The Community Spotlight - 03/21/2014

Hello and welcome to the latest edition of the Giant Bomb Community Spotlight! I am your host as always and goodness has it been a crazy week! Part of this is in large part due to GDC "happening." Many of you are no doubt dealing with Lang Zone withdrawals. Check out @aurahack's video below to help remedy that. For those of you that had issues using our chat during the GDC streams please note that the Amazon Web Service, our cloud server, for the chat crashed thus rendering the chat inert during the event. The problem was not due to the chat being run over-capacity, nor did it have anything to do with an engineering glitch. Web engineer @chrisharris has a major update to his Giant Bomb Live Stream Desktop Alert System. Finally if you have experienced any issues with your poster shipping please contact @rorie at support@giantbomb.com. With that lets get on with the Spotlight!

Clips of the Week

Someone on YouTube has compiled the entire "Australian Thong Debate" from the Bombcast into a single YouTube video. @turboman is back as always to show of the best video moments on Giant Bomb, this week is about Rorie's Puppy Chat and ArmA being crazy. Finally...@aurahack crossed the streams by mixing Dave Lang with K-pop. The results are horrifying.

Community Activities

• PSN Friend Share Thread for Luftrausers Leaderboards - Fill Your Friends Leaderboard on Luftrauser By Heading Over Here!
• Kite Co. Indiegogo Shirt Fundraiser - Our Community EVE Corp. Is Attempting to Print off T-Shirts Using Indiegogo! Learn How You can Help Them Out Over Here!

Wonderful Wikis

They're coming...the big releases are coming. This week we have Metal Gear? Sorry, lame pun is lame...crap I did it again. Also out this week is inFamous: Second Son.

• Metal Gear Solid V: Ground Zeroes
• inFamous: Second Son

Best of Blogs

This week Mento has written one of the most comprehensive story and character break-downs of Tales of the Abyss you will ever see. It's almost like it could be on an embarrassingly telling user run wikia. Fobwashed gives you a snapshot into insane process one must go through to print out t-shirts. ArbitraryWater shares the frustrations he's been having trying to get through Bravely Default, similarly ILikePopCans extrapolates on why he feels Fire Emblem Dark Dragon and Tomb Raider (2013) are disappointing games. Also tapping into the underwhelming bandwagon, Wrighteous86 equivocates on how Halo 2 isn't just one of the worst games in the Halo franchise, but how it wrote Halo 3 into a corner. thatpinguino attempted to reconcile the paradox of Dark Souls having clunky controls and obtuse instructions, with still being a "good" game. granderojo also tried to get to the bottom of something. but he worked to identify the misuse of "punditry" in the internet gaming community. Video_Game_King set his target on Killer is Dead and Yume Penguin Monogatari...your guess is as good as mine. Sarumarine has a comprehensive review of his opinion of all of the bosses in Dark Souls II, and speaking of failing MajorMitch has theorized on why more video games should allow and accept failure. GunStarRed has started a blog series examining the video game adaptations of his ten favorite movies, on the flip-side dankempster is still chugging along in Pokemon Fire Red. Marino has anotehr PAX guide on how to not get herpes while attending PAX East in April. halomaste19 wants you to join him in talking about games you enjoy that everyone else hates. Hero_Swe is still continuing his role-playing adventures in Skyrim, whereas RedPanGamer shares his excitement for the release of The Elder Scrolls Online. Finally armaan8014 has written on why he feels comfortable calling Assassin's Creed IV "beautiful."

• A Delve Into the Abyss (By: @mento)
• Papers, Please Giant Bomb Shirt Creation (By: @fobwashed)
• Bloggily Default: Frustrated Fan (and Other Wonderful Uses of Time and Money) (By: @arbitrarywater)
• I Played Two Games That Were Disappointing This Week. This Link However is Not (By: @ilikepopcans)
• How Halo 2 Ruined Halo 3: A Wrighteous Wretrospective (By: @wrighteous86)
• The Paradox of Dark Souls (By: @thatpinguino)
• Confusing Agenda with Punditry (By: @granderojo)
• Killer is Penguin (By: @video_game_king)
• The Dark Souls II Boss Review! (Spoilers Warning!) (By: @sarumarine)
• Top Ten Blog (Part 1) (By: @gunstarred)
• Marino's PAX Guide v4.0 (By: @marino)
• Failing Better (By: @majormitch)
• Pokémon FireRed Nuzlocke Challenge - Part Four (By: @dankempster)
• What’s A Game Everyone Hates, That You Enjoy? (By: @halomaste19)
• Wuulfräd's Journey (Part 7) (By: @hero_swe)
• The Elder Scrolls Online PTS (By: @redpangamer)
• A Beautiful Gaming Experience (And AC IV Thoughts) (By: @armaan8014)

Fantastic Forums

Big round of applause goes to shouldice for making Vinny's "every picture ever" television a reality. Macks also created some AWESOME Binding of Patrick art. From GDC we have a GDC livestream discussion thread as well as a "Dave Lang Appreciation Thread." What's next? An appreciation thread for rats? demoskinos is hosting a bit of an "Ask Me Anything/impressions thread for Yaiba: Ninja Gaiden Z. Danny O'Dwyer has a discussion thread for the Alt + F1 podcast. Then we have a BUNCH of game discussion threads for Metal Gear SOlid V: Ground Zeroes, Dark Souls II, and Infamous Second Son.

• "Every Picture Ever" TV Now a Reality (By: @shouldice)
• I Did Some Binding of Patrick Art (By: @macks)
• Dave Lang Appreciation Thread (By: @ronald_raiden)
• GDC 2014 Livestream Post-event Discussion (By: @mb)
• I Finished the First Two Levels of Yaiba: Ninja Gaiden Z (By: @demoskinos)
• The Official Alt+F1 Discussion Thread (By: @dannyodwyer)
• Are you Choosing to be Good or Evil for Second Son? (By: @falserelic)
• Did Kojima Go too Far in Ground Zeroes? (By: @bocam)
• Ground Zeros Discussion and Impressions Sharing Thread (By: @falserelic)
• 100%-ing Dark Souls II Tips and Tricks Thread (By: @fredchuckdave)
• Beginner Character Guide: "Paladin" (By: @ethanielrain)
• Dark Souls II Boss Fight Discussion Thread (By: @development)
• Dark Souls or Dark Souls II: Dark Harder? (By: @gaggle64)
• What's the Most Souls You've Lost Thus Far in Dark Souls II? (By: @sterling)

Lovable Lists

Marchantia has a heartwarming list of games that he has had a fun time playing with his children. Hydrogorilla on the other hand lists out his ten favorite video game stories he experienced on his 360.

• Games My Kids Loved (Ages 4-11) (By: @marchantia)
• Top Ten Xbox 360 Game Stories (By: @hydrogorilla)

Useful User Reviews

• @vermisean's review of Hearthstone: Heroes of Warcraft
• @dimsey's review of South Park: The Stick of Truth
• @machofantastico's review of South Park: The Stick of Truth
• @machofantastico's review of Dust: An Elysian Tail

Potent Podcasts

• #Bombslaunched - Episode 39: The Dark Souls of Podcasts

He's also doing another screenshot thread, this time about a visual novel about time travel disabilities. Your guess is as good as mine.

Wait, what was the GDC memorial? Can you explain that a little bit?

Man, that Lang Zone K-Drama is PERFECT. Good job @aurahack

The winner of this week's WTF OMG it's beautiful is definitely @aurahack 's ridiculous K-drama thing. I think I watched it like 5+ times =D

@fobwashed: @ilikepopcans: Don't feed the troll. @aurahack is a menace to society with his attempts to try and spread k-pop and Canadian socialism in the United States.

During GDC's award show there was a "In Memoriam" montage dedicated to game developers that had passed away during the last year. During the montage the above image was shown during the memorial.

@zombiepie: But I love K-Pop! At least, I think I do...

Pshf, I'm the menace to society! You're the one labeling it all as K-Pop when it isn't!

Was so happy to see how many people shared that image of Ryan on Twitter. Here's my review for this week.

@zombiepie: My god, you sound like I do when I stay up two extra hours doing art.

@aurahack: That wasn't me...and you are not the first person to say that.

I made this wiki page for the first, last, and only Japanese pachinko simulator worth caring about because it's actually an open-world RPG that does everything in its power to make you forget you can play pachinko machine it's ostensibly licensed to simulate.

This is how I use my Japanese major while I'm jobless. I'm pretty proud of myself.

I use my 日本語 knowledge to play games like this. I don't know who should envy who.

I also play games like these without 日本語 knowledge. Maybe I should improve it so I don't have to.

A hearty congratulations are in store for:

@pabba@mmmman@pezen@hero_swe@shakey1245@supermike6@rolkien@theburlaplemur@jagged85@thefakepsychic@brewmaster_andy@sin4profit@thepoark@turboman@laszlokovacs@pepsiman@shaggydude@dankempster@sarumarine@tizzzzzz@sunbrozak@rexman64@epicsteve@thatpinguino@animasta@video_game_king@therealmoot@tarfuin@i77ogical@mento@adam1808@mikelemmer

Great work everyone and keep it up! You all will have something on the next edition of the Giant Bomb Community Spotlight!

@zombiepie:

yay!!! I'm working on my second video now. With less dumb voice and more charisma. (Hopefully it comes out good)

A silly blog and a sillier list.

Here's hoping the site doesn't eat this reply. It's been acting up today.

I honestly don't know how to properly praise your work of insanity other than to say "good job."

The latest edition of the Community Spotlight is up over here.