Triad Orion

That's great news, Jade! I'm glad he's feeling at least a little better! Tell him to stay strong; I may not know him personally, but he's got a lot of friends to come back to here.

I know this really isn't profound or anything; I've never been good at this without sounding cheesy, but I'll just say this: Get well soon, bLiNd! Good luck to you!

While it's true that Wily is constructing Zero (Mega Man X4 alone proves it), with purposes to destroy either Mega Man or X, it is certainly *not* true that Zero kills Wily. It's the predominant fan-based theory, but it isn't the truth. Wily could die of something completely unrelated, or he simply could just... fade to obscurity in the hundred years between the two series. The Cataclysm Theory is purely fanon. While it is a theory I find very interesting with lots of different interpretations and entertaining ideas, it certainly is *not* common knowledge. Who knows, maybe Zero's never activated until right before he beats the tar out of Sigma. It's a wait and see. Though I would like to see more allusions to X and Zero in Mega Man 9. It would be entertaining to say the least.

Truthfully, I'm not sure if it'll see a retranslation. Personally, I liked the old script, even with its occasional campy tendencies. It's part of what made it fun. And while I wouldn't disapprove of a little clarification here in there in the dialogue, a full retranslation might cut some of the humor and charm out of the game. That being said, a lot of people said the same thing about FFVI Advance's retranslation and it actually turned out better except for the omission of "Submariner" in Kefka's angry rant. But personally, I don't think a full retranslation's really necessary. Final Fantasy VI was generally a very serious game, but Chrono Trigger was intended by its creators to be more of a swashbuckling adventure, ripping through time to save the world, and the original translation really was true to that sentiment. It's ultimately a wait-and-see. Odds are, they'll probably polish some of the translation, but I doubt they'll muck with the whole thing.

Well, those idiots are lame. Granted, I liked the little changes in music because they made for good gags, but I understand with Yahtzee's growing popularity he has to try to be a bit more self-sufficient, especially if he's selling merchandise of his work and all. There are less risks involved for him this way and I fully support it. Even if this means we have to sacrifice a couple of good gags now and then, it's hardly affecting us otherwise, so people who are complaining should just bugger off. Anyway, I'm actually a bit surprised that Yahtzee had fun with a Lego title. Doesn't seem his bag, but hey, glad he doesn't completely shoot it down. Good stuff.

Or, if you're like me, you miss every fully charged headshot with a sniper rifle. XD ...Granted around 95% of that is me just being a lousy sniper. The other 5% is hit detection to some degree. Like I could swear I have a perfect shot lined up and somehow it misses entirely or doesn't kill. *Shrugs*

I only get numb fingers when using my PSP because the thumbstick is small and shitty and you have to push the R Button down really hard for afterburners when you're trying to play Ace Combat X. As for the DS? No problems with numbness or control. I love my damn Lite, though I wish they had them in Silver like the DS Fats. I had a first gen DS fat in Silver and loved it until the shoulder buttons wore out from overuse. I blame my addiction to Mega Man Zero for that, really. Anyway, I agree that I'd like the speakers to be a little more powerful, but to do that would probably drain battery life faster and I like the Lite's battery life where it is, especially if you use low backlight settings.

I might be going, but I might not. It's up in the air right now, considering the door fee is going to be ridiculous on top of the gas cost to get to Baltimore and back.

I find it's the opposite, but that comes from years of playing years of airplane/starfighter games. So to me, if there's a stick that controls the pitch of something like a camera, I go inverted just so I don't mess it up. I don't own a PS3 myself, but I've played a bit of this game on my friend's and it's a lot of fun. I've only beaten Part One thus far. Unlike a lot of JRPGs I've played recently at least the frequent cutscenes are relevant to the main story and aren't generally useless fluff. That was a plus, and I like messing around with the soldiers who see you as allies. Going through the tunnel in the cardboard box with all the guys was a trip, because they'd always kick the box off of me and go "Oh, it's YOU." I lawled.

Nah, it happens sometimes. And this is one of those times that we're all glad he's had a change of heart because AudioSurf is a really fun and addictive game. I don't play on Elite yet, mostly casual and Pro. And I suck at the Pointman system still, even if it's where the meat of the game really is.

That last one IS brilliant.

I agree with Zircon. Demos are not overpowered at all. Yes, they hit hard, but their primary weapon is difficult to hit with and takes forever to reload. The Sticky Bombs are useful for ambushes, but they're nigh impossible to use in a small fight as opposed to a big battle, plus add a terrible reload time. No direct attacks aside from the bottle means if you can get past the stickies and deal with the grenades they're feebly trying to launch at you, you've got that guy right where you want him at medium to short range barring a crit from either the grenades or the bottle. For Demomen, you want to keep them at medium to short range and use a direct-fire weapon such as the Flamethrower, Scattergun or even the backup Shotgun to take them down. Dealing with the stickies is easy if they're in plain sight. Use a rocket or a shotgun to clear them away from your path, then move past. If the stickies are hidden, you have to try to goad the demoman into activating them at the wrong time, which is more difficult. At that point, it's better to pull back and if you're a class with a good ranged weapon use that instead. They're really not that hard to deal with. It's just in the chaos of battle it's easy to lose track of enemy stickies or eat a grenade from your flank. Situational Awareness is key to fighting well against demomen in major frays, and considering with the Backburner now out there, watching your back is top priority anyway.

And what's wrong with playing Sonic? If you can handle him well, I don't see the problem with it. Ignore the fact that Sonic's my favorite in Brawl...

Eh, I'm sure there's a proper metaphor to describe the age changes. ...I admit though that I'm too lazy to really come up with it at the moment. Either way. I'm loving that work, and 2-tan and 4-tan are my favorites of the four. The volleyball is a good detail, IMO. I can't wait to see the finished product. You could probably find a way to turn that into a wallpaper too.

This is pretty much the game's weakest era, IMO. It's important to the story, but the monsters and fights aren't particularly fun, and it's very hard to care about the cavemen beyond Ayla, I found. Most of the other eras are interesting with more developed characters and subplots, but the prehistory era feels notably bare by comparison. I guess it's really hard to compete to a wartorn medieval era, the post-apocalyptic future, and the dystopian era of a mageocracy.

No, I'd say it's directed more at the hardcore tourney player, not the consumer in general. Considering I play the game casually at best, I don't find any of the changes all that appalling, including tripping. Tripping gives me laughs not only because of the chaos it adds to the game, but I love to hear people complain about it because apparently I'm a horrible person. XD

I don't like the obnoxious Quake soundeffects. I would muchly appreciate them being disabled again.

I loved how completely unsubtle he was on who he was calling out. ...Now to see if Buckley reacts. Probably not, knowing Buckley, he wouldn't want to give him the satisfaction.

Much win. I'm pumped to see this and cannot wait.

I like Blizzard's art direction, and frankly having Diablo being colored more works for me. Remember that this is still probably an early build of the game and we only saw a couple of areas. And really, the bright, defined colors allow Blizzard to display greater environmental and character detail. Frankly, I could see them making some pretty awesome looking monsters with more colors at their disposal. Browns, grays, and darks don't necessarily make a grittier game. Besides how gritty it looks is always second to the quality of gameplay, and Blizzard never disappoints on that. That's what we all play Diablo for, right?

Totally agreed, and I know I've said this, but I love how smoothly you can transition from one move to another. It looks like the melee classes will now get several more abilities they can use to mix it up and it looks like Mana regenerates fast enough that you can use them with some frequency. This could lead to some amazingly cool combos. Just by the video the combat system looks quite a bit deeper and I really like how it's looking so far.

With Injin on this one. Hell yes, Beat. Beat was around in the NES days, he has every right to be here for this. Also? If he's not, don't cry about not being saved about dying in a bottomless hole. XD I kid, I kid. Also, I'd submit: Yes to Bass too, because I actually like Bass and am constantly amused by his failures to defeat Mega Man. That being said, I DO agree about NO DUO. Nothing from Mega Man 8 should even see the light of day again in the Classic Series. EVER.

Well, I think Blizzard's learned something since Diablo II. Odds are 1.1 probably showed them that not giving the opportunity to respec will hurt your player base if you change a few of the core mechanics of the game. I suspect in Diablo III we may get an option to respecialize ourselves if a patch comes out or a particular build doesn't work well. That was just the killer in 1.1. It bricked a lot of builds really fast, and actually still inspired the same cookie-cutter mentality, just in a very altered manner. This was *especially* true if you rolled with the Hardcore crowd. As Monobrow mentioned, there was greater emphasis on Set and Unique items, in addition to proper allocation of attribute and skill points. Before, you could pretty much throw your points where you saw fit and it worked well, but after 1.1 for a good Hell Difficulty build you needed the bare minimum of STR and DEX to use the best equipment in the game, you never touched Energy, and all the rest of your points went into Vitality just so you wouldn't die to the beefed-up, ridiculously resistant, resilient monsters. To be successful in Hell, you almost needed one of those pre-defined cookie-cutter builds. Hell Difficulty was damn near unplayable in Single Player because short of using Open Battle Net, you rarely found the things you needed to just survive. Even on Battle.Net, good luck trying to beat anything alone if you didn't or if you weren't playing with helpful people. That being said, on Normal and Nightmare, you did have quite a bit more in the way of options with Synergies and stuff, so long as you had no intention of playing seriously beyond Nightmare. This is how I ended up playing Diablo II after 1.1 came out. I pretty much stopped at the end of Normal and only went to Nightmare if I particularly enjoyed the character. This way, I admit, I still had a lot of fun with the game. Nightmare under 1.1 was challenging, but very doable, and I liked that a lot. Diablo III? I don't anticipate this happening again. Blizzard's learned a great deal more with World of WarCraft. Say what you will about the game itself, but the fact that Blizzard refunds talent points to classes whose talent builds have been significantly altered now shows me that they've learned from their mistakes in the past. I have full confidence that Diablo III will be an amazing game, and I will no doubt end up buying it on launch day. ...whenever that is.

A BLIGHT UPON HUMANITY. I hated this patch, truthfully. I didn't play on Battle.Net much at all, first. So I played solo Single Player most of the time on my Paladin and I had really good gear out of Nightmare from grinding and getting really lucky, and I had a hybrid build because back in 1.09 it was more viable, even if it wasn't very powerful in the long run. Initially when I was in Hell Difficulty Act I in 1.09 I could actually do stuff by myself. It was extremely tough, but I could get by. As soon as 1.1 came out, it effectively bricked that level 70 plus Paladin I had worked a long time on. I could still do well in Nightmare, but I couldn't advance any further in Hell because of the ridiculous boost they gave the enemies. In fact, I got pushed back all the way to the Blood Moor and could barely survive there if there were more than three quill rats shooting at me at once. @_@ It pissed off a lot of people I knew too, who actually DID have level 90+ characters on Battle.net who got completely ruined by the way the game changed. Loss of Life-Steal on bosses, increasing resistances like mad, etc. It was sheer madness that Blizzard didn't include a way to respec at that point. All of that complaining and hatred being addressed, 1.1 really did give the game a new dynamic and some great new features. In fact, it made the LOWER difficulties easier, which wasn't so bad... But anyway. I digress far away from the main topic. Diablo III looks like a lot of fun. I'm digging how easy it is to shift between special moves and attacks to perform some outrageous combos. Good stuff. Though, I have to disagree with Injin in that I think forgoing potions entirely would be a bad idea. Sometimes, you just need them if you make an honest mistake; and if the higher difficulties punish you for dying like Diablo II, a single mistake shouldn't cost you *that* much. I think potions would be a great *supplement* to the orbs, but by the logic make potions either a little more cost prohibitive or rarer. *Shrugs* Also, I hope this game fixes the issue where like, Sorceresses and Bow-Amazons have hardly any repair bills whereas Barbarians and Paladins have to continually pay out the ass to keep their gear in good condition. That was a bunch of bull in Diablo II.