BardicKnowledge

This forum desperately needs a like button.

I'm definitely in again, Wes!

Not a bad list, but a little too much love of Megaman and Castlevania. I would have preferred to see some of the 70-115 entries from those franchises replaced. There's a lot of material that wasn't covered, but four omissions really stand out to me: 1) No Uematsu track at all, really? I'm not normally a crazy FF fan or anything, but his lyrical stuff for FF2/3 Famicom deserves a mention -- perhaps "Eternal Wind" from FF3? 2) No Dragon Warrior opening fanfare. Nothing else on NES gets trumpets the way that the fanfare does. 3) No Power Blade track -- those games are really gems, listen to them! 4) Lastly, I'm extremely surprised to not find anything from SMB3 on the list -- quality candidates being 1-2, airship, World 3, World 6, among others.

They have only made decent re-releases of 5 and 6 on GBA. Shitty Anthology versions on PSN don't actually count as games (especially 5, where the translation is abysmal to the point of being an embarrassment. 6 just has terrible load times).

Related to this, if you're a US citizen please consider signing the petition at http://stopcensorship.org/ -- as people who have a relatively greater understanding of the importance of the Internet, we really need to be leading the charge against these two bills.

The above counter-reasoning makes sense, thanks. As for Hardcore, I doubt they will include it. I have also lost numerous characters to very short bursts of poor connection, so will not miss it in the slightest.

I wonder what effects this will have on the ingame trading items-for-items system. Suddenly, my nice big Monk item for your nice big Barbarian item no longer feels like a "good" trade, when I could get $2-5 for my item instead.

I've made a few mastery pages to try out -- check them below. Will update this post with reports of how things work. I'm really interested in builds that are not 21+9 if possible; see my build for Spellvamp Kat (or any char that rushes Hextech). Full Utility Support 0/0/30 1 Summoner's Insight 3 Expanded Mind 1 Improved Recall 4 Swiftness 2 Meditation 1 Scout 4 Greed 2 Wealth 4 Awareness 1 Sage 3 Perseverance 3 Intelligence 1 Mastermind AD Jungle 21/9/0 The 9 is masteries, and rush to Bladed Armor. 21/0/9 AP The 9 is Improved Recall, Swiftness, and Runic Affinity. 18/0/12 Spellvamp AP 4 Mental Force 4 Sorcery 1 Arcane Knowledge 3 Havoc 4 Blast 2 Archmage 1 Summoner's Insight 2 Good Hands 1 Improved Recall 4 Swiftness 3 Transmutation 1 Runic Affinity AD Jungle Offtank 9/21/0 The 9 is rushing to Weapon Expertise. 1 Summoner's Resolve 2 Hardiness 2 Tough Skin 4 Durability 3 Vigor 1 Veteran's Scars 3 Evasion 1 Bladed Armor 3 Honor Guard 1 Juggernaut

I wish I was playing more...school keeps getting in the way of things.

Happy birthday, Vinnie! Do something exciting to celebrate!

I think that we're quickly approaching the other side of the valley, at least as far as games are concerned. Honestly, I'm much more interested in a full episode on the quip at the end about the "lots of brown over there". We need to see a wider color palette in games -- the real world has it, and our "realistic" games should too.

Some of the choices seem odd, yes. Personally, I feel that they should have included only one CoD track (from 2, not 4, but that's just me), and put in one of Ryu or Ken's themes from Street Fighter II. In any case, while the choices are certainly questionable (especially under the pretense of "The Greatest"), the music itself it largely pretty good. Both Uncharted and Elder Scrolls don't feel as fleshed out here as they do ingame; maybe it's just me, but they are the underwhelming tracks thus far.

While the title is obviously a marketing plot, I think that this album is largely fantastic. I haven't had the chance to listen to it in its entirety yet, but what I have heard sounds like different arrangements than the Video Games Live shows, which is ideal -- not that VGL is bad, but having only one orchestral arrangement of such flexible work is not desirable. Surprisingly, the Tetris arrangement is a really standout track. The best parts of the album, however, might be the under-covered songs -- the piece from Bioshock is excellent. Of course, our old favorites remain excellent in this format also, the best of them this time around being the Super Mario Galaxy arrangement of the Gusty Garden theme, which is phenomenal here (and one of my favorite Kondo pieces of his entire repertoire). In any case, what did others think of the album? Full review to come sometime tomorrow, during my wait for Skyrim to drop...

I need to play more often -- I've had projects due the past week preventing me from getting any time online.

This track would benefit greatly from live piano and bass. As exposed as they are here, even humanizing them will only go so far (unless you have outstanding samples and outstanding mixing ability, in which case, impress away!) Have you considered asking someone to collab with you on this? What you should try to humanize a little more is the strings -- if you get a nicer sounding piano/bass, the treble strings will really stand out as poorer quality. As for the arrangement, I really like it -- enough variation on the original track to keep me guessing, but it maintains the mellow vibe that I like so much about it. I feel like the piano could have a more intense / complex variation of things near the end with a lot of movement -- that would really make it soar during the last few repeats. Again, finding a live pianist would make this much simpler... Nice WIP, looking forward to the next iteration!

I'm hoping to torrent the Making of DVD sometime this week. I really wish there was a $80 dollar version that had the artbook and DVD but no dragon statue...sigh.

I'm a little worried about how much potentially better tanks are going to be...Singed and Amumu with a good Heal and Cleanse combo?

Have you played Dominion since the rebalance to losing team advantage? It is now much better, and there is at least one rebalance to that system incoming. It's got a lot of potential; were I Riot, I'd get a Dominion tourney organized to highlight the unique mode. More on the topic of the rebalanced spells: I really like the fact that Heal is going to be good -- hopefully they don't overbalance it, as that will encourage even more defensive play. Cleanse improvement makes it viable for squishy carries (I see Vayne running it at the very least), while Ignite will no longer see much use (since the effect can be purged; beating QSS with it was useful on big regen chars). Ignite receives a pretty substantial nerf now that there's a way to purge it -- I see its use dropping on heroes that don't rely on the extra 10 AP (Annie will probably keep it around). The gold standard will no longer be Exhaust/Flash at the very least. I predict Ghost to be a new standard on most heroes, as mobility remains highly prized, no matter how you go about getting it. My guess for a remaining spot is as follows: (Squishy) AD Carry: Cleanse Hybrid/Tanky DPS: Exhaust AP Carry: Promote Support: Heal if lacking a heal spell, otherwise (Janna) Promote Tank: Flash+Heal (they don't need Ghost to chase/run, but need to position exactly) Jungle: Smite + Heal, stick around forever. I also see the potential for each team to run two Smites, with more constant battles over the buffs as a result. Clairvoyance will probably go away, being replaced with junglers buying cloth + 3 pots + one ward and counterwarding the enemy red/blue (depending on jungler) to maintain vision of key areas.

Just FYI, you can rebind the item slot hotkeys easily enough -- I'm using Z,X,C,F,G,V atm and it's just fine.

I just finished a practice match of Dota2. First impressions: -Shop interface is better than the WC3 engine but still _sucks_ compared to HoN or LoL. This needs work badly -Framerate doesn't seem as smooth as HoN / LoL -- this may be because they are trying to emulate DotA1 exactly, but also needs fixing before release, since it makes the game look aged in comparison. Everything else seems perfect. Gameplay rocked, I won 3v5 by raping some serious face with Tiny, letting my Antimage get so fed it was ludicrous. Really looking forward to playing it as development continues. Edit: Tensei is right -- the game looks like a freaking dream. It plays excellently also, and tomorrow I am going to be playing a ton on my day off as soon as Tensei is free.

Happy birthday, Neblix!

I'm no longer a fan of Triforce on Irelia, just fyi. Wriggles into either Wit's End (against casters) or Madred's Razors. On Dominion, skip to Kitae's Razor and Lightbringer afterwards -- Sword of the Divine as a Jax counter on both maps. Triforce only if you are coming up short on health, imo.

No fees is a huge plus. Additionally, I was super impressed by their manifesto video and trailers thus far. It's easily one of my most anticipated upcoming games -- only Skyrim and Arkham City (PC) are higher on my priority list.

Source track, so that others may reference it: Edit: This is pretty close to the source material -- too close, I think. That being said, what's here is nice to listen to, and I enjoyed the piece. I was hoping for more variation in the melody, especially since it is presented so many times as the only rhythmic element of interest. At around 2:50 when the cello begins to separate from the other instruments, I was hoping things would pick up and move towards a more polyphonic texture. I would have enjoyed the piece much more if it had branched out into hearing some sort of overlap begin to occur between instances of the melody, or the cello fully developed into a counter-melody, or anything to add more variance to what's going on. The addition of the cello at 2:50 is good, but I was hoping for more afterwards. It's a good piece to chill out to, since it doesn't demand anything from the listener, but it is so passive and repetitive that it could be just as interesting at at least one minute shorter than it is.

First off, this is great work -- a great way for me to return to the WIP forums, I must say! I'm a huge fan of how you've added so much richness via variety of texture and their placements in the mix, something the (Nier) original lacks. The piece begins by giving us this warm, murky texture where notes are somewhat unclear, except for the piano which pierces that texture. When Sabrina enters, it's unclear at first to which realm she belongs, that of the "ancient" murky texture, or the "present" piano texture -- I'd suggest that the answer may well be both simultaneously. Even as the drums pick up and bring us towards a more forward ("present") placement of things, the more murky synths stick around, giving us a context in which to listen to the lead parts. Incidentally, the piano sound on the Gerudo interlude does not pierce the veil, if you will, as much as the Nier melody on the piano during the introduction -- is is mastered differently here, or have we as listeners been trained to hear it differently as a result of what has previously occurred? It's to your credit that you delay giving us the Gerudo melody in the second bridge section -- it certainly heightens both our expectations that we receive it, and the moment when the cello soars to give it to us. Speaking of which, excellent job differentiating the two with regard to timbre also -- it would have been very simple (and worse, obviously) to just stick in the piano again. I wonder if you had ever considered a slightly longer ending that played more with the contrast between the synths and the instrumental? With such an interesting buildup to your full instrumentation, it may be equally interesting to pull us back to where we began over a longer period of time. Lastly, to Sabrina: What a nice voice you have! You manage to maintain a nice forward tone without coming off as too bright, barring a couple vowel endings where I feel the diphthong begins to emerge a little early. This is extremely nitpicky because otherwise I think you sound gorgeous; as a result, I have nothing broader to address. This feels like it is in a comfortable lower range for you -- I wonder how your tone changes as you really let loose, both in volume and towards the ends of your range?