Tuesday, January 10, 2012

SPC Mailbag - January 10th, 2012

It's the first time we open the SPC Mailbag for the new year, so let's wear our funny looking hats, get out our noisemakers, and celebrate in style! ...Or I could just answer three e-mails from SPC's faithful readers as honestly as possible without offending anyone or any group of people. Good luck with that, SP!

Recently (or at least in the past couple years) you gave Game of the Year awards to LittleBigPlanet, Skyward Sword, and Super Mario Galaxy 2. Have these games moved onto your top ten games of all time list?

That's an excellent question, and it brings up an announcement. In the coming weeks I will be creating a brand-new top ten of SuperPhillip's Top Ten Games of All Time - 2012 Edition. They will have new titles along with old ones that just managed to hang on to the top ten by the skin of their teeth. Will Super Mario Galaxy 2 bump off the original SMG, or will LittleBigPlanet 2 take top honors on the list? Only one way to find out, and that's to stick around to SuperPhillip Central for the answer!

Can Mario maneuver his way to the top
of my Games of All Time 2012 list?


On your Christmas Eve post you named message boards as one of your least favorite things. Is there any message board out there that you actually like?

Most message boards are the seamy underbelly of the Internet, full of fools, trolls, and people who get off on being jerks to others through the anonymity of the web. I'm probably just going to the wrong places. However, there is one site that I do indeed like. It's called GameTZ. I should link to it even though they're too big time to affiliate with a site of my standing. Regardless, they're like CheapAssGamer except for the fact that the owner isn't a bald manchild, the community is full of reputable traders and not a bunch of scam artists, and there are practically zero trolls to speak of.


GameTZ has it where you can search for game, see who is in possession of said game (how much they value it for, how much Amazon has it for, the condition of the game, if it comes with the box and/or manual, etc.), and who wants said game. The message boards are just a means to an end, an alternate way to communicate. Instead of just using a feedback system, GameTZ uses an offer system. One party sends an offer (what game(s) person A will send to person B and vice versa), and the second party either accepts, rejects, or performs a counter-offer. One can send a tracking number, select when they have shipped/received, and the deal goes off usually without a hitch. If a problem does arise, an incident is reported, but these are so few and far in-between that these aren't commonplace. To check out and perhaps make an account of your own, check it out here.

You said message boards are one of your least favorite things. Which ones do you hate the most?

Aren't you the same person who asked last question? ...No? Anyway, oh, that's easy. There's three main ones:

GameFAQs - There is a typical GameFAQs poster that people use to make fun of this awful community (I only post reviews and top tens there as a means to draw users-- this works truthfully). To be a user at GameFAQs, you have to be 15, chubby, overuse memes like "over 9,000" that stopped being funny years ago (if they were ever funny), post Confirm or Deny topics constantly, continuously overuse the words "epic" and "fail", fall for blatant trolling all of the time, think that if something isn't to your liking it is the worst ever, think anyone who has a different opinion than you is a troll, and pretty much be a little pissant to everyone.

To be a mod, you must be anal, oh-so desperate for the power you lack in real life so you can bully the 15 year-old users who make up the majority of the GameFAQs community, and must not mod the trolls but everyone else instead.

If for some reason you are older than 15 and still use GameFAQs' message boards, what the hell is wrong with you?!

NeoGAF - Is there a site more in love with itself than NeoFAQs-- I mean, NeoGAF? The elitism is almost painful to read, and the majority of the posters there are really a mere step away from becoming GameFAQs users. Seriously, this is the best message board community that the industry can come up with? As Bender from Futurama would say, "We're boned." Full of trolls that the mods (some of the trolls are actually mods as evident by rampant title changes, unfunny and inappropriate tags they give to members, and rude posts) keep around because they amuse them, fanboys who all fall on my ignore list, and console wars coming up in every other topic, NeoFAQs... er... NeoGAF is hardly the ultimate when it comes to gaming forums. It'd be great if they could back their undue elitism up somehow, but this is one forum that fails to do so in every instance of the word.

CheapAssGamer - This was my experience on this pitiful trading site:

*posts Nintendo-related article*
"You are a fanboy! Herp derp!"
*posts Sony or Microsoft-related article*
*crickets*
*someone trades with me and doesn't send me their end of the deal; I get screwed over*

Do this ad infinitum until I finally left to GameTZ, a much better community with forums I don't cringe while reading.

===

There you have it-- an edition of the SPC Mailbag with as little hatred as possible. ...I really need to try harder next time. If you have a question that you are just burning inside to discover the answer to, hit me up with an e-mail at superphillip32[at]yahoo[dot]com. I'll look forward to answering your most heated queries. I need them, too, as it is pretty cold here in Central City!

No comments: