wavey

You can also get email (or SMS, etc) updates of all Steam deals via ifttt.com - set up a trigger that checks the RSS feed http://store.steampowered.com/feeds/news.xml for new items with "Deal" in them. EDIT: actually you can just use this recipe - http://ifttt.com/recipes/17923 it looks to have a more sensible RSS feed

I'm a bit behind on the Daily Show, so I've only just seen Kristen Schaal's bit from last week, about the federal funding of abortions for rape victims. (Here if you can frig the county restrictions, I can't find it on Youtube.) Basically, it's amazing. The conceit is that, thank God, the Republicans are finally closing the rape loophole in the health system by limiting funding to "forcible" rape. On the programme they take this and push it as far as it will go, and then a bit further. It even sounds like they are losing the audience at some points (you can hear them shouting "woah!"), like when they reclassify date rape as "rape with benefits". The whole bit is uncomfortable and provocative in exactly the right way. The obvious moral fury underpinning it is fucking Swiftian. Interestingly, the BBC report about the issue says: So anyway: *this* is how you do offensive comedy, Top Gear.

Geared 2 and Trainer Drop are both free at the moment.

Also free: Broken Sword and Draw Race.

If anyone's tempted by the £10 HoI3 deal, remember the Paradox Complete pack is £30 (discounted £356!) and has *all* the Hearts of Iron games & DLC as well as all the games from: Europa Universalis, King Arthur RPG, Majesty, Mount & Blade, Victoria, Sword of the Stars, Penumbra, etc.

Canabalt, Drop7, Osmos, Eliss, Solipskier, Spider: Secret of Bryce Manor all on sale, 59p, go go GO

Castlevania Puzzle is down to 59p.

This has just gone free. Seems quite good, nice and polished.

Well now we know: it WAS just a really bad publicity stunt. ffs.

I* brought my launch 360 back to life this week from a RROD, following this guide, and if you already have some torx screwdrivers and heatsink glue it won't cost you anything to give it a go. * (I say I did it, it was really my mate at work who loves playing with electronics and happened to have the screwdrivers and the glue. Thanks Rich!)

More from Simon Parkin:

Simon Parkin (author of the fantastic Eurogamer article about all this) tweeted earlier:

Yep, here's a full list of games you can use the CD keys for.

Sounds hopeful... Ron Gilbert did some work on the design of the new episodes: http://grumpygamer.com/8280380

This is quite interesting, according to Penny Arcade, "The same reviewer who gave us the 4 in Edge gave us a 68% in a different UK magazine."

Ah, that'll be it then, cheers. Game own everything nowadays!

OK what the HELL is going on. Just got this email... Which is lovely, except I didn't pre-order from Game! I'm sat at work hoping my Gameplay order has turned up at home. I don't have an account with game.co.uk, and trying the "lost password" thing on the Game website, it doesn't recognise the email address they sent that email to. I'm confused

Just tried this, it's superb. Some of the pictures people have made with it are stunning.

Half Life 2 with a portal gun!

Are you broadcasting an SSID? I couldn't get DSOrganize (or any other homebrew) to connect without it, but commercial stuff worked fine either way.

Here's another chart from GAF (via Qt3). It's just the monthly global sales, but it really emphasises the trends.

Well if I was reporting these figures for the BBC, and had to choose a headline to somehow sum them up, I'd definitely go with "PlayStation 3 sales boost in US"

Here's the story link: http://www.maxconsole.net/?mode=news&newsid=18778

The part about the spontaneous discussion between strangers could well be true. Here's a leaked memo written by the VP of Corporate Communications for health insurance company Capital BlueCross, who went to see the film:

But what's an "8's worth of fun" exactly? It doesn't mean anything until you put it in context. For example, if you're reviewing say, STALKER, and think that it's better than Prey but worse than Half Life 2, surely it should get a mark higher than Prey but lower than HL2, as a guide for the readers? I think scoring on a relative scale within a magazine is fine, and they do have different audiences. If a friend asks you to recommend her a book or a film, you'd take her tastes into account, and wouldn't recommend something that you know she'll hate. But I also want to use websites like metacritic. I think the answer may lie in something like (the apparently defunct) MetaFuture was intending to do: first take into account the score distribution curve of your source, to let it be compared more directly with other sources.