BardicKnowledge

I agree with this. Aside from a couple Payload map spots (Watchpoint: Gibraltar comes to mind), the maps tend to work against her -- this is particularly true of Nepal, in which basically none of the three maps provide her both a clean shot to and a safe distance from the point. Her single best use case in ranked IMO is the Ilios map with the arena at the bottom of a flight of stairs as a hard counterpick to Pharah. Otherwise, whatever you want to accomplish with her can probably be better done with a different character. Keep in mind that for static defenses, Ana is at least as good as she is (turrets) or flat out better (putting Bastion to sleep forces him to stand in movement mode, allowing you enough time to kill him if he doesn't retreat immediately), and she also heals and has one of the game's best ults. This completely kills one of the big use-cases Widow had going for her on release -- and she didn't get any to make up for it. Tom's right that by and large, the people who do play her can shoot -- but they can shoot better with basically any other character right now. Potential changes to help her positioning: (just for fun) -Allow grappling hook to temporarily let her cling to a wall like a spider (say, for 2-3 shots worth of time) -Allow grappling hook to let her descend and ascend in a straight vertical line, like the famous sequence from Mission: Impossible.

This is pretty awesome -- I'll have to keep my ears open!

Blake Neely is knocking the entire CW-verse out of the park, and I agree that Supergirl represents his best work thus far. It's hard to sound as uplifting as Williams, and somehow he manages it without sounding like a weak impression. The Flash Main Theme, while not as hummable, is great as well, with both the two-chord choral intro and the ostinato serving as powerful things for the audience to latch onto. Reminds me of much of Hans Zimmer's work where one small kernel can carry an entire scene (think of the four chords that form the final cue to Inception, for instance). See Frank Lehman's chapter in the new Routledge book "Music in Epic Film: Listening to Spectacle" for more: https://books.google.com/books/about/Music_in_Epic_Film.html?id=JVH0DAAAQBAJ

Level with Emily is the continuation of "Top Score," formerly on MPR. https://www.patreon.com/Level/posts

I'm bad at responding to things unless I'm actually tagged. There absolutely is room for new folks though! I'll caution that League has a ridiculously-high skill floor -- David Sirlin's comment about good players and newbies actually playing two totally different games applies here even more than it does in Street Fighter. That said, I'm always happy to play with new folks. I'm RTBardic, just add me and the next time we're both online (I'm usually around from 9:00 to 11:00 on the internet somewhere), just hit me up!

I'll quote music theory professor Frank Lehman here, who after noting that the YT channel this comes from is excellent, notes: "...they bizarrely gloss over the most glaring issue with these franchises -- the lack of firmly defined or hummable themes. (Exceptions, IMHO, w/ Capt. America leitmotif and maybe the Avengers theme--not accidentally both from Silvestri). And they further claim that the music is not evoking an emotional response, when that's pretty much all it's doing: pure affect" That pretty much sums up my thoughts. Get Silvestri to do more, haha

Believe me when I say I am appreciative of posts designed for research. Unfortunately, no matter how you slice it, asking people for a list of favorites is against the forum rules, and therefore I'm locking the thread.

Ana is my new go-to counter to Bastion, by the way. Her sleep dart not only stuns him, but even if he wakes up right away, he wakes up in walking mode! So you are guaranteed 3 seconds where he's not gunning your team down, usually enough time (especially in conjunction with Ana's ult on someone) for your team to close distance and eliminate not just him, but the whole team.

Owen can play Peggle now, and it's a lot of fun watching him, haha. Random parenting story: I bought Peggle 2 to listen for how the audio integration was improved, and let Owen play while I made lunch two weeks ago. Suddenly I hear "Oh, FUCK IT!" from the other room, and it was the first time he'd sworn like that. I had to bite my lip to keep from laughing so hard before asking where he'd heard that type of language.

In case you haven't noticed, Titan Quest got a massive update for its ten-year anniversary. It includes not only widescreen resolution support (and proper scaling for it -- it looks good!) but Steam-based multiplayer -- no more fiddling around with Gamespy or whatever. It's also quite possibly the longest set of patch notes that I have ever seen. Most importantly, if you owned any edition of the game on Steam, you get a free upgrade and already have it in your library waiting to be installed. If you missed out on the fun, or on the various bundles over the years that have had it, it's only $5 for a week, and it will be $5 well spent. I recommend it especially for those folks who are burned out of Diablo 3, given that we're looking at no new content from Blizzard for the second season in a row.

Tangentially related: I am the OC ReMix clan leader for League of Legends -- I am RTBardic there, and I am on usually 4x a week (almost always with one of prophetik, OA, or newt). I know I added the OP to the clan, but anyone else should feel free to ask for a clan invite. It's a good way to find people who are online -- and there are a lot of us here who play League.

I don't think that the Shinespark tricks required in AM2R are more difficult than those required in Fusion and Zero Mission for 100%, fwiw. And though I like the extension of Metroid 1 that Zero Mission offers, I will say that I would have been livid if it were inserted into Metroid 1 proper instead of being placed after, if that makes sense. As for Metroid Prime: Though you may not be comfortable with first-person movement as much, the reason it's so well-regarded is because it absolutely has the best platforming physics (e.g. requiring jumping) of any first-person shooter ever. Consider the platforming sections in Turok: Dinosaur Hunter for N64 or some other game, and it's a whole new world. In 2002, the graphics were also out-of-this-world good, which doesn't hurt at all (seeing accurate reflections, including Samus' own face in the right lighting, was a new thing back then). The Morph Ball sections are about as good as you can possibly get in 3D as well. Not saying you have to like it or anything (Newt doesn't particularly care for them either, and he loves 2D platformers), but I'll say that there will probably never be a _better_ conversion of the franchise to 3D than the first Prime game.

You could play constantly from now until Christmas and you wouldn't have a chance in hell against Wes or Jeremy, I hate to tell you.

The side-event to get the Super Missiles stands out as something Nintendo probably would not have done, though it's over so quickly once you know what you're doing that it isn't a big deal. Any longer and I wouldn't have enjoyed the departure from standard gameplay.

Dave, as usual you do a far better job than any of us could -- and I feel your pain with regard to parenting and a loss of free time. That's largely why I haven't been around as much lately I don't think you and the team need more help than you have, but feel free to reach out whenever.

I actually agreed with this in the very first line I posted here. Re-wording the Content Policy is worth a look -- not that my 2c needs to count for any of it, as I have absolute faith in the current staff.

Define "SHOULD," please. Legally they are not bound to do so, as you license the music to them at no charge when you submit! Similarly, paying artists does not directly support the site, which goes against the Content Policy. And, as you have pointed out, it would hurt their case for a successful fair use defense if they were ever taken to court. Ethically, if you don't think the site should be using the music without paying the artist, maybe don't submit music to them given the existance of their Content Policy? It's there for you to peruse _before_ you submit, not the other way around. It's my opinion that the music supports the mission, promoting video game music as an art form.

You argue that you're mostly concerned with fair use, and then talk about why you're not being paid -- two completely separate discussions that you yourself identified as such. I'll get to fair use; as for payment, the Content Policy means that the site is never going to pay you by definition, because any revenue made is explicitly forbidden from anything that isn't "directly associated with the operation and promotion of OverClocked ReMix." See #1 and #5 under the Content Policy for the full text. Fair use aside (wait for zircon's posts :p), I think this is the most valid point anyone has made. While the Content Policy does allow OC ReMix to do this, it might be nice to explicitly make clear how that monetization occurs, and I understand why an artist might want that. Updating the language here seems a fair request worthy of consideration. Tom is absolutely correct here -- churches are non-profit but pay their pastors, secretaries, etc. Charitable organizations can get to be quite large -- Lutheran World Relief has a hundred employees or so in the Twin Cities area alone. Related: It is my contention that you could pay the site staff and STILL be well within the bounds of fair use; as anyone on staff can attest, there is a high time commitment to be a judge or core staff member here. Because of how other people don't seem to understand or agree though, let me reiterate that currently, no staff member has ever been paid for their extraordinary volunteer efforts. For anyone who wants to learn more about a fair use defense (and it IS a defense -- it is always going to go to court if the copyright holder wants to push on it), I highly recommend Fair Use: The Story of the Letter U and the Numeral 2 as your textbook. It contains a the full court decisions for Luther R. Campbell AKA Luke Skywalker v. Acuff-Rose Music, Inc. and an analysis of it -- the case that established fair use in the music world (more colloquially, it's 2 Live Crew's commercial parody of Roy Orbison's "Pretty Woman.")

Addie and I are both going! Looking forward to seeing everybody.

Just finished all of AM2R -- what a ride! Some thoughts now that I'm done (with 94%, incidentally -- will look for the last things on my next playthrough): First off, there are no real surprises until the 2nd area -- the first area where you get bombs and other starting items looks very nice, but doesn't immediately signal how much of a departure the remake is from the original. Easing players into it is probably for the best, and it works. Once you enter into Area 2's water stuff though, you know you're in for a treat. Metroid II was often cited as the most atmospheric of the games for good reason, and I love that it keeps its potential to scare you if you wander too quickly inside a breeding ground. The new mechanics -- especially the underwater zone and the electrified walls that prevented weapons fire -- were very well done. Alpha Metroids are vastly improved, and it's nice that there are two clear variations of them now. Gammas are bigger without requiring significantly different tactics, though the new moves they have are awesome (if easily avoided). Zetas and Omegas -- holy cow, what great stuff. I never did settle into a good pattern with Zeta Metroids, and instead just unloaded a ton, haha. I don't want to spoil too much, but almost all of the new bosses (and returning ones from Fusion) are excellent as well. I thought the optional boss above the mineshaft (come back with power bombs!) could have used one more attack pattern, but otherwise everything was stellar. The single best moment was an unexpected scripted event that caused a moment of sheer panic on my part -- absolutely brilliant design decision. Won't say any more there, as I imagine I will not be the only one wracked with nervousness. I'd place this right next to Zero Mission for quality, though it's worth noting that I did not encounter either of the large bugs (one after a suit upgrade, one after the Queen fight) that some people have reported.

AM2R is wicked good -- it could have done far less and been a successful fan game. As it stands, the quality is so good that Nintendo could have released it as an official remake and nobody would think twice about it. The inclusion of all of the native SR-388 enemies from Metroid Fusion is an especially smart touch. And for those people in this thread who loved Fusion, you will likely enjoy AM2R the most -- Fusion has always had more in common with Metroid II than the other titles, because they share a certain amount of linearity, though both the original Game Boy game and the remake have more open spaces than Fusion.

A big part of this has to do with how wonderful Hamill's performance of the character is -- and Tara Strong's Harley Quinn (who usually comes along with) is pretty damn good as well.

I am sure that all of the posters in this thread have a different bar for what good emulation is. My current desktop rig, which plays Overwatch on medium settings at 1920x1080, will only run Higan to play SNES games at about 40 FPS -- which is unplayable. It obviously runs Snes9x and ZSNES fine though, good enough to stream to Twitch and record to my desktop simultaneously while playing at full frames. So it depends on what resources you have, and what performance you are willing to accept. Meteo: Did you ever get GBA emulation working well on the Wii? Whenever I try it starts to frameskip like mad after a very short while, and I just assumed that the processor simply wasn't fast enough to keep up.

For what it's worth, it is strongly hinted that Richter's demonic possession by Shaft is what motivates him to give up the Vampire Killer. He doesn't need it anymore after Alucard has done the job for him, and is ashamed ingame that they came to blows. I would be interested to hear how Julius Belmont reclaims the whip from Jonathan Morris, though that's likely part of a 1999 story (Morris would be 73 years old then).

This absolutely. If their team has too many tanks, running Zenyatta+Ana as your support duo absolutely melts them. Worth a mention: If Zenyatta is using his ult to allow his allies to push they payload or storm a point, Ana's grenade will make all of them vulnerable again. Got a very nice PotG recently by using Ana's blast to allow our Roadhog to clean up with an empowered ult during Zenyatta's ult. Edit: Since no one has mentioned this yet, IMO these are the two best uses for the sleep dart. 1) Shutting down Pharah, Reaper, Roadhog, or Soldier ults right as they begin. McCree is also possible but you likely go down in the process. 2) When someone comes to flank you, dart them -- and then have your whole team charge the point. It's a 5v6 at that point, and without their Tracer/Reaper they are very likely to lack the damage they need to kill you.