Native Jovian

UC is vastly overrated. It's good (for the most part -- I still loathe Zeta as much as most people love it, and Gundam 0083 would be a complete waste of time if not for the mecha porn) but not the be-all end-all of mecha anime. The only AU I really dislike is Gundam Wing (yeah, I managed to scrap a certain amount of enjoyment even out of Destiny, though it was the omg-it's-so-bad-it's-good type), though I'm only about halfway through Gundam X and I haven't seen Turn A at all yet. I thought the "I'm too goodie-two-shoes to take cold-blooded revenge but I get to kill you anyway because you totally tried to out-draw me!" thing was retarded, but given Al's or Tieria's ending, it still comes out as one of the better ones, which is somewhat sad... Black Lagoon has been on my "I totally need to get around to watching this" list for a while, but this description bumped it up to the top. Outlaw Star is awesome.

Are you talking about me?

You ever get the plasma rifle in Halo 2 that fires the Scarab main cannon shot? Fun for the whole family!

this: and also this: Plus I was sorta curious to see how many half-charged shots it would take to kill a heavy being healed. (The answer, according to my experiment, is "server crash".)

You have my sincerest sympathies, sir.

He didn't go to six years of evil medical school to be called-- Wait, I'm thinking of someone else.

Because I don't feel comfortable taking advice from a person calling himself "chumble spuzz". It just sounds dirty.

I don't think that the four-year jump was a problem -- it was just the executive decisions made between seasons that was the big issue. 25 episodes is a lot of airtime -- a lot of the really classic anime (Cowboy Bebop and Trigun, for example) are only 26 total. The problem is that they wasted it -- they spent way too much time on nonsense like Marina (ANYTHING with Marina counts as "wasted time" in my book), Saji and Setsuna having the same conversation over again ("We will fight to get Louise back!" "Yeah... okay..."), the Mr. Bushido nonsense (seriously, they spent like half an episode right at the very end doing nothing but fapping to how awesomely samurai he was by being as wapanese as possible!), etc etc. They could have done awesome things with the time they had, but they didn't. Like you said, wasted potential.

This 10chars.

Class debates are lulz. Each class is good at it's own particular thing, and each player has strengths and weaknesses. Such as, for whatever reason, I suck at close range -- so I go for sniper, heavy, or soldier when I'm trying to cause damage, rather than scout, pyro, or spy (but I still go pyro if I'm getting spy-raped harder than usual, or if the fight has devolved into a clusterfuck "EVERYONE CHARGE IN AND DO AS MUCH DAMAGE AS POSSIBLE BEFORE YOU DIE" sort of thing, because that's what the pyro is good at). Part of being good at a class is just knowing when to use it. That said, I was totally dominating everyone on that one map we were playing before the server crashed (waterfront or riverbank or something?). That map was MADE for snipers. There were like eight long straight choke points with no cover. My biggest problem was that I would take a shot before I was charged, so even a headshot wouldn't do all that much damage. I swear I must have headshotted that one heavy being healed by the medic 4 or 5 times....

But he's my kind of son of a bitch. Seriously, the whole series becomes much more enjoyable if you start to consider Obi Wan the main character. I mean, he accomplished more shit after he DIED than half the main characters did while they were ALIVE. (I'm looking at you, Amidala.)

For the record, these aren't 4X games, they're RTS games. If you're controlling individual units on a single battlefield, it's probably an RTS. 4X games are about controlling an entire country/planet/species, not a handful of guys. That said, RTS games are pretty awesome too. My friends and I are still playing Starcraft on a regular basis, more than 10 years after it came out....

From MY point of view, the numbers game IS what the prophecy is about!

Yep. That's the crazy thing about time travel -- you can literally be in two places at once.

I am enlightened!

No, because cannons are the things that shoot things at other things. It might be canon, though.

Edit -- Massive edit. Moral of the story is don't leave a reply open for a long time before posting it. I thought Ganondorf went into the Sacred Realm right after Link opened the Door of Time and removed the Master Sword from the pedestal, though. At that point Hyrule was basically screwed until Link grew up; there was nothing anyone could do to stop him until Link would wield the Master Sword properly. That's why Link just up and left for Termina rather than sticking around Hyrule. If that's the case, then there would be no point in warning anyone -- he was no longer around (presumably searching for the Triforce in the Sacred Realm), and even if they could have found him, they couldn't have stopped him. Who knows -- it's entirely possible that he did warn people and it didn't do any good. It doesn't necessarily result in a split timeline.

But wouldn't that make it 25/25 if someone connected to that last slot? Or are you saying that some people have magic "I get to connect no matter what" powers and the server is told to display 24/25 (when it's actually 24/24 + special people) so that Steam doesn't prevent special people from even trying to connect?

I love you too, Bleck. Hug?

Fun fact about the Halo series: the entire thing is actually a zero-sum game between plot and gameplay. In Halo 1, the plot was interesting and original (at least for an FPS) -- the gameplay was good, but (as The Coop said) the level design was extremely uninspired and somewhat dull even without the repetition. In Halo 2 the level design and the game mechanics improved -- destroyable vehicles, better weapon balance (lulz Halo 1 pistol) -- but the plot took something of a downturn (hey look there's also more aliens that you never saw in Halo 1 for some reason! And they really don't like those aliens!) and the ending was crap. In Halo 3, the gameplay improved again (more vehicle types! All the weapons in Halo 1 and Halo 2 plus extras! Equipment like the bubble shield!) but the plot was absolutely retarded (they completely derailed the character of both the last surviving Prophet and Johnson, as well as tossing all of the speculation on the relationship between the Forerunners, humans, the Flood, and the Covenant straight out the window, plus the repeated bits where they slow things way down so that Cortana and/or the Gravemind can yell at you gets old after about the second time it happens). So yeah, the gameplay has gone consistently up in the series, but the storyline went down at the same rate. Fun fact about 4X games: they're freaking awesome. I've gotten into Galactic Civilization II recently. The AI is absolutely brilliant -- it can observe your actions and predict your strategies with impressive accuracy. It's somewhat surprising and goddamn hilarious to be massing warships on your enemy's border in preparation for invasion, only to have him call you up and say "Yeah, I see you massing your forces. Don't think I don't know what's going on. We both know you're about to invade us and we both know that I can't stop you. I just wanted to call and say 'see you in hell' before you annihilated my entire species."

Can I just say that this attitude always confused me? Your opinion isn't holy truth, man, and even if it was, why the hell would you get so worked up over what someone else does with their free time when it doesn't affect you in the least? re: open slots, the few times I've run into a full server (well, 24/25 -- what's the deal with that?) I've jumped on another to play and checked to see if there was an open space every few minutes. Protip: it's important to hit "refresh" when you're looking at the server list, or else it won't tell you when there's a slot free.

Well, sure. I'm not saying that Hyrule Castle Town and whatnot just magically rebuilt itself, but where does the split come from? HCT was trashed for a few years, then Link came and saved the day, and presumably they rebuilt it after that. Ha! That's actually a really cool idea, even if it doesn't quite work out.

Can someone explain to me why it's taken as a given that the timeline splits in OoT? Seriously, it seems pretty straightforward to me. Link goes back and forth through time to do his thing in OoT. When he's done, he goes back to his time as a child, and leaves Hyrule so he won't get caught in the crossfire of Ganondorf's takeover/his own actions as an adult. Majora's Mask shows what he's doing during this period (or, at least, part of it). When enough time has passed that the events of OoT are over, he's free to return to Hyrule and do whatever. At what point does this result in two separate timeliens? (For the record, yes, this means that during the Adult Link events of OoT, there's another Link out wandering somewhere outside Hyrule. That's time travel for ya.) I view it like this: just like OoT is the definitive beginning of the Zelda timeline, WW is the definitive end. At some point, for whatever reason, Link fails to show up and save the day, which results in Hyrule being flooded, etc etc, and that's the end of that (barring stuff like Phantom Hourglass, anyway). Everything else, with Ganon being killed and reborn and sealed away and released and whatnot, all that happens some time between OoT and WW. No need for messy multiple branching timelines. I honestly haven't played the majority of the Zelda series (the only ones I've played to completion are OoT, MM, LA, and WW) so I can't speak for some of the games, but it seems to me that it HAS to go OoT/MM -> LttP -> LoZ -> WW. At the end of OoT Ganon is sealed in the Sacred Realm, which his evilness turns into the Dark World (and where he's trying to escape from on LttP). In LoZ he's running around in Hyrule again, so that has to be some time later. WW's at the end for reasons I've already mentioned. LA can go pretty much anywhere -- all we really know is that it's not a unique, separate Link, because reference is made to "after his adventure" or something like that.

Thread over as of second post. Impressive. Most impressive... 4X stands for "eXplore, eXpand, eXploit, eXterminate" (and some that include RPG elements also add a fifth X, eXperience). Yes, the X thing is dumb, but it sounds better than "4E game" so whatever. The Civilization series is probably the most well known example, but there's a bunch of different 4X series out there. Generally speaking they give you some sort of map (whether it be a particular country or a whole galaxy) and you have to explore the area, expand your influence to control territory, exploit the resources you control, and exterminate the opposition where necessary. However, they're harder to get into than most other genres of game, and they tend to lack any defining characters (or oftentimes any characters at all), which means that there's never been a 4X "blockbuster" like Half-Life or Halo. Also, lulz I hate Halo so that makes me better than people who like it har har har.

Amuro wasn't in 00; it's an alternate universe. But the Japanese voice actor for Ribbons was also the Japanese VA for Amuro. The "Amuro back in the RX-78" comment refers to the fact the Ribbons (ie Amuro's VA) was piloting the 0 Gundam (which was in RX-78 colors) for the final battle between Ribbons and Setsuna. On the subject of Gundam 00 as a whole, my general opinion on it is "it was alright, but there was a ridiculous amount of wasted potential". Season one was great, I had very few complaints about it (mostly the occasionally-gratuitous fanservice and the way they had Saji completely puss out toward the end). Season two was a lot less interesting; it's like they felt like they had to make up for the lack of Gundam cliches in the first season by kicking them down your throat in the second. Elite military force supposedly working for the good of all that's actually evil and trying to take over the world? Check. Angsty masked rival for the main character? Check. Threat of massive damage to Earth due to falling objects? Check. Giant space laser? Check and double check. Main character plothax that makes him sixteen times more awesome than everyone else by default? Check, double check, and triple check. Overall, Gundam 00's main problem was the same as Destiny's (though admittedly not nearly to the same degree) -- too many characters, too much wasted time. I was looking forward to the return of the Al/Hal mind-meld for pretty much the entire second season, and perhaps a similar merging for Soma and Marie. What do we get instead? Endless repetitions of Marnia singing that damn song with those damn orphans. Andrei has two subplots (his relationship with Louise and implied rivalry with Saji, and his conflict with Soma vis-a-vis his father) that never went anywhere. The relationship between Kati and Sumeragi never went much past "old college buddies turned rival commanders". I could go on -- the point is that they laid the groundwork for all this cool stuff and then never followed through on it. However, Patrick is still awesome. And many props to the creators for sparing Evil Haro, who was also awesome.