aurahack

I'll give it a bit to bang around with regular use and see how I feel about things site wide but I think first impressions are pretty important and I need to share those:

1. The navbar at the top is great. It's well categorized and having Infinite displaying what's currently playing in there is super cool.
2. The landing page/home page is not great. This feels like I'm browsing a mobile site on desktop and I super dislike it. The top-billed promo pushes the other panels so far down that I can't see more than 30% of them, title hidden and all. I genuinely thought I had loaded the iPad version first or something and looked in the Settings for, like, a "desktop" option. It sounds petty but having to scroll on login just to see what's new is a super-bummer, especially in cases where I'll go a day or two without checking and there'll be enough content for me to just immediately have to dig down to find the "Latest" tab. (Which is also, weirdly, buried in a carousel super far down? That's such a handy thing to have now!) Having something more like the current homepage, with the more recent and currently-promo'd features, all visible on first-load is something I'd much prefer. (I kicked the top-billed title container up a bit and zoomed in the rest overall with Chrome.) Giant Bomb genuinely has SO much to offer and to obscure ALL of it on first visit for anyone is a bummer, too!
3. I feel like the typefaces chosen overall are a little... lifeless? There's something about the current "Coming up on Giant Bomb" header that feels a lot like... I don't know, exactly. It has a style, as does the rest of the Serif fonts used, that help make Giant Bomb feel like it's own thing! It always has and it's been pretty cool to have that feel like a pretty consistent through-line. I think I'd extend this feeling overall to the tiled/flat design the new/beta site uses but that starts getting into subjective territory and I don't know if that's, like, worth anything.
4. The individual video page rips. Having the series in the top right with further options there is super smart. Love it.

Anyways, those are upfront thoughts. I'll definitely come back to this after a few days of just using it regularly since I'm sure like, actual use-case stuff will come up! Overall though y'all did a NUTSO overhaul of everything and it's super impressive. Hats off to the whole engineering team, y'all kill.

It's very extremely unquestionably XIV. For silly reasons it's an unpopular opinion and I get that, nostalgia is a powerful force, but Soken's music has completely surpassed Uematsu's scores imo.

Not at full price. I get that it's a new thing for some players and there are development costs to recup but despite being way into having that game on the go I just don't have the money to plop down on like, arguably the most lesser version of that game I guess? I'd be tempted if it had a bunch of new stuff in it.

There are too many to count but the one that always does and always will come to mind is Jeff's Howard Phillips bit.

I have some pretty bad days at times and that episode of the Bombcast is one I go back to whenever I do because it never fails to make me laugh. The entire thing is the dumbest podcast they've ever produced and I love it to bits.

a crappy $20 avatar is not going to possibly open a loophole for the current piracy/homebrew issues Sony is facing with its hardware

MY FAVORITES ARE TOO WEIRD but hey

1. Rez
2. Midnight Club II
3. Tony Hawk's Pro Skater 2

I'm kinda done with both? Tbh I'd be okay with something something completely new and fictional in like, a 90s/modern day setting.

Basically just give me another game with the Burger Town level from MW2.

Team! Impossible Girls signing up!!!

I LOVE THIS.

Where's the B. Yoo card tho

@bbalpert: It's Mutsu from Kantai Collection. I'm trash.