snide
snide's last update: OK, the pod for "yesterday's biggest" now correctly works. Look at WoW at number 2!
If you notice any bugs, please give us a shout in the forums.

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Nov. 20, 2009
  • OK, the pod for "yesterday's biggest" now correctly works. Look at WoW at number 2!
    1 hour, 27 minutes ago via Twitter
  • snide replied to the topic New front page! :O
    @Sweep said: " I like how simple it is. The IGN and Gamespot updates are totally cluttered. But I agree, it does seem a little plain. Needs a banner, perhaps? "I take simple and plain as a compliment!  Also, the Yesterday's biggest stuff will start populating soon. It should show all the people who were playing games yesterday.
    2 hours, 15 minutes ago
  • The top game/achievements portion of the GB homepage will be up soon. Small hitch, but it's cool!
    2 hours, 32 minutes ago via Twitter
  • I'll need to sneak myself in in the second version, but someone had to hold the camera. :D
    19 hours, 29 minutes ago via Twitter
  • Step 10: finish. Giant Bomb zombified. Hmm. so much for doing something after work. http://bit.ly/174Frh
    19 hours, 30 minutes ago via Twitter
  • snide uploaded 1 new image
    19 hours, 31 minutes ago
Nov. 19, 2009
  • step 9... stay up and finish the job. axe in brad's back
    20 hours, 14 minutes ago via Twitter
  • step 8... give drew a six pack and rip off his chin
    21 hours, 43 minutes ago via Twitter
  • Touche... RT @TurboToaster Seven, Dave.
    22 hours, 58 minutes ago via Twitter
  • step six... kuato from total recall
    23 hours, 4 minutes ago via Twitter
  • step six... add one plate of spaghetti because vinny is Italian.
    1 day ago via Twitter
  • step five... add the smooth malt liquor that lando likes.
    1 day, 1 hour ago via Twitter
  • Step four... Include a reference to Bloodsucking Freaks.
    1 day, 2 hours ago via Twitter
  • step three... lobotomize jeff, add rambo knife.
    1 day, 2 hours ago via Twitter
  • step two... insert swamp style backdrop
    1 day, 2 hours ago via Twitter
  • step one... take goofy photo
    1 day, 2 hours ago via Twitter
  • snide replied to the topic
    1 day, 4 hours ago
  • Here's Monday's QOTW (with prize) for those that would like an early start. http://bit.ly/11IQZY
    1 day, 4 hours ago via Twitter
  • The question of the week this week with be sponsored by Assassin's Creed II and we're giving away another Buzz_Clik original Giant Bomb themed hoodie. If you'd like to get a head start before sunday, here's the challenge that will appear on Monday 23, 2009.   Sneak up on someone (possibly a stranger) and do something nice!   
    1 day, 4 hours ago
  • 1 day, 4 hours ago
Added by Dave Snider on May 8, 2009

SPOILERS 5 MINUTES IN!!!!


Dunno what happened to the aspect ratio, but here's Tony (from comicvine) and I discussing the star trek movie.

  

Related to: Star Trek


Added by Dave Snider on March 1, 2009

Games like Silent Storm were always my kind of Strategy
Games like Silent Storm were always my kind of Strategy
With few exceptions, I've never really enjoyed RTS games. The amount of frantic key pressing and learn by repetition strategy always put me off immediately. The times I did manage to slog through the first half of any RTS game I was rewarded with 2 hour missions where I spent a good portion of my time building up a base. While that seems fun for some, the RPG nerd in me liked my battles a little more confined and slow paced. I liked being attached to my "units" and caring about their deaths rather then pumping a new set out of my barracks. Turn-based strategy like Fallout Tactics, Silent  Storm and X-Com were always more my speed.

Imagine then my surprise that I've been totally addicted to Dawn of War 2 the past week. I had played through the first one and although I loved the setting and the steps they made to make it less twitchy the game was soon easily forgotten in the large pile of games I gave up playing after a week. The recent sequel I haven't put down and it's easy to tell you why.
  1. I have built nary a base in the entire campaign.
  2. I control only 4 units the entire game. Although each unit is made up of several marines, I can only control them together as a group.
  3. I level up these units across the campaign and can tailor them to my playstyle.
  4. I can equip these units with dropped loot, further cementing them into the class of marine I want them to be (melee vs. ranged...etc)
Did I mention I haven't built a base? While some may be thinking... well, it doesn't sound much like an RTS to me, I can only reply... thank you Relic for removing the tedium out of this genre. I start every 20 minute mission with the same troops, who are now slightly stronger from the last mission, and use tactics, cover and the ever rare retreat to beat my enemy instead of amassing troops for 30 minutes so that I feel confident I can take out the other side. Relic didn't stop pleasing me there though, because they added boss fights to almost every mission and alleviated my other harp against the genre -- that defeating the enemy should be more involved then blowing up some buildings after the enemies are dead.

The battles in Dawn of War 2 are intense but confined
The battles in Dawn of War 2 are intense but confined
I can't tell you how freeing this feels. Finally I can enjoy this genre. While I'm still a little slow when it comes to all the key commands, the focus on tactics over units really has me hooked. So much so that I'm going to give World in Conflict a go, which I hear has a similar quick to fight feel.

Now remember when I said there were a few exceptions to my RTS hate? The exceptions all come from Blizzard, specifically Warcraft III and Starcraft, which I spent many of my younger years wasting my days on. Having played through DoW2 I can now only wonder if my experience with Starcraft II will be sullied by this experience. While I know Blizzard will have a great story waiting for me, I don't know if I can suffer building up a base or dealing with 100 units on the screen again. While I hope that's not the case, I also can't imagine how it could be a Starcraft game without those kinds of amassing of units.

In any case, suddenly I'm really excited by RTS games again. If you have any recommendations leave me a comment. I've got World in Conflict and Company of Heroes all queued up.


Added by Dave Snider on Feb. 17, 2009

Still working on little things, and you'll notice my screen cap program doesn't grab flash vids, hence the large gaps in my blog. Right click and pick open link in new tab to see the full versions. T-minus 1 weekish. Yes, we are that fast / obsessed with our jobs.






Added by Dave Snider on Feb. 2, 2009

An example of a mock I give to our engineers to dread over.
An example of a mock I give to our engineers to dread over.
So I'm starting week 2 of actual CSS work on redesigning Giant Bomb. It's going amazingly well. You know you're digging the style when you get bummed out when you have to use the live site. The first steps were reworking all the core CSS (buttons, major layout classes...etc). If you've checked out the mocks you can imagine that this had me making lots and lots of rounded corners for various layout sections of GB. Using rounded corners, while better looking, drastically increase the complexity of a site's frontend code. For this reason I had sworn off the look a couple years ago, but like a lost lover, have embraced them again recently.

This week I'm mostly taking those core CSS changes and implementing them throughout the actual HTML on the site. That means I basically go through each and every page on the site and massage the new style into the old templates. It's pretty tedious work, but after having thrown together the original Giant Bomb in only 6 weeks it's nice to have time to spend fully on making the site prettier, instead of worry about functionality. Coonce is helping out as well, helping me out with the backend stuff that I can't do on my own. I'm very excited about everything, so much so that I've been regularly showing up back at the office after dinner to attack more templates. Right now I'm waiting on my local database to rebuild so I figured it'd be a good time for an update.

While I'm doing this Ethan is working on a MAJOR gallery/image management redo. The new stuff is all drag and drop and well... impressive. Basically we're banishing checkboxes from image management and trying to better define galleries and in turn fix a lot of those tools. Those changes will likely make it into the site before mine and will come in handy to some of our bigger image uploaders. Andy is working on some additions to our search functionality and working on requests from the API forums.

Mostly the things I'm most excited about is showcasing the crew downstairs content a little better. I think if you don't check the site everyday you can miss a lot of the funny vids they add to the site daily. Right now we do a pretty poor job at promoting vids, news, guides and user reviews on the game pages. I've reworked those pages the most and it's nice to see VInny's stuff float up better. In general I'm just happy with the way things are actually looking from a cleanliness perspective. I've tried to cut down the length of our pages without losing content. It's not the easiest thing to do, but I've spent a lot more time on font sizing and line heights this time to make things in general more readable.

In any case, that's what I'm up to. I'll likely add some screenshots to this post in a half hour or so when my local database is finished rebuilding. I guess that just leaves me raiding the vinyl collection at the office till the db is built. Right now Jackson Browne's Running on Empty is on. 


Added by Dave Snider on Jan. 15, 2009

Anyone recognize the "Glaciators"?

  


Snide's Reviews
My Favorite Combat RPG of All Time (PC)
Rambling on about one of my favorite games. Nerd alert.It's funny you know, I have this amazing gaming PC at home (my work machine on the other hand is a Mac) and despite it being able to put my xbox 360 to shame I find myself regularly loading up a ...
Reviewed by snide on July 20, 2008

8 out of 8 found this review helpful.


Date Joined: May 12, 2008
City: San Francisco
Gender: Male
Alignment: PC
Points: 1,116 Points
Ranked: Ranked #949 of 60,711
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game - 233 points
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franchise - 80 points
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game - 50 points
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FUEL
game - 40 points
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game - 40 points
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TheGamerGeek 4 minutes ago
Woohoo! @hendersonman I found my fucking dog! :P He finally came back, was gone for about 12 hours...gah, scared me to death.
taco484 11 minutes ago
http://twitpic.com/qbf76 - Happy holidays... From andy and coca-cola
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Captain Kirk has fallen in love more than anyone else in history.
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Watching #destertbus If you aren't you should!
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Woot! 18,000 wiki points.
AjayRaz 34 minutes ago
whoa, new page layout.
Hexogen 40 minutes ago
Playing 1 vs 100 instead of modern warfare 2. What's wrong with me?
zophar53 40 minutes ago
Girl in a cobalt next to me shadowing me on the freeway. Must think im cute cuz im not an effective radar detector.