So, I found this list of top 10 Stadium foods

And it got me thinking... stadiums have really really expensive food choices inside. Like, 9 bucks for a small slice of pizza and a coke. That's pretty fucking ridiculous. Highway robbery. Of course, they can charge that because of the convenience. People get hungry while watching a long game of baseball or football. It's only natural to munch on something. Still, they should probably just charge you more for the ticket and have regular normal everyday prices for the concession stands. That would make a lot more sense to me.

Anyways, I was just wondering... do stadiums actually prohibit you from bringing food from outside the stadium? Ya know, so you don't have to buy their overpriced hot dogs and stuff? Will they actually stop you and search your backpack to see if you're carrying in a homemade sandwich? It's been forever since I've gone to any sort of sporting event so I'm clearly in the darkness on this one.

Hmmm, alright let's see here... what's this anime about? Let's try to piece it together from what we know. Let's see, there's the name. We know the name. It's called Full Metal Panic... and it's an anime. So, the Full Metal part of the name... implies some sort of metal... metal usage... metallic... mechanized metallic man... giant robot! Okay, probably some sort of giant mecha robot thingy.

And the Panic part of the name... what does the panic mean? Panic because of... some sort of inner turmoil? Panic because of... inner turmoil... at being... an effeminate man? Some sort of androgynous effeminate looking guy. And who tends to panic? Perhaps a female... of... youth? Female youths tend to panic. And... let's see, female youths go to... school. Schoolgirls. Schoolgirls in uniforms.

Alright, I think I've pieced this mystery together.

FUCK ANIME.

    The sons of the prophet
    Were valiant and bold
    And quite unaccustomed to fear
    But of all the most reckless
    Or so I am told
    Was Abdul Abulbul Amir.


    There were brave men aplenty
    All well known to fame
    Who served in the ranks of the Czar …

Who's Relic? They're the best game developer working today, IMO.

You have to keep in mind, back in the old days I had only dabbled in a bit of C&C red alert and Starcraft as far as RTSs go. They weren't anything special, I was far more involved in FPSs. So then, being a Trekkie... I go and buy Star Trek Armada. Ultimately a fun game, one of the better Star Trek games ever made, but pretty much a disappointment if you expected it to be more then Starcraft with starships. Then Homeworld 2 came out (I missed the boat on HW1), and what a revelation. Completely 3D environment, with no basebuilding, intelligent fleet formations and fighters all swarming around on their own. It was simply incredible. All from a completely new studio, out of the blue.

And the environments they created... were completely breathtaking. Every Relic game has had that unique Relic art direction that utilizes quality concept art to bring the game to life. It's completely unrealistic, but space never looked more beautiful then in HW2. FreeSpace games come close, but staring at some of the backgrounds as your battle-weary ships sail past... it's majestic, breathtaking, elegant, operatic, awe inspiring... like looking at a brilliant sunset in autumn. The grandeur of the cosmos was perfectly captured.

I dunno... it was the first, and still stands as the greatest 3D space RTS ever, as few of those as there are. Sins of a Solar Empire adds more 4X elements, but I can't say it really comes close. Of course, someone did tell me they made Sins with only 9 people and 3 million dollars, which is impressive in itself.

Relic's just a great innovator of RTS games and has been pushing the envelop for years now. That's ultimately what makes them tops in my book. In Dawn of War, they gave us squads of infantry to control, syncronized kill animations, and reinforcements on the fly, retreat mechanics, morale mechanics, as well as terrain cover. Instead of just mining crystals or chopping wood, resources were gathered from strategic requisition points on the map.

With Company of Heroes, they took it even further with directional terrain cover, supply lines, location-based vehicle damage modeling, and machine gun suppression mechanics. In multiplayer, annihilation of the enemy base was replaced with victory point capture mode, which is kinda like Battlefield's tickets concept.

Dawn of War 2 introduced RPG gameplay elements to the single player and bravely took out basebuilding entirely. What we got was a small squad-based tactical game that made you care about your units and preserving them in combat. Plus, they added in the Tyranids, making it superior to DoW 1 by default. Yep, Relic's obviously the most innovative RTS developer out there and I can't wait to see what they've got in store for us next.

Ya know... it's a bit sad how most games just have regenerating health these days. I do think it streamlines the gameplay, but at the cost of removing a lot of the difficulty.

I think they just really went too far. Cause the original Doom model... just picking up healthkits and using them as you walk over em, is outdated. It doesn't work well enough for today's games. Good players end up not using up health kits because they're already at full health, and then later might require a healthkit but can't get any because the level designer decided not to put any down at that location.

Mulling it over, I think the healthkit-in-inventory system is still probably the best. Like in Jedi Knight, Max Payne, or Deus Ex. You pick up healthkits, store em in your inventory, and use em when you need to. I really liked Max Payne's... he just carried around some painkiller pills. Far Cry 2's was a pretty good implementation too. You get these syringes to inject yourself with, but first you'd have to pry the bullet out and cauterize the wound to stop yourself from bleeding out.

I played this RTS religiously for about a year before I moved on and found out about Dawn of War. Anybody who likes RTSs at all should try this little-known gem from Atari. To put it simply, Act of War is in my opinion the perfect Command and Conquer game. It takes everything that made Command and Conquer great and dials it up to 11. This is strange because Act of War isn't actually an official Command and Conquer game. IMO, Act of War got exactly the right scale of combat. With DoW 2, you have small intimate squad battles. With Supreme Commander, you've got a ginormous scale with epic battles across entire peninsulas. Act of War had the perfect average of scale with good infantry action (even inside buildings!), while also allowing for devastating nuclear strikes and massed tank rushes. They even managed to pull off air combat in an innovative realistic fashion, which Relic later mimicked in CoH. Even Command and Conquer 3 came out later and tried to follow the magic and execution of Act of War, but I think they fell short. About the *only* complaint I can ever make about Act of War is that the infantry are individual units rather then squads, but I played it before DoW so that didn't bother me at the time.

Am I the only one who thinks melee-synapsed Hormagaunts are way too good? They get frigging leap! That makes them practically impervious to ranged fire. Let me tell you, ranged fire is not very far in this game. Not even a full screen length, at full zoom out. Tactical squads can get maybe 3 or 4 bursts off before hormagaunts close the distance and tie them up. With leap, they can reduce that to about 1 burst. Melee damage in DoW 2 is higher then ranged damage to compensate for the fact that you have to close the distance. That's the entire justification for weaker ranged damage. Leap removes that disadvantage almost completely. Leap allows your 240 requisition unit to completely trump a 500 requisition unit. Not to mention the knockdown it provides. I find leap pretty damn overpowered right now. If ranged units had twice the distance, leap would go from being amazing to merely a good addition. Which is what a synapse bonus should give you, IMO.

Anyone else find this strange? How come Terminators, Assault Terminators, and FC in Terminator armor aren incapable of retreating? All other infantry units are able to retreat. It makes sense for vehicles to lack a retreat button, but Terminators aren't vehicles. Other powerful infantry like Tier 3 Nobs and the call-in Seer Council are capable of retreating, so why are Terminators deprived of this option? They'd probably have to retreat slower because of their heavier armor, but that's alright. It just seems like an unnecessary disadvantage.

Here's a question... what's up with heavy bolter and plasma devastator squads? Is there a reason they only have 675 health when a tactical squad have 1050? I mean, these squads are all just three guys in power armor. The Tact squad doesn't appear to be wearing heavier armor then the devastators. Why would they lose 35% of their health just because one of them swaps out a bolter for a heavy bolter/plasma cannon? Anybody else think this is strange? Do Warriors lost 35% of their health when they gain a barbed strangler or venom cannon? I'm not writing this because I want SM buffs, it's just kind of an odd inconsistency.

Pretty peculiar.