There is a Barbie mermaid bath toy that makes girls eager to take a bath at the end of a hot summer day. On the web, Blizzard typically posts links to news coverage at the end of each day of the convention and, of course, WoW Insider will be staying on top of the news — but your favorite WoW, StarCraft, Heroes of the Storm, Hearthstone, or Diablo site will be sure to have the latest, too. But of course, Mario is nothing without his brother Luigi. They will be available separately, of course, but they will also be available in the new Legacy Pack, which I will discuss a bit later in this column. Despite that though, I’ve just replaced my Xbox, so I will be pouring some serious time into Batman: Arkham City. In practice, though, the things I like about the idea aren’t in evidence much — or at least, not yet. Seriously, though, that was all speculation. Less trustworthy than a Ferengi loan shark and more useless than a neutered Tribble, Ryan Greene beams Captain’s Log straight into your mind every Thursday, filling your brainhole with news, opinions and reckless speculation about Star Trek Online.

Currently in development by Team NINJA, more details about DEAD OR ALIVE 5 Last Round will be revealed in the coming months. There’s no zombie apocalypse game out there quite like The Last Of Us, which tells the heart-crushing story of Ellie and Joel. This was, I believe, a direct result of the plot having to keep time with frequent content releases, and trying to maintain a connection between story elements while swapping through wildly different game activities and settings. If you give your players a little plot of land and some stuff they can build in that plot of land, you will have happy players that will busily and joyfully create their own content for hours upon hours. However, we’re pretty much waiting on big stuff for the foreseeable future anyway, which makes the difference matter a lot less to me. Expansions aren’t likely to suffer from that as much since they’re designed and released as a whole, but I’m a little concerned that the living story might always have to contend with it.

With the latest direction the novels have been taking, they’re becoming less of a tool to tell stories that weren’t told, and more of a tool to deliver the nuances of current story that can’t be shown in game. As always, Costume Quest 2 is really an adventure game masquerading as an RPG, with traversal puzzles and fetch quests comprising the bulk of the gameplay. The folks at Cryptic could encounter trouble if they bundle too many popular mission storylines into purchaseable “adventure packs,” but the CO beta experience will give them a good idea of how to balance that give-and-take. I love the idea that major content such as new playable races, new skills and new zones can appear organically at any time instead of being bound to an expansion pack — not least because it means I might not have to wait up to five years to roll both a Tengu and a Largos (I know, I know. I learned basic sewing skills from my mom when I was a kid.

I imagine the Foundry would assume some sort of hybrid status. Right out of the gate, that pretty much would gank any illusion that STO was going free-to-play in any enjoyable sort of way. We’ve been busy! ArenaNet has continued to toss content our way at lightning speed, and unlike many of the previous releases, much of the content in the past month has been in the form of permanent adjustments to the game. The following feature contains substantial spoilers for the game Xenoblade Chronicles. Garmin is offering Twitch broadcasters and other game streamers a way to layer their heart rate and other metrics into their streams, with an Esports Edition of its Instinct GPS smartwatch. It’s entirely possible that I feel this way because I’m too used to expansions to know any better; free expansion-level content would be a pretty big deal in an MMO of GW2’s size (for certain values of “free”; I’ve got a crippling makeover kit habit that regularly drains me of both gems and dignity). I’m sure the writers have a narrative in mind, but it’s hard to know how much balance ANet is intending to maintain between story and gameplay, and how much the lore might need to bend, twist or retcon its way into providing explanations for eclectic bits of update content from week to week.