KillEm_Dafoe

I just hit 50 with my rogue yesterday. I wasn't sure I was gonna stick with it at first but I'm glad I did. Once all the skills start coming together, it is immensely satisfying. Making a huge crowd explode via a rain of arrows with shadow imbuement is awesome. I really like the crowd control skills the class has. I'm still a long way from getting all the aspects or even having a full suite of good gear, since the game loves to mainly drop loot that is 8 to 15 levels below what you're at. Looking forward to finishing the campaign and jumping into the endgame stuff. I plan on trying the Sorcerer next.

Fast X. They somehow found a way to make an already-dumb franchise somehow even noticeably dumber. And you know what? It kinda works. I don't like that the crew are separated for nearly the entire movie, but as the setup for a supposedly trilogy, it works. Jason Momoa is the best part of the film. He plays a fantastic over-the-top villain and is clearly just having the time of his life in the role. The action is also the best it's been since Furious 7. The big set piece with the huge bomb ball rolling around Rome is spectacular.

I would say that overall this movie is better than 8 and 9 combined. It's fucking stupid as shit but I had an absolute blast watching it. 9/10.

I love everything about Rorie. His vibes, his manic energy, the way in interjects inappropriate anecdotes into normal conversation. I love how self-aware he is about all of these things as well and then just continues being who he is. He's always been exceedingly pleasant and prompt when it came to support issues. It felt special getting support responses back knowing they were from him and clearly hearing his voice reading back the emails about my account issues. He writes much the same way he talks.

I always wished he was more of a front-facing personality on the site. I love whenever he pops up on content. Rorie has been the backbone of Giant Bomb for so long though. Despite not being on camera all that often, I enjoyed knowing he was still there, doing good work behind the scenes.

I wish him the best of luck on his new endeavor. Any place would be lucky to have him. Much like our precious puppies, we don't deserve Matthew Rorie.

I just don't understand this. I mean, I do, because corporations are gonna do what they do, but still. Jason had become the senior-most staff member and has always been an invaluable asset to the site. Love that duder to death and he doesn't deserve to be let go of like that. Jess also became one of the top contributors of the site since she joined and has been a part of most of the running series.

This is truly the death knell of Giant Bomb. I've remained optimistic through all of the major changes of the last few years but this is really the beginning of the end. Fuck Fandumb. Add me to the list of people unsubscribing from premium. I've had premium since it first launched and the other day, my payment got rejected because it was on a card I recently changed. I'm just gonna let it lapse.

Good luck to Jess and Jason and Justin. You deserve way better than this.

@mellotronrules: Mine was the exact same!

Most recently, I would have to say The Callisto Protocol. Not that it's a super high rated game or anything, but the majority of the reviews were pretty good with some caveats, and I've seen a lot of folks saying they're really enjoying it. I bought it release day because it was one of my most anticipated games of the year, and because the pedigree is there. I saw the middling reviews and got it anyway.

Sunday morning, I finished it and I don't think I could've ripped that piece of shit out of my PS5 and traded it in any faster than I did. Frustrating and janky combat mixed with poor encounter design from beginning to end. The deaths come cheap, and they come often. I probably died over 100 times in my playthrough on normal. And it has extremely rote level design with no interesting set pieces or scenarios anywhere to be found; no puzzles of any sort aside from taking a fuse from one door and putting it another. The amount of vents and crevices you have to slowly move through in the first 4 hours of the game is fucking comical. Everything about playing it feels slow and cumbersome. And it's not scary whatsoever. I don't recall it even going for anything but the most basic jump scares that it repeats until the last level. Dead Space wasn't scary either, but it at least had a little more variety on that front. I could actually go on for quite a while about how bad this game is, but I'll cap it at just saying that it's very dull and it plays like total shit. The fact that it actually got as many good reviews as it did is baffling to me. It's easily one of my worst and most miserable gaming experiences in my 30 years of gaming.

From last year I would also go with Deathloop. It's not a bad game but it's also not at all deserving of the praise it received. It's a pretty small game that only gives the illusion of having all these dynamic elements, but it actually just holds your hand through 90% of its content. I had some fun with it, but I have no desire to ever revisit it and I think its easily the weakest game Arkane has made.

I fell off when I got to the mansion in the volcano. I think I had about 73 hours or something like that. Still my GOTY most likely though. I need to go back to it soon.

@infantpipoc:I realize that the concept of the puzzle itself is nothing new, but I read online, which could just be hearsay, that the devs specifically referenced the RE3 puzzle, which is also a water pump and kind of notorious for being a pain in the ass. Could be bullshit but whatever. I'm actually glad they just hand you the answer.

@sethmode: You run back, get the flashlight, bring a gun and maybe a health item, go into the dark room and boom: 5 new items to pick up. That shit happens just often enough to be aggravating. You're right about the side items too. I didn't end up using them all that often. At one point I got tired of always having to run back to get the light after encountering a new dark room, so I just kept it all the time. By then, of course, it's only useful like once or twice more and just wastes inventory space.

It's an absolutely fantastic game with a few relatively minor caveats. The tone and presentation of this game really sets it apart from other games in the genre. It has some of the best puzzles I've ever seen too. Great mix of kind of grounded, practical puzzles and the more esoteric Silent Hill type ones. The water pump puzzle, I'm pretty sure, is a direct reference to a very similar puzzle in RE3. I also read that the reason that the answer is right next to the puzzle is because that puzzle tested very poorly with early testers so rather than improving its design, they just straight up tell you what to do. Some of the later puzzles made me feel like a fucking genius though, and that's really the best feeling.

My biggest gripe with the game was the inventory limit. I'm no stranger to inventory management in survival horror games, but Signalis takes it a step too far. You find so many things lying around that 6 slots is kinda brutal. Not only are ammo stacks very small, you can't even hold multiple stacks at once which makes zero sense. The utility/defensive items should also be put in a separate slot when equipped. I played on the hardest mode where items are even more limited and was still struggling to get everything.

Can't complain much beyond that and some annoying bugs that seem like they've gotten fixed rather quickly. True survival horror has been seeing a great resurgence in the last several years. It's a wonderful sight.

I've met amazing people at shows over the years. I met a dude at random at a Nonpoint show in Joliet, Illinois in 2011. I got to the show early to catch the opening bands and ending up sitting next to these two dudes in front of the bar, who were actually brothers, and we all started chatting and making fun of how lame one of the openers was. We hung out for the duration of the show, talked about music. The one brother, Shaun, his favorite band was Nonpoint and he had seen them dozens of times over the years. The show ended, we said our farewells, and I added Shaun on Facebook so we could keep in touch

Nearly exactly a year later, Nonpoint played another show at the same venue. Shaun and I hung out again and caught up on the last year of our lives, and we also both met a couple of other guys for the first time who were also die hard Nonpoint fans. Not too long after that, Shaun invited me to take a trip down to Springfield to catch a show. Fast forward a decade, Shaun has been one of my best friends for years. He now works for Nonpoint directly, and also helps run a hugely successful fan group with the two other dudes we met at the show 10 years ago. Shaun and I still love shitting all over bad opening acts to this day, and we're also planning on launching a music podcast next year, mainly just so we have more chances to talk and make each other laugh.

Also, December 2018, I had just moved to Atlanta 2 months prior. Sevendust was playing a trio of hometown shows downtown, the final one being on NYE. I went to all 3, but during the last show I went to check out merch booth shortly after I arrived. I'm just standing there, deciding what I want to buy, when I hear a voice next to me say "which hoodie design do you like more?" I turned to see where this voice came from and saw one of the most drop-dead beautiful women I had ever laid my eyes on. We hung out until 4 am and bonded over Sevendust being our favorite band, walked around the city and got lost for awhile, but had an amazing time. Unfortunately, she was only in town for the shows; she actually lived in Denver. Despite that, we met up for a lunch date the following day before she had to leave. To keep the story short, we ended up in a long-distance relationship. The distance was brutal but we made it work, or I should say, I made it work for over 3 years. Sadly we ended things earlier this year, but I still look at going to that concert as an absolutely pivotal moment in my life. Despite the heartbreak, I wouldn't change a thing.

Concerts can be an amazing experience for a variety of reason, with the music sometimes being secondary. I've been to hundreds of shows over the last 18 years and have plenty of encounters with random assholes and weirdos and temporary friends. I've even met some of my idols. Nothing will ever top those two shows though.