https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J2ywJQUnBOM

It's spoiler-free for the first 20ish minutes. We all liked it even though there were some missteps. It does a good job of tying the prequels to the original series and it's really well done.

Don't expect a normal Star Wars movie. It's dark for Star Wars.

Also Katie points out that with Adam on the panel, you really need to up your beard game, Jon.

Hmm you make a good point with episode III being dark. I mean Anakin straight up murders children (spoiler alert). Rogue One just feels more gritty. I guess it's that it's about military operatives performing a military op.

I really didn't think episode VII was dark, though. There were dark things in it but it was handled in a non-dark way I guess.

The don't think this is a spoiler but just in case spoiler alert: Really the "dark" in Rogue One is that the good guys aren't always good.

I enjoyed Rogue One. On my entertained, not entertained movie scale, I was entertained.

I bought the whole game and have already gotten $10 of enjoyment out of it.

I have only had to do the extra data download once, when the game started. I have not seen it since, and I have played all 24 levels.

Jon, there are multiple ways to get more tickets. There are a few bonus games that unlock every 8 hours that can get you more tickets. Also, you get tickets when you finish a level (like you said) and collect all 5 of the special color coins for a level. Right now I am sitting at 51 tickets and have already done 66 Rallies.

I really dislike how building your kingdom is dependent on the rallies, which are competitive, REpetetive, and can result in losing resources if you lose the rally. Toads from your kingdom come to cheer you on, but if you lose they'll leave. It's the kind of thing that you'd expect to see in a free-to-play game to encourage you to spend money on microtransactions, but there are no microtransactions here. I wish the rallies weren't required to get access to extra levels. You can build pipes and rainbow roads to take you to other levels but that requires a lot of grinding.

Plus on a few occasions I've been unable to play at all because of the online requirement, and I've even lost progress a couple of times. The rallies obviously need a connection, but there's no reason to lock out the main game. There are some cases when I'd normally play mobile games that I'm unable to, because the reception is hit-or-miss in those areas.

But the "Journey" mode where you play through six worlds of four levels is really fun. For an endless runner it's solid, probably the best I've played. I don't love re-grinding the levels to collect different colors of coins, but it does add replay. But more levels would also provide replay value and be far more interesting.

I'm not sure it was worth the $10, but at the same time I don't have any regrets for spending that money. I will say that the first three levels in the demo are not representative. A better representation would have been 1-1, 2-1, and 3-1. Things get more complex and interesting after the demo.

Also yeah, I've played the whole thing and I only got the extra download the first time I launched it. Scrypt I imagine you might have some other issue there.

Couple corrections:

1. It's called "Tour" not "Journey."

2. I was wrong about the pipes-- those don't require rallies, just pink/purple/black coins. The rainbow roads do require rallies.

Damn: http://www.wsj.com/articles/nintendo-shares-fall-after-super-mario-run-disappoints-1482142448

I have been playing a shit ton of rally. It is probably my favorite part of the game at this time.

The problem I have with rally is that your progress can be entirely halted by how well other people have played the levels in what amounts to single player. You're competing against the "ghost" of runs past. So I'll play and do really well and get 50 or so new toads then do less well or get outplayed by the ghosts of other players and lose nearly all of them. It's just frustrating. Halting progress is commonplace in video games, but *losing* progress, in a world building segment of a game, because you did poorly in a faux-multiplayer segment, just seems weird.

So since the game stops showing you players who are less than a few toads lower than you, we'll play up to a point where we can't progress, because everyone above us is better than we are.

I wanted to see what the princess cake unlockable was all about so I watched a youtube video. A guy with almost perfect runs was having a little trouble gaining the toads he needed because everyone with more toads was so damn good.

But I keep playing it because I have so many tickets. Your max is 99 and I've hit that a couple times. And with those bonus games that are easy to unlock you basically have infinite tickets. So why have tickets at all?

And plus I'd like to unlock the remaining two characters.

I guess the one thing I don't dislike about the rally is the actual gameplay-- the randomized chunks of levels makes for good replay, but the fact that you're playing against someone is a frustration for the above reasons.

I'd say something even as simple as only losing half as many from a loss would give you the opportunity to progress a little further but the problems still persist.

Combine that with total random opponents instead of those ranked higher with you, and your chances of advancing go up while your losses are minimized.

You still have risk, you still have reward.

I love racing against the ghost. I also don't mind losing toads. It knocks you back so you can win again! It all works for me. :)

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.

This sounds truly awesome. I've played video games like this before, but doing it in person sounds even better!

There's one minutes from here: https://puzzlr.us

I gotta try this out!

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.