accompanies light, disarming piano chimes, fooling you for just one moment into thinking that you have truly arrived in the kingdom of the Lord. This moment, just like pretty much everything else in the game, is testament to Ken Levine’s status as an auteur, someone who’s careful consideration to detail permeates every element of the game.

Heavenly introductions, discordant warnings and the pulse-jacking industrial clang of Sky-Line battles are just but a few notable elements of Infinite’s score, but what truly gives its character  is the creative use of licensed music. As I type this I am still haunted by the flying barbershop quartet that so beautifully executes The Beach Boys God Only Knows.. and the jaunty, carnival rendition of Girls Just Wanna Have Fun. Not only does Infinite brand these songs with a new and distinct sense of place and character, but it also employs them with an almost Scorcese-like sense of purpose. The song choices punctuate the scenes in which they are used, echoing the sentiments on show and helping to reinforce the science amongst the fiction, something that begins to unravel as you realise just how these songs can exist in 1912.

The very concept of world building is something I had little awareness for until the original Bioshock. The way in which our foray into Rapture showed us the downfall of an entire city, told through the environment itself, was a master stroke, one that has barely been matched since. Infinite’s floating city of Columbia is rendered with altogether brighter tones and sees far less disrepair than we may expect from a Bioshock game. Pageantry and misty-eyed optimism permeate every surface throughout the city: it is a shining homage to the true age of American Exceptionalism. Posters and segregated washrooms tentatively introduce the darkness behind this great nation in the sky, whilst a foray into the city’s industrial district and its shanty town show the stark difference between those who leisurely stroll through Columbia’s floating streets and the ones who make it float in the first place, figuratively speaking.

Columbia is an idealist’s vision cut from an entirely different cloth than the familiar surroundings of Andrew Ryan’s Rapture. Bohemians; Artists; Vanity and the gratifying sense of discovery are replaced with awe-inspiring scale; bright, enriching hues and American splendour. Simply put, Columbia is a world like no other and one that is masterfully crafted from the game’s underlying themes. It only falls short in so much that it feels, at times, slightly less than cohesive. Re-treading your steps through different planes of existence and a lack of assurance as to whether or not you should be scrounging and planning ready for a boss battle will result in more back-tracking than some will be comfortable with. In addition, the often plain, clean textures of Columbia sometimes feel lacking in character and give the environment an unusual, patchwork quality. Without question, this echoes the clean, ideal vision that Columbia’s residents would expect, but there’s also a nagging sensation that out-dated console hardware may be holding back the vision just a little bit.

Gone (largely) is the sense of planning and employment of environmental hazards that formed Bioshock’s basic gameplay. In their place, we have Sky-Lines – a network of overhead rails that connect Columbia’s many floating islands. Originally intended for the transportation of cargo, the city’s youth took to joy-riding them with the soon to be object of many-a-nercraft: The Sky-Hook.

Sky-Hooks add a fresh sense of dynamism to the combat and make Bioshock Infinite a wonderfully kinetic game, when it works. Do you sense the pang of negativity? Brace thyself. Considering myself to be the seasoned player, and given the waning difficulty of games these days, I figured Hard was the difficulty for me. It took several painful buttfuckings for me to realise the error of my ways. As a shooter, using cover and being patient, Bioshock Infinite is most certainly playable on a harder difficulty. However, if you are craving the kind of fluid, energetic combat that I and many gameplay trailers have promised you, just stick to Normal. I suppose it’s something of a recommendation that I have to really try to find a problem with Bioshock Infinite and it’s also worth noting that my problem directly relates to my own shameful failure as a gamer. However, I’ve always insisted that finding the ‘core’ to what makes a game’s systems work and then putting that knowledge to work for yourself is the very essence of video games, or games in general for that matter. Perhaps I’ve read it wrong, and dynamism and momentum aren’t meant to be at the core of Bioshock Infinite’s combat, or maybe I’m just the failure that my parents always feared I’d become.

Overall, I feel that talking about Bioshock Infinite is almost futile. I mean, I’ve busted this out due to a sense of commitment and because I hate getting free games and not giving something back in return. I can’t imagine there’s anybody really on the fence about this game: the odds are that you either wanted to play or are a member of some bizarre gaming subculture that refuses to acknowledge the relentless excellence of Ken Levine and his team at Irrational Games. That said, it seems like my words will either be falling upon deaf ears, or preaching to the choir. Either way, it takes it out of you – I hold little to no challenging opinions concerning this game and as such agree with the rest of the gaming community. I am a fucking sell-out.

I could have just written THIS GAME IS A MASTERPIECE BUT YOU ALREADY KNOW THAT, HOWEVER SOMETIMES THE COMBAT DOESN’T QUITE WORK AND THE SAVE SYSTEM ISN’T PERFECT. Maybe that’s where I need to go – it’ll save us all some time.

What Bioshock Infinite achieves is frankly astonishing. Sure, I feel stupid adding to the chorus of almost overwhelmingly positive responses to it, but there really isn’t a lot else to say. It is a game that excels because it focusses on the kind of details most games don’t make time for. Tacked-on multiplayer, DLC gun skin packs and insultingly formulaic design all too often take presidence over the kind of thoughtful, detailed world-building that Bioshock Infinite excels at. It’s an impressive achievement, just go and play it already.

I applaud you for enduring this existential crisis, I really do.

The internet was initially invented by the US military to allow for decentralized information distribution. In the event the Russians blew up Washington or New York, dudes could still send messages to bros in Iowa’s cornfields manning the nuclear missile silos. Twenty years later, it appears that the real reason the internet was invented was to provide a vehicle for shit that would otherwise have no place to live—like a seven hour documentary about the original Star Wars trilogy. God bless the Russians.

At seven hours, this video is about as long as the original trilogy. Also it’s about as long as a day of work, so if you really don’t give a fuck about your job, cue this up, and digitally give your boss the finger as you suck down bandwith at ana amazing rate. The doc features interviews, storyboards, alternate angles, special effects work, and pretty much all the arcane information you could ever want to bring up, the next time you watch Return of the Jedi with your friends.  I only watched the first forty minutes or so, while they touched on a bunch of shit about the design of Vader’s helmet, showed some deleted scenes, and interviewed the lil dude inside of R2D2, they never discuss why George Lucas wouldn’t let Carrie Fisher wear a bra. I guess some shit is just better left unsaid.