Native Jovian

For most of them, that's fine. But there's a handful (like hydro) that are pretty much universally loathed and never ever ever get voted for even when they show up on the vote list.

I think the defining element of an RPG is character progression in terms of levels, stats, and/or skills increasing during the course of the game. If you get more powerful by fighting stuff, then that's an RPG. Of course, it's possible to be an RPG and another genre at the same time.

Fixed that for you.

You can change that. Click on "User CP" in the top left of the window, then click "Edit Options" in the navigation pane on the left. Scroll down to "Thread Display Options" and one of the options will be "Thread Display Mode". Select "Linear - Oldest First" from the dropdown menu to have the oldest posts of a thread on page 1, and the newest on the last page. That said, when I first watched Gundam 00, I was quite irritated at the massive tone shift between the seasons. I still like season one better (pretty much literally the only things I would change are a few things in the last couple episodes dealing with how they transitioned to season two), but season two stands reasonably well on its own if you judge it on its own merits rather than in comparison to the first season. Plus, even compared to season one, it has some ridiculously awesome scenes. The attack on Memento Mori, the defense of the orbital elevator, the final battle... all fantastic moments. The 00 movie was pretty much shit from start to finish, though.

For some reason, the songs that tend to stick with me most are ones that combine different, seemingly opposed emotions. The Boss Battle music from Final Fantasy IX is a good example of that -- it combines a sense of dread and fear with a feeling of excitement and anticipation. It's like, yeah, something bad is here and it's trying to kill you, but you're ready to fight back and do what you need to kill it instead. Another example one that I ran into recently was Living With Determination ~Iwatodai Dormitory Arrange~ from Persona 3. It takes the generic "sad music" that plays earlier in the game (Living with Determination) and remixes it over a hip-hop percussion beat, which gives it a feeling of... well, determination. It has a sense of experiencing loss, but working through it to keep moving toward your goals, rather than giving up and wallowing in self-pity over the things that have happened.

I'm totally down for getting a weekly thing going again. As for whether Friday or Saturday is better... I travel for a living, so I'm not-infrequently on an airplane on Friday nights. On the other hand, I have other stuff I do with other people on Saturday nights. So on Fridays, I'm either there or not, while on Saturdays, I can consistently be semi-sorta-half-there as I alt-tab between windows. I guess if I had to pick one, I'd prefer Fridays. Sometimes I won't be able to make it, but I'd rather be able to devote my full attention to it when I can be there rather than be distracted even when I am there.

Hm, that's a fair take on Unicorn, I suppose. Personally, I disliked it both as a stand-alone work and as an addition to the existing Universal Century timeline -- I could go into details, but I doubt anyone's interested in reading my ramblings. (If you are, feel free to let me know. I can ramble. Rambling is fun!) Pretty much the only stuff I've been watching recently is Gundam Build Fighters Try. It doesn't have quite the charm that the original GBF did, but I'm enjoying it none the less. I haven't watched any Reconguista in G yet, though. I haven't even heard much about it, actually -- is it any good?

You say that to my face, son. I will fight you. With violence. What makes you think that it lacks substance just because it's over-the-top hotblooded awesome? Fact is, underneath the flash, G Gundam is one of the best stories in the franchise. Yes, it's presented melodramatically, but the substance is certainly there. If you dislike the shonen action-heroics in and of itself, that's one thing -- but just because it's got shonen action-heroics certainly doesn't mean that it doesn't have interesting characters, a compelling story, or "complex substance". Really, G Gundam does an amazing job of incorporating the themes from the Gundam franchise as a whole (war, communication, and conflict) into a new setting beyond the standard "teenage proto-ubermench drawn into ongoing war against his will" archetype. Of course, I'm a huge Gundam nerd, so take that as you will. As an aside, I'm curious to hear what you thought of Gundam Unicorn, having not watched any of the Universal Century stuff that leads up to it. I have my own opinions on Unicorn, but that's watching it with 30 years worth of backstory baggage in mind. Since it seems like you watched it cold, I'd be interested to hear how it stood up on its own.

1. Banjo & Kazooie 2. Chell 3. King of All Cosmos

Whenever I run into something like this, I'm torn between "hey, they're using this music, that's awesome!" and "hey, they're not giving the artist any credit and almost certainly didn't ask permission, fuck them!"

You don't need to read the entire thread to get a sense of what one person's stance is. The guy took one line from one post and decided that DJP was pro-GG. If he had read back a few posts, much less a few pages, it would have seen that this is incorrect.

Really? My understanding was that the initial thing was the "female game dev sleeps with gaming journalists for good reviews" (which appears to have been debunked, but was still the issue that got everything started) and it sort of merged with the people who already hated Sarkeesian and the like already (or the people making noise about Quinn were the same group of people making noise about Sarkeesian and the two originally-separate issues assimilated each other?) at some later point. Not that it really makes a difference as the two are definitely tied together at this point anyway.

Can someone tell me where exactly the whole games journalism ethics thing intersects with the whole doxxing/harassing/douchebaggery thing? Because I have no idea what one has to do with the other, other than the fact that it's apparently the same group of people doing both. I get that people being assholes on the internet "for a cause" is a thing, but if "the cause" is ethics in gaming journalism, then what does going after critics and developers have to do with that? If they're going to go after anybody, shouldn't it be, you know, game journalists? Personally, I'm just tired of hearing about it. It's fucking everywhere, and has been for weeks. Twitter and blogs and every gaming news site on the internet just won't shut up about it. The signal to noise ratio on the subject is incredibly low -- they're producing a lot of words, but not really saying anything. Most of the stuff I see from the gaming news side of things boils down to "#gamergate is terrible and wrong. If you aren't terrible and wrong but you still associate yourself with #gamergate, you need to think long and hard about your position" which just comes off as dismissive and condescending. There's a lot of talk but no discussion. It's just lobbing "you're wrong!" "no, you're wrong!" back and forth at each other endlessly. But the real problem is that they just won't shut up about it. If there's anything of value to be had from engaging the movement, then have a discussion about it. If there isn't, then address it ("we're not going to argue the point with #gamergate because there's nothing of value to be had from engaging with them") and move on. By all means, continue to cover the story -- a post about a speaking engagement canceled due to bomb threats or something like that is still legitimate news and should be covered -- but don't keep doing the constant moralizing "shame on you, #gamergate!" crap. We've heard all about it. Seriously, your opinion is well and truly understood. Now either say something useful or stop talking about it.

I'm on a job site at the moment, so I'm pretty much working until 6:00 or 7:00 PM Eastern every day from now until Friday (the 31st, I mean, not tomorrow). That Friday is a wash because I'm flying home that evening, but I should be free pretty much all day on Saturday. I don't have a schedule for anything after that yet, so I don't know if I'll be free on Sunday or I'll be flying out somewhere else. Incidentally, I didn't bring my headset with me on the road, so I won't be able to do voice chat like we did last time. However, I've gotten a new laptop, and I think this thing has a webcam, so I might be able to do it that way instead.

Which dungeon in Brave Fencer Musashi are you talking about? I love the hell out of that game, but I don't recall anything that fits your description. The single longest dungeon is probably the Restaurant Basement, but it's split into manageable chunks, so it's not that bad. In any case, long dungeons can be a lot of fun -- as long as they don't pull bullshit that artificially pad out the time required or spike the difficulty, like Malaki mentioned. Stuff like "you have to fight your way down 100 floors of enemies, and if you ever lose you have to start again from the beginning", or puzzles with elements in widely spread out areas that require tons of backtracking.

5 PM EST Saturdays should work for me. I'll have to think about what sort of character I want to run...

I'd be interested if I can make it. I travel for a living, so my schedule is bizarre and ever-changing. The only times I know I won't be able to make it is Friday and Sunday nights, because I'm almost always on a plane then. Anything Saturday or Monday-Thursday evenings I can probably make more often than not. I've never played Pathfinder, but I've played a lot of D&D 3.5, so it shouldn't be too traumatic a switch.

I liked Bleach waaaaay back in the beginning when it was Yu Yu Hakusho redux. Average punk-ish high school kid gets ghostbusting powers more or less by accident! Cute afterlife girl must bludgeon him into using his newfound powers for good! Also one of his schoolmates has powers that are similar, but not the same, and he tags along too (while insisting that he's better in every conceivable way). Theeeeeeen the Soul Society arc started, the pacing slowed from "average-ish" to "glacial", then decided that that was too fast so shifted down to "tectonic". By the time they started introducing ten thousand characters, each with completely unique and equally boring personalities, backstories, powersets, and fighting styles, I stopped watching because they spent all their time focusing on that instead of doing anything interesting. I liked the show when it was Ichigo & pals fighting ghosts and grim reapers -- why the hell did they decide to introduce a baker's dozen different squads (each with its own theme), plus a captain and a lieutenant (at least) for each, plus each of those having a weapon (which is also a character) and those weapons each having a unique special ability (if not more than one)... I want to see kung-fu ghost samurai fighting, goddamnit, not need to memorize a spreadsheet just to remember who's who and what the hell they're doing.

Most games last a fair bit longer than a two-ish hour movie, though, so you could conceivably get the same amount of entertainment (in terms of hours played/watched, I mean) from one $60 video game and five $12 movies. Yeah, obviously, if you're seeing the same number of movies as you are buying video games, then obviously you're going to spend more on the games -- but that's not necessarily what people do.

That's pretty much what I said when I saw that email about it

May I ask what internet you've been browsing? Because "anonymous people being assholes" is sort of a thing. And that comic is from ten years ago, so it's not like this is a new phenomenon. Being a public figure is always going to draw some unsavory types out of the woodwork -- and being a public figure known entirely for expressing controversial opinions on the internet is typically going to be worse. Again: we're not disagreeing with you that this is a horrible thing and the people behind the harassment are unmitigated assholes. We're just disagreeing with you that the harassment was an unforeseeable or unexpected result. It's happened in the past. It'll happen again in the future. How is it in any way unreasonable to expect it? (Again: the fact that it's expected doesn't mean it's okay. I'm going to repeat this every time the subject comes up just to minimize understandings.) I don't think anyone here disagrees with that sentiment. No one here that I've seen has said that you should be harassed for expressing certain opinions, only that it will happen anyway, and you should be prepared for it. The fact that the internet is not a free and open place to discuss ideas is certainly terrible, but that doesn't make it any less of a fact. You seem to be confusing "is" and "ought", here. Being able to post opinions on the internet without facing harassment for it ought to be the state of affairs, certainly. But that doesn't mean it is, and pointing out that it's not doesn't mean you think it shouldn't be.

Well, you certainly didn't seem to read my post on the subject. Their point is that when you act a certain way (like posting controversial things on the internet), you can expect a certain response (like harassment from random anonymous assholes). That doesn't mean that the response is appropriate or acceptable, but it does mean that if you're unwilling or unable to handle the response, you probably shouldn't take the action in the first place.

There are two different levels of victim-blaming: "you should have known better" and "you deserved it". They're very different. If you're walking down a dark alley in a bad neighborhood in the middle of the night while drunk off your ass and with hundred dollar bills spilling out of your pocket, it's not unforeseeable that you might be mugged. Saying "well, doing that was pretty stupid -- you put yourself in a bad situation, you could have easily done things differently and avoided the risk altogether" is the "you should have known better" type of victim-blaming. You're saying that it's their fault in that they engaged in risky behavior. If they hadn't run the risks they did, they wouldn't have run into the consequences they did. Now, saying that they deserved to be mugged for engaging in that risky behavior is something else entirely. There's huge gap between "the guys who mugged you are assholes, but if you hadn't been flashing large denominations of cash in that alley in that neighborhood at that time of night after you'd been drinking, it wouldn't have happened" and "the muggers aren't at fault, you are; you're an idiot and deserved to be mugged for doing something so stupid".

This is my biggest problem with Sarkeesian's videos. (The constructive criticism part, I mean. The tediousness is a matter of opinion, and I've watched all of them, so the constructive criticism is the only really germaine part of the quote.) Sarkeesian does a good job of calling attention to things that she sees as problematic. She probably does too good a job of it, actually -- she tends to spend too much time on examples (ie, raw gameplay footage that she finds problematic) and not enough on explanation (ie, discussing why she finds them problematic or what makes them problematic in her eyes) and none at all on suggesting alternatives. It's entirely possible to watch her videos, agree wholeheartedly, and have no idea what acting on that agreement would look like.

I'm cautiously optimistic about this. I travel for a living, so I'm doing the majority of my gaming on my 3DS XL these days -- stuff like better 3D viewing angle and better battery life could make this worthwhile. Mostly what I'd be worried about is transferring all my digital stuff from my old one to my new one. I know getting stuff from the Wii to the Wii U was supposed to be a colossal pain in the ass, and moving things from one 3DS to another was supposedly annoying as well. I've heard things are better with the new "Nintendo network" stuff, but I'd still like to hear details. Will my downloaded games be transferable? How about stuff like saved games and my Mii Plaza data? (Hey, laugh if you want, but I've been building that stuff up for years, I don't want to lose it!) Won't be coming out in North America this year anyway, so plenty of time to figure these things out, I guess.