The Community Spotlight - 05/30/2014

Hello and welcome to the latest edition of the Giant Bomb Community Spotlight! E3 is drawing nigh my friends, and Vinny has officially relocated to New York! Issues with the chat should be fixed, however many of you may have noticed that there are issues with the notification system. For now file a big report over here to keep the engineers updated. Mr. Rorie would also like to inform everyone that he has a survey pertaining to Giant Bomb's subscription model. Mr. Rorie is also polling the community in regards to the status of the "Friends tab" on the Giant Bomb Live Chat. If you hate to see that feature go, tell him! Oh and for those of you that are looking forward to the Giant Bomb Moderator Run E3 Banner Contests...they are coming soon!

Community Art

Many thanks go to @monkeyking1969@damodar@icyeyes@rustyaries@graboids@monkeyman04@wrecks@spacedongle@wifipirate@glenmanalo(Tumblr)@grimgrinninggoats(Tumblr)

Gallery

Community Activities

• Watch Dogs Community Player List - All Platforms Welcome - Post Your XBL/PSN/UPlay/Steam IDs Over Here!
• Giant Bomb Minecraft Feed the Beast Monster Sever - Join Our Community Run FTB Server Over Here!
• UK Duder Meetup - Help Plan Out a Potential UK User Meetup Over Here!

Clip of the Week

A big hearty thank you is in-store for @maddenedman for creating a musical ballad in tribute to Ryan! @turboman also continues to nail it with his Best of Giant Bomb video series.

Wonderful Wikis

Great recent work has resulted in impressive wiki pages for the latest Wolfenstein game as well as our Beam Breakers page. Do you know anything about Drakengard games? Because I sure as Hell don't!

• Wolfenstein: The New Order
• Drakengard 3
• Beam Breakers

Best of Blogs

As indicated above a big special thanks goes to MaddenedMan for creating his tribute ballad to Ryan Davis! thatpinguino on the other hand got meditative with a blog on how player choice allows for gamers to learn more about themselves. TurboMan wants you to provide some input on his latest and awesome Best of Giant Bomb video. bdhurkett went through Hell and back again to just install Microsoft Flight Simulator X, and talks about what went so horribly wrong. FinalDasa discusses the importance that KOTOR has had on him, and why he is interested in re-exploring it. bobafettjm has another wiki update on his GB wiki activity as well as his Steam Card plans. Mento and MikeLemmer both hit it out of the park this week for continuing their respective blog series, and then some. Video_Game_King dabbled in the Land of the Rising Sun, but didn't make any The Vapors jokes...so good on him. Speaking of Japan, DocHaus only partially dabbled in the dark world of "anime," but also has video games on his latest blog. DevourerOfTime wraps up his countdown of games he is excited to play this year, whereas demoskinos summarizes his gaming year thus far. Praxis has another user created map pack that you should read about. MooseyMcMan finished Transistor and shares his mostly positive thoughts about the game. Tarfuin may be playing catch up but he finally finished Dark Souls II and wrote all about his final thoughts on the game. dankempster extrapolates on his victory in Fuchsia City on his latest Nuzlocke Challenge blog, and finally StarvingGamer hosts his own TANG related to Street Fighter: Assassin's Fists.

• I Recorded a Song: "The Ballad of Ryan Davis" (By: @maddenedman)
• Using Games to Learn About Ourselves (By: @thatpinguino)
• Best of Giant Bomb 62 - Warm Soda (By: @turboman)
• How to Install a Planet (By: @bdhurkett)
• Coming Back to KOTOR (By: @finaldasa)
• Weekly Wiki Update - Friday, May 30th 2014 (By: @bobafettjm)
• The Comic Commish: The Previous Generation (Jul-Dec 2010) (By: @mento)
• Mento's May Madness Melange: #10 - Miscellaneous Marvels [Part #9: Obligatory Puzzle Platformers] (By: @mento)
• Possibly the Most Japanese Blog I've Written in a While (By: @video_game_king)
• A Blog Thing That Is [Mostly] Not About Anime! (By: @dochaus)
• Tropico Tourist Trap Pt. 4: Rumming on the Threshold of Time [Part 3, Part 2, Part 1] (By: @mikelemmer)
• Top 30 Most Anticipated Games for (The Rest of) 2014 - #10 - #1 (By: @devoureroftime)
• Year in Review 2014 Part 1 January - June (By: @demoskinos)
• Doom Travelogues 02: Dark Corridors and Other Scenic Venues (By: @praxis)
• Transistor? I Hardly Know Her! (By: @mooseymcman)
• The Issue with Transistor's Ending (SPOILERS) (By: @mikelemmer)
• So I Just Played: Dark Souls II (By: @tarfuin)
• Pokémon FireRed Nuzlocke Challenge - Part Nine (By: @dankempster)
• TANG: Street Fighter: Assassin's Fist (By: @starvinggamer)

Fantastic Forums

WE HAVE ENTERED THE UNCANNY VALLEY EVERYONE! That is to say that jman204's attempts at pasting Bard's face on a Dota 2 hero have resulted in..."results." Sweep wants you to join him in discussing what goes into a good in-game mini-map, whereas emofratparty wants you to join him in sharing your ideas for future video content on Giant Bomb, either for GBNY, SF, or Chicago. All that and plenty of discussion thread pertaining to the slew of big games that came out this week.

• Brikimaru (Brad's Face on Rikimaru) Lives! (By: @jman240)
• Impressions of Early Access to The Forest (By: @brettuss)
• Watch Dogs Ending Discussion Thread (By: @white)
• Wolfenstein: The New Order Ending Discussion Thread (By: @oaktownacid)
• Drakengard 3 Reviews/Discussion Thread (By: @steadyingmeat)
• Bad Game Design Fundamentals; Minimaps (By: @sweep)
• Content Ideas for Giant Bomb (By: @emofratparty)

Lovable Lists

Many of you may be surprised to learn that resident Resident Evil fanatic Yummylee hasn;t actually played every game in the franchise. Check out list to see which games he hasn't played in his "beloved" franchise and why. fisk0 on the other hand has created a comprehensive list of very single games he owns for Nintendo consoles.

• Resident Evil Games I Haven't Played (By: @yummylee)
• My Nintendo Games (By: @fisk0)

Useful User Reviews

• @vermisean's review of Wolfenstein: The New Order
• @euandewar's review of Wolfenstein: The New Order
• @wemibelec90's review of Transistor
• @sparky_buzzsaw's review of Primordia
• @video_game_king's review of Project X Zone

I don't even know what The Vapors is.

Thanks again! I'm surprised you caught my blog lol You're quick!

I want a high res version of the "A Fork" New Yorker cover with Vinny.

@cooljammer00: I didn't really draw it at a particularly high res, sorry D: The one up there is 700 pixels tall and I think the original is only 900-and-something.

Thanks so much for the mention!

Good stuff.

I have a question.

I dont often purchase or play "really new" games, since I don't tend to have the cash. But I do buy older games that don't have a lot of facetime.

If i wrote out really well formed reviews, would people read them? I read all the community reviews that are on these spotlights. I just wasn't sure if people would read them.

@sjqpersonal: People rarely read user reviews in general really. You're better off writing and formatting them as blogs if you want people to read your thoughts, especially for older games where a review is almost completely useless to begin with.

*sad face acknowledging truth*

*really sad face*

Thanks for the shout.

4 player Gang Beasts is a possibility.

I hope a load of UK duders can make it!

@video_game_king: Right? im super bummed about it too.

@video_game_king: Why are you sad face about it? Your blogs commonly get plenty of comments.

Don't be. There's really no difference anyway, besides changing the writing style so as if you're not writing a review. Doing a blog allows you to be open about spoilers too and generally be more in-depth, more analytical. It'll also give your thoughts more exposure and is more likely to inspire discussion, whereas a review may most likely get a few recommendations and that's it.

Dude, if you make something, I will promote it regardless of what format it is in. That is so long as it is original. Just link it here and I'll do what I can to get people to know about whatever you have written.

For consideration in next week's Best of Blogs:Infinite Shelves with Consumer Protection.

I've always really liked how GiantBomb treats games, even pretty terrible FMV games or glitchy projects that reviews should basically say "don't buy". There is no hate there (unless it's @jeff talking about Dota2) so when something like Harvester comes up on Steam/GOG, people here sometimes think it'd be cool to buy it, even knowing how it looked on a Friday show. The "make Greenlight even harder to get past"/"delist everything I don't like" discussion seems completely counter to the GB style of celebrating games, and yet there are big voices (out there in games journalism) championing that stance. So in response to a good blog about why we should celebrate games, I added some notes about how we should already be legally protected (with links to actual UK law if people care about sources) from fraud and substandard products we don't see coming on services like Steam. Buying with confidence that we have a right to cancel/return seems like the actual solution to all this shouting about how stores should be curated spaces where only games you like should be sold.

@zombiepie: That's awesome! Thanks for the encouragement and the information. I'll do my best! I'll be in contact.

Behold! A blog for all seasons!

Hey @zombiepie, just want to point out that the GBNY logo topic has moved on to GB as box art, and I would especially like to point out @icyeyes phenomenal Watchdogs send up...

Special thanks go out to:

@funadog@snide@marino@devoureroftime@perfidioussinn@blacklagoon@finaldasa@grantheaslip@mikelemmer@majormitch@pabba@wemibelec90@shivoa@praxis@granderojo@charlie_victor_bravo@eccentrix@ltsquigs@yummylee@sgtsphynx@video_game_king

Great work everyone! You will have all have something on the next edition of the Community Spotlight!

Just a single follow-up blog for May Madness before I move onto something completely different.

How "British" of you to move onto something completely different.

Would my review of the sport of football count for the spotlight?

@zombiepie: Hey. you need @icyeyes in that list too, he's the one who made the watchdogs cover

Here's the latest edition of the Spotlight.