The Community Spotlight - 03/08/2013

WELCOME!

Hello and welcome to the latest edition of the Giant Bomb Community Spotlight! The engineers are still ironing out some leftover issues with the new site, but the live stream content is coming at a furious rate. There's a new "New releases" show featuring Giant Bomb and GameSpot staff members working to showcase you all of the latest games. Have any thoughts on the show? Go ahead and share you thoughts on the discussion thread for the new show over here. Also worth noting is that Patrick is planning on playing Monster Hunter 3 Ultimate and if you are a fan of the series wants your advice on playing the game. Finally if you haven't read Jeff's comment on changing review scores after publishing them, you should. szlifier's Quick Look search engine that allows you to filter Quick Looks by staff members is nothing short of amazing.

Community Activities

• Giant Bomb Community TrackMania 2 Stadium Server - Join the Trackmania Madness Over Here!
• Giant Bomb SimCity PC/Origin Friends List - Have Other GB Users Join Your Regions Over Here!
• Share Your Etrian Odyssey IV Guild Cards - Share Your Cards and ER Codes Over Here!

Wonderful Wikis

Tomb Raider and SimCity are the big releases this week and not only are they both reboots that have dropped their numbering, but they both have detailed wiki pages. Also for both pages go back and check out the Lara Croft and SimCity 2000 pages to read up their wonderful history. Baseball season is drawing near and that means that the major baseball games are coming out, MLB 13: The Show most notably. Finally you can always count on the fire Emblem wiki editing community to provide a great character wiki page as seen with the new and improved Gaius page.

• Tomb Raider
• Lara Croft
• SimCity
• SimCity 2000
• MLB 13: The Show
• Gaius

Best of Blogs

The passes for PAX East 2013 are being sent out this week and that means that Marino has provided another PAX Guide to PAX which should be required reading for any PAX first timers. Blogging machine Video_Game_King graces you with two blogs this week with one providing an in-depth analysis of the box art for Persona 3: FES and the other plunging into the depths by detailing his experiences with Bioshock and The Little Mermaid. Humanity explains why he's starting to get bummed out by all the cynicism he has noticed recently proliferate the video game community. Related to SimCity spiralcut shares his rants on the launch day issues with SimCity. In light of the launch issues with SimCity TheAdmin discusses his expectations and hopes for always online games. thatpinguino recently went back to Final Fantasy VIII and explains how developers could learn a lot on how to deal with random encounters in role-playing games. Inspired by Matthew Rorie's employment luck and Unprofessional Fridays Mento whipped up a very dog centered blog detailing his adventures in Dog's Life and Okami. Phatmac finally got his hands on Fire Emblem: Awakening and shares his thoughts in a very detailed blog this week. Finally humphreys shares his perspective on the Mass Effect series as someone who has just played all three games back to back.

• Marino's PAX Guide v3.0 (By: @marino)
• What Happens When I Stare at Box Art for Fifteen Minutes (By: @video_game_king)
• See If YOU Can Spot the Theme Behind this Blog (By: @video_game_king)
• Games are Serious Business, Apparently (By: @humanity)
• Expectations of Cloud/Always-On Games in 2013 (By: @theadmin)
• Redefining the Enemy Encounter: Battles in Final Fantasy VIII (By: @thatpinguino)
• A Rorie Collie Palace: The Dog Blog (By: @mento)
• My Thoughts on Fire Emblem: Awakening (By: @phatmac)
• Back to Back, the Mass Effect Trilogy (By: @humphreys)
• SimCity Pre-Release Rant (By: @spiralcut)

Fantastic Forums

Again, szlifier's Quick Look search engine that allows you to filter Quick Looks by staff members is amazing! Check it out if you haven't already! With two upcoming game conventions hook-up with and set up meeting places with other users on the PAX East 2013 and SXSW Gaming Expo discussion threads. Find any great free apps or games for the iPhone? Well share them on the Free App attention thread! Finally Seppli asks you to think of your favorite games with difficulty scaling and SpudBug discusses why the "Why does this game exist" question is incredibly reductive.

• Quick Look Crew - The Ultimate Quick Look Filtering Tool (By: @szlifier)
• Good Examples of Accomplished Difficulty Scaling? (By: @seppli)
• Free App Attention Thread (By: @sexytoad)
• Who's Going to PAX East 2013? (By: @albedo12)
• Anyone Going to the SXSW Gaming Expo this Weekend? (By: @agammon)
• The "Why Does This Game Exist" Question (By: @spudbug)

Lovable Lists

This week abbyrose shares the most disappointing games ever released. EightBitWarrior on the other hand has created a video Game of the Year list detailing every single game that would take his game of the year award since his birth.

• My Most Disappointing Games (By: @abbyrose)
• My Game of the Year Awards (Since the Year I Was Born) (By: @eightbitwarrior)

Useful User Reviews

• @gonmog's user review of Tomb Raider
• @stealthmaster86's user review of Tomb Raider
• @meauntienora's user review of Tomb Raider
• @gamer_152's user review of Spec Ops: the Line
• @video_game_king's user review of Bioshock
• @demoskinos user review of Metal Gear Solid Rising: Revengeance

Jeff's into Monster Hunter, too? When will the Monster Hunter illness end?

Yea, that describes me pretty damn well.

And finally, HOW THE EFFING HELL DID I FORGET ABOUT THIS!? I posted it yesterday!

Jeff has some very interesting things to say about Monster Hunter.

Aye, finally my Rising review gets its proper due. I should really get this Ni No Kuni blog out the door soon.

@video_game_king: I don't see any Jeff there -_-;; Am I missing something?

@fobwashed:

That's the joke. @zombiepie linked the wrong thing, and I'm kind of giving him crap for it.

I've just posted user reviews for Uncharted 2 (HERE) and Hitman HD Trilogy (HERE) if anyone wants to check them out.

One day I will publish a typo and error free Spotlight...and it will be glorious.

Damn you all!

A few Duders and I started a Giantbomb EVE corp a couple of weeks ago, we've got about 65 members as of right now and are super newbie friendly,

link to the forum thread Here (info on how to join / get 21 day trials)

Cool, thanks for the notification.

Posting this so I don't forget later in the week, but I wrote last weekend about Metal Gear Rising on my blog here.

I have a blog thing here, and I'm not sure if it counts as it wasn't published this week, but I also did this which hasn't been featured here before, and here is another thing I did with some people.

After about fifteen minutes fiddling around with the blog tools because I clicked the wrong option and the site isn't clear about how to fix this, Renegade Ego.

No lists this week, sorry. I do have the new comic blog and a Tomb Raider review for anyone interested. I'm just kind of adding to a big pile with the latter, but then I don't imagine I'll be playing many new games this year.

Oddly enough for this week I have plenty of non-Mento based lists to showcase for this week.

But what about for this week?

We're still fine. Despite bugs and editing issues people are still making lists at an admirable rate.

@zombiepie:

You didn't get the joke, did you? Even after editing?

The latest Spotlight is up over here.