Do_The_Manta_Ray

I can't even begin to understand why I'm this excited about having an avatar with multiple, smaller characters. Miniature Santa Hats, man!

Absolutely nothing. Gonna' play me some games and enjoy my time with them, and maybe write something about my feelings on 'em come the end of the year. Or not. Rushing through a game just so that you can take part of the discourse around it sounds to me like the worst kind of book-club experience. Will end up lessening your enjoyment with them as well, more like than not.

There's been a metric ton and a half of fantastic games come out this year, so I figure there'll be plenty to discuss even if you didn't make it through every last one of 'em.

Let's tone down the cult demeanor just a tad, shall we? Fellas at the Bombcast ain't infallible, and if there is room for improvement (there always is), then a bit of constructive criticism is only healthy. Sure, there are ways to completely bypass all the ads, but that defeats the point of 'em ads in the first place. Folks cynical enough might say that they are just there for revenue, and they'd not be wrong, but you'd like to think that just maaaaybe someone could benefit by learning about a new service. And there very well might be some duders on the site who don't have a ton of money to throw around, find themselves looking for recommendations from people they trust, and the way the ads work right now takes advantage of that fact.

There's seemingly no filtering made, so we get everything from encouraging purchasing toiletries in bulk, which sounds economical, to promoting real shoddy gambling sites, and even worse, anime.

Imma' throw in a disclaimer here of how much I love the bomb/beastcasts, and that I've been a premium subscriber since day one and yadah yadah yadah, please don't shoot me, but I think this a bad practice that goes against the integrity in every other matter that the site stands for. And it's just fucking weird that no one has said "Hang on a minute, let's actually look at what we're doing" by now.

I'm not saying that they ought to screen and scrutinize each and every offer, but given how wildly popular the bombcast is, you'd think that there has to be a way to maintain some base level of standards. And it'd make sense for part of that process to be for the user-base to maintain a discourse, including praise and constructive criticism, rather than offering a blank "deal with it".

The only thing I got out of this is the suddenly deep-rooted urge to, at some point in my life, smash an arcade cabinet (preferably with a bat), and leave it at someone's doorstep. Can't just have it be unannounced, however, or even left with a note. I feel you'd have to plant a foot on it and yell your demands at the top of your lungs for maximum effect, then throw the bat on the ground and walk away after a few moments of intense glaring.

I also love how in depth he goes into the retrieval method of said arcade machine, and his specific thought process as to why he decided that robbing an arcade might not be as advantageous as buying one on the cheap. Seems like the kind of thing you wanna' spend a paragraph on where-as you only mention your kidnapped sister once. Japan, I love you, but you need help.

I know it's been said before, but what the fuck, Japan?

Perhaps more importantly, how do you make this topic with a straight face?

@theht: You can only have one of each character in any one game. The make up of your team becomes quite important as you want to have a nice mix of heroes and equipment that are specified for different tasks, especially on higher difficulty levels. For instance, you'll want someone with a shield to basically act as a tank by knocking enemies down, incapacitating them and drawing their aggro once they get back up while your mage sets up his time-consuming, but devastating AOE spells. Ontop of that, you'll want some effective ranged weaponry to deal with certain enemies, including mini-gun wielding buggers that can mow down your entire team if given the time to set up, or gas-grenade lobbing assholes who decide to hug you and then suicide in some spectacular explosions once their health drops low enough. As if all of this wasn't enough, you also need to balance weaponry that will do damage to multiple foes at once to deal with swarms, and armour-piercing weapons to deal with more heavily-armoured units. And I haven't even begun to go into the specific strategies for each mission. There's some real depth to be found here, creating a feeling that's more similar to an MMO-style raid than L4D in my opinion. That said, you can by-pass these more complicated mechanics by playing on easier difficulties, those will still offer a good challenge to anyone wanting to just brutally slaughter hundreds upon hundreds of rat-men. And slaughter them you can, there's some real good gore effects in this game.

They've also done a good job of handling the logistics in setting up a team. You'll pick which hero you'd prefer to play before starting the match-making process, and the game will then either load you into a match that suits your hero and mission designation, or provide you with the choice to either keep searching for a match that's to your liking or to join a game where said hero has already been selected by another player and have you choose from a pool of available heroes. It's a pretty elegant way of handling the situation as it means no load-times until you get a game that you'll actually want to play.

As I'm a real sucker for anything Warhammer, I couldn't resist picking this up earlier today. I'm Blackmoore on Steam, and I got a slightly disturbing fixation with axes that's going to come in real handy for once.

Turns out there's even a trailer dedicated to this pre-order bonus. The world we live in.

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I have very mixed feelings on this matter. On one hand, I am beyond stoked that Chaos is going to be a playable faction in this here game as it's seemed, up until now, that they'd only be included at a later date in one of the proposed full-scale expansion packs. On the other hand, it is beyond shitty to relegate what is probably the fav favourite of the factions (let's just agree this is extremely debatable) to on-disc DLC. Especially so given that there are only 4 playable races available at release, and unlike previous Total War titles, each will consist of wholly unique units as there's a very heavy emphasis on the distinctiveness and personality of each faction, rather than the world they inhabit, this time around.

I appreciate you signing your name at the bottom of this here forum thread. That is an odd thing to do that I'm weirdly into.

You will lose Quiet, and unless you're willing to go to certain lengths to prevent that from happening, such as modding the game or purposefully keeping her bond level down, there is little you can do about it. After mission 43, if I recall correctly, she will disappear from mother base, leaving you with a new prioritized side-op that leads into a full mission. Said mission concludes her character arc, and is one of the strongest scenes in the entire game.

The fact that you treasure her presence, be it solely due to a practical approach to game-play, or a personal fondness for her is very much part of what makes her leaving so powerful. You're supposed to feel empty in the aftermath, as if something's missing. It's a very unique feeling in modern games, and I honestly don't think you should cheapen it by reducing the experience to a Youtube video.

Post her leaving, little happens in the campaign itself, there is one last story mission, which you cannot bring any buddy into, and a couple of older missions presented in a higher difficulty. As such, you won't find yourself missing her much from a game-play perspective unless you're going to go out of your way to do a bunch of side-ops. Even then, I think you should let things develop naturally, and allow the game to do what is set out to, and maybe just affect you a bit in the process. And hey, if everything else fails, D-Dog is still a hell of a buddy.

Someone must be able to do this!