Miscellaneous Links 2 - The Vengeance

[AAA]

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MmnCJ9RFMqw

This is awesome. Also, I will never understand the people who choose Snake Man first.

[Meeplelard]

You mean besides the fact that he is one of the easiest Robot Master's to kill with the Buster, and of the Gemini Man/Needle Man/Snake Man trinity split from the usual branch (for all that I think Snake Man has a secondary weakness to Shadow Blade, apparently?), he's by far the easiest?

I mean, only MM3 Boss I can see that's easier to buster offhand would be Top Man.

[Ranmilia]

Gotta agree with Trips.  Snake Man's easy, but the end of his stage is not, and there's no advantage to doing him first since the only thing you gain from him is Search Snake, which is useless unless you want to do Gemini Man as your second stage.  Which... yeeaaah.  I don't see why you'd want to start with that trio instead of Top and Shadow. 

If you really want Rush Jet early, just do Needle Man first, suck it up and buster duel him.  He isn't THAT hard, and you get an e-tank or two to help.
</pointless rant>

[AAA]

Magnet Man takes more damage, his pattern is easier to avoid damage entirely with(whereas Snake Man will occasionally just run straight into you and you have to have fairly good timing, all you have to do with Magnet is just slide out of the way), and his stage simple the entire way through, even with the block puzzles. Top Man would probably be better, though. And everything Alex said.

REAL Men do Needle first anyway.

[Meeplelard]

Magnet Man's stage is much harder than Snake Man's is the difference (Disappearing Blocks > Oh no cloud platforms!)  How you can call Snake Man's stage genuinely hard is odd; no death traps til the very end, and they're some of the easiest to get around.  This isn't freaking Ice Man's stage where it goes from "Benign" to "OH DEAR GOD THE HORROR!"

Furthermore? Snake Man's pattern is obvious; he only jumps in the middle or on the edge.  As such, the strategy is pretty obvious:

Stand on the edge, when he runs to the dip, jump over him, run to the middle, wait for him to come, jump over, shoot as he runs to the other side, repeat.

Needle Man is a MUCH harder fight, and not an easier level.  Yes, you get Rush Jet out of it, but that's about it; you don't need Rush Jet much in the initial 8 stages.  Needle Man is not one of the easier fights to Buster, as such, not anything remotely close to a good starting choice as a result, unless you really got bustering him down flat.

[Luther Lansfeld]

The easiest to me is Top. The boss is just extremely simplistic and the level is not hard at all.

[AAA]

Magnet Man's stage is much harder than Snake Man's is the difference (Disappearing Blocks > Oh no cloud platforms!)  How you can call Snake Man's stage genuinely hard is odd; no death traps til the very end, and they're some of the easiest to get around.  This isn't freaking Ice Man's stage where it goes from "Benign" to "OH DEAR GOD THE HORROR!"

Furthermore? Snake Man's pattern is obvious; he only jumps in the middle or on the edge.  As such, the strategy is pretty obvious:

Stand on the edge, when he runs to the dip, jump over him, run to the middle, wait for him to come, jump over, shoot as he runs to the other side, repeat.

Needle Man is a MUCH harder fight, and not an easier level.  Yes, you get Rush Jet out of it, but that's about it; you don't need Rush Jet much in the initial 8 stages.  Needle Man is not one of the easier fights to Buster, as such, not anything remotely close to a good starting choice as a result, unless you really got bustering him down flat.

 I disagree with you on the block puzzles being harder. But then again they're both pretty easy, and I just RJ them both anyway. I never said Snake Man's stage was geniunely hard, just that Magnet Man's would be easier for someone just starting out. And Magnet Man takes more damage from a buster. I've always found Snake Man harder to avoid than Magnet Man, even knowing his pattern, but maybe that's just me.

And obviously doing Needle Man with only the P buster is not recommended for someone who's not experienced/good at the game.

[Dark Holy Elf]

Snake Man is clearly the easiest of the Snake-Needle-Gemini trio and you have to do ONE of them first. The person in the YouTube video was absolutely godawful at fighting Snake and still won because Snake is terrible. The level is decent, but eh.

Magnet and Top are both arguably easier, sure, but they're the start of the other loop. If you choose to do Snake's loop first (because you really want Rush Jet?) then Snake seems a logical starting point. Have to agree with Meeple that Snake Man's stage is way easier than Needle Man the boss.

Of course, I think my optimum order for playing the game might be something like Top -> Shadow -> Gemini -> Needle -> Magnet -> Hard -> Snake -> Spark. But I can see reasonable-ish ones that start with Snake.

[Ranmilia]

Eh, the point there is that even if you want to do the loop of 3 first, there's still no reason not to start with Top-Shadow to get Shadow Blade (useful for everything) and Rush Marine (negates the hard part of Gemini stage) before going into Snake.

[Dark Holy Elf]

Again, if you're really trying to get Rush Jet quickly, you can get it faster by cutting out Top/Shadow. And since bustering Gemini or Needle will likely be too much for many newcomers, this makes Snake a logical starting point.

Overall I agree with you, as made clear by my order (more hype for Top Spin than Shadow Blade, but both are two of the better weapons, whereas Search Snake is outscrubbed only by Needle and Spark), but that doesn't make Snake a -bad- choice.

[Luther Lansfeld]

Bustering Needle is too much for me.

[Grefter]

So uh from the sounds of the argument the guy and his level are so unimportant of the grand scheme of things that it doesn't even freaking matter where you do him, it is just something to do sometime whenever because he doesn't slot well into any specific sequence and isn't vital to any of them.

http://www.rpgcodex.net/phpBB/viewtopic.php?t=23562
More Vault Dweller on Aged of Decadence.

[Shale]

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R2yo_r0kj2o

Why didn't this ever happen at libraries where I worked?

[Grefter]

Why is the ghost making the pacman eating noises?

[Shale]

Because Pac-Man is busy screaming at the top of his lungs.

[Monkeyfinger]

http://www.rpgcodex.net/phpBB/viewtopic.php?t=23562
More Vault Dweller on Aged of Decadence.

Fuck you. I got curious, followed the link to the devloper's site, looked on the forums, saw some retard armchair designer spouting out of his ass to Vince, and am now registering an account so I can chew him out in what will probably result in shitflinging that I will want to block from my memory.

Might as well throw in a reaction to the game itself.

Vince promises lots of non-combat options, and good ones, ones that actually reward you for building your character around being charismatic and intelligent. That would be great, and I hope he delivers. He's provided examples ( http://www.irontowerstudio.com/forum/index.php?topic=231.0 ); let's hope the game is loaded with stuff like this. Because the "default" option, going rambo on whoever is obstructing you, looks like it will be boring as shit in this game. I didn't really need confirmation that Vince could never design good battle systems and combat encounters. I knew that since reading his general RPGCodex posts. But it's simultaneously vindicating and painful to watch it be thrown into sharp relief by his AoD-related posts and videos.

[Grefter]

I only grabbed a random link really to respond to the Megaman stuff while staying on topic.  But yeah the review is pretty blech.  I have high hopes for the game, I like Vault Dweller  and while I do agree the combat system will likely be underwhelming, I also look forward to finally having another RPG kind of like Torment where the gameplay is actually not the combat.

[Monkeyfinger]

Nono, what I'm saying is, that review has links to Iron Tower's site. I went to it.

The site has forums, one of which is an AoD design related one.

That forum has a moron who is making suggestions that appall me.

I registered an account on IT's forums to argue with said moron.

[metroid composite]

http://www.chinavasion.com/product_info.php/pName/bluetooth-microphone-dental-insert-nano-electronics/
Bluetooth Microphone product with the following warning: "All dental work should be performed by a qualified dentist"

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=He7Ge7Sogrk
(video) Painting Elephant.  Neato.

http://www.getwonder.com/2008/03/to-the-north-polerussian-nuclear-icebreakers/
Pictures of Soviet Nuclear Icebreakers.

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/portal/ttv/arts.jhtml?bcpid=1358314062&bclid=1363192294&bctid=1482436596
(video) BBC's april fool's joke.

[metroid composite]

http://www.darkroastedblend.com/2008/04/japanese-creative-barcodes.html
Barcode artwork.

http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/n/a/2008/04/04/state/n000323D19.DTL
Wheelchair robbery.

http://www.dailytech.com/Computercontrolled+Skysail+Saves+Money+Cuts+Emissions/article11210.htm
Set sail!  Sails on ships are back in style!

http://io9.com/376647/suburb+eating-robots-run-on-fat-reclaimed-from-liposuction
File under WTF.

http://www.wired.com/culture/lifestyle/multimedia/2008/04/gallery_DandDStats?slide=9&slideView=7
9 celebrities rolled as D&D characters.

http://www.freakingnews.com/Partial-Face-Transplants-Pictures--1233-0.asp
Photoshopping two faces together.

http://www.cnn.com/2008/WORLD/asiapcf/04/08/baby.heads.ap/index.html#cnnSTCText
Two-faced baby worshiped as goddess in India.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WWqCNmfJ1hY
(video) Uwe Boll: "I'm the only genius in the entire fucking movie business".

[Anthony Edward Stark]

http://kerberos-productions.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=7839&sid=ede2f42ff21d9a2578683489e590de5c

Kerberos Productions, makers of SotS, a 4x game I rather enjoy, apparently announced their next project and I forgot I'd already read about it (at least, that's what the link being purple rather than blue would suggest...)

North Star is... kind of like Privateer, I guess. You get a star freighter and ply the mysterious and dangerous frontiers of space as a trader, running goods between far-flung colonies for cash, putting together a crew, charting planets to find new commodities, and so on.

Oddly enough, in the North Star timeline, Canada is the world's premier superpower. Silly writers, that's usually China's job to replace the US.

[Monkeyfinger]

It was China's role in SotS, at that.

It'll probably be next decade when North star is out, anyway, since SotS isn't even done yet.

[Anthony Edward Stark]

I didn't know they were working on a second SotS expansion. I liked Born of Blood a lot (I mean, the lack of stuff like alliances or trade sort of irked me in Vanilla SotS), so I'm all over another expansion.

Though in SotS, for some reason, England seemed to be the top dogs (SolForce speaks English and, inexplicably, Latin). Probably has something to do with the Hivers blasting the shit outta Earth until they got lit up with a few thousand ICBMs.

[Shale]

http://www.newsday.com/news/local/longisland/ny-litrap0406,0,7022889.story

So a guy in Long Island rigged up his own security system. It involves a knife that stabs intruders in the face. Guess what happens when a guy from the phone company shows up while he's out?

[metroid composite]

http://gawker.com/377201/the-dangers-of-being-a-television-news-reporter
(video) Compilation of TV news reporter wipeouts.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MHcUTNre2oI
(video) Unbelievable horse.

http://laughingsquid.com/ed-force-one-the-iron-maiden-boeing-757/
Ed Force One--Iron Maiden has their own customized Boeing 757.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hBzkNchB0p0
(video) quite possibly the crappiest animation I've ever seen.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0YQmkDDCyXQ
(video) Japanese Television, or possibly a spoof "Gorgeous Tiny Chicken Machine Show".

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=42E2fAWM6rA
(video) Actually pretty clever.

http://www.apathyparty08.com/
Apathy party.

http://youtube.com/watch?v=-0jNC_w1tSw&fmt=18
(video) Dancing dog.