80% fresh on the rotten tomatoes: https://www.rottentomatoes.com/m/rogue_one_a_star_wars_story

So far, over all, it seems to be about 10 points lower on RT and Metacritic. Still not in a bad spot by any means, and honestly kinda where you'd expect a Star Wars spinoff to show up.

Also whoa! I had no idea Michael Giacchino was the composer for this! He has some big shoes to fill but I love his work in everything else.

That would require having an Apple store within 250 miles. Otherwise I totally would have.

I just read that Super Mario Run will always need an internet connection: https://www.engadget.com/2016/12/09/super-mario-run-no-offline-mode-piracy-concerns/

I foresee SMR getting a bunch of negative reviews on the iTunes Store just for this reason.

Jon, airplanes have the wifi. Pay up! Or pick a flight that has the wi and the fis. Just say "No" to planes that don't carry wifi.

Jon, you make a gazillion dollars being a software dev and all, you can afford airplane wifi.

Why would s game that you pay a very premium price for (for a mobile game) require a connection? I get some leaderboard stuff, daily challenges, that kind of thing, but those are optional. In fact, all the free-to-play microtransaction-laden games I've played have let you play offline. That makes no sense.

And I literally give no games access to my mobile data (except for outliers like Pokémon Go that truly need it).

This decision is baffling at best.

Right, I know the reason, that doesn't make it less baffling. Android piracy is rampant, not so much on iOS.

On iOS, in order to pirate, you have to jailbreak your phone. So roughly 8% of iPhone users are even capable of pirating this game.

And then there's the extra barrier of actually figuring out how to download them.

And THEN there's the fact that people who know enough to pull all this off probably know enough to realize that malware is much harder to prevent on iOS when you've broken down all those barriers and it would be madness to try it.

They'd lose like 2% of sales, if that.

So ultimately what will happen is that the people who *do* pirate it will get the version that's been somehow patched to remove the online requirement, which will probably introduce other bugs, and these people will just think it's a buggy game.

It's a lose-lose for Nintendo.

I had my issues with $10 for an endless runner but I was going to anyway, because Mario on my phone.

But the two places I play mobile games most often (both of them are toilets) don't get service. So I don't even know if it's worth it. :/

Yeah this is very Bioshock-ish, but that's not a bad thing. This really grabbed my attention at E3 but this gameplay trailer makes it look even better.

Lucas has apparently given it his blessing, which is something Episode VII was missing. That's good or bad I guess, depending on how you see it.

Whoa, I didn't know Tom Morello did gaming videos.

Why are you frowning at that Greg? It's free! Snag it in the next 19 hours and it's free.

Oh I think I see-- free-to-play is a kind of game model. Free and free-to-play are not the same thing.

You may have thought based on Jon's reply that you can only play it for the next 19 hours. But that's not the case. It's FREE for the next 19 hours. So grab it now and you can play it forever.

But that doesn't make it free-to-play. If that makes sense.

Oh but also, it's the next 41 hours. It's a two day freebie.

I guess they either put it in wrong (that's what she said) or changed their minds.