Lurker > YoBlazer

Thanks! I just got through all the character-specific Legendaries, leaving only the final two trials to go. They're also the last hurdles I need to clear in order to complete Johnny's hotel (WHAT'S IN THE BOX) and earn the plat.

Yeah, I was using the Yuffie ATB strat and still hitting a wall with the final round. I'd get caught in the first Shadowy Chains, which I was prepared for, but would then immediately get hit with another. I didn't even think to parry it until I watch a YouTube vid last night, but lo and behold, everything clicked this morning and I beat it on my first attempt!

I've been stuck on the final Brutal Challenge for like a week. The last fight is such a wall.

I give James a ton of credit for likely being the first online video creator to hit 20 years of relevance - that's a huge accomplishment. It's not a surprise that his reviews have lost their humor as we've grown older, but one thing I wish he'd do more is just evolve the character.

He's perfectly capable of doing that. For example, his Earthbound video is arguably his best ever, and it's one where he reviews a good game he genuinely likes, and the AVGN character doesn't suffer a single shit-flinging tantrum. I think his fanbase would prefer seeing more videos like that as well, but the problem is... they take a ton of effort. You can tell James really poured his heart into the Earthbound video, taking time to analyze the game's themes and communicate them in an emotionally resonant way. But ss a father in his mid-40s, he'd probably much rather make low-quality content for the steady income.

Crimsoness posted...

We should start punishing white collar crimes like this in the US

I'm not a big supporter of capital punishment, but I'd be less opposed to it in cases like this than I would for the people who usually get it. How many innocent people lose everything and decide to kill themselves as a direct result of these white collar thieves? How many communities are sucked dry? White collar criminals are fucking heinous, and they are insulated enough from the consequences of their crimes that they can sleep like babies forever. Fuck em.

George Carlin said it well decades ago

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6NXYWxdwh9g

Please tell us about the beef, including restaurant prices. I'm being sincere - that's definitely one of the reasons I'd ever choose to visit Argentina, and I'm not even *that* big of a steak guy.

Also, have fun!

Snake5555555555 posted...

Don't count Sheva as a dual female lead?

LOL. Sorry, I don't. How many times does the main villain even acknowledge her? Might honestly be zero. She's not a bad character or offensive or anything, she was just clearly shoehorned in and definitely not a "lead" the same way Chris is.

Snake5555555555 posted...

Don't count Sheva as a dual female lead? Or RE6 with Sherry & Ada getting full campaigns?

Maybe I should backtrack this one a bit since 6 is the only one I haven't played, but I thought Sherry shared her campaign with a male co-lead, one who is far more important to the overall narrative than Leon's female co-lead? RE6 may be a game with playable female characters, but I always figured that, like 5, it was a game that never elevated them to the level of the male stars. This is in contrast to the first six years of the franchise, where the female characters really were "leading ladies."

Kotetsu534 posted...

It is somewhat odd that FF games had more agentic and prominent female characters 25 years ago than they do now (see FFXV and XVI).

I don't want to hijack the topic, but Resident Evil fans have been complaining about this exact thing for at least 15 years. Being a pretty big fan, a part of me has always resented how Western Hollywood Action Explosion-Time rotted what was such a cool part of the franchise.

Resident Evil 1 - dual female/male leads, female character way more popular
Resident Evil 2 - dual female/male leads, about equally popular
Resident Evil 3 - female lead
Code Veronica - dual female/male leads, female character more popular
Resident Evil 4, 5, 6, 7, 8 - male leads

Better Call Saul might have been the only weekly TV show I bothered keeping up with over the last decade (Breaking Bad was over ten years ago), and in all that time, it feels like the only culturally relevant thing I missed was Game of Thrones.

Queen's Blood is on the shortlist for greatest minigame of all time, imo. The more I think about it, the more impressed I am.

I'm in it now but only pop in occasionally. I'd likely do the same, and be content in knowing that we still exist as a community.

This guy is a douchebag Trumper, right?

Despite that, I still sympathize with him. I've had to face completely false claims brought on by a vengeful lover, and something like that is absolute hell to go through.

Bumpo

Snake5555555555 posted...

https://gamefaqs.gamespot.com/a/forum/0/0caaac35.jpg

Detailed cock, wow

My heart is full, for BAIG is remembered.

I've never been, but the prevailing bit of "fun" advice I've always seen is to eat lots and lots of beef. Argentina apparently has more cows than people and price of high quality steak dinners is supposed to be among the best values in the world.

Sigh, if this site even sees the end of 2024, it'll be in a very different state. I try reddit, but it's no substitue for the traditional message board format I love, and the Discord can keep us connected, but again, I much prefer the message board format. This feels like another sad step in a long goodbye. =(

The one thing I've enjoyed about this is Allen's troll topic, which shows beyond ambiguity just how unfriendly his exit from fandom was. Good on ya, SB.

Every line from the second half of that playcall is legendary. One of my favorites is "Secretariat is now in a position where he's impossible to catch!"

BlueTigerLion posted...

So what are the God tier chocolate? Is it Toblerone? Or something less mainstream.

Assuming you're into dark chocolate, most of the stuff they sell at Trader Joe's is delicious and very reasonably priced.

OJ definitely compelled me to make this topic here, but I made a similar topic on CE like a year ago, and the results were practically reversed. The voters there are much more likely to believe accusations regardless of the outcome in the justice system, so I wanted to see how B8 felt.

Giacomo_Hawkins posted...

Decent, but no more than that.

Fair enough, but the price point makes it legendary. "FuggetAboutIt" pizza places charge like $30 per pie these days, so getting an acceptable pepperoni pizza for $6 is the best deal in fast food.

Fiop posted...

I had no idea how to get access to this and kinda assumed I never would.

Yeah, I remember noticing fan letters in Nintendo Power being sent "via the internet" and thought those people were geniuses using indescribable tech.

HaRRicH posted...

They had a reviewer named Shoe, and I thought they had another reviewer who was referred to as a ninja but it's hard to remember.

That was Sushi X!

I probably own a few dozen EGMs from the late 90s to early 2000s. It and Nintendo Power were the only game mags I read and kept up with, and the contrast between them was stark. NP was very safe and steralized, while EGM was much more risque with its opinions, language, and advertisements. I remember reading "shit" in one of their issues for the first time and wondering if they had maybe gone too far, but I loved them for pushing the envelope like that. Their editors were also known to readers and had unique personalities, something that seemed to be completely missing from NP.

Even back then, I could tell that NP was carefully scrubbed by Nintendo, while EGM seemed like a group of young guys living the dream in an office where they played games all day, and it was the much cooler product because of it. Pretty sure I saw EGM as a dream job back in the 90s.

Yeah, I've usually kept everyone fully slotted to maximize AP growth (two of my three Elementals are MAX, and the third is close), but apart from the main party - usually Cloud/Tifa/Aerith - I rarely give consideration to what everyone's actually got equipped. I think it's the combination of actually strategizing for six characters in conjunction with like an hour of final boss phases that's really keeping me from jumping in.

I'm at the final boss stretch in Hard Mode, but I've put it off for like three days because I really don't want to intelligently allocate Materia for every fucking party member.

First time through, I swear I counted 11 phases to the final boss stretch.

Among those sports, definitely the least athletic but likely the most skilled.

There are gay bars in like every major city in America.

No way. She's younger than Alito and Thomas and seems to be far and away the most liberal justice. I understand that the court has now been politicized, but I don't think you should pressure a good justice to retire while they can potentially carry out 10+ more years of service.

No one averages 40 mpg though. I'd guess the goal is to gradually condition him to 35, which is high for a modern big man.

What's worse, this or a college professor sleeping with one of their students?

I will agree with part of that - Barret's beach outfit fucking sucks.

Andrea's sexual orientation is never directly addressed. On the contrary, he makes a point to dismiss such labels, delivering one of the most surprisingly empowering lines in either remake thus far:

"True beauty is an expression of the heart. A thing without shame, to which notions of gender don't apply. Don't ever be afraid, Cloud."

I've spent the last couple years helping my parents plan for retirement, and that hasn't really been our experience. My mom had it ready to go as soon as she turned 65 last year, but we applied for her three months ahead of time (as is recommended) just to be safe. My dad turns 65 in three months and has his all ready to go, but he retired early and has been taking social security payments since he was 62, so he's been in the system for a while.

Did your uncle apply early? My parents both applied for all this through the main social security website, and it was surprisingly serviceable (again, we did things well in advance to account for delays).

The more "general" reddit forums are full of antisocial puritans who preach from a moral high ground because it's easy to do that when you've never left the house.

GameFAQs still might be worse. Some of our most active posters haven't grown a day in 20 years, and that's a really sad reflection of the community as a whole.

You know what, no. I'm being unfair to Dean. His YEAH wasn't crazy at all, it was a decent speech, he was just feeding off the crowd's energy, and he momentarily got a little too excited. The media overblew it and completely fucked him.

The fact that one excited exclamation derailed Howard Dean's campaign is still crazy as fuck. The public's appetite for awkward and crazy back then was like a world removed from today.

I love both. Satisfying combat system, well realized worlds, amazing music, and characters that are absolutely brimming with life. For both games.

Beans

I could have used one to save a loved one from cancer last year =(

ClayGuida posted...

I still think that PH would be wise to just encourage their users to just vote Republicans out. Porn has a larger control over things than people realize. Porn adopting VHS or DVD or Blu Ray had a bigger effect on media than anything else, same goes for streaming porn, which was around before shit like Netflix. VR is also more of a thing because of porn. Porn is also taking over AI generation and I wouldn't be surprised in the future, sex robots. Where porn goes, the rest of the country does.

No lies detected. Sex is probably the most powerful force there is.

I attached my Elementals to AP Up to get them to 2 stars ASAP, but then I started actually using them. The 7500 AP grind to hit 3 stars was just too daunting before NG+. Speaking of which, is there a known Chadley challenge that allows for easy AP farming? One of the best things about Interlude is that it offered just such a challenge, allowing you to level up most Materia in minutes.

BK_Sheikah00 posted...

Cus I agree Wall Market is the peak of both games.

Wall Market is peak gaming, one of the best sequences in any game imo

Anyway, I'm gonna need to find the spoiler topic and gather my thoughts because BOY HOWDY do I want to discuss that ending. My immediate reaction to the 120 hours I just plowed in would be something along the lines of

"Michael Jordan just had one of the greatest regular seasons in history, winning a unanimous MVP and carrying the Bulls to an easy 1-seed in the playoffs. They dominated on their way to the finals, a sure lock to win it all. They are up 3-0 in the finals, looking to sweep and end the season as one of the most dominant teams in history. Jordan then inexplicably quits to try his hand at Nascar, the Bulls lose the next four games and the series, and fans around the world are wondering what IN THE FUCK WAS THAT."

Wow, I can't recall a case of a masterpiece falling apart at the end quite that much. What a disappointing final chapter.

Sure thing, I know how awful this feels and am always bummed out when someone tells me they're going through it too (which is becoming more common as we grow older).

I've considered surgery but have gotten wildly different opinions from different people. The specialist I consultes obviously pushed for it and said that it was minimally invasive and usually a cure-all. On the other hand, I've had friends and family (who are medical professionals) beg me NOT to get back surgery unless the pain is so agonizing that I'm essentially crawling to the hospital. I continue to leave surgery as a last-ditch option in favor of more holistic approaches.

I've also been told that this is often hereditary. My dad had such severe sciatica when he was around my age that he was largely bedridden for months.

I feel for you, my friend. I've been struggling with on-and-off sciatic nerve pain for over eight years.

The initial injury happened while I was jogging on a treadmill in a crappy hotel gym. I felt a completely foreign pain go down my right glute and leg. I flew home in extreme discomfort, and my dad - who is a doctor and has also dealt with this same thing - immediately diagnosed me. He told me that unfortunately, this might be something I need to live with for life, and that the best thing to do is take healthy steps to mitigate it.

I hate to tell you that it may be the same deal for you, as I'm sure most people recover from sciatica completely, but that sadly has not been the case for me. I'll often go pain-free for weeks or months and think I'm in the clear only to re-aggravate it via weightlifting or just randomly. In my experience, the best thing to mitigate sciatica has inarguably been weight loss. I've never been massively overweight, but there are times I've packed on maybe 35 pounds more than my ideal weight, and that's when my pain has been its most unbearable. The lighter I get, the less of an issue it becomes.

The other advice I can give you (and I'm being hypocritical here because this is advice I often ignore myself) is to be disciplined about strengthening your core. Anytime you strengthen your abs and obliques, you are helping your back, improving your posture, and lowering the risk and intensity of sciatica.

I reinjured my back most recently a couple months ago and decided to try yoga classes at my local gym. I've only been going for a month and already feel significant improvements in my core strength, range of motion, and pain management. I'd recommend a good yoga class, or at least a core strenthening routine.

Best of luck, and I hope you beat this!

I'm in the middle of the final boss rush and it feels like they're absolutely shitting themselves across the finish line here.

I'm still in my initial playthrough and had a "oh shit" moment when I realized Synergy could be paired with Comet, wondering if I just found the code to nuke the game. However, it's such a slow spell that I'm not sure if it's any better than something like Thunder.

I reached Chapter 13, which I presume is the endgame. I was determined to accomplish EVERYTHING leading up to any points of no return, but some of the late-game goals are clearly meant for a second playthrough. Regardless, I completed all the Normal VR missions and all the Chocobo races, so I'm content with that.

Also, I probably missed it, but did we have any discussions about the Gold Saucer date? I'm not sure how the end differs depending on Cloud's date, but I got Tifa, and I have to admit getting misty eyed at the end. Just one of the most genuinely sweet and heartwarming cutscenes I've ever seen.