Triad Orion

Ace Combat 7, above all others. Honorable mentions to Sonic Mania, Breath of the Wild, and the hopes of a new Borderlands, much like The Damned.

Mei's entire kit is about disruption and being as aggravating as possible to the enemy team. So yeah. She's pretty not-fun to play against. But you can deal with her. Bleck's advice is solid. Above all, you have to keep your distance unless you're positive you can kill her before she freezes you. Her projectile attack is strong but it has delay and its velocity isn't as fast as a bullet. If you're a good shot, McCree can counter her reasonably well due to his good range on his primary and his flashbang if she does manage to close the distance to you. Soldier 76 can work in a pinch too at medium to long range, but his pulse rifle's damage might not pile up fast enough to kill her without blowing your Helix Rockets. Widowmaker obviously is a decent choice against her too, given her predilection for long-range combat. Needless to say, Pharah can be a nightmare for Mei, especially if you can maximize air time so she has to rely solely on her alternate fire to bring you down. Just don't pop rocket barrage if she knows where you are and keep moving erratically and you should have the advantage there. If you're in a situation where you're a short range character, your options are more limited. Reaper and Tracer have escapes, as does Winston, and should be used liberally if you're in a disadvantageous situation. I've had some success with Reinhardt against Mei thanks to the large health pool and shield, and if you have a good sense of timing, his charge can level a Mei coming out of Ice Block if they don't wall up the instant they get out. Even if you flub the charge and hit the block, you're still in hammer range, and with a teammate backing you, you should be able to finish her if you land at least one swing. Relatedly, I've found that against low to mid level Meis, that saving your burst damage for after she ice-blocks tends to punish her reasonably well. But I don't play all that often and Meis may have gotten smarter since then. And importantly, I want to stress what Bleck said: when facing one or more Meis, stay with your team. Ganging up on her if she's out of position is one of the best ways to deal with her. Without her ult, she can generally only freeze/headshot one of you at a time. She may be sturdy, but she probably won't have enough health to weather two or three people wailing on her before she goes down.

Happy 15th Birthday, OC Remix! 15 great years of music, fun, and community that can't be beaten. A big thanks to everyone who keeps OCR running, to the judges, and to DJ Pretzel for everything. I may not be around or talk much, but I love coming here and listening to the great work everyone does for the love of the craft. Here's to another 15!

Pretty much this. Witch Doctor play style while leveling I found is a matter of patience and using your sustain damage to whittle guys down. The class starts out remarkably slow in my opinion, but once it gets rolling with its abilities and runes its power really comes to bear. It and Demon Hunter are the slow ones off the line, in my experience. Once leveled, they're dangerous, but they do feel like they lack the instant gratification of being a Barbarian or Wizard and cutting immediate swaths across the battlefield. But long term it tall works out.

That's a boss setup. I may have to try that one sometime just for fun. One With Everything is just *so* good. I love that passive.

Got back into playing this after the patch dropped with my ladyfriend, and wow, the game as a lot of fun again. Loved the new loot system, the new tweaks to characters, and most especially the difficulty curve. No longer stuck trudging through Normal to get to Nightmare where it started to get fun. Can turn on Expert/Master difficulty right from the get go, and have a blast playing it at any level. I couldn't be happier with this patch and it's sold me on getting RoS when before I was considering passing. I mainly roll on a Monk designed to suppress enemies (Run Mantra of Conviction with the 80% slow, Crippling Wave with Atk Speed Slow, Seven Sided Strike with the stun, Lashing Tail Kick with the Stun, and the Healing Light spell) but I have a Witch Doctor and Wizard up and coming.

...Honestly, I like the Torgue Campaign way more than the Scarlett one. I personally find the Scarlett campaign to be pretty boring, tbh. Decent loot from it, like Blade's cursed gear, but I found most of it to be forgettable. Then again, I think Mr. Torgue is a hilarious character so that probably helps.

I happen to agree. The fact that Microsoft tried to push such anti-consumer policies onto everyone as "features" that we should want, and if we didn't, then something was wrong with us? That has not sat well, and it really should not be forgotten just because they finally pulled their heads out of whatever hole they stuck them in. Removing the DRM is one step forward. But there's still the issue of the Kinect being forcibly included and all the issues that entails, as well as the fact that you're still paying more for a technologically inferior piece of hardware to the PS4. Not to mention, they still sound utterly put out by the fact that we didn't want to put up with their nonsense. It reminds me of a spoiled kid dealing with a new babysitter, really. And I'm not about to give 500 bucks to a spoiled kid for treating me like garbage. Not now, and not for the life cycle of the console. No one game on that thing will justify the kind of crap they *tried* to pull.

The answer to this is surprisingly simple and realistic. In the desert, there's an abundance of sand... which is blown around very easily by the wind. The Mjolnir armor has moving parts and joints, that sort of thing. Sand constantly blowing into the armor will require it to be cleaned and maintained more, and if he has no access to the tools required to maintain it, it results in degradation of armor performance. Covering it with that robe protects the surface and potentially vulnerable spots of the armor from sand blowing around. Notably, Zero does the same thing during the opening of Mega Man Zero 2. That and it was to conceal him for a big reveal, but at least it makes sense.

I'd say the point is really more to go back to the drawing board with how your games, not your hardware, is produced. There's nothing really wrong with the hardware. That's not the issue. The hardware sells, even if it is at a loss, and it sold before those features were even conceived. The issue is games, and verily the industry itself, are suffering from bloat and excess, and adding more bloat to the console itself isn't going to solve the issue. It may just make it worse as developers might be forced into shoehorning in things for these extra features as a "selling point."

This sums up how I feel about the matter, personally. I don't have a problem with the box having new "all-in-one" features or whatever. What I take umbrage with is that they're making this the primary selling point for the console instead of the *games*, which is what the X-Box One can do over all the other slew of devices I have that can do the same damn thing as most of the other features of the One. ...Then there's the draconian methods of digital rights management, requirements for internet connection (even if it's not always on), the requirement of the Kinect 2, continuing the ornerous policies of XBL for indie companies, the list goes on, but those are other ogres in the room. ...Side note, that room's getting pretty crowded and smelly with all the ogres in it. I wouldn't recommend going in there.

While I feel quite sad that LucasArts has closed down on some level, thanks to their heydays in the 90s with a huge list of great games (many already listed in this thread) they really petered out after Jedi Academy. Honestly, the last LucasArts game I remember liking without any sort of major quantifying "but" (disregarding the Lego Star Wars titles which were mostly developed elsewhere anyway) was Battlefront II (mostly Pandemic developed anyway), preceded by Republic Commando. ...Back in 2005. ...It's been a longer time than I thought since I played a good LucasArts game. So maybe I can kind of understand where Disney was coming from, given the patently mixed reception the Force Unleashed games got.

I'm not entirely sure about that. This game sold well enough to make Gamestop stop taking preorders in some areas. That's a pretty big sign. Also, the constant demand for, and the big hype for this game? Nintendo would be foolish not to do at least one reprint of this game. It's the perfect entry level title in the series too, which the series hasn't really had since Path of Radiance, or even Sacred Stones. But I do agree that we really need another Advance Wars game. I love those games to pieces and they were pretty close to a good balance in Days of Ruin.

Honestly, with my historic and well documented cases of bad luck with anything RNG related, I typically don't play Fire Emblem games on anything higher than Normal. I might dabble in Hard here and there but honestly when success or failure is ultimately determined on probabilities as much as sound strategy I can get quite frustrated. If I truly play a Hard Run I'll probably play Hard or Lunatic Casual just so I don't frigging get screwed. Case in point, I got crit on a 3% and a 4% back-to-back tonight. Granted, it was in a situation where the attacks did no damage (gotta love armor knights) but this kind of thing has a history of happening to me when it *does* matter. That said, I am loving this game a lot. It's a blast to play and it's a very well crafted game with lots of awesome characters.

Am I the only one who thinks that thing looks like the Book of Mudora?

Related, but if your Thief is higher level than the Item God or if your Stealing Hand's HIT Stat is higher than average, you get better than a 1% chance to steal. And it gets worse every game after that. /Disgaea Nerd Playing Fire Emblem: Radiant Dawn on US Normal Mode (which is Japanese Hard). Get all the Emblems in Sonic Adventure 2. Get all the Gold Medals in Star Wars: Rogue Squadron, Rogue Leader, and Battle for Naboo. Beating Pixy on Very Hard in Ace Combat Zero in an F-4E Phantom II. A-Ranking every mission in Mega Man Zero 2 and 3. Going through Mega Man Zero 1 without using any cyber elves at all. Beating half of F-ZERO GX's Story Mode on Very Hard. There's probably more I'm forgetting.

Re: Those Planes? You get *massive* points for making them F-4 Phantom IIs. That is shamelessly my favorite aircraft. Mad props, yo. And the rest of it is obviously awesome as well.

Agreeing here. I enjoyed Corruption despite its linear nature and some tacked on motion control BS, and the original Prime was one of, if not my favorite GameCube game ever. Prime was pretty much the perfect Metroid experience in three dimensions. Echoes pissed me off way too much for me to fully enjoy. Even more backtracking, very few shortcuts to be found, and worst of all was Dark Aether. While interesting at first, it quickly lost its novelty when you got locked into every other room where you were forced to fight a bunch of Ing and you were restricted to the areas that were lit up. Conceptually, Dark Aether and its toxic atmosphere were awesome, but in practice, it was just a huge nuisance. What's sad is that Echoes is, for the most part, a wonderfully put together, atmospheric game, but it suffers a lot coming off the original Prime's footsteps.

This always bothers me. Unlike the CD-i stuff which is abysmal, the Prime series is arguably the best Metroid has to offer since the era of the Super Nintendo, and I've even heard Prime 1 compared favorably to Super Metroid. I think if they're trying to make people forget about or decanonize Prime, it's out of some stupid pride thing? Because that the games developed by Retro were better than the games directly developed under them (never mind that Team Ninja were involved with Other M)? I wouldn't put it past the executives in Japan being upset that the American development team of Retro Studios did a better job than their teams. Of course, that's purely speculation, but it seems foolish to make people try to write off one of the best selling titles (and series!) that the GameCube even had.

^^^ All this, pretty much. LucasFilm will still make the next Star Wars film, and the two following it. The main difference is that George Lucas will not be in full creative control of what happens. He will be a creative consultant, which probably means he won't do all the writing and definitely won't be directing. Which I think given how stilted the writing was in the prequel trilogy, that's probably a good thing. I like that Lucas is still going to work as an idea man, but having an editor or two to reel him in might help return the series to a better place.

Ah, yeah. Skag Gully. That area *does* repopulate absurdly fast, you're right. I'd forgotten. Most other zones aren't quite as bad as that one, though. And yeah, very little's worse hearing their telltale roar come from behind, because it's just one of the bigger "Aw, crap" moments early in the game.

It's not instantaneous respawn, it does take awhile, but the problem is it doesn't really wait long enough. Respawning enemies in areas are probably most noticeable in Old Haven, considering the enemies there are considerably more combat capable than the bandits you see in most of the game. Ironically, this is what makes Old Haven one of the most fun "dungeons" of the game.

Yeah, people are definitely nuts for Miku and Len/Rin. I'm not the biggest vocaloid listener myself, but prior to Miku's update and subsequent all-around improvement in her voice bank, I always thought Luka sounded better for a lot of things. Not all, of course. Luka's still my favorite overall, though.

It's ultimately designed for both. The original Borderlands was more designed with consoles in mind, but high PC sales for the game convinced Gearbox to pay more attention to the needs of PC gamers for Borderlands 2. For the sake of argument, *both* control setups are what the game is designed for. Pick your poison, and it's the right answer.

This, pretty much. Playing the first game and knowing it well gives you tons of little bonuses, laughs, and references you would just miss otherwise, but in terms of major plot? You're not missing much of anything. You have more worldbuilding than anything in 1, and even that's more left to discovery and thought rather than accurately spelled out. ...And I too miss the Pestilent Defiler, Tensei. Also my old Glorious Ogre.