After fielding some 1900 questions in a 45-minute Twitter Q&A, Maxis, the maker of SimCity, directly answered about eight regarding the game, which has been inaccessible to many since it released on Tuesday.

"This is on Maxis," said Lucy Bradshaw, the studio's boss, in response to a customer's allegation that publisher Electronic Arts required SimCity to always connect to the game's servers, even for the fundamentally singleplayer modes of the city-building simulation. "EA does not force design upon us," she said. "We own it, we are working 24/7 to fix it, and we are making progress."

Additionally, Bradshaw said Maxis more than doubled its server capacity on Friday and added more today. But again, it's "just not possible" to let the game revert to an offline, singleplayer mode because, as has been said before, SimCity depends heavily on cloud computing, taking place on a computer other than the gamer's, to run the simulation.

The remainder of her responses debunked previous rumors that EA's Origin service would ban someone who demanded a refund, and pleaded with customers to stick with the game. EA is offering a free game to those who bought SimCity, as a makegood.

"Anything you would like to say to die hard fans of the franchise who will not buy this game due to a tarnished image?" asked @AAPL_Geek.

"I sure hope that after we right this ship, you will give the game a try. It is really good, worthy of the brand!" Bradshaw replied.

I've already had my say on the cynical, abusive b.s.. of running a Twitter or Facebook campaign to get folks to vote on a cover or a character or to pretend to give them some kind of influence over a video game publishing decision. In a nutshell, it's garbage, and its true purpose is to get a social media manager rehired when his or her contract is up. But I forgot to mention the other big problem with putting the cover of a video game up for a vote on Facebook: Voting fraud.

Yes, really. When I last checked in, on Tuesday, Michigan quarterback Denard Robinson was well in front of Texas A&M's Ryan Swope, by 14,000 votes, for the honor of gracing NCAA Football 14's packshot this July. A winner was supposed to be announced on Friday. One wasn't. Swope, on the last day, closed the gap and took the lead, a comeback so improbable that EA Sports says it is investigating claims of voting fraud. For the cover of a college football game.

Jesus Christ, just make up a winner and let's be done with this. This contest began in mid-December and at no point did it involve the three actual big names of 2012 in college football: Manti Te'o, Johnny Manziel, or Katherine Webb. If any of those three were ever a candidate, people may have actually given a shit about fair results.

Still, it's amusing that it's come to this, because EA Sports totally left the door open by deciding to half-ass this contest with a murky voting standard that has, at various times, included Twitter hashtags and Facebook likes and polls and such, instead of creating a website and an application to tally votes there. Who really, honestly, cares if a bunch of Aggies created spam accounts or wrote bot programs to steal the election? Good for them! Honor their ingenuity and school spirit! For God's sake, this is a popularity contest in which ballot-stuffing—retweet this hashtag! Make us trend! Click like! Make my manager happy!—was encouraged from day one.

What's happened in the business of video games this past week ...

QUOTE | "We don't think that there are enough games for mature, adult players."—Adam Badowski, head of CD Projekt, talking about developing Witcher 3, Cyberpunk 2077 and other PC games.

QUOTE | "Video games are not all they can be... most of them are the same formula in a constantly updated skin."—Adrian Chmielarz, developer of Bulletstorm, talking about why his new team The Astronauts is trying to create different games.

STAT | 78%—Percentage of core gamers who regularly buy used games, according to an NPD survey; this compares to 88% who say they regularly buy new retail copies, and 70% who buy digital games.

STAT | 3 million—Number of units of BioShock Infinite predicted to ship in the first month, according to analyst Arvind Bhatia; the $150 limited edition version appears to have already sold out in most places.

QUOTE | "We really want to deliver more like a Monday Night Football experience."—Whalen Rozelle, senior eSports manager for Riot Games, talking about how the company is changing League of Legends tournaments and livestreaming.

QUOTE | "It's not getting any easier."—Cie Games' CEO Dennis Suggs, explaining why better quality games are making it harder for smaller developers to find an audience for mobile games.

STAT | 8%—Amount that Nintendo's stock jumped on Friday, thanks to a combination of a weakening yen and an improving U.S. job market.

STAT | 50 million—Number of copies of Temple Run 2 that were downloaded for iOS in the game's first two weeks; the Temple Run game is also the #4 game on Android.

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Major League Baseball 2K13 is an offensively recycled product and an embarrassment to sports video games. In my five years as Kotaku's sports writer, I've spent a good deal of time in comments defending the genre, and those who make its games, from the worn-out slur that annual sports titles are nothing but reskinned roster updates. Yet that is exactly what MLB 2K13 is, and its existence is forever an argumentative trump card to any advocacy I can make for sports, whether for a series that did meaningfully improve itself—like Madden NFL 13—or for a consistently excellent title that made largely cosmetic upgrades, such as NBA 2K13.

MLB 2K13 shows so little effort as to be unworthy of the basic dignity of a full review. The Xbox 360's baseball fans, however, do deserve to have a condemnation put on the record, in their name, because MLB 2K13 is nothing but a fuck-you to that constituency. For the past four years, Take-Two Interactive has peddled its poor-me bullshit over this license—recklessly negotiated by a corrupt regime preceding the current one—rather than taking ownership of its responsibilities and giving the MLB series the leadership and resources it so badly needed. One would think that, finally freed of the contractual requirement to deliver an ugly, uninspired, glitch-filled game year after money-losing year, a management that professes to care so much about publishing only high quality brands, and not rushing them into annual production, would have the character to simply walk away from this mistake, not reanimate its corpse.

That's what we have here in MLB 2K13. Do you want specifics about the game? Well, which creative work should I recycle, the review I wrote about MLB 2K12, or the one about MLB 2K11? The complaints I've had with both are still on full display. From comically sped-up animations to eye-twitching framerate drops on every swing, to something as nitpicky as the deformed numerals and nametapes on the back of every uniform shirt—it boggles my mind how that could be so difficult to reproduce—it's all still in here. So is my favorite glitch. I simulated to the end of a World Series and yep, right on schedule, a batter from the losing team walks up to the plate and photobombs the winner's celebration. You know everything about this game is, at best, reconditioned from the previous year as soon as you boot up the game. Its loading screen features audio of fans chanting "M-V-P" at Tampa Bay's David Price, who did not win that award. It's audio left over from last year's introduction screen whose cover star, Detroit's Justin Verlander, did.

No, this is not literally MLB 2K12. There are some minor differences. For example, online leagues are no more. Yep, they were taken right out of the game, which doesn't bode well for the online support this game will get, either. Not that MLB 2K12 was a model of post-release support, receiving only one patch in a plain tip-off that 2K Sports was hell-yes washing its hands of the series. What else? Yeah, the Houston Astros, tied for the worst team rating in the game, will now play in the AL West, if you dig franchises with one pennant in a 50-year history rebooting themselves in another league. And the Million Dollar/Perfect Game/Whatever-the-hell-it's-called now Challenge, whose grand prize winner in fact gets a quarter of a million dollars, now features rules prohibiting players from stocking the opposing team with terrible hitters to better their chances at throwing a perfect game. That should be good news, but we won't know if the exploit allowing such roster manipulation was corrected until the contest begins on April 1.

Major League Baseball itself also deserves blame for MLB 2K13, and not just for buck-stops-here reasons because its name is on the box. Take-Two Interactive may have signed an outrageously priced contract back in 2005, but baseball had absolutely no long-term vision for the license either, despite clear signals sent years ago that it would have no dancing partner on the Xbox 360 under any normal deal in 2013. This game was announced, by surprise, in January, and is plainly the product of Major League Baseball reckoning with the embarrassment of missing a year on the Xbox 360 and the fact it had zero leverage in avoiding it.

The structure of Take-Two's semi-exclusive license to make MLB video games on consoles left the big leagues with no way to engage a new developer in enough time to put a simulation product on shelves this year. I suppose MLB and the MLB Players' Association could have renegotiated their arrangements with Take-Two to let in another publisher to build something—which would require modeling hundreds of players' liknesses and at least six new stadiums—for release after the pact expired in 2012. That, presumably, would have required a large cash giveback to 2K Sports. Otherwise, what meaning does an exclusive license have, and why would anyone have paid so much for one, incurring losses estimated at $30 million a year.

As much as I hate reviewing a business plan, rather than a video game, that is all you are buying if you choose to pay for a new copy of MLB 2K13. You will be helping to reward 2K Sports with the first ever profitable year it will see from this license after nearly a decade spent mismanaging it, and you are telling the Major Leagues that not only can they slap their logo on any piece of crap and everyone will still buy it, but also that their poor stewardship of a multimillion-dollar license doesn't matter either. You are endorsing MLB Advanced Media's delusion that its video game product is as valuable as the NFL's. It is not. That attitude created this awful mess in 2005, when Take-Two's newly constituted 2K Games popped its suspenders and decided it would punch back at Madden and EA Sports by paying a ton of money to kill MVP Baseball, as revenge for the loss of the sainted NFL 2K5.

I'm embarrassed to reread my publication history on this game prior to last season's release. I have, on two different occasions, driven 1,000 miles round trip to 2K Sports headquarters to preview this series. Another time, they flew to me in Oregon to show it off. I wrote neat things about camera angles in different stadiums, providing not only this game with a new presentational feature, but also inspiring its nominal competitor to include it as well. I wrote a bunch of praise for the regular joes who won a million bucks playing this game, or who fell agonizingly short. Despite the rest of the game being so painful to even watch, its pitching system is still the most brilliant and engaging means of handling the task that anyone's ever conceived, No other publication or writer has given this series more benefit of the doubt, so when I say this game is shit, it should hurt.

It does. But I'll learn from it.

Kotaku's twice weekly roundup of the best discounts, combinations, offers and incentives in video gaming is brought to you by Dealzon.

Downloadables

GameFly expired their 20% off coupon for last Tuesday's release SimCity and the upcoming June 25 release of Company of Heroes 2. Thankfully, it still applies to March of the Eagles ($15.99), and more notably, it also stacks with select Call of Duty games 50% off, leading to even greater savings. Available titles listed below:
• Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 3 is $23.99 (list $60)
• Call of Duty: Black Ops is $15.99 (list $40)
• Call of Duty: World at War is $7.99 (list $20)
• Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2 is $7.99 (next best $20)
• Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare is $7.99 (list $20)

Green Man Gaming
• Last Tuesday's release Tomb Raider is $40 (next best $50)
• Last Tuesday's release The Sims 3: University Lifeis $32.00 from Green Man Gaming. (next best is $40)
• Last Wednesday's release Dollar Dash is $8 (list $10)
• Mar. 12 release Sniper Ghost Warrior 2 is $24 (list $30)
• Mar. 26 release Battlefield 3: End Game (PC DLC) is $12 (list $15)
• Apr. 23 release Dead Island Riptide is $32 (list $40)
• Dead Space 3 is $48 (next best $60)
• Red Orchestra 2: Heroes of Stalingrad Digital Deluxe Edition is $9.99 (next best $50)
• War Of The Roses is $4.99 (next best $20)
• Red Orchestra 2: Heroes of Stalingrad is $4 (next best $20)

GameStop
• Crysis 3 is $39.99 (Origin is $42, elsewhere $60)
• Battlefield 3 Premium Service is $24.99 (next best $50)

Steam
• Apr. 9 release Age of Empires II HD is $17.99 (list $20)
• Max Payne 3 is $13.59 (list $40). Other Max Payne 3 DLCs are also 66% off.
• ArmA 2: Combined Operations is $12.49 (next best $25)

• Wizardry Online - Adventure Kit is $9.99 from Steam. List price is $20.

Origin
• Crysis 3 Digital Deluxe is $55.99, free ship (list $80)
• Mass Effect Trilogy is $25 (next best $60)
• Mass Effect 3: Digital Deluxe Edition is $15 (list $30)
• Mass Effect 3 is $10 (list $20)
• Mass Effect 2 is $10 (list $20)
• Mass Effect is $7 (list $15)

Amazon
• Enormous .EMU Pack (10 downloads) is $9.99 (separately $92)
• Ticket to Ride Complete Pack (5 downloads) is $6.49 (list $25)

NewEgg
• Call of Duty: Black Ops 2 (PC) is $29.99, free ship (next best $48)
• Starcraft II: Wings of Liberty (PC or Mac) is $18.99 (list $40)

GOG.com has a Super Strategy Weekend sale with 50% Off 11 DRM-free PC titles. They also have Waking Mars for $4.99 (list $10).

GamersGate has a Sword of the Stars weekend sale with 75% off the game and expansion packs, as well as NiGHTS into Dreams HD for $5 (next best $10).

Ubisoft
• Assassin's Creed 3 Deluxe Edition is $55.99 (list $80)
• Far Cry 3 Deluxe Edition is $41.99 (next best is $48)
• Far Cry 3 is $34.99 (next best is $50)
• Assassin's Creed 3 is $34.99 (next best is $50)
• Assassin's Creed 3 Season Pass is $20.99 (list $30)

• The Humble Bundle with Android 5 lets you pay what you want for 6 DRM-free games compatible with Android, PC, Mac, and Linux.

• BundleStars.com's Fire and Ice bundle includes 10 PC download games from indie developers for $4.92 at time of writing. Normally you'd pay $130 for these games separately. If you only pay $1.26, you'll still get the first two games on the list - Tiny Troopers and Airport Control Simulator. [Dealzon]

Console Games

Kmart has all the games below with a $15 Gaming Coupon bonus, elsewhere near full price with no bonuses.
• Last Tuesday's release Tomb Raider (PS3, 360) is $59.99 free ship + bonus
• Last Tuesday's release MLB 2K13 (360, PS3) is $59.99, free ship free ship + bonus
• Last Tuesday's release MLB 13 The Show (PS3) is $59.99 free ship + bonus

NewEgg
• Ni no Kuni: Wrath Of The White Witch (PS3) is $50.99, free ship (next best $55)
• Portal 2 (360, PS3) is $17.99, free ship (next best $23)
• Tekken 6 / Soul Calibur 4 Bundle (360) is $16.99, free ship (next best $20)

GameStop
• Crysis 3 (360, PS3) is $39.99 (Amazon is price matching. Origin is $42, elsewhere $60)
• Last Tuesday's release Naruto Shippuden: Ultimate Ninja Storm 3 (360, PS3) is $54.99, free ship (elsewhere $60)
• Red Faction Armageddon (360, PS3) is $5.99 with $3.49 shipping (next best $14)

Amazon
• NBA 2K13 (Wii U) is $39.98, free ship (next best $46)
• XCOM Enemy Unknown (PS3) is $37.40, free ship (next best $40)
• Madden NFL 13 (Wii U) is $34.99, free ship (next best $39)
• NCAA Football 13 (PS3) is $27.64 with $3.99 shipping (next best $54)
• Madden NFL 13 (PS3) is $24.57 with $3.99 shipping (next best $56)

Best Buy
• Call of Duty: Black Ops Declassified (Vita) is $34.99, free ship (Amazon is price matching, elsewhere $50)
• Little Big Planet (Vita) is $29.99, free ship (Amazon is price matching, elsewhere $40)
• Uncharted: Golden Abyss (Vita) is $29.99, free ship (Amazon is price matching, elsewhere $38)
• Playstation All Stars Battle Royale (Vita) is $29.99, free ship (next best $35)
• Assassins Creed 3: Liberation (Vita) is $29.99, free ship (Amazon is price matching, elsewhere $34 and up)

Hardware

• Xbox 360 Live 12-Month Gold Membership Card is $31.49, free ship from NewEgg. Next best is $35. [Dealzon]

• Xbox 360 Live 3 Months Online Code is $19.99, free ship from NewEgg. List price is $25. [Dealzon]

• Xbox 360 Live 1200 Points Online Code is $12.74, free ship from NewEgg. List price is $15. [Dealzon]

• Wii U Console 8GB Basic Set is $299.99, free ship and comes with a $20 gift card from Best Buy. [Dealzon]

• Sony PlayStation 3 40GB Console (Refurbished) is $229.99 + $9.49 shipping from GameStop and comes with 5 games, including Call of Duty: Black Ops and Duke Nukem Forever. List is $261. [Dealzon]

• Nintendo Wii Console (Pre-owned) with Wii Sports and Wii Sports Resort is $79.99, free ship from CowBoom. Normally $200 in new condition. [Dealzon]

• Alienware TactX Gaming Keyboard is $67.99, free ship from Dell Home. New low by $2. Next best is $78. [Dealzon]

• Xbox 360 Wireless Controller for Windows PC is $39.99, free ship from NewEgg. Next best is $45. [Dealzon]

• PS3 DualShock 3 Wireless Controller Black is $36.99, free ship from NewEgg. Next best is $45. [Dealzon]

• Asus 27-inch VG278H 2ms 3D LED Monitor is $519.99, free ship from NewEgg. New low by $30. Next best is $550. [Dealzon]

• AOC 27-inch E2752VH 2ms LED Monitor is $189.99, free ship from Best Buy. New low by $10. Next best is $200. [Dealzon]

• Samsung 20-inch S20B350H 2ms LED Monitor (Refurbished) is $89.99, free ship from Rakuten. Next best is $100. [Dealzon]

• HP Envy dv7t-7300 17.3-inch laptop with Quad Core i7-3630QM, 1080p display, GeForce GT 650M 2GB, Blu-ray, and Windows 8 is $959.99 with $9.99 shipping from HP. New low by $40. List price is $1,200.

• HP Envy dv6t-7300 Quad Edition laptop with 1080p display, Quad Core i7-3630QM, GeForce GT 650M is $879.99 with $9.99 shipping from HP. New low by $20. List price is $1,100.

• Alienware Aurora desktop with Dual AMD Radeon HD 7870 2GB graphics cards, Quad Core i7-3820 Overclocked 4.2GHz processor, 16GB RAM, and 3TB HDD is $1,799 from Dell Home. List price is $2,024.

always, smart gamers can find values any day of the week, so if you've run across a deal, share it with us in the comments.

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Later this afternoon, Lucy Bradshaw, the general manager of SimCity maker Maxis, is going to take over the studio's official account to answer questions from gamers who, four days after the game's release, are still unable to play the thing they purchased. She's already given a preview answer to the question most of them likely have: Why can't this game simply be played offline?

The question has been answered before, but Bradshaw reiterated the reason overnight to Polygon: "With the way that the game works, we offload a significant amount of the calculations to our servers so that the computations are off the local PCs and are moved into the cloud," she said. "It wouldn't be possible to make the game offline without a significant amount of engineering work by our team."

In an internal memo sent to Maxis employees, and made public Thursday, Bradshaw claimed that while "thousands of players across the world are playing and having a good experience," many others were unable to connect to the game, so "the rollout in North America has been challenging." She promised Maxis would be adding capacity to its SimCity cadre of servers and stabilizing the existing ones. "We're working as hard as possible to make sure everyone gets to experience the amazing game we built in SimCity," she wrote. SimCity, as of publication time, is still crippled for most who want to play it.

Maxis explains what went wrong with SimCity and what the developer is doing to fix it [Polygon]

Welcome to the Best of Kotaku, where I round up all of this week's best content.

I'm back from vacation (with a slight tan and a cold) and ready to unleash this pretty, wooden Atari 2600 at you. It's currently running for $1.2k on ebay. Or, if that's too much for you, you can always just look at extra pictures of the thing on Ian Brooks' Tumblr, where I found the console, and read about it over on Game Sniped.

Now let's move on to reading this week's best content, courtesy of us.

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The Many Ways We Didn't Get To Play SimCity This Week

Can't access SimCity? Lots of people can't. For lots of reasons. Kirk Hamilton takes a look at these. More »

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Oh My, How the Pokémon Anime Has Changed

Brian Ashcraft gives us side-by-side comparisons of these Pokémon changes. More »

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Ultima Creator Richard Garriott Revolutionized Video Game RPGs. Now He Wants To Do It Again.

Evan Narcisse has an interesting chat with Lord British, the man behind Ultima, who is coming back to making games. More »

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Proof That American Gamers Really Do Want Japanese RPGs

Jason Schreier lets the numbers do the talking. More »

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Amazon's Potential Jump Into Cloud Gaming, And Other Secrets From The World Of Video Games

Superannuation uncovers more secrets about Amazon, Trion Worlds and more. More »

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God of War: Ascension Vs. The PlayStation 4

Stephen Totilo wonders how much the PS4 will help (or not) to evolve series like this one. More »

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SimCity: The Kotaku Review

Mike Fahey knows there's plenty to love about SimCity, if only he could get to play more of it. More »

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Here's What Japanese People Are Saying About The PS4

Toshi Nakamura rounds up what Japanese people's concerns and excitements for the PS4 are. More »

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I'd Like Fewer Addictive Games, Thanks

Patricia Hernandez explains why "addictive" isn't really all that much of a compliment to a game. More »

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MLB 13 The Show: The Kotaku Review

Owen Good finds this series holding strong. More »

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Mass Effect 3: Citadel: The Kotaku Review

Kirk reviews this Mass Effect 3 DLC that he considers a great chapter for the most diehard of fans. More »

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I'm A Mormon. Pop Culture Often Mocks My Faith, But Fallout Treated It Right

Skip Cameron is pleasantly surprised by Fallout's treatment of Mormon culture. More »

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Tips for Playing SimCity

Fahey gives us some tips before we dive into SimCity (if/when that happens). More »

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What I'd Like To See In The Witcher 3

Kirk, resident The Witcher nut, runs down what he wants to see out of the next title in the series. More »

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What In The World Do Video Game Writers Do? The Minds Behind Some Of Last Year's Biggest Games Explain.

Phil Owen interviews some video game writers to see what they do exactly, and how they do it. More »

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I Sold My Video Games To Pay For My Wedding, And Said Goodbye To Part Of Myself

Christopher Lawton shares his experience of letting go of a favorite hobby to make way for a new, shared life. More »

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DmC: Vergil's Downfall: The Kotaku Review

Evan enjoys the DmC extension, even if Vergil isn't as awesome as Dante in this DLC. More »

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Castlevania: Lords of Shadow - Mirror of Fate: The Kotaku Review

Jason enjoys the combat in this Castlevania, even if the game does have a few flaws. More »

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The Dramatic Palm-Slice: A Fantasy Trope I've Never Understood

Kirk ponders this odd ritual. More »

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Introducing 'The Multiplayer,' Your Weekly Destination For Games We Play With Each Other

Patricia introduces her new weekly column. More »

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Cadbury Creme Eggs: The Snacktaku Review

Fahey tries all sorts of flavors. More »

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SimCity Won (and Broke) My Heart in Just Three Days

Fahey shares the story of the rise and demise of his city, and how he killed Kotaku boss Stephen Totilo's city, too. More »

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Be Excited About Assassin's Creed IV. And Be Skeptical.

Stephen shares all the reasons we have to be excited about a new Assassin's Creed, and all the reasons we should remain skeptical for now. More »

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How I Learned That I Suck At Civilization

Mike Rougeau tries out different methods of tackling Civ V. More »

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Anyone who bought SimCity will get a free video game, publisher EA said tonight.

Apologizing for the crippling server issues that have rendered the new simulation game near-unplayable for the past week, Maxis boss Lucy Bradshaw wrote in a blog post that anyone with a copy of SimCity activated before March 18 will get a free PC game from EA's catalog.

Here's the full blog post:

Here's a quick update on the problems we were experiencing with SimCity – and a little something extra for people who bought the game.

The server issues which began at launch have improved significantly as we added more capacity. But some people are still experiencing response and stability problems that we're working fast to address.

So what went wrong? The short answer is: a lot more people logged on than we expected. More people played and played in ways we never saw in the beta.

OK, we agree, that was dumb, but we are committed to fixing it. In the last 48 hours we increased server capacity by 120 percent. It's working – the number of people who have gotten in and built cities has improved dramatically. The number of disrupted experiences has dropped by roughly 80 percent.

So we're close to fixed, but not quite there. I'm hoping to post another update this weekend to let everyone know that the launch issues are behind us.

Something Special for Your Trouble

The good news is that SimCity is a solid hit in all major markets. The consensus among critics and players is that this is fundamentally a great game. But this SimCity is made to be played online, and if you can't get a stable connection, you're NOT having a good experience. So we're not going to rest until we've fixed the remaining server issues.

And to get us back in your good graces, we're going to offer you a free PC download game from the EA portfolio. On March 18, SimCity players who have activated their game will receive an email telling them how to redeem their free game.

I know that's a little contrived – kind of like buying a present for a friend after you did something crummy. But we feel bad about what happened. We're hoping you won't stay mad and that we'll be friends again when SimCity is running at 100 percent.

SimCity is a GREAT game and the people who made it are incredibly proud. Hang in there – we'll be providing more updates throughout the weekend.

While we're not yet sure which games will be given away, you can view EA's PC catalog here.

Sure, pranks are things jerks often do—but sometimes, things can get genuinely mean. And there's really no other way to describe this supercut of cruel wake up pranks, where people find the most awful ways to get people to rise from their slumber.

Despite how mean the video often is (if not dangerous, and arguably stupid at times), it's funny—even if I winced often. Good compilation, clipnationdotcom.

Ah, another weekend. Do you guys have plans? I'm gonna hunker down and try to finish a couple of books, because my backlog there is starting to rival my games backlog! That, and I'll probably spend plenty of time with Tomb Raider as well as a different game I'm reviewing soon. Fun stuff.

Feel free to talk about jerks, pranks, weekend plans, or just about anything else here in this open thread or over in the Talk Amongst Yourselves forum.

See you next week!

The Ultimate Wake Up PRANK Compilation [clipnationdotcom]

At South By Southwest in Austin, Gearbox debuted a teaser trailer that hints at the addition of a new character to Borderlands 2. The character isn't fully shown, but looks to be some sort of melee-focused badass.

The video above comes via Polygon, who are on the ground at SXSW.

"A new vault hunter is coming," the teaser video promises. What do you think? Think it'll be a return of Brick-style brawling? I'd be in, but then again, I've barely even managed to mess around with the last downloadable character, the Mechromancer.