The Community Spotlight - 03/27/2015

Hey everyone! ZombiePie's been putting these community showcases together for years now, and it's well past time to get them more prominently featured. As such, we're going to be hosting them on the homepage moving forward. Although my name's on the byline, ZombiePie deserves all the credit for putting them together. Enjoy! - Rorie

Hello and welcome to the latest edition of the Giant Bomb Community Spotlight. Do not attempt to adjust your computer monitors, YES this edition of the Spotlight is indeed on the frontpage of Giant Bomb rather than being pinned to the forums. Today marks an exciting moment for myself, the Spotlight, and the Giant Bomb Community. Together we are going to experiment and explore new avenues, formats, and activities to more effectively spread the word about the best content that the Giant Bomb Community has to offer every week. However, I would first like to thank Mr. Rorie, Jeff, and all of the members of the staff for allowing this to happen, and of course all of you for continually providing me with the amazing material to justify this happening in the first place. Thank you, and this is and always has been for you.

State of the Site

It goes without saying that the format of the Community Spotlight will be tinkered with in future editions. If you have any suggestions on how to better present community content please feel free to present your ideas and thoughts in the comments below. For this week we will be maintaining the standard format as with previous editions, but I will be taking all of your suggestions for future editions very seriously.

As seen on the banner Dan made a guest appearance on the Comedy Button Podcast which you can catch over here. In regards to site related housekeeping there a few announcements worth sharing. First off if you were having issues posting on the forumsthe issue should be fixed now thanks to the hard efforts of the engineering team. Another issue that the engineers are actively dealing with are the CSFR Token Errors which have been hitting some users on the site. If you have experienced a CSFR Token Error please drop a comment here. Speaking of the engineers they would like for anyone that is still having issues with the Giant Bomb video player to go ahead and run a special diagnostic test to help them locate potential sources to these issues.

Clip(s) of the Week

The first video of the week comes from @turboman who has a new edition of his "Best of Giant Bomb" video series. This episode is all about Dan playing games with his father. The second video comes from the Guilty Gear Xrd Weekly Tournament Group, which you can join here, in the form of an archive of their last tournament.

Awesome Artwork

The first image comes from Kyle G on Twitter who shares his best attempt to create Charlie Tunoka in Bloodborne. The next set of images come from Stochastic Gamer on Tumblr who was inspired by last year's Halloween UPF.

Gallery

Community Activities

• Giant Bomb Bloodborne Community Group - Get the Password to Join the Group Over HERE!
• Giant Bomb Community Game Jam - Starting NOW - You Still Have Time to Join the Effort Over HERE!
• Giant Bomb Community Endurance Run Royal Rumble - NOW WITH MATT RORIE - Learn How You Can Join the Madness and Raise Money for Charity Over HERE!

Wonderful Wikis

The community is just buzzing about Bloodborne and Pillars of Eternity this week and luckily for many users we have some nicely done wiki pages for both of them. Also, a very special thanks is in store for @bobafettjm for doing the research to figure out what Agent Alice was about last week.

• Bloodborne
• Pillars of Eternity
• Agent Alice

Best of Blogs

MeesterO has been playing Final Fantasy XIV for a year and a half now, and has two massive and well written blogs not only detailing his thoughts about the game, but also an explanation as to what keeps bringing him back. Marokai on the other hand got nostalgic for Front Mission 4 which he not only enjoys playing today, but defends as being the "last true Front Mission" in North America. While they oftentimes get a bad rap kyle_is_1derful details his long and overall enjoyable relationship with sports based video games. TurboMan is back with avengance this week with a new and always entertaining edition to his "Best of Giant Bomb" video series. Meanwhile thatpinguino has another Deep Look, but with this edition breaks-down how you can quickly beat all of the bosses from Beatrix 1 to Beatrix 2 in FFIX. Speaking of Final Fantasy games GrantHeaslip continues with his retrospective of FFXIII with a detailed look at how the game sets up the Pulse Verge. Sweep has some pointers on how to beat The Last of Us under the "Grounded" difficulty setting. Mento joined the rest of the community in playing Pillars of Eternity, but went the whole mile in writing a blog about his first impressions of the game. Mento also played the parricide heavy visual novel Long Live the Queen as part of his long running Comic Commish blog series. bobafettjm is happy to discuss all of the good work that he has done on the Giant Bomb wiki this week, and always welcomes you to join him. TheAcidSkull stands by his claim that The Assignment is the best example of DLC he has ever played on his review blog. Tarfuin extrapolates on why he enjoyed Ori and the Blind Forest despite having some issues with how it controlled. Finally MooseyMcMan played catchup with a myriad of PlayStation Plus games this week, and discusses each game in great detail.

• Living the Fantasy: A Year and a Half of A Realm Reborn Part 2.1 (By: @meestero)
• Living the Fantasy: A Retrospective of a Year and a Half of A Realm Reborn (By: @meestero)
• Revisiting the Last True Front Mission that North America was Blessed With (By: @marokai)
• My Other Passion: Sports (By: @kyle_is_1derful)
• Best of Giant Bomb 75 (By: @turboman)
• Grounded and Grounded NG+ [Spoilers] (By: @sweep)
• Revisiting FFXIII #005 – Everyone to the Bad Place! (By: @grantheaslip)
• So I Just Played: Ori and the Blind Forest (by: @tarfuin)
• Pillars of Eternity: First Impressions (By: @mento)
• The Comic Commish: Long Live the Queen (By: @mento)
• The Evil Within DLC - The Assignment Review (By: @theacidskull)
• Weekly Wiki Update Sunday, March 22, 2015 (By: @bobafettjm)
• Deep Look: Final Fantasy IX- Speed Run Tips: Beatrix To Beatrix (By: @thatpinguino)
• PlayStation Plus Catch Up: March 2015 (By: @mooseymcman)

Fantastic Forums

In terms of the forums everyone is welcomed to share tips and tricks that you have discovered while playing Pillars of Eternity and/or Bloodborne. We also have general discussion and impressions sharing threads for both Pillars of Eternity AND Bloodborne. We also have a new Tips and Tricks thread for Helldivers. Another opportunity to learn about new games can be found in a user run "Ask Me Anything" thread by chuugoku for the latest iOS/Android Final Fantasy game. Finally can you think of a really monotonous boss fight that you had to deal with in a game you liked? Well that's the topic of debate for this week's community discussion of the week.

• Pillars of Eternity General Discussion Thread (By: @artisanbreads)
• Pillars of Eternity Starting Class Discussion Thread (By: @mb)
• Bloodborne Tips and Tricks Thread (By: @sackmanjones)
• Bloodborne First Impressions Thread (By: @fredchuckdave)
• Bloodborne (Best) Weapon Discussion Thread (By: @nophilip)
• Helldivers Tips and Tricks Thread (By: @giantstalker)
• Long-Winded Monotonous Boss Fights in Games You Like (By: @hypnotoadbrwowrowrow)
• Ask Me Anything about FF Record Keeper! (By: @chuugoku)

Lovable Lists

ATD88 continues his theme of examining the Final Fantasy franchise, but this week he looks at the games in the series that really made the effort to break the standard JRPG mold. Doppelgamer on the other hand looked at the collection of games that he owns but has yet to play and added them to his "Hall of Shame" list. Finally Eder reveals his longstanding love for League of Legends with a list of his ten favorite champions in the game.

• Final Fantasy: When The Series Went Off The Beaten Path (By: @atd88)
• Hall of Shame (By: @doppelgamer)
• Top 10 Favorite League of Legends Champions (By: @eder)

User User Reviews

• @wemibelec90's review of Tales of Xillia 2
• @mento's review of Weapon Shop de Omasse
• @geekcomplex's review of Resident Evil: Revelations 2 Episode 4
• @vert_vermillion's review of Code Name: S.T.E.A.M.
• @dinoracha's review of Lisa
• @jaypb08's review of Cities: Skylines

Author's Note: Do YOU want YOUR blog, review, list, or forum topic on the next Community Spotlight? Then just send me a PM with a link to your content and I'll promote it to the best of my abilities!

There is an official community spotlight now? Neat!

Awesome to see this on the front page now!

It's really cool that this is on the main page! You're moving up in the world, ZP! Or something like that!

Also, thanks for including my blog, as always. And thanks to whoever put my PAX blog on the front page too. Was that you? I seriously don't know.

LOCAL ZOMBIEPIE MAKES GOOD

Congrats on having your hard work featured more prominently ZombiePie and well done to everyone featured this week!

@rorie: Could we get Marino's wrestlemania site added to either this community spotlight, or the next one? He doesn't want to add it himself for fear of self promotion, but it's pretty awesome and deserves some exposure!

Exciting stuff. I hope having the spotlight in a more public venue encourages more community output.

This is a great feature! I get bummed out when I go a day without new giantbomb content. Is that sad?

Cool seeing this on the front page. I try my best to check out the community showcase, but always forget to check it. This will make it much easier.

So great to put this as a feature on the main page! I see these every week, and honestly never click on them. But being more prominently placed will probably bug me enough to give the damn things a look.

Duders are endlessly making great stuff here, and it's really encouraging and I'm sure rewarding to get more eyes on all of these cool things.

Great to see the spot light on the front page.

Good on you guys for giving this a more prominent placement

Awesome.

Yes! I always click this when I run across it in the forums, but putting it on the front page means I won't miss it. And it's a pretty good way to put up some impromptu weekend content.

Cool. My next hope is that someone starts running a community question of the week, with high quality, Lemon-like videos that we can curate ourselves.

This is awesome! It is about time @zombiepie's awesome feature made its way to the front page of the site. I always love seeing how many people put stuff together in this community and its great that more community output is getting surfaced.

Thanks for the spotlight this week!

Wow, its been a while since I've listened to the comedy button. will check out that podcast, thanks.

I super appreciate being featured this week, I'm having a lot of fun revisiting XIV, and this makes me super psyched to get part 3 up later tonight. Thanks again!

Great to see ZP and the community's work, blogs, and reviews featured on the front end of the site. Just, uh, don't tell Zombie I ever said anything positive about him. He'll be squealing at me for weeks.

Good on GB for putting this in a more prominent spot.

Sweet!

"Turboman is back with avengance", takes me back to checking Patrick's articles :P

And I can't be the only one who thinks it's weird to refer to Rorie as Mr. Rorie? I know it's technically correct, but it just sounds weird to me.

This is the right way to do this stuff, so I don't have to read it/watch it. Question of the Week was always a disaster, showcasing the worst kind of people in the segment of the populace with which I identify myself. Now, if I come across something stupid, it's my own damn fault. I still love Mondays, even if the Bomb doesn't.

Cool shit!

I may have to start giving this some attention...

About damn time!

I just want to add my voice to the throng of people who are saying this is a great idea. Well done, zombie, and thank you, Rorie.

About time indeed.

Glad we have these up here right now. I think showcasing the community content as much as possible is really important and ZombiePie is a hero for putting this thing together every week.

It's about damn time. Congrats zombie.

I agree this is awesome to have on the front page. Here is some (hopefully good) feedback purely on a layout basis:

- For the "Fantastic Forums" and "Best of Blogs" sections I found it a bit hard to dig through the block of text above the links to find the description for each link. You could put the description of each link under it in a line, or even use the format Patrick used to use for Worth Reading (see the last section "Oh, And This Other Stuff" for a one line idea).

- To save you some typing, you could easily pare down some lines. For example, this line:

• Giant Bomb Community Game Jam - Starting NOW - You Still Have Time to Join the Effort Over HERE!

Could be just

• Giant Bomb Community Game Jam starting NOW - You Still Have Time to Join the Effort

- Also, the use of bold and caps is (in totally my own opinion) a bit over the top. With so much stuff highlighted, my eyes just glaze over and don't focus on anything really. For example, that same line could be written as

• Giant Bomb Community Game Jam starting now - You still have time to join the effort

to focus my attention that it is now starting, instead of all 3 lines of that section being in bold.

Thanks for writing this all up and bringing it to the fore. It's a great summary of all the stuff I tend to miss.

I like this idea. Looking forward to more posts.

@comprox: Next week will feature a format more like "Worth Reading"

It will be done.

I always refer to the Giant Bomb staff by their proper names. Much to the chagrin of the staff and my fellow moderators.

Cool feature, I've needed something like this up front and center.

Huh! Brave new world

Hey that was a really good read, even created a small bookmark folder in my Bookmarks bar "GB Recommended Links" that's ready to be filled by things like these. Keep them coming and keep the same format!!

This is a good thing and a great idea, Rorie.

Revisiting the Last True Front Mission that North America was Blessed With (By: @marokai)

Good luck with that one, man. It's a real step down from 3.

This is awesome!

It's great to see these on the front page! Awesome job!

This is a great move to finally get eyes on the content this great community is making week to week. I'm happy seeing it get more recognition. Maybe it will actually motivate me to write a blog more than once every few months.

@chillicothe: I went back to 3 at some point and it's still an amazing game, with so many things stylistically I love more than 4 (which has a very bland, sterile presentation) but one thing that bummed me out was that the maps are just so small in comparison. The way things go for being on the Ps1 I guess, but I liked how 4 managed to flesh out the stages with larger maps and more mechs in battles at once. I just can't pick a favorite, don't make me!

Took you guys long enough. GB is nothing without it's community. Hopefully this inspires more people to make more cool stuff.

PUSH ZOMBIEPIE

Wow! Awesome to see this on the frontpage. Good stuff ZombiePie!

Zombiepie on the come-up.

This is awesome! :D

Bank tellers and Zombiepie are the two peoples from which you will hear "Mr. Rorie".

I will listen to this episode of the Comedy Button, but that will probably be it. That podcast is not so good...The rest of the Geekbox podcasts are good though, and so is Rebel FM. But man, The Comedy Button.... you know what I'm not going to say anything else and leave it at that.

Come and listen to the "Greatest Podcast Ever Recorded".

We only recorded one episode, and it wasn't all that great. Maybe we should have actually got great people to be on it.

Probably should have been on the homepage for awhile right? Good to see that it is now!

Eventually, Question of the Week will come back... I'm still waiting!