[The Walking Dead is a difficult series to write about. I want you to experience the game for yourself. After all, your game will likely play out entirely different from mine, given how dependent on player choice it is. But I still want to give you an idea of what it was like to experience the final episode of this season. So think of this less as an impressions piece, and more of a diary entry.]

I knew we'd end up here eventually, in this dark and bleak place.

Sometimes I look back at the journey we've taken together and wonder how the hell all this even happened. Death, betrayal, moral ambiguity running rampant. Feels like every step we took for survival pushed us further into our graves. We've learned so much—about people and how they change, about the threat of the walkers at hand—and somehow I feel much farther off the track of staying alive than I did back when all this madness first started.

Maybe the only thing keeping me going even after the end of the world is a little girl with a big heart and sweet eyes. Everyone else distrusted me at one point or another. Maybe it's my shady past, my seemingly weird relationship to this girl who is effectively a stranger, or my actions since taking her in. There have been arguments, tussles, even, and a whole lot of hard decisions that often led to death. I have a difficult time not blaming myself, and so it's hard not to see some truth behind people questioning my leadership. They don't always doubt me, but it still stings as hard as if they did. Doing right by everyone is important to me.

But Clementine, she's different. She stood by my side through each decision I had to make. She never doubted me. And while everyone else slowly changed, their stomachs rightfully churning after the horrors they faced, Clementine remained steadfast. It's a marvel, really, to think that an eight-year-old can stick it to the apocalypse harder than a grown adult. Military, doctors, teachers...everyone breaks. But not Clementine. I like to think I had something to do with that, even if this recent episode is making me to begin to doubt my fatherly abilities. The overpowering feeling that I need to, above all else, keep Clementine safe was once what helped me push on in the face of no hope. Now that instinct to be protective is turning into guilt, and that guilt is crushing me, slowly seeping into my conscience and making me second guess everything that has gotten us this far.

People show their true character after a disaster. It doesn't matter if you donated to charity while your life was merry. How did you act when you were starving? Did you steal from someone else, who was likely just as close to death? Did you ever kill someone just to keep them quiet and yourself safe? These are the situations in which your decisions should be judged.

One of the most fascinating aspects of The Walking Dead episodic series has been watching personalities and relationships evolve. When I first met Christa, the spitfire survivor you meet in episode four, I wasn't particularly fond of her. She seemed to have good intentions, but she also didn't seem to care much for anyone outside the locked enclaves of her steely heart. I grew to respect her, though. Cherish, even. Love, maybe. Had I had enough time to explore the complexity of her character, I could definitely see myself loving her.

Ben's weak disposition had me fed up by episode four. No matter how hard I tried to guide him, he stumbled over his own feet. It was infuriating. No one else exhibited these problems, I'd impatiently scoff. And then I realized that while Ben would make bad decisions and wasn't too reliable, he was also never violent. Or psychotic. We've definitely met our fair share of sociopaths in this life-after-death scenario. But I came to appreciate Ben's benevolence, even if he did constantly drag the group down (albeit accidentally). Even Kenny, who I've grown to love as a brother, can't be completely trusted in tense situations. We've supported each other this entire time, but I wouldn't put it past him to strike me in a rage or confusion. Ben would certainly never do something like that. He'd bitch and whine, but he wouldn't put his fists up to me.

Episode five is a disaster, and I mean that as a compliment to the game. Lee clings on to a sliver of hope, pushing forward in the worst of conditions. He's haggard, he's at the end of his rope. But, like Clementine, he never wavers. He pushes forward for the few things left that are worth saving in this post-apocalyptic world. Lee's every breath is spent for Clementine. Without her, I'm not sure he could survive the zombie apocalypse.

Episode five is also more intense than ever. You have to make tougher decisions on tighter deadlines. I've never felt as much pressure in the Walking Dead series than I did in this finale. I began to resent my responsibilities and longed for a "let's just wait it out for now" speech option. But this is the homestretch. It all comes down to this, and nothing—not even everything I've experienced up until this point—can prepare me for it.

These aren't just the toughest decisions I've had to make, they're also the most important. Nothing in my journey has mattered as much as the next few steps I take, and how I decide to take them. It's more vital now than ever that I choose the right dialogue options. I'm no stranger to this harsh life. I'm just tired of it. I'm tired of no reprieve.

And secretly I love it.

Because who hasn't daydreamed about the zombie apocalypse before? Who hasn't theorized their strategies and argued tactics? Telltale's The Walking Dead lets you live the zombie apocalypse in the most realistic way possible.

Sure, the animations may be janky and the actual game component of the series is limited to QTEs (that are at least meant to replicate the amount of force you're trying to use when opening a door or pushing a walker off of you) and point-and-click exploration to discover the world around you. But the zombie apocalypse is about so much more than fighting zombies. It's about meeting all sorts of people, and facing all sorts of threats. Threats that rival your most horrifying nightmares. You don't need traditional strength to survive (though a good swinging arm and a sharp eye could definitely help). You need strength of character.

The Walking Dead makes me feel like I've been through the harsh realities of a world where everything is working against me. And by the end of the episode, sitting back in the comfort of my apartment, I (only slightly ashamedly) cried. Because I actually felt all the things that Lee was supposed to feel in this made-up world. And that's perhaps the best thing about Telltale's masterpiece: it's a made-up world that manages to evoke real-life emotions. And those emotions—those thoughts of "what if" and "holy shit"—those have stayed with me even now.

The Walking Dead's final episode is where it all ends. And where it all begins anew again. I cannot wait for the next season to resolve all my unanswered questions and fears, and hopefully gain some closure. Until then, those haunting memories will follow me.

Just cause someone doesn't play games as regularly as you do doesn't mean they wouldn't be up for a friendly introduction. So what do you get that one friend, cousin, sibling, aunt?

Watch out for our editors chiming in down below, but share your ideas with everyone, too! We're open to ideas that run the gamut. Books about game theory, soundtracks, handheld titles, even hardware. Anything to entice a potential new player.

Get your wallets ready. There's a Steam sale starting tomorrow and running until November 27, according to Tamás Bakó, CEO of the team behind Secret of the Magic Crystals.

The winter sale, Bakó says, will run from December 20 to January 4. Just in case you don't spend enough money on holiday gifts and Steam games this week.

(via Reddit)

For decades now the world has been obsessed with the stacking of tetrominos, passionately rotating and placing odd geometric shapes in a never-ending quest for the perfectly-packed screen. We have to learn to let go. Dream of Pixels can help.

Dawn of Play's Dream of Pixels is an ingenious take on the classic Tetris formula. That's elusive perfect stack has been completed, filling the sky with an infinite field of dream clouds. All that's left is for you to lay back in the grass, stare up at the sky and begin deconstructing that wondrous construction, on shape at a time.

As the rectangular bank of dream substance slowly descends, players are tasked with taking it apart, tetromino-by-tetromino. Rotate the same set of shapes that were used to build that masterpiece, dissolving it in rows of one to four.

It seems like a simple task at first — just move the shapes about and poke holes in that ephemeral wall. Then pieces start getting left hanging in the air below the falling clouds. Clearing lines becomes more urgent, as it's the only way to reunite those hanging thoughts with the main mass. It's certainly not as stress-free as I assumed it was when I first saw the game in action, though it is just as therapeutic.

Players looking for something a bit more relaxing can always take on the game's Zen Puzzle mode, which presents cloud-crafted pixel pictures and a selection of pieces used to take them apart.

Every time I think I've seen every possible variation of the Tetris theme possible, a developer like Dawn of Play comes along with a delightful surprise like Dream of Pixels, one of the dreamiest gaming apps on iTunes.

Dream of Pixels -- $.99 [iTunes]

If you think about every major video game publisher whose games you ever played, certain staple characters may come to mind. Recalling those characters might even bring a smile to your face, and remind you of the fond memories you had playing as each of them.

So let's take all those memories and all those characters, and put them in one room together and make them fight. There's something pleasantly delightful about seeing your favorite PlayStation protagonists out of context and beating the hell out of each other.

And that's exactly what PlayStation All-Stars Battle Royale is all about.

PlayStation All-Stars Battle Royale is a fighting game. But it's not a fighting game in the way you remember Street Fighter or Tekken. For one thing, you can have up to four players fight against each other. And that's the beauty of a brawler like this one, especially if you have every player in one room to match smack-talk to the virtual smacking. If a traditional fighting game is about relying on the choreography of button combinations, a brawler like PSAS is about jumping on each other's heads and throwing each other around. It's chaotic, it's fun, it's a little bit silly.

WHY: You get to beat up your favorite PlayStation characters on some really wild maps.

---

PlayStation All-Stars Battle Royale

Developer: SuperBot Entertainment
Platforms: PS3
Released: November 20

Type of game: Brawler

What I played: Every character, every map. Against the AI and/or friends over roughly 7-8 hours.

My Two Favorite Things

• Amazing third-level Super Moves that really make each game shine through the character that's repping it.
• Wacky and wild maps that burst into even wackier and wilder maps halfway through the battle.

My Two Least-Favorite Things

• Not enough maps.
• The campaign is boring and too easy.

Made-to-Order-Back-of-Box-Quotes

• "Can something be pretty, silly, violent, and beautiful all at once?" — Tina Amini, Kotaku.com
• "Apparently ‘handsome' does not necessarily equal ‘good fighter.' Dammit. Sorry Drake, but you're going to have to die at the hands of a fat, princess butt." — Tina Amini, Kotaku.com

But there's also a singleplayer campaign component to this multiplayer experience. The campaign feels more like a tutorial, getting you used to how your character plays, the rules of the game, and fighting against three people at once by scaling it upwards from just one. The campaign is yawningly easy, but it is a good place to get your feet wet. What kept me repeating the campaign over and over again, though, was to watch each character's intro and outro scenes. They're like mini-storylines, setting up everyone's motivations within the context that you're familiar with seeing them in. None of these are particularly significant. None of them blow my mind—though some are definitely better executed than others—but curiosity got the better of me. What's Kratos' motivation for fighting in this league? What does Big Daddy get out of this? How'd they convince Nathan Drake to participate?

The game isn't about the campaign, though. It's about the characters, and the maps that take advantage of some really significant setpieces or even events from each game referenced. Every level is wacky and wonderful, and constantly shifting into wackier and more wonderful environments. Though every map acts as the battleground where you'll face off against friends, they're also there to attack you. You'll have to be mindful of the map hazards even as you're fending off your friend roleplaying as Fat Princess. Levels will spontaneously combust and break away to reveal some new background action. Maybe you're bouncing on sun-colored flowers, or trying not to fall off a map that is the opened door of a cargo airplane mid-flight. You even get to fight in a city in the sky (a reference to the upcoming BioShock), and other maps send Songbird to attack you. The maps are all alive, and just as active as you are bouncing and slicing inside them. The only downside to these maps are how few of them actually exist. I love their creativity, but the fuel to their flame runs out quick.

PSAS is a fun brawler game. But its beauty is in the details. In how the game incorporates references to all the PlayStation titles it features in one bundle. It's in the maps, the very short cutscenes, the characters' special moves.

Playable fighters in PSAS can be judged like any other fighting game. My favorites might not end up being your favorites. I loved Evil Cole from Infamous, for instance, but wasn't a big fan of Sweet Tooth. Twisted Metal's character moved too slowly and his hits felt too difficult to direct. Big Daddy has an amazing third level Super move, but he relies on strength as opposed to speed, which isn't too much my style. I prefer springy characters that use swift movements and are always on their feet.

So Nariko, Cole, Raiden, Kratos and Dante were all favorites of mine. Maybe you prefer characters with sillier moves, so Fat Princess, Toro and Sackboy are probably more your flavor. Regardless of who you choose, they're all interesting to play, at the very least to witness each of their first, second and third level special moves. To make this game work, to really evoke the feeling of each character's game that they're meant to represent, every detail should work towards the theme. The special moves really bring out each game reference. It's a bonus that they're mostly creative, and some even creatively animated.

You see that kind of variety between each character even in something as simple as a throw move. Your fighting style isn't limited to just three buttons. You can combine a direction and a hit, choose to throw in one of three directions (and therefore styles), and string attacks together for seamless combos. Some characters' strong suits are in long range versus short range, and others rely on traps (like Sackboy). The PlayStation characters that were made more blatantly for fighting—like Cole, Dante, Kratos, etc.—feel more fluid and their actions feel more fleshed out. It makes sense—there's more to work off of when designing their brawling abilities. In fact, a character like Cole plays so well that I could see him in a traditional 1vs1, arcade-style fighting game.

A big component to brawler games are the items found randomly on the map. Items can drastically change an experience, even dictating your priorities (namely, a shift of focus from cornering your friend of six years while they yell at you to stop using that same move over and over you bastard). The second I see the comically-sized cod (or whatever the hell fish it is) on the map, I dart straight for it, because seriously nothing is funnier than slapping someone in the face with a fish. This goes for real life, too. I was surprised to find just how powerful the fish-slapping technique is, as well. It sends people flying. As does the chicken (yes, there's a chicken). And when you're playing a brawler with three friends in a room with you, don't you want even more ammunition to tease them with? What better way than to remind your friend that you just slapped them in the face with a chicken? A CHICKEN.

While playing PlayStation All-Stars Battle Royale, I had a weird feeling I couldn't place. The game is designed well, and theoretically I like it quite a bit, but something seems to be missing. Is it that it's releasing during a time that a sea of games are washing over us in a panic just before the craze of holiday gift-buying? If you asked me to compare, I'd say hold out and play those other titles you undoubtedly have on your wish list. But it's not quite because of the pre-holiday rush, the busiest time of year to be a gamer.

I decided that it had to do with how much content is currently available. PSAS' strengths are in the characters, and how they play. Though it can feel like a mixed bag, there are definitely gems in there for everyone. But as it stands, you can burn through the map and even each character's campaign with little effort. Even map items are few, and so it's easy to lose the spark of curiosity that I began the game with. That doesn't mean that PSAS is a bad game by any means. It just means my guess is that you'll tire of it soon without constant content updates.

Brawlers are the silly brother of fighting games. Maybe you're not terribly proficient with fighters. Maybe you go to arcades and would love to approach the unoccupied joystick, but that one dude has the most fierce look on his face that you just know he'll end up wiping the floor with you. Enter a game like PlayStation All-Stars Battle Royale, where it's much easier to get a handle on each character's moves, and therefore a lot more accessible to all sorts of players. The next time your friends are around and not too keen on versing you in a fighting game for fear of embarrassment, you can tell them to rest assured knowing that this brawler is fun and accessible. And they may even catch a reference or two that gets them smiling for the recognition.

In an odd bit of unintentional coordination last week, Zynga and King.com both launched mobile versions of their hit Facebook games on iOS on the very same day. This gives us a chance to answer a question with this week's charts: Who's players are more into mobile, Ruby Blast's or Candy Crush's?

Judging by the two apps' positioning on the free chart this week, one could infer that the answer is Candy Crush Saga, but that's not taking into account on important factor: Ruby Blast is not a very good port. It's only half of the Facebook version of the game, and not the half that's been driving new players to the web-based game in droves lately.

So I guess that question really wasn't answered after all. Hey look, Angry Birds Star Wars.

Top Paid iPhone Games - 11/20/2012

1. Angry Birds Star Wars
Last Week's Position: 1 (0)

Not expecting this one to go anywhere anytime soon.

Angry Birds Star Wars on iTunes

2. Bloons TD 5
Last Week's Position: N/A

Those evil balloons are back in the ultimate pop-centric strategy game.

Bloons TD 5 on iTunes

3. Bad Piggies
Last Week's Position: 3 (0)

Bad Piggies beaten by balloons? Sad piggies.

Bad Piggies on iTunes

4. Wreck-It Ralph
Last Week's Position: 2 (-2)

Finally saw this movie this past weekend. I would give anything for a mobile version of the racing game.

Wreck-It Ralph on iTunes

5. Minecraft - Pocket Edition
Last Week's Position: 6 (+1)

Minecraft somehow finds the resources to build itself up a spot this week.

Minecraft - Pocket Edition on iTunes

6. Flow Free Bridges
Last Week's Position: 4 (-2)

The Bridges of Flow Free County take a bit of a dive.

Flow Free Bridges on iTunes

7. Tetris
Last Week's Position: 9 (+2)

Tetris never ceases to amaze me with its forward movement.

Tetris on iTunes

8. Plague Inc.
Last Week's Position: 7 (-1)

The dreaded disease lingers longer than I expected.

Plague Inc. on iTunes

9. Fruit Ninja
Last Week's Position: 10 (-1)

The official Fruit Ninja candy is actually an empty box of gummi bears. Not a true story.

Fruit Ninja on iTunes

10. iGun Pro HD
Last Week's Position: N/A

This is a gun simulator. You can shoot them, arrange your gun rack. It seems like a silly thing. I want it.

iGun Pro HD on iTunes

Now that we're locked and loaded, let's take this week's free apps by storm!

Top Free iPhone Games - 11/20/2012

1. Hill Climb Racing
Last Week's Position: 3 (+2)

Okay, now I am curious. What is it with this game?

Hill Climb Racing on iTunes

2. Asphalt 7 Heat
Last Week's Position: N/A

Asphalt 7 goes free and races up the charts.

Asphalt 7 Heat on iTunes

3. Are You Quick Enough 2
Last Week's Position: 8 (+5)

The ultimate reaction test gets even more ultimate!

Are You Quick Enough 2 on iTunes

4. Gangnam Style Massacre
Last Week's Position: 2 (-2)

Let it die with some dignity, people.

Gangnam Style Massacre on iTunes

5. Aerox
Last Week's Position: 1 (-4)

Aerox's meteoric rise last week ends in a slow and gentle descent.

Aerox on iTunes

6. Flow Free
Last Week's Position: 6 (0)

Flow Free holds steady in the sixth position, stubbornly refusing to yield.

Flow Free on iTunes

7. Candy Crush Saga
Last Week's Position: N/A

King.com's colorful candy puzzler is a joy on the iPhone.

Candy Crush Saga on iTunes

8. Ruby Blast Free
Last Week's Position: N/A

The gimped mobile version of Zynga's Ruby Blast Adventures takes its rightful position below Candy Crush Saga.

Ruby Blast Free on iTunes

9. Reign of Dragons
Last Week's Position: N/A

Another one of those damn collectible card battlers clogs up the chart.

Reign of Dragons on iTunes

10. Extreme Road Trip 2
Last Week's Position: 5 (-5)

Extreming its way off of the charts.

Extreme Road Trip 2 on iTunes

Come back next week, when we'll all still be sleeping off Thanksgiving dinner.

Nintendo's new console is just three days old and already one of the most controversial creations the company has ever produced. The Wii U is better than you may have heard, but it's in some ways worse. It's also changing. Constantly. And mostly for the better.

Just as new issues are being discovered some of its problems are already being addressed.

The state of the Wii U seems likely shift day by day. Here on day three, here's what's going right, what's going wrong, and what needs to change.

Good

• There are lots of games. There are more than two dozen at launch, which is a healthy amount for a new console. Just look at this bunch… not too bad:

  

  
  
• There are several very good launch games. New Super Mario Bros. U, Nintendo Land and ZombiU are all very fun. There are so many games, in fact, we've yet to be able to spend a lot of time with some of the potentially interesting titles like Scribblenauts Unlimited or the apparently-improved Ninja Gaiden 3.
• The GamePad controller is light, comfortable and useful. It turns out you can add a six-inch screen to a twin-stick console controller and you wind up with a better device, one that, at minimum, makes map and inventory displays bigger and more accessible.
• The Miiverse is amusing and handy. Nintendo's promising new social network functions as a message board for any of the system's games and apps but also functions as a handy source of advice if you're stuck in the middle of a game. Just screencap where you're stymied, multi-task your way to loading the Miiverse, post you screen and a query, go back to playing and, inevitably, someone will answer with a tip-and you'll be able to know if they had played the game, to boot. Posting in Miiverse is moderated after the fact, so fears of delays in message-posting have proven unfounded. Moderation may be heavy-handed (we have too few examples to make a judgment), but we can confirm that users are being creative within the confines Nintendo allows. Go to any Miiverse page and you'll see as much.

  Also, after a Sunday of instability, Miiverse seems to be staying online. A rep for Nintendo told Kotaku: "Due to an overwhelming response from the public on Miiverse, the servers supporting this feature went down. The service is now functioning normally." The company also claims that what appeared to be a hack of Miiverse on Sunday was actually a case of a user accessing a "mock-up menu" in the service. Nintendo says that the menu "has now been removed and is not accessible."

  
  
• The eShop needs work, but already rivals its console competitors. Nintendo's online store on the Wii was slow and confusing. Its DSi shop wasn't much better. The 3DS one was a step up. The Wii U one is actually good. You navigate it on the GamePad's touchscreen, which makes reading the listings and tapping through the menus a cinch. Better still, most of the launch games, including a few download-only titles, were available for purchase on day one. The system saves credit card info, though it could use a shopping cart and a purchase history display.
• Wii transfer worked well. Moving content from an old Wii to a new Wii U is easy and is accompanied by an adorable animation. The Wii U emulates the Wii and keeps old Wii content relevant. There's a flip-side to this, though… see below.
• The WaraWara plaza is already evolving. On day one, the Mii-filled plaza you see on your TV when you turn on your Wii U was just showing Nintendo-made Miis and the Miis on a user's friend list. But last night, Nintendo switched things, and the plaza now features clusters of Miis representing players who have commented on various games on the Miiverse. In the center of this ring of players are the user's Miis and those of their friends. Speech balloons can pop up from any of these Miis, which pretty much means that the first thing you'll see when starting the Wii U isn't an ad nor a publisher-created image of a game. What you'll likely see are the ideas and opinions of Wii U gamers. As a result, when I'm booting up my Wii U, I'm seeing people troubleshoot Black Ops II headset support, rave about Nintendo Land, grumble about IGN's review of ZombiU. This isn't buried. This is how the system is welcoming me. It's an extraordinary gesture on Nintendo's part to put the voices of its users on the launch screen of the console.

  I even saw someone making a Virtual Boy joke.

  
  

Bad

• The super-slow OS is worrisome. A console powerful enough to run Assassin's Creed III and Mass Effect 3 should not struggle and take 20 seconds to go from its system menu to its system settings app. It should not take 15 seconds to close a game and go back to the main menu. This kind of tardy performance was barely tolerable on the Wii in 2006. It's worse on the Wii U and desperately needs improvement. But when I asked Nintendo if they could or would make this better through a firmware update a rep said that the company had nothing to announce at this time.
• Controller sync problems abound. The most common complaint we've seen from readers about Wii U functionality is that they can't get the GamePad or Wii Remotes to sync to the console. We've fielded a couple of complaints per day on Twitter and in e-mail. This is not a plague, but it is the most common malfunction we've heard. Users either need to wait a long, long time for the sync to take or they have to trade their system in. We can say that we've had no problems on our team's three Wii Us.
• The Wii emulation hides all the Wii content (and your money). It's nice that the Wii U can pretend to be a Wii. It's disappointing that it keeps all of a user's Wii content, including Virtual Console games, inside the app that puts the Wii U in a Wii emulation mode. This would not be as big a bummer if the Wii app loaded quickly, but as with all other system apps, it takes its time. It's also worrisome if this signals that Nintendo won't let Wii-purchased VC games be moved to the main menus of the Wii U. And if Nintendo has the audacity to make people pay for those games again… just to have them on the Wii U menu? Let's hope they're not considering that. Sadly, any unspent money in the Wii's shop stays in the wallet held in the Wii U's Wii shop. The money doesn't transfer to the Wii U's eShop where Wii U games are sold.
• The GamePad screen lacks multi-touch. As good as the GamePad is for games, its lack of multi-touch control makes the system's web browser feel archaic. Using control sticks and tilt as well as single touch is a poor substitute to modern touch-screen web-browsing standards. Good thing no one's buying the Wii U for web-browsing.
• Slow, mandatory installs are another drag. The Wii U is a system that makes its users wait too much. It's nice that eShop purchases download in the background by default, but, as is the case on PlayStation 3, downloaded games must be manually installed. The system can't do anything else during installation. No problem, if the installation is fast. It's not. The 2GB Trine 2 required a 17-minute installation. Smaller games required a proportionately smaller amount of time.

Needs Fixing ASAP

• Patch-nation. The Wii U simply requires too much downloading and updating. Buy the system, take it home, wait an hour while a patch downloads so you can use half of the machine's advertised features (otherwise: no online, no Miiverse, no Wii compatibility, no Netflix, no eShop). Pop in any game that uses online features? It needs a patch too. Nintendo needs to ship consoles that are patched ASAP. And it would be nice if the system, which knows which games you have once you pop them in, would start pulling down patches while I'm not using the console. The PS3 can do this; so should the Wii U.
• Nintendo Network ID migration needs to be added. It's nice that Nintendo has created an account-based system to track online purchases and to save a user's profile. This is a great improvement from their old tricks of locking people's purchases to a machine and forcing people to re-buy games if they got a new console. The Wii U launches with a promise from Nintendo that Nintendo Network IDs will be transferable from one machine to another-just not yet. For now, you're stuck with the ID on the first Wii U that you register it to. Although… when asked about when migration would be permitted and about user concern that, should their Wii U break, they'd lose access to their ID, a rep for Nintendo said, via e-mail: "Anyone who experiences any issues with a Wii U console can troubleshoot at http://support.nintendo.com or contact 800-255-3700." Perhaps Nintendo tech knows something about how to migrate NNID's that we don't.
• Friend requests are confusing. Nintendo promised that the Wii U, in ditching the Wii's notorious friend code system, would make adding friends on the new console easy. But friend requests only seem to pop up if people send you the request via Miiverse. You get an alert. You can choose to accept the friend request. But it seems that if you are friended via the Wii U's actual friend request app, you don't get an alert. You have to friend the person yourself to discover they did the same. So you have to communicate in real life, as you did with friend codes. That's weird. Nintendo needs to have a consistent friend request system in their console.
• GamePad battery life is wretched. The GamePad needs charging every few hours. It's best used wired, plugged into the wall. As soon as possible, Nintendo needs to get a better battery in this thing.

It's good to see that the Wii U was packed with ambition. It's understandable that in reaching further on day one than probably any other console maker ever has, Nintendo has made several gaffes. It's gratifying to see some problems already being fixed and to see functionality improving. It's nevertheless worrisome that some issues may be inherent to the machine, and it's disappointing to see that in cases like Wii backwards compatibility, Nintendo has delivered an experience that technically fulfills its promise but doesn't provide an ideal user experience.

The Wii U is no more shaky at launch than the PS3 or the 360. All these machines sputter at take-off before they soar. There's potential here. Let's hope there are no fatal flaws and that Nintendo prepares to be a proper pilot for the journey that many people have already spent a lot of money to be a part of.

BZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZ. This is horrible. Kotaku reader vipeness sent in this video, which shows his Wii U hard-locking and crashing during a game of Nintendo Land.

It seems to be happening to a bunch of other people too.

Vipeness isn't too dismayed, though: "Booted the system right up and tried it again and it worked just fine," he writes on YouTube. "Wii U still is the best console we've played in along time for my entire family. Just hope this is a one time thing and if it is an issue, Nintendo will patch that up right away."

Rhianna Pratchett has made a name for herself with the video game writing she's done. Her contributions to Overlord, Heavenly Sword and Mirror's Edge added tonality and humor that helped make those titles stand out. And in a recent interview with Gamasutra, she explains how she and the team at Crystal Dynamics are trying to weave game action and storytelling in the new Tomb Raider:

"One of the things we've been keen to do with Tomb Raider is explore the idea that action equals character. It's a fairly standard idea in other entertainment mediums, but in games there's often a strange disconnect with the way a character is presented in cutscenes (heroic, quippy, everyone's pal) and the way they act during the gameplay, i.e. mowing down enemies like there's no tomorrow."

"The key is making the action part of the story and not something that exists outside of it. With Lara we wanted to show that her actions (particularly when she takes a human life for the first time) have an impact on her character and emotional state."

Pratchett also waves off the controversies sparked by comments from Tomb Raider developers about sexual assault and players' motivations vis-à-vis Lara Croft:

There have been grumbles in certain quarters that we've broken her down and taken a strong character and made her weak. That's really not the case.

Of course, the proof of all of this will be in the finished game. If nothing else, all of this churning might make people more curious to get the game when it comes out next year.

Rebooting Lara: Rhianna Pratchett on Writing for Tomb Raider
[Gamasutra]

Experimenting with new ways to make folks pay for their iOS games, Square Enix releases Groove Coaster Zero, injecting new songs and adapting a free-to-play model to Reisuke Ishida's original musical masterpiece.

Groove Coaster Zero takes the fine selection of tracks from the original game, drops in a selection of new free and premium tunes and lets the people play as they please. Unlock free tracks by playing through the game or drop a little cash for more tunes to play with.

As a bonus for fans that own the original game (everyone should), having it installed on your iPhone, iPad or iPod Touch when Zero launches unlocks three special limited edition gift tracks, not for sale and not available anywhere else.

Enough talk, it's time for me to wander away and play this for hours, ignoring the desperate pleas of my co-workers to write all the things.

Groove Coaster Zero — Free [iTunes]