The Community Spotlight - 02/22/2013

Hello and welcome to the latest edition of the Giant Bomb Community Spotlight! The community is still getting use to both the new site and the announcement of the next Playstallion the Playstallion 4. Our very own Jeff Gerstmann discussed the announcement of the new Equus based platform on Gamespot, and Adam Sessler (yes, on Adam Sessler). If that wasn't shocking enough Brad Muir revealed he was in a Ska Band where he played the saxophone! How is that even possible? Finally best wishes to all of the fine men and women at 1Up and GameSpy, especially Matthew Rorie, after losing their jobs. On that dower note here's a YouTube video of the Bombcast theme masked up with the Saint's Row: The Third garage music:

Important New Site Stuff

• PSA For Users Who've Been Suddenly Banned For No Reason
• Giant Bomb Video FAQ
• What We're Working On the New Site (By Dave) - UPDATING CONSTANTLY

Community Activities

• Giant Bomb Guild War 2 Guild Thread REDUX - The GB Community Guild Thread is Under NEW MANAGEMENT!

Wonderful Wikis

All hail the "new" Brad Muir! Give him your saxophones to help his ska band take over the world! Oh and Metal Gear Rising: Revengeance came out and it has an impress wiki page thanks to the Giant bomb community. I personally worked on the Michael Jordan wiki page to detail all of the "important" games he has appeared in.

• Brad Muir (Begun the Main Wiki Page Image Wars Have)
• Metal Gear Rising: Revengeance
• Michael Jordan

Best of Blogs

Big shout out to charlie_victor_bravo for finally coming out and announcing that he's the user on YouTube making the bootleg GameBomb.ru Bombastica videos. You should check out his latest video for Demolition Girl. benspyda shares some of his personal Sonic the Hedgehog fan art, and buzz_clik discusses an odd Japanese robot puzzle game you probably have never heard of. gogosox82 got around to playing the Dragonborn DLC for Skyrim and discusses if it's worth your time. Video_Game_King got horrifying with Penumbra: Overture and Splatterhouse, whereas Sarumarine discusses why dead Space 3 lacks horror because it added a bunch of stuff it shouldn't have. FLStyle gives you a summary of the upcoming events from the Winter lineup for the Fighting Game Community. In anticipation for Metal Gear Rising LegitFruitSnack finally completed every game in the Metal gear Solid franchise and discusses which game is his favorite on his latest blog. thabigred blogged about why a lot of games utilize archipelagos when creating open worlds, and GrantHeaslip returns to the world of Final Fantasy XIII as he continues to attempt to play through the entire game. ildon laments about how going through Black Mesa Source highlighted issues with the original Half-Life that he didn't notice the first time around, and mrcool11 explains why he really enjoyed Mass Effect 3, including its ending, now that he's beaten it. Mento details how video games have integrated meteors into their stories and Cretaceous_Bob provides a synopsis about he recent foray into The Elder Scrolls III: Morrowind. Finally IrishDoom blogs about his tolerance for games that are incredibly difficult.

• Encyclopedia Bombastica (Bootleg Edition): Demolition Girl (PS2) (By: charlie_vitor_bravo)
• Artistic Aint It! (By: benspyda)
• TES V: Skyrim Dragonborn Thoughts *Spoilers* (By: gogosox82)
• The Unholy Terror of President's Day (By: Video_Game_King)
• Winter Brawl 7 (Feb 23rd - 24th) Preview & More FGC & EVO News! (By: FLStyle)
• Recently Played: Dead Space 3 (By: Sarumarine)
• Metal Gear Solid Series Completed (By: LegitFruitSnack)
• Black Mesa vs. Half-life (By: ildon)
• Final Fantasy XIII Part 10: Cie’th Stones (By: GrantHeaslip)
• Dealing with Ultra Difficulty - How Often is Patience the Answer? (By: Irishdoom)
• The Brilliant Accident of Morrowind (By: Cretaceous_Bob)
• I Beat Mass Effect 3 and Did Not Despise It (By: mrcool11)
• Meteor, Meet Eeyore (By: Mento)
• Let's Talk About the Archipelago Effect in Open World (By: thabigred)
• Miniature Robots are Screwing with my Brain (By: buzz_clik)

Fantastic Forum

If you haven't heard 1Up.com is closing, as well as GameSpy, so join LordAndrew in posting your 1Up.com user stats. Fellow friend in arms BoG has created a forum topic discussing teh best RPG battle systems. Fobwashed asks if the lack of a forum feed on the front page has impacted your use of the site. If you haven't noticed Jeff's Gaming Minute Radio feature has joined the Bombcast on the Podcast portal, so discuss your thoughts of the feature. Finally show off the profile banners you have on your profile on the Banner Sharing Thread.

• Game Over for LordAndrew as He Runs Out of 1UPs (By: LordAndrew)
• Great RPG Battle Systems (By: BoG)
• Has the Removal of Forum Activity from the Main Page Altered your Forum Use? (By: Fobwashed)
• CBS Gaming Minute Discussion Thread (By: CH3BURASHKA)
• Profile Banner Sharing Thread (By: DaMisterChief)

Lovable List

The announcement of the Playstallion 4 got TepidShark into a frenzy as he has already listed the five games for the platform he can't wait for. Nikral was recently reminded about the old days of LAN parties and as such has created a list of his favorite games to play during LAN parties. Finally wastlanderone has taken up the insurmountable task of listing every single "Diablo-like" game ever made. Help him out if you can.

• Top 5 PS4 Games I Am Interested In After the February Reveal (By: TepidShark)
• Top LAN Party Games (By: Nikral)
• Ginormous List of Diablo Clones (By: wastelanderone)

Useful User Reviews

• baldgye's user review of Metal Gear Rising: Revengeance
• Master_Prophet's user review of Metal Gear Rising: Revengeance
• wumbo3000's user review of Stacking

User Created Podcasts

• TL;DL 23: These Guys

Some investigative journalism going on at the gamewise thread, "It's a website about video games. It's a video game website, about video games! You can find out about videogames there such as plagiarism, apis (maybe) or a good old fashion dude copying and pasting for 8 months (speculation!!!)"

http://www.giantbomb.com/forums/general-discussion-30/gamewise-co-importing-assets-from-giantbomb-1425724/?page=1

Gamewise

Whoa whoa whoa. All these forum threads and not mention of the greatest issue that divided the Giantbomb community since the Hamburger "Is it a sandwich or not?" discussions?

Good to know that I'm a power bottom....I think.

That's such a great picture.

@cirdain: I'm glad that I got to see this Gamewise happen in person and live. It reminds me of the crazy user "outings," like for ItalyCanadian.

Man, original launch Giant Bomb was crazy....

@demoskinos: 312 votes. 50:50 exactly.

We discussed the PS4 in a (very) lengthy podcast. It's not too bad!

http://www.giantbomb.com/profile/chavtheworld/blog/podcast-the-mighty-electronic-box-ps4-edition/99672/

I really wish they called it the Playstallion 4.

I think people are intentionally avoiding my thread due to the horrible attempt at a pun in the title. I put a lot of effort into making it horrible, so I'm glad to see it's paying off.

@lordandrew: Play-stallion 4

I normally don't promote my stuff on here since you're usually so good about parsing through my stuff and figuring out what's worth putting out there, but since friend feeds are down for the moment, I thought I'd clue you in to a review I just posted for the Japanese version of Disaster Report on the PS2. Not what I'd call a particularly conventional piece, but I found talking about the game in more abstract terms to be a fun writing exercise, at least.

This is it. 300 blogs. And one.

(Also, I really love how my "this thing goes all the way to the top" comment in the Gamewise scandal turned out to be exactly what was going on.)

I wish I had a tally of how many Spotlights I've authored and how many comments they had, but the statistics for that would be warped considering that for the longest time I use to have the single stickied Community Spotlight topic.

@zombiepie:

I wrote a thing. I hope you'll find it within your heart to include me this time, after skipping over my previously published blog.

Fatbomb: A Tale of Five Cities

http://www.giantbomb.com/profile/fattony12000/blog/fatbomb-a-tale-of-five-cities/99724/

Well, gee, I've been busy this week: Wrote something on the PS4 conference (and the site), wrote something on this month's Turbografx-16 game and wrote something that looks like a Video_Game_King something that he already mentioned. Oh, and a list about Genesis games.

You can check out my review of BioShock... I don't know if it is relevant at all to the community spotlight since it is such an old game, but check it out anyway if you are interested.

@plainplease:

The scary thing is that I have a BioShock review going up next week.

@mento: I have you down for this week as having published three notable blogs this week, tying your old record for most blogs on a single Spotlight.

Zombleplie, lok, and blog.

The latest Spotlight is up over here.

@Video_Game_King how serendipitous! I look forward to reading yours.