Yesterday, Binerexis and I had the opportunity to put our skills to the test not only in front of dozens of Xbox Live strangers, but also in front of a live audience at LiveStream.com. Behind a barrage of heckling, taunting, and an uncomfortable amount of praying, two top tier titans squared off to find out who would triumph.

In the end, I did manage to take the gold medal, finishing the two-hour marathon session with a lead of 13,360 points. But the real winner wasn’t me; it was one lucky reader who insisted on keeping a sad meme alive, wagering I’d secure victory with a lead of over 9,000 points.

Tomorrow from 4pm to 6pm, WiNGSPANTT and Binerexis will duke it out in Assassin’s Creed: Brotherhood to determine who the master of murder is and who among our readers will win a free copy of the game. Watch the live stream here!

While Top Tier Tactics has previously addressed the requisite skills for tournament play and etiquette for Street Fighter, there wasn’t enough attention paid to the fundamentals that will prevent you from outright losing every match you play. This article explains how to become a mediocre player in as few steps as possible. While this piece is intended for novices, fisticuff experts should probably consult the more advanced Street Fighter Tournament Guide for pro-level tips.

Binerexis and I have had a long standing dispute about who the true master of the universe is. While I’ve got him beat in the sexy voice department and he’s taken the gold with his epic beard, neither of us has yet determined who is the ultimate king of Assassin’s Creed: Brotherhood.

Help us settle the dispute and you could win a copy of the game on your system of choice!

On March 6th, 2011 from 4pm to 6pm EST, Binerexis and I will duel to the death (or rather, many deaths). All you have to do to win is comment on this post with your prediction of who will win, and by how many points. The person who’s the closest to the final result, without going over, wins a copy of our favorite Animus-based murder simulator.

This is the second in my little series on YouTube commentary, sparked mainly by a recent Sandy Ravage video. Its main thrust was this: Black Ops is boring, the videos containing it are boring, it’s too easy and… boring. Redundancy completely required. I put up my own 500 character thoughts, but I want to go [...]

A lot of series have dealt with the pressure of a decade-in-the-making sequel: Team Fortress, Starcraft, Duke Nukem (to say the least). And when the fanbase has waited half their existing life for a game, it means two things: the developer has a lot to live up to, but they also have a guaranteed hit.

As far as shareholders go, a guaranteed hit is a great thing. As far as gamers go, it’s usually not. Developers will more than likely fall short of expectations, especially when they know they can cut corners, squeeze in profit-generating schemes, and rely on happy memories to whitewash the kinks in the experience. Of course, it all depends on the developer.

Luckily, we all know Capcom would never exploit nostalgia.

Binerexis and I have worked together in Assassin’s Creed Brotherhood to bring you some team-inspired Alliance Mode fun. While these videos won’t be new to you if you’ve subscribed to my channel, they’re such masterpieces they deserve to be watched again and again.

What I propose is a monthly or weekly* take on the state of the YouTube community from an outsider’s perspective. I’m not a part of it, else I’d not have time for this or any real writing, but I watch a fair bit of it. If this is something all of you want, I’ll undertake it and cast my net wide, searching for the biggest names I’m not yet aware of, comb them for the overall feelings in the community as I see them, and report them here to you with my commentary on the commentary community (and I’m done with that word now).

I recently spoke to Tyler of Ninjalemon’s Reviews and Tactics, a new gaming blog about (surprise!) gaming impressions and strategy. I was immediately impressed by the quality of his work and the content of his character, so I agreed to post one of his inaugural pieces as a Guest Article on Top Tier Tactics. If you enjoy it, go check out the rest of Ninjalemon’s offerings. Because when life hands you Ninjalemons… good luck finding them later!

I promised it and now it is here: an analysis of the weapons of Battlefield Bad Company 2: Vietnam, or at least, those in the Assault kit. For this series, I’m going to split the kits into five groups: the four main kits and general all-kit weapons.

Why? Because I know that my attention span is taxed just by looking at a web page for more than a couple seconds, so yours must be at least ten or so. You are reading this, I should think.

Let’s jump right in with Assault and begin with the ten ton elephant in the room: the Ak-47. I know Swordsman75 has already done his Briefing Room episodes on these, but I want to give a more specialized analysis of the weapons than he did. I plan to include ballistics, or at least, the ballistics as I see them…

Dungeons and Dragons is a game about many, many things. Fantasy, swords, sorcery and roleplaying are generally considered chief among them. However, with 4th Edition, a lot can be done with just dice rolling! With this being the case, you need to have your dice rolling skills at their maximum. But there are a couple things you need before you can even start thinking about rolling those dice. First item on the list? Fingers.

Back in my Life in a Game days, I had the pleasure to meet Mike of Saturnine Games. They’ve recently released Antipole, a gravity-bending platformer, for Xbox Live Indie Games. By no means an extensive review, I thought I’d show some of the gameplay and just how terrible I am at platformers.