GreekTrojan

Just like Mario 64, the ability to have a fully fleshed out, 3d world to explore was quite mindblowing at the time. Nintendo showed a much greater understanding of moving/exploring/controlling in a 3d world than virtually anyone else at the time (which is why they hold up much better than most games of the era). The switch from 2d to 3d gaming was revelatory for the people in that era. I still think its one of the better Zelda games as it is.

I agree, somewhat actually and my paragraph there overstates it but there were plenty of double standards over the years (I was never banned or even warned) but there was a definite slant, if only because they were over aggressive in trying to prevent trolls, which meant a decent amount of contrarian opinions were modded IMO. Heck the "SonyGAF" era was during the PS3 era, fortunately the console fanboyism on all sides really fell off this gen, so people were more civil about their various disagreements. NeoGAF was still the best forum for gaming on the net, it just had some misteps. I'm hoping we can rebuild into something [even] better. I should clarify that I didn't really follow any of the political discussions but it was clearly effecting a lot of the site broadly, which was my problem with them, not any of the viewpoints expressed. Heck theres nothing to say that NeoGAF will rebound under new moderation.

I hope something new and better can rise from NeoGAFs downfall. It was too problematic a culture to be the defacto voice of the industry like it has been. The mods were always biased (though the biased shifted over time) where if you didn't agree with the "consensus" opinion, you were banned, almost regardless of what was said. There were the SonyGAF years where anything buy effusive praise for Sony platforms was considered trolling (though other platforms were trolled incessantly) and the poor job they did with the politicalization of the forum (they should have limited to a specific sub forum or banned it all together but like SonyGAF, anything more nuanced that 100% unconditional support of "SJW" issues was ban worthy, which caused a lot more drama than was necessary). Heck even at times I felt that the GB crew view of the industry was shaped by the hive-mind that NeoGAF cultivated. Reddit is great but their gaming forums aren't really for good conversation and the format isn't great for it. GB isn't heavily trafficed but has a good culture so its why I'm here. GameFAQs is ok but more lax in moderation so trolls are more rampant.

I too had no idea that Barnwell was a games journalist in his past life. Just know him from his fantastic NFL work, especially his podcast. He would be a great guest if you could nab him. He does love his nonsense as much as the rest of the bombcrew.

I'll echo what most said. Witcher 2 was on my backlog for ages and I finally powered through it and beat it a few days ago so I have a fresh perspective. Both can be had for dirt cheap if you wait for a sale (which is frequent) so its probably not a terrible idea to do both.

The Witcher (1) is a very methodical, slow burn of a game. There is little grinding but a decent amount of backtracking. The gameplay is really simple and pretty easy once you get the timing down and past its learning curve (even the un-moded hard mode is pretty easy for a first timer). What W1 excels at is exploration and lore. The world builds itself up in a great way over the course of the story and that is what draws you in (it did me, and I HATE LoTR style medieval fantasy because it bores me). I really like it but it does take a while for it to click and gain momentum, and its a very long game (beat it twice, about 50 hours for a "100%" run doing all of the content). Until the end, most of the game is rather "Low stakes"/"low urgency" which is a nice change of pace and fits the world.

The Witcher 2, is the ME2 to W1's ME1 (though more pronounced). The combat and presentation is much better and the game is much more streamlined so that a lot of things that were present in W1 are there in W2 but not as repeated (fewer sex scenes, less expansive dice poker/fist fighting side quests). Same thing with the story, which is more focused and larger in scope. This makes sense since the world/lore is pretty established in the first game (though you do not need to play the first to follow the second). Even having played the first two times, there are points in W2 that I don't know a specific character/term so its rather like Game of Thrones where you can get a little lost and still follow/enjoy the story fine. I would recommend this game first to someone new in the series.

All I can do is +1 everything said already. Like many others, there were times where he (and the rest of the bombcrew) would be the only good thing to happen that day/week. Just reminds me (and everyone) to cherish the good things we have in life when we have them.

DOTA has more varied champs due to its nature as a mod and half the champs just being ones with the coolest skillsets. LOL's are less varied because they are designed from an actual gameplay/competitive balance standpoint, which means they tend to be a bit more similar but with different flavors. As a result LOL tends to be better balanced across the entire roster, which adds to the accessibility (as 90% of the roster is realistically competitive). DOTA's roster, by comparison, is be more fun at first as you play around with the whole roster and have fun with all the varied skills but less than 1/2 the roster will be played regularly as there is a much more defined tier of good vs. bad characters for competitive play.

That said, there is solid variation in LOL's champs in practice, just much less obvious in writing as LOL's champs are more spammy/ability driven than DOTA's (longer CDs, fewer active abilities, abilities tend to be crazier though). Singed is a great example of someone who sound dumb on paper but is surprisingly useful/unique (basically his only damage is is poison trail, but is super tanky and amazingly disruptive).

SMRPG was fantastic back in the day but doesn't hold up nearly as well now. Still fun but not up to the level of the Paper Mario games (especially TTYD).

Generally spending extra to future proof is an futile endeavor. Save the money on the 4 gig/SLI, get one good single GPU for what your needs are and save the extra money for a better/more power GPU when you need it down the road. If nothing else, reinvest that money into parts with better longevity like a sturdy case, good fans, mouse, keyboard, monitor, power supply, SSD etc... Always funny (and backwards) how people will constantly skimp on those essentials that have significant real life performance gains (longer shelf life, better ergonomics, superior picture quality etc..) to invest in minute and often unnoticeable theoretical performance gains with a top shelf CPU/GPU.

I'm genuinely surprised by many of the responses in this topic. Yoshi's Island is masterpiece and one of my favorite games of all time. The mechanics were fine if you can get past the "Mario" in the title and assume platforming is only supposed to be about precision jumping. I actually find the reverse true in that SMW is a bit overrated.