Egge

The nature of para-social relationships on the Internet is that when there's a radical staff change like this it feels like someone just jumped out from behind a dumpster and shot your little sister, for no discernable reason (not that there's any good reason to shoot my little sister, mind you). So, emotionally speaking, it doesn't feel great right now.

That being said, seeing the GB formula change and develop in new directions might not be such a bad thing. I've been religiously consuming Giant Bomb content since the site started (and followed Jeff & Co. long before that), but mostly for the staff members as specific personalities and not for what they're actually doing (i.e. playing games on the Internet, which everyone does these days). In that context, it will definitely be interesting to see if GB can carve out a new niche for itself in the weird online multiverse of 2021.

Yes, it's back!

I was wondering the same thing. Watched most of the episode last night and now it seems to be gone...

I'm likewise happy with every solution that means you keep playing Life is Strange in some form. Separating the whole COCA initiative from the LiS playthrough sounds like a sensible move.

@kasaioni: Well, without access to a walkthrough I wouldn't have known how to get to the true ending in the first place, but I did beat all the bosses including ZEKE. Peace Walker turned out to be much more work than I had anticipated (took me around 30 hours); presumably because of the Monster Hunter-esque multiplayer-focused structure of the game.

@arbitrarywater: Yep, the official forum is a sad place alright, which is part of my underlying concern with OpenDev. They're already on the right path, so listening to those clueless foreigners could only hurt.

MMX certainly has a lot of respectable old school DNA and is surprisingly ambitious given its downloadable format and small budget; it's clear that the team at Limbic Entertainment knows its niche audience really well (...which ironically makes all that anxious-to-please "OpenDev" nonsense even more unnecessary).

Words seem inadequate and trivial at a terrible time like this. Still, my condolences to Ryan's friends, family and everyone at Giant Bomb, Gamespot and elsewhere who knew and loved him.

Have played the first hour or so, and for a cheap downloadable game from some random French developer this is pretty impressive stuff. Structurally there are a ton of similarities with The Witcher 2 (and definitely not just the combat), and while the poor production values and mechanical flaws clearly won't win over the mainstream crowd there's a lot here to like for forgiving fans of quirky Europgs.

The excellent shooters Bulletstorm and Singularity do not belong in the same category as DNF, Fracture or Colonial Marines. That said, I'm currently having a lot more fun with ACM than I had anticipated - I guess going in with low expectations helps a lot - and on the wrongly labelled Ultimate Badass difficulty setting (which would be called "Normal" in any other shooter) the game provides just the right kind of challenge for the most part. The drab space ship environment early on was very forgettable but once the Marines go planetside the proper Aliens vibe ramps up considerably and the game gets at least as enjoyable as the venerable Doom Aliens total conversation (which of course was a much more revolutionary accomplishment in FPS design at the time of its release than ACM is now).