FirestormCAN

I recently played SK with an old friend of mine after quitting TF2. I played about two hours a long time before going back, and I found that a lot had changed since that first run. Mist energy, the free stuff that locked how many adventures you could have or how many weapons you could make, was gone. Little buddies were added, new levels. Combat was enjoyable, and the game had quite a few tricks to make sure you're ready for what lies ahead. However, I got stuck on this one ranked mission that required me to have 3-star items equipped. The problem? The economy is still bullshit, even without mist energy. Why? Alchemy orbs. Fucking alchemy orbs. Now, I'm a veteran of Neopets and something like this isn't anything new. Codestones and dubloons are items you need for training. And they demand a lot of money as a result. Orbs are following a similar principal, limiting your ability to perform an action which results of high prices. But here's the thing: on Neopets, you have a lot of ways to earn money without having to worry about a lucky item drop: the games room, dailies, your shop, stocks, a large variety for a pet site. The only thing SK has to offer for easy money is the arcade. That's it. And even then, you earn around 3000+ crowns after reaching the first town. Compare that to the price of just one orb. In my case, I need about ~7500 just to buy one goddamn orb. The arcade just simply doesn't adjust to your need for cash, it just drops the same crappy amounts every single time you go to the arcade, forcing you to play it over and over and over and over until you shut the game off from boredom. Even on elite mode the payout is terrible. Stop giving me 1 crown coins, dammit, gimme more 5s, 10s, 100s even! I've actually done math on this; to meet the 3-star items criteria, I need almost 200 THOUSAND CROWNS in recipes, alchemy fees, and orbs. What numbnut thought this would be a good idea? And you can't sell your older weapons 'cause they're bound to you and they can only be unbound with energy. What's the point of keeping those old normal weapons if I'm not gonna use them anymore, it's not like I can get their upgrade recipes and have enough orbs to use the damn machines, why don't I have the ability to just throw them in the trash? On top of that, certain enemies are real pains in the ass, to the point where I can't move on in the arcade trying to get a crucial upgrade to a weapon that that put the little pests to rest easier. Devilettes are the absolute worst, they take so many hits even with piercing and they do so much damage that's nearly impossible to avoid. I've used up all my sparks of life against these pricks and no one else seems to be willing to spare one for me. Some party, huh? Just leave your teammates to rot and not give them a chance to move on and collect more money they need. And I ain't wasting all the crowns I earned PLUS the crowns I saved up for just to have enough for two sparks which will pretty much be wasted in a matter of seconds anyway. Such terrible game design. TL;DR - Spiral Knights, while having enjoyable combat, suffers from a piss-poor economy, annoying enemies reliance on energy to make your life easier. "Free to play" my ass. I'd advise people to avoid this if you don't have the patience to waste so much time and effort just to get a required upgrades to rank up.

Haha, you can go as any pony you like, regardless of generation. All you have to do is be creative! You should've seen the costumes we had last year. Ca-razy! Keep in mind that little ones will be running around, so keep it clean and we're good.

Been giving the rest of my Steam Library some love. Played a few demos, became a wizard in Pinball Arcade's free board, brought the CPU to its knees in Worms Reloaded and been tearing critters and mechs apart in Spiral Knights. SK is really run (especially with loyal friends), but you can hit a lot, and I mean a LOT of money shortages. Be prepared to grind in the Arcade for a while. Also going back to an old fave of mine, Backyard Soccer. I think I made a mistake in turning off spot locator for penalty kicks, 'cause I can't get my goalie to respond to my aim. I actually lost the indoor tourney because of that. T_T

I'd like to go on a tangent here and say that I FUCKING HATE HELLTOWER. Hightower was by far the worst map I played, but this goes WAY beyond that. The main problem? Mini-sentries. There are too many spots where minis can be a real pain in the ass. They're easy distractions which lead to easy places to get sniped, piped or crocketed away. And they're so cheap and easy to set up and run for cover, it's by far the worst mechanic on the map. But try adding pumpkin bombs, skeletons, fireballs, teslas and a goddamn evil eyeball to the mix. What do you get? Absolute chaos for one team, there's just no point in pushing those stupid corpses. The stupid thing needs to be banned from Halloween event maps, it just sucks the fun out of everything when there's a stupid little aimbot you can't do anything about. This update has left me very disappointed, all thanks to the WORST map in this game. http://firestorm-can.tumblr.com/post/65861492722/im-retiring-from-team-fortress-2 You know what? Fuck this game. I've suffered TOO MUCH from this stupid free-to-play model. I've had it up to here with all these people who think they're smarter than anyone else.

First it was this... http://youtu.be/M8REVZE-REw And now they've gone and done this. Welp, better watch yourselves out there, ladies and gents. Anti-bronyism will be in full throttle this Scream Fortress. (btw, the Engie and Scout got the best lines.)

Musical fans will be delighted to hear this number again. http://youtu.be/byAfC5yW_hw One of the most adorable pieces of animation I've ever seen. Thanks for the link, CR!

AAAAUGH, goddamn players who keep going scout in MvM WHEN WE DON'T NEED ONE. I'm sorry, I'm sick and tired of running into this. I really think that this game needs class limits as a default option, people are not paying attention to the class roster when they first join the server and don't consider the situation the team is in. Stacking all those crappy classes leads to nothing but disaster. Words of advice: don't be an ass to your fellow players unless they refuse to listen to reason. Don't take so long to hit F4 when everyone else has. Stick to the class you start as and only switch to a class that could improve the situation in the next wave (eg. one guy could switch to spy on waves with Steel Gauntlets to make them easier to manage). Don't force anyone to change their strategy unless they're interfering with their teammates (eg. building next to other engies, screwing around away from the battlefield). Help them learn from their mistakes, don't be a complete know-it-all and boss people around. If they can't get the hint, then votekick them out. If you're gonna be a gigantic douchebag, do it with other people who are willing to play along, aka PEOPLE ON YOUR FRIENDS LIST. Oh, and one more thing: never roleplay in a public server. People are there to kill bots and enjoy themselves, not get roped into a "story" and have one player refuse to play properly unless the others advance it. Somebody thought it was a good idea to RP as Fluttershy and kept bugging us with constant "Do you love me? Do you love me?" and being completely useless. Drove us nuts and got us nowhere. There's a place for roleplaying, and that's a forum. Not a horde mode in an action game. Unless, again, it's with people you know. I'm sorry, but I hate people that decide to get in the way for no good reason.

The Nintendo-owned Seattle Mariners just put this up on their Tumblr: It's hard to imagine seeing Nintendo become the superpower that it did and have baseball up in the northwest without him.

@Eureka: There's one sound byte that always comes to mind when she blasts Belatrix away. There's one scene from of all things, a Disney sequel, that really got me.

Hohoho boy, this is gonna take a while to figure out. There's so many songs from Disney I love, but it's just hard to put it in an ordered list. So I'll put them in no particular order: On the Open Road (A Goofy Movie) Poor Unfortunate Souls (The Little Mermaid) The Mob Song (Beauty and the Beast) I Wann'na Be Like You (The Jungle Book) Great Spirits (Brother Bear) That's How you Know (Enchanted) He Mele No Lilo (Lilo and Stitch) Streets of Gold (Oliver & Company) Son of Man (Tarzan) The World's Greatest Criminal Mind (The Great Mouse Detective) He Lives in You (The Lion King II: Simba's Pride) Friends on the Other Side (The Princess and the Frog) The Backson Song (Winnie the Pooh) I'll add the scores from of my favorite scenes while I'm at it: Message Montage (The Rescuers Down Under) Sugar Rush Showdown (Wreck-it Ralph) Crazed (The chase scene) (101 Dalmations)

Brits and Scots always get me. Most of the accents I've heard of in America are just so bland and forgettable, it's always so gratifying to hear more of a old-style way of speaking. And besides, I always get a kick out of the TF2 Demoman's best line: http://wiki.teamfortress.com/w/images/f/fa/Demoman_painsharp07.wav