rowd149

Did East Coast Natives even scalp, historically? I though that was a plains thing, and even then, not so widespread.

Did one of the bad Halo novels come from this guy? *checks* The Flood by William C. Dietz. Yup, all you had to know that this would be a stinker was to be familiar with this guy's other licensed work. Pure dreck.

@Omega2822 It's because you're the omega. Belly up, runt! (I upvoted you.)

@Liquidfingers You go ahead and think that, friendo. You're the one sucking the fun out of the joke by reacting so seriously. There are certainly times when dark humor (hah!) is all-advised, but this is SO OBVIOUSLY not one of them. However, the fact that you've gotten so defensive (and, by that, completely missed Troy's intentions) means that you're probably one of those guys who'd defend telling an inappropriate race-based joke at an inappropriate time (with all the implications THAT brings). So, yeah, perfectly justifiable Downvote City.

I don't know what this writer is on, SCII is the cream of the crop of the Soul series. It was /gorgeous/ graphically, it had a large variety of well-balanced characters (introducing a ton of series mainstays, like Raphael) it played spectacularly (I can't say much for the earlier games, but the later ones didn't have that balance of speed and impact that just "clicked" in II), and it had a pretty stellar replay value. SCII is also when the series hits its stride in terms of popularity due to the multiplatform release. Take off your nostalgia goggles, II is the tops.

@Zetsuei Forgot to add, technically you still are and always have been dealing with a biohazard, so... The RE moniker made it synonymous with zombies, but really wasn't supposed to be about *just* zombies.

@Zetsuei Well, remember that it was never supposed to be called Resident Evil. In Japan, it's Biohazard, but they had to change the name because of trademark issues or something when they brought it stateside.

@DeadpooI That was the thing about FFXIII, it felt like they spent a /really/ long time getting the localization right. Even with all the fal'Cie/l'Cie mumbo jumbo -- I "got" it, but apparently it threw a lot of people off -- it has by far the best dialogue I've seen in a JRPG. The only issue is one that's probably never going to go away, and that's the dichotomy between English and Japanese conversational styles (at least as it pertains to pre-written dialogue): the latter tends towards long monologues with "interaction" consisting mostly of terse confirmations or denials, whereas with the former, you get the back-and-forth banter that works so well in games like Uncharted. But all in all, it was good (and it had better have been, considering they had 4 years to do it).

What I've seen of FFXIII-2, on the other hand, is super-duper Japanese, super-duper anime. Not just the phrasing, not just the conversational dynamics, but even the mannerisms (take a look at the cutscene at the start of the demo: the way Serah bends over when she's asking if this is Noel's first visit to Cocoon is something you'd see in a ton of anime, but NEVER in an American show). It seems like the development team defaulted to what they "know" to get the game out as quickly as possible, whereas with the first game, they had a ton of time to fine tune things and make sure each character had a unique, non-cliche verbal and physical characterization.

@(Unverified) It should be noted that this boss fight is also terrifying. Even as a 16-bit battle, the set-up, music, and boss sprite all somehow colluded to create something I had nightmares about.

Actually, looking back on it, a lot of SNES RPGs didn't really pull any conceptual punches; most of the greats all tackled some pretty scary stuff that might have been made all the worse by the presentation (as your brain fills in the details). No movie postapocalypse has haunted me with true, unshakeable disturbing of Chrono Trigger's (it took a Harlan Elison book to do that).

@maxwell97 USPS has been losing money for years, and there is nary a fire or police department in this country that hasn't gotten federal grant money in the past 10 years. Hell, even the past 5 years.