The Community Spotlight - 01/30/2015 (MARIO PARTY EDITION)

Hello and welcome to the latest edition of the Giant Bomb Community Spotlight, and I am honored to be your host as always. Let's enjoy our very own Mario party this week!

State of the Site and Housekeeping

A lot of users have been reporting issues in regards to the Giant Bomb chat and live stream systems. If you have been having issues site engineer @jslack would like for you to click a link that he has to try and locate/determine the source of the issue. @rorie wants for all users that were not able to purchase a premium account during at any point last week to send him a yelp at support at giantbomb.com. Finally, friend of the site Pat Baer has posted the video recording of his 404ing It panel during PAX South which features Jeff, Samantha Kalman, and Trin Garritano.

Awesome Artwork

This week we once again have a slew of emblems from the Giant Bomb Warframe Clan, but this time they are asking for YOUR INPUT on which emblem they should use. @saik0u has created a banner for the Mario Party 3 stream, whereas @fobwashed gives Dan the victory he secretly wants in his wrestling inspired artwork. jackelzxa has an idea of what Dan's two favorite things are in a pencil sketch. jrdizon went to PAX South and took pictures of himself with the GB staff and the Dr. Tracksuit alpaca toy he made. Finally arcanesylph is on a roll with great artwork about the staff and their feelings about another Mario Party stream.

Gallery

Community Activities

• Giant Bomb Guild Thread Mk. III - Lincoln Force Has Been REBOOTED - Check out the New Guild Thread Here!

Wonderful Wikis

Mario Party 3 is a good game, and I enjoy playing Mario Party. There I said it. So if you have a heart and a soul check out our awesome Mario Party 3 page as well as our well done Waluigi page. Also, good work has recently been done to our Teslagrad page.

• Mario Party 3
• Waluigi
• Teslagrad

Best of Blogs

It is all about the artwork this week, and as you can see one of the big highlights comes from @aurahack and @bboymaestro. Mento and thatpinguino both have the distinction of creating multiple blogs this week. Mento spent the week pontificating upon Lightning Returns, whereas thatpinguino shared his thoughts on Magic the Gathering and his progress as a blogger and a writer about video games. Yummylee has written the MOST COMPREHENSIVE breakdown about the good and bad of the recent Resident Evil HD Remaster. JBG4 once again welcomes you with a weekly update on what he played in the last week, in the meantime FLStyle welcomes you to discuss the latest Fighting Game Community event. armaan8014 finally completed Assassin's Creed: Unity and details his final thoughts on the game, and why he disliked it overall. el_tajij admits to being a League of Legends fan, and from that perspective writes about his thoughts on his time with Heart of the Storm. Finally, Ford_Dent has the second part to his blog series about visiting a modern arcade and the sorry state of them.

• You Have Once Again Entered... The World of Survival Horror... Good Luck! (By: @yummylee)
• What Is Lightning Returns? (Part 1) [Part 2, Part 3, and Part 4] (By: @mento)
• Deep Look: South Park: TSOT- The "Less Is More" Combat (By: @thatpinguino)
• ThatPinguino's Magic Lessons: Morph Shenanigans (By: @thatpinguino)
• Looking Back on a Year of Video Game Writing (By: @thatpinguino)
• Aha! Is This Our Chance (to Pet Puppies)?? Giant Bomb x Persona Fanart (By: @aurahack)
• Happy Monday Duders - Far Cry 4, Wrestling, Big Reveal for Next Month 01/26/15 (By: @jbg4)
• APEX 2015 Preview (Jan 30 - Feb 1) PLUS EVO, Curleh, Reptile & PR Balrog Retiring (By: @flstyle)
• Final Impressions of AC: Unity (Story and impact) + Video Tribute! (By: @armaan8014)
• A Seasoned League of Legender's Take on the HotS Beta! (By: @el_tajij)
• Cavalcade of Arcade Sadness, Pt. 2 (By: @ford_dent)

Fantastic Forums

Do you think we will ever see a Mario Party 4 stream? Join the degenerate bet thread below. On top of that Resident Evil expert Yummylee wants to see which save room theme you think is the best in the series. Did you pick up any of the PS+ games for February, or have any of you had any luck running Dying Light on PC with reasonable settings? If none of those threads tickle your fancy we also have discussion arenas for Life is Strange, the Indigo Prophecy re-master, and the latest expansion for Guild Wars 2.

• Should the Bombcrew do Another Mario Party Party? (By: @imsh_pl)
• Favorite Resident Evil Save Room Theme? (By: @yummylee)
• Life Is Strange Episode 1 Discussion Thread (Spoiler Warning!) (By: @d_w)
• PS+ Games for February Discussion Thread (By: @altairre)
• Indigo Prophecy Re-Master Discussion Thread (By: @ntm)
• Heart of Thorns Expansion Details/Trailer Discussion Thread (By: @jack_lafayette)
• Dying Light PC Performance Sharing Thread (By: @doctordonkey)

Lovable Lists

Well I'm pretty sure that I said that I was going to put the kabosh on more 2014 GOTY list, but here we are and I still have some to share! Please check out joe423's and Karkarov's lists as they are worth reading over.

• Games That Didn't Come Out in 2014 That I Enjoyed a Lot in 2014 (By: @joe423)
• Day Late, Maybe Buck Short but 2014 Top 10, Here We Go! (By: @karkarov)

Useful User Reviews

• @addfwyn's review of Citizens of Earth
• @geekcomplex's review of Resident Evil HD Remaster

Many thanks! Well done to everyone else who made the Spotlight!

Oooh I missed that 404ing panel at PAX!

All of that art is fantastic. Great spotlight this week!

So I'm going to try and mix things up in terms of how notifications are sent when it comes to the Community Spotlight. Rather than sending notifications to users a day before the Spotlight comes out I am going to instead send notifications the day of, or slightly after. That means if you get a reply from me in regards to the Community Spotlight that means you can see your name RIGHT NOW, and I think you have done something awesome on the site! So let's try this for a couple of weeks and see how things go:

Artwork:@aurahack, @bboymaestro, @saik0u

Activities:@shinboy630(Guild Wars 2)

Blogs:@yummylee@mento [A collective British Menace], @thatpinguino, @jbg4, @flstyle (GET BOPPED!), @armaan8014, @el_tajij, and @ford_dent

Lists: @joe423 and @karkarov

Reviews:@addfwyn (Citizens of Earth) and @geekcomplex (Resident Evil HD Remaster)

Forums: @imsh_pl (Mario Party Discussion), @yummylee (More Resident Evil), @d_w (Life is Strange), @altairre (PS+ Games Discussion), @ntm (Indigo Prophecy Discussion), @jack_lafayette (Guild Wars 2: Heart of Thorns Discussion), @doctordonkey (Dyling Light PC Performance Thread)

Thank you everyone for your contributions this week! If you ever create anything cool or interesting on the site again to drop a link on the latest Spotlight and I'll showcase it.

Me? Something awesome? No, no, this can't be right...

Some great work by the community, this week! Those Warframe emblems are making me want to put more time into that game. Thanks, @zombiepie!

@zombiepie: Sounds good!

@zombiepie: Thanks for the mention Mr. ZPie! Your switch up on the community spotlight seems to make sense too.

Thanks for the mention. A bit surprising as I'm not so sure what made the thread special to warrant this, but cool! I guess it was awesome :P.

Thanks a lot for the spotlight duder! :D

A great spotlight, as always. I've been trying to get back into writing blogs at GB for random gaming-related stuff, and I just did a text dump of Stuff I played in January. I think I need to add a few pictures, though...

(EDIT: Went back and added pictures. Now it looks presentable! :P)

Aw, thanks for the mention (I'm arcanesylph on Twitter and Tumblr)! I'm trying to make a Jeff picture, but I keep fixing little mistakes that I make along the way. Eventually, though!

There you have it folks, I bought my way into the Spotlight! Haha glad @aurahack was cool enough to commission that little ditty. Speaking of Persona, I've got a look forward at Persona 5 after all these 3/4 games have been coming out in the works, so keep watch! Thanks @zombiepie

I did a review of The Wolf Among Us. Use this link if you don't want the site to bork it up.

I made a blog post detailing my surprise at Far Cry 4's decent attempt at a thoughtful story, with emphasis on the theme of morality in video games.

p.s. sorry if this double posts. Site's been screwy with me lately.

Two more blogs (Part Five and Finale) about Lightning Returns. I swear I'll talk about something else next week.

@jack_lafayette: @karkarov: @ntm: @armaan8014: No, thank you for your great work last week.

@kirlia: Anytime you make a new work feel free to drop me a link or PM! Tumblr can be a nightmare to keep a track of sometimes.

@bboymaestro: Thank you for the awesome work of art! It good to see @aurahack make artwork for stuff other than bullshit animes like Kill la Kill.

@tonicbh: @gamer_152: @gruebacca: You all should be covered for this week!

@zombiepie: sorry for the late response, work sucks!!!!

I actually wrote 2 this week, a regular Happy Monday Duders about Nintendo... and a WWE RAW review with a positive spin called, WWE RAW – Fork in the Road to WrestleMania 02/02/15.

Thanks, as always, for the hard work.

As a prelude to my Top 35 Most Anticipated Games of 2015, I wrote about all the games that were on my lists in previous years but still haven't come out yet.

The latest episode of the Giant Bomb Community Spotlight can be found here.