BisonHero

The return of Matthew Rorie’s Alpha Protocol.

I remember having a genuinely fun time with the game. It’s very uneven, and the balance on the different skills/playstyles is way off, but on the missions where this game works, it *really* works.

@chaser324: Every day that Dan is in a video, I’m reminded how great it would be to get Bak 2 Skool Season 2.

@allthedinos: The Toonami bracket was pretty good:

https://www.giantbomb.com/videos/top-toonami-bracketology/2300-15562/

Jan's Ranking of Tiles idea is the most revelatory thing in this.

@nameredacted: While I think it’s overall a separate debate from the Rowling/Harry Potter issue, I do wish the site would stop discussing WWE stuff for the reasons you get at.

There’s AEW, there’s New Japan, there’s indie circuit stuff. I don’t know what it would take to make long-term wrestling marks give up their attachment to WWE. It being the biggest promotion and their near-monopoly on televised English-language wrestling for years obviously goes a long way, but wow that organization and its leadership suck.

The line between youth culture/internet culture gets blurrier every day so maybe I'm wrong on which of those is the culprit, but "you love/hate to see it" is definitely one of those things where I go "oh, that person spends a lot of time online," when I hear it.

Across varying ages of friends/families/coworkers I don't think I've ever heard anyone say it IRL, but it sure is a common turn of phrase among podcasters/Youtubers/streamers/online media professionals. There's something to be said for people who keep up with Twitter and don't let Twitter dominate all of their commonly used expressions, but I imagine that's a deliberate decision one has to make.

In closing:

Abby has such good rapport with the staff. I miss having her on GB <3

I hope she’s doing well after the G4 stuff.

Bakalar's Trump impression while talking about Mumen Rider is pretty great.

Is it harsh that I keep wanting to compare this game to ReCore? Both ReCore and Forspoken are not a terrible idea and you can see a hint of what they’re going for, but the execution just isn’t quite there, and they clearly cut some content from the game which makes it feel kinda thin.

ReCore was more a technical mess, while Forspoken seems to just have tone/writing issues, control responsiveness issues, but in my mind they’re both in the bucket of “Japanese dev tries new IP with a fresh concept that potentially has international appeal but developer fumbled the execution, so probably no sequel.”

@genessee: What part of it is astroturfing? I haven’t seen the wider reaction to the show, just a few TV/video game websites posting their reviews of the first episode.