ZombiePie

Even numbers usually get more attention, but a birthday is always a celebratory moment, especially when it comes to websites! So, here's to another anniversary marking Giant Bomb's founding! Here's to another hopefully successful year, and feel free to share your memories regarding the site's launch so many years ago. If you are a late-comer to the site, you are equally appreciated, and feel free to talk about what directed you to the site or your first impressions of the staff or community.

Last year Giant Bomb celebrated its tenth anniversary, and as such, it published several touching pieces of reflective works. Below you can find some of these features in case you missed them the first time around.

1. 10 Years of Giant Bomb Page - A retrospective of the best and most memorable moments featuring the Giant Bomb staff and community.
2. Giant Bombcast We're Sorry: Ten Years of The Giant Bombcast - Podcast retrospective on the site's development through the years.
3. Giant Bomb Still Changing Video Games Media 10 Years Later- An article from Variety interviewing former and current Giant Bomb staff members.

I can confirm this to be the case. Also, most of the kids are either too young to know about Mass Effect and stick with the Planet Snoopy zone, or are old enough to prefer roller coasters to this 4D motion simulator.

Conrad Verner being the lead actor is just one example of the ride being "inside baseball." As mentioned, the ride is a continuation of DLC from Mass Effect 1, but set during the events of Mass Effect 3. Look, I love the original Mass Effect trilogy, but I don't think I ever played the "Bring Down The Sky" DLC when it came out or even after the game's re-release on PC. Virtually any attempt at storytelling in the queue is about an optional battle most mainstream Mass Effect fans NEVER SAW!

Yeah, I'm not sure why they didn't go with Mass Effect Andromeda, or at the very least, a taste of Mass Effect post-ME 3, but the timeline here is totally wrong. Worse, what bits of Mass Effect flavor the ride tries to inject into its story are just annoying for anyone who loves the franchise, warts and all.

Thing is, most Defunctland attractions have their defenders. I have yet to meet a single person clamoring to keep Mass Effect: New Earth at California's Great America. This ride has virtually no champions, and it shows. Parts of it are literally falling apart, and the damn thing hasn't changed in over three years! Most motion simulators are designed to have a lifetime of two years with Star Tours being the obvious exception.

I agree 100%, but you still see plenty of theaters with at least one room providing a 4D experience. I bet you when Hobbs & Shaw comes out, there are going to be plenty of "D-Box exclusive" airings of the film around the world.

I mean, if you like FF12 I can only assume you have moved onto FF14 and consider it the second coming. That said, as someone who played their fare share of WoW, the parts of FF12 that emulate, but do not entirely copy, the well-established quest structure of MMORPGs drives me absolutely bonkers. There's no reason why you need to talk to two or three different NPCs before starting a quest and one extra person at the end to cash it in. That's entirely unnecessary and if they tried to pull that shit in WoW people would have rioted.

You are going to enjoy the plans @thatpinguino and I have developed for the next series.

I didn't hate RAW, but there was a bunch of ticky-tacky nonsense that rubbed me the wrong way because, in the end, RAW cannot help but be RAW:

• I would like to see a normal tag match on RAW that isn't interrupted or transformed into a different match creative had in mind in the first place.
• Was Karl Anderson's wife a stipulation against her will for a hot minute? That's... not cool.
• Now would have been a great time to push No Way Jose because a loss doesn't hurt Cesaro's credibility, and No Way Jose really could have used the momentum.
• What happened to the "team" of Cesaro, EC3, and Bobby Roode from Main Event? If the answer is "nothing," that's a bummer because I thought all three could really benefit from working together.
• Maria Kanellis' promo sure was something.
• I still hate everything about Baron Corbin and Lacey Evans. Their promo was terrible and I have zero investment in anything they are booked in.
• I'm done with the two out of three falls match type for a while.
• Why did Nikki Cross win?

Also, and I have been meaning to do this for a while, but this segment of my FF12 blog series coincides with the third episode of the podcast I recorded with @thatpinguino and @rorie! Give it a listen when you have the time!

@turboman: I will just say as someone who is part Japanese I'm not okay with JR saying "oriental" during a PPV. I'm not having it.

More fundamentally, his old-style approach to commentary often does not fit the style of wrestling in the ring.

And it pains me to say this, but JR is not a good commentator anymore. There are times when his commentary felt totally out of place.

I am not okay with the chairshot Cody took during Fyter Fest. It is 2019, and we now know more about CTE than we did during the Attitude Era. Even if it's a work, that crap has no place in a wrestling ring.

This is such a bad take I'm not even going to listen to my gut and dignify it with a Final Fantasy meme picture.

We will not speak of "Leon" in my presence. Not now; not ever.

It's going to be great... right up until I need to remind myself how the junction and item refining systems work.

Other than that, I'm down with reliving the game's crazy plot again but now with better textures! I'm really excited to see how Esthar looks and how the things you do there translate in the remaster.

The "true story" is more wild than you could ever imagine. Long story short, Square deleted the source code of Final Fantasy VII within a year of the game's Japanese release and thus, Eidos had to use a pre-launch build of 7 and play the final PS2 step by step as they touched up the game. Hence, why the PC release launched with as many bugs as it did when it first came out. Then, when Eidos was contracted to make the PC release of Final Fantasy VIII, lo and behold, Square did the same thing, and that's why the PC version of 8 uses the MIDI sound files and not the actual PS2 OST.

Yo... but what about all those AWFUL minigames at the Golden Saucer? Everybody LOVES Chocobo Racing, right? Anyone?

But it all seriousness, the best part of Final Fantasy VII has nothing to do with Aeris or Midgar, even though those are the two things everyone remembers about the game. No, the best part of Final Fantasy VII is when you go to Mideel and learn who Cloud is and how he relates to the greater world. That's the whole point of the climax of the game and it would be a shame if they never got around to that part of Final Fantasy VII.

I'm not joking, Square-Enix had the best E3 2019 conference. Their conference had something for everyone, and it was perfectly paced right up until its ending. I get people don't like how the Avengers game looks, but everything else was pitch perfect.