TheLastBaron

I'm probably going to have to play this on low as my rig was good in 2009, hopefully DeadEndThrills has the beautiful stuff covered for this.

Is in a current number two position in terms of my all time favorite jazz musician. He occasionally flip flops with Stanley Clarke, and those two are always at the top of my list. Speaking of Stanley Clarke and amazing drummers, I saw him at Yoshi's last year and Ronald Bruner Jr was insane. He's one of those drummers who has mad chops and I might write off as just being a super fast technical drummer, except he had such a tight groove and even in his crazy solos he never loses it. He played a solo when I saw him where he did everything hard with his feet and one hand and with the other hand just kept the pulse on the snare. I'll try and find a good video when I get home, most of the stuff on YouTube is him doing solos (as in not playing with a band) so they don't do him justice.For contemporary stuff my I'm a huge fan of Snarky Puppy (video when I get home) and I'm super excited that they're going to be playing here in Los Gatos in August.

I haven't, though it's been on my radar after it got a ton of buzz last year. I remember looking at it on Fantagraphics' site last year after it won the Eisner and they had a pretty long preview, like maybe 20-30 pages, though you have probably already seen it. Issue #2 is out and man this is in the same boat for me as Optic Nerve in that it's insanely good, but it's also just soul crushing so I don't know why I read it.

I'm really liking the new Antlers album

Yeah the story is definitely pretty bad, though honestly that's kind of how all Blizzard games are (I was actually really in to the story in WC3, but in 2003 I was also 12). Based on what you said you're still in Act 1 which is really early into the game. The second act isn't in the town and is actually my favorite act in the game so if you aren't digging the tone and setting there's a chance you'll enjoy Act 2, at least more than Act 1. The gameplay opens up a lot more once you get a little higher level (I'm assuming you're around level 20 now and 30-40 is where you have a lot more skills and rune to mess around with). As far as loot goes I actually found that loot seemed to be dropping a lot more when I played than back in 2011. I don't know exactly what they changed in loot 2.0, but I was playing with a couple friends and we were all finding legendaries maybe once every 30 minutes or so. I'm not sure if that's related to having more people in the party or what, but it's a noticeable increase. I would say at least give the game a try for a little bit of Act 2 to see if you find it any more engaging, but if you don't you shouldn't feel bad about quitting.

Just watched the Bruins game, dear lord Chara is a monster. Smith punches him in the face and he just stands there laughing. When a 6'9" 260 lb. man is standing there laughing at you you should probably just get away as fast as you can.

I really like him because of how good he is at writing episodic stories. There are a few things I think BKV does just as good if not better than any other person in comics right now. He always has great first issues which hook you in, usually he has some sort of reveal right at the end with like with Runaways, Y, and Ex Machina. There are lots of good first issues though, the hard part is both following through with the story and then finishing it. Brian K Vaughan's stories stay consistently good after the start and then manage to have satisfying endings. There are so many writers that let their books get out of control and don't know how to reel them in, or those that don't know how to end a series (like Fables), so when Brian K Vaughan does it again and again it's worth a lot. He's not my all time favorite writer and I don't like every single thing he's put out, but I enjoy most of his stuff especially his creator owned work. I personally enjoy Saga, though I think I like The Private Eye more.

Oh my god, these are all great! I love the Sailor Moon one.

A couple years ago he was on an episode of the Top Score podcast/radio show and he seems like a super cool guy. http://minnesota.publicradio.org/display/web/2011/09/06/top-score-martin-odonnell-halo-s2e1

I'm really disappointed, I thought this was going to be a thread about jazz and then I came back and it wasn't.

Uh oh, I'm getting scared that the new Mastodon album is going to be bad. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wHdSlmQD2Qs

His point wasn't just that the word is used too much, it's that it's used so much that it doesn't have any meaning. I don't have any strong feelings about the word as it isn't something I hear very much among the people I talk to, but when I do hear it I pretty much don't know what it's supposed to mean without a lot of context given.

Wow, my uncle worked at Humongous so I played all the games growing up. I'm tempted to replay some of these, but I have a hunch that I won't really like any of them 20 years later.

So I started playing this, and I'm liking it, but man are there a lot of cut scenes. Is this like an initial hump I have to get over, or is the whole game a battle followed by a whole bunch of setting the controller down and watching TV for a while?

Yeah I've been watching the games, the Sharks seems to be doing well but even if they manage to win this game they'll still choke later on.

Wow, I don't know how I missed this post, I'm down to trade, what do you need?

I don't live in San Francisco and have never worked there, but I did spend a lot of time helping some friends who go to SF State and UCSF find an apartment and it took a while. I imagine it would also be a lot harder if you're trying to do it from England.

Comixology is currently running a sale until the 21st on the books published by Image which were nominated for Eisner awards. There's a lot of them, and they're all probably good (hence getting nominated for Eisner's), but Saga, The Manhattan Projects, Lazarus, and East of West are the books I read every month that I would personally recommend. If I were to make a top 10 list of my favorite ongoing series' currently being put out they would all be on it. I've also been interested in Zero for a little while now, I guess this is as good a time as any to try it out. By the way, the sale is the issues are 99 cents each, and trades are also discounted, but in some cases the trades now end up costing more than buying multiple issues. For example, there are three trades of Saga out, the first one is $5, but the second is $7 and the third is $8. Each trade is six issues, so only the first one is actually cheaper than buying single issues for 99 cents each.

Wasn't the person always HD on account of it being on PC

This is probably going to be one of those games where I can read a ton about it, but until I actually play it for a while and see all the systems in action I won't have any idea if I like it or not. I want to like it, but right now I'm probably another neutral vote.

Which one is going to be Maude?

So I watched my friend play this today and it's gorgeous. One thing I noticed though was that the lip syncing was way off. He was playing in German though, is it something that anyone else has noticed with it in English?

I think Animal Man was great, the last issue was in March so it's over now. It's definitely a Vertigo book being put out by DC proper, so if you liked Batgirl I can't say if this is something you'd like as it's very different. The only New 52 book like it is Swamp Thing (again, previously a Vertigo book) which it also does a cross-over with. If you like Arrow then Green Arrow seems like an easy choice, though the first year or so was kind of a mess with the creative team changing a lot and a bunch of poor arcs. I stopped reading it pretty early, but jumped back on when Lemire got put in charge and I think most people agree it's been great since. Wonderwoman is also good, Brian Azzarello isn't for everyone, but Cliff Chaing's art is stunning no matter what your tastes are. I think of all the Batman family of books Batman proper has been the one I liked the most (there are a ton of Batman books and a lot of them are pretty bad and a few have already been canceled.) It's very much in the dark Miller style of Batman that's big right now, but it's written by Scott Snyder (who also did previously mentioned Swamp Thing) and this style is right up he started off as a horror writer. I've always been mostly on the DC side of the big 2, but I'll be the first to say that I think by and large the New 52 has been a disaster. I don't read that many superhero books these days anyway though, so my don't necessarily line up exactly with the standard comic book audience that DC is aiming at. At this point I mostly follow creative teams I like and don't read too many other books so I could be missing something great going on. P.S. I'll second the DCAU stuff done by Bruce Timm and Paul Dini for learning more about DC stuff, though obviously it's Batman and Superman focused.

I started Infamous and after a few hours I'm calling it a day. The combat is pretty bland, the world is pretty boring (I'm not sure if the other islands are better), and the writing is so bad. I really wanted to like it, I liked Sucker Punch's other games, but I don't think this is going to work out.