The Sanctum

The Guide To Peeing Safely

By: Anthony

Table Of Contents

1.0 Table of Contents

1.1 Introduction

1.2 Urinal Strategy

1.3 Toilet Strategy (Standing)

1.4 Toilet Strategy (Sitting)

1.5 Final Words

1.6 Credits

1.7 Request for Sticky

1.8 Copyright Information

1.1 Introduction

Many people, including myself, have a all-too-common problem. This problem is a certain peeing disorder that prevents these afflicted peoples from doing their business properly. Many also say that this problem is severely minor, as it has a trivial fix. However, I would venture to say that people who do not know the fix would not think of it as "minor." So by now, many of you are probably thinking, "What is this problem so many people are forced to deal with every day?"

Peeingous Toohardium.

1.2 Urinal Strategy

This is the main reason I wrote this guide. I, myself, suffered many wet pants from this foe. After many many failed strategies, I finally found the ones I use today.

The Dry

This method is relatively straightforward. You aim right for one of the holes in the middle area of the rubber mat at the bottom of the urinal, and pee straight through. If your stream is narrow enough, and your hand is steady enough, you can have a successful trip to the bathroom with almost 0% splashback. I was surprised at the fact that my entire stream went through the hole the first time I did it, because the holes looked relatively small.

Unfortunately, some of you might not have a stream small enough for this strategy to work. If you are one of these people, I am sorry. There are only a few things I will not do in life, and one of them is testing peeing strategies with another man's penis.

The Wet

Sometimes you will find that there is a lot of water in the center, and that it actually covers up the filter. (or it just isn't there) When this happens, pee straight into the water. Normally, this is a bad idea (like with a toilet) but, since the surface area of the water is so small, you can fill it with bubbles almost instantly. Your pee will start to hit the bubbles, and they will cushion its fall a bit, before it replenishes the bubble supply from below.

1.3 Toilet Strategy (Standing)

At this point many of you might be wondering why I included both wet and dry urinals under the same bulletpoint on the table of contents. Well, I am here to answer your questions. When switching from dry to wet, your aim doesnt really differentiate much, with the exception of having to be a bit more percise with the dry, you're aiming in the exact same place. However, The differences between standing at a toilet and peeing, and sitting at a toilet and peeing are huge. You're not only aiming at a different side of the toilet, in one instance youre on the toilet.

Aim for the X. You want to aim at the back center of the bowl, a little under the lip.

1.4 Toilet Strategy (Sitting)

Another reason I seperated the two was, well, I really have no idea how to pee sitting to make sure you dont splash. If I had to guess, I would say to aim right above the water...but I really don't know.

1.5 Final Words

Please post whatever you like in this thread, as long as it agrees with forum rules. I don't care if it has nothing to do with my guide, as far as I'm concerned thats a free bump until my guide gets stickied. Anyways, I hope I was able to help someone with this guide, whether it was revealing a trick to a sufferer, or just opening the eyes of someone else.

1.6 Credits

Myself

Google (for the pics seen in this post, and the © symbol stolen from their homepage)

Risujin (for the all around idea of prettying the post)

Tea (for the idea to do [ list ] for the table of contents)

If you would like to add something and/or suggest something new, please post it and I will look it over and, if you're lucky, I'll even add it.

1.7 Request for Sticky

I request this post be stickied because it can truely help people. In its current form, it has the means to help, but if it is stickied, it will attract more attention for people to help me improve upon it, and help the lives of others. I ask that you think of these people, the afflicted and the ignorant, and think of how you can change their lives by stickying this topic.

1.8 Copyright Information

©2007 Anthony a.k.a. n00b pl0x

All rights reserved.

Over thanksgiving break, we played a nerf war game. We tried a new gameplay style called assault. We had 7 people and only 6 guns, so we modified the rules to accommodate that. Four people started as defenders and two as attackers. Each of the defenders had a single gun and the attacking team had one gun to share. Whoever had the gun would be in play and attacking, when they died, the team would wait n minutes (where n is the number of attackers). After n minutes, the next person in the queue would grab a gun and head into combat. If a defender was killed, he immediately converted to the attacking team. He walked over to the back of the queue, and the first person in the queue would enter the game without having to wait.

The defenders were allowed to build a fort and their goal was to try to defend it over the course of 20 minutes. If there is one person living in the fort by the end of the 20 minutes, the defenders win. If at any time, the fort is completely empty (but the defenders are still alive), an attacker may enter the fort causing an immediate victory for the attackers.

I started in the queue of the attacking team, when I finally got in, I fired very few shots before being shot in the hat. After that, I ditched my hat to improve my skill. The game ran very smoothly (but not perfect at all) as the opposing forces were slowly thinned.

Mr. Chumley was met with unfortunate luck, one of the times when he spawned, he was instantly shot in the face for a kill, by Christina. Christina was a very good shot, knocking people out both left and right. Somehow, she managed to pull off a shot to my back that left a stinging feeling.

The battle was very balanced, leaving the attackers to have to make a final push in the last two minutes.

At six minutes left, Christina (now an attacker) is killed. Four minutes later, I spawn. It is now Austin and I left to take on an armored fort of three defenders in two minutes. We would have no help from fellow attackers since the next spawn time was four minutes later, a good 2 minutes after time is up.

Austin, unsure of how much time we have, calls out to me for time. I tell him we have a little under two minutes.

He replies, “Alright, times up!” and we skillfully duet a “Let’s do this! LEEROY JENKENS!” We rush their fort and quickly dispatch two of the remaining survivors, leaving Crexis to face the both of us. He takes one shot on us before we shoot out his legs and arms. We tried to execute him several times, but he squirmed so much that it actually posed a bit of a challenge. To finish him off, Austin shot him from point blank so that he had no chance to dodge at all. The game was done with 1 minute and 15 seconds remaining…a 45 second successful assault.

I’m considering reducing the amount of time the attackers have to assault the base in and I might tinker with the spawn times for the attackers, but this game style seems like an overall success. If anyone has a game style that they believe would be exciting for us nerfers, feel free to share it with me and I might test it out.

Until next time,

The Always-on-Schedule eronћ

Here is a map of campus: http://www.mst.edu/images/map.jpg (numbers indicate location on map.)

Saturday, November 14, Michelle came to rolla for a visit. At one point I decided to give her a tour of the S&T campus. We tried to walk as quietly as possible, as was standard protocol now-a-days, but of course I managed to stumble upon some dry twigs and snap a few. This was clearly enough to alert the horde, and within moments we had zombies chasing us down. My first instinct was to run for the physics building, as it is quite the defensive position. On our way there, zombies cut us off, coming from behind the Civil Engineering building (2).

We quickly doubled back into EE (5) and took the long winding path through it. We circled around the zombies and were able to continue forward on our journey. As we were passing Civil Engineering (2), even more zombies came out from behind it. Luckily we were close enough that this time we were able to bail inside the building. We took off our coats and used the sleeves to tie the doors shut and keep the zombies out for a while. I walked to the back of Civil Engineering and grabbed the mounted shovels, which are there for this very situation.

We untied our coats from the doors in unison, and bashed our way through the zombies with our newfound weapons. We considered rushing through the physics building, but decided against it when we saw several zombies wandering through the halls. We ran our way towards McNutt to try to hit the more open and defended roads. We ran it to several small bands of zombies that were easily dispersed. When we got to McNutt (11), we were pinned down by a human sniper. Apparently the government decided that Rolla was too infested and had to be cut off from the rest of the world, and the sniper was there to make sure it happened.

We turned around and headed back, but turned off towards another end of campus before getting back to EE (5) and Civil Engineering (2). This edge of campus lead into town, and would probably have less guards. Near the end of our campus journey, we ran into a vampire. She caused a little strife for us, but in the end we were able to best her.

The vampire had been an armed human before turning, and we were able to loot a small firearm for each of us. We headed into town, which was far less infested with zombies, but had more hiding places for any vampires or stray zombies to spring on us. We were lucky and did not run into any vampires or zombies during the worst part of the trip, but we did have to fend off a few surprise Tarmogoyf attacks.

As we neared the back exit to Rolla, I smelled a very familiar smell. It was the smell of fire… dragon fire. I was excited to see dragons, as I haven’t really seen them in person before. But I was frightened that it might see and attack us. We heard the cry of vampires, and ducked behind buildings to evade detection. We slinked along the sides of buildings for a while, remaining completely undetected, but then we had to cross an open plain. As soon as we tried to cross, we were swarmed by vampires, goblins and a few zombies.

We thought all hope was lost, when suddenly the bear cavalry erupted from the forest to our aid. They smashed vampires like twigs, and most of the zombies died due to indirect blows. Michelle and I took care of the goblins with the remainder of our ammo and shovels to the face. The bear cavalry was also trying to escape Rolla, so we followed them through some abandoned buildings and under a bridge.

I rounded the corner from under the bridge, and saw the most terrifying thing I have ever seen in my life. There were three slain dragons, and a vampire zombie dragon hovering over them. The bear cavalry bravely charged the dragon, and we were ordered to head back. We obeyed and headed immediately back to the dorms, encountering one or two zombies on the way back.

After we got to the dorms, we barred the doors and went back to my room to sleep. We used my sniper to snipe random zombies for about four hours or so, and we had far more fun than we should have. Around then we got tired and went to bed.

The next morning we learned that the bear cavalry teamed up with Canada’s ninja army to clean out the whole area. We checked around anyways, just to make sure. After we felt safe, Michelle got in her car and drove back to Mizzou.

-eronћ

Hello everyone, and happy Thanksgiving.  Today I want to introduce a game that has been in the making for some time now.  I call it Cluricaun.  Many of you might be asking what Cluricaun means or where I came up with the name.  Cluricaun is actually an Irish legend.  It is a name given to eternally drunken spirits.  I had no use of the name in the game itself, but I figured that it was too hilarious not to use.

Anyway, this game was inspired by my original design for an RPG.  Sophomore year I decided that it would be fun to come up with a bunch of classes, a bunch of weapons, and a bunch of enemies and make a little game.  At that point I really only had two templates to go off of:  Fire Emblem and Final Fantasy.  Those were the major fantasy based RPG's that I had played, and I thought that if I could somehow combine the two I would have gold on my hands.

In practice it was more of a hassle than anything else.  The problem was that I didn't have anything to run the battles for me, including the random numbers (RNs), so I had to do everything by hand.  It sucked.  Also, since I had the creativity level of zero, I was also unable to come up with anything resembling a story.

The remedy for this was found during Senior year.  My friend Charles starting an email list, with a few of my other friends.  On this list he would give us a scenario (in first person) with some options.  We would then vote on the choices, and based on our decision, Charles would generate the next part of the story, complete with new options.  It was such a good idea and it was so popular that I had to steal it.

I had a couple of friends of mine helped me come up with a basic storyline based on a few key choices that they could make.  What developed was a pseudo-D&D over e-mail.  I had a bunch of math behind the scenes that was all reliant on randomly generated numbers.

What I'm trying to do here is a very similar thing, but with some added shenanigans involved.  For instance, I will later include the ability to have animal companions and also introduce more and more skills as the game progresses.  For now, I hope everyone will check out Cluricaun, and if there are any questions, ask away.

Thanks for reading, and I hope you enjoy the game.

-Rikente

I continue with my list of nerf guns. Use this article to further understand how serious this business is.

The Recon:

This gun is four interchangeable parts and a gun so that you can modify the gun however you want. These parts are the stock, flip-up sight, “laser” light, and a barrel. It uses clips and can hold two, just like the longshot, but it only comes with one (which is a little odd). You are also able to replace these parts with similar parts of other guns (e.g. the recon’s barrel replaced with the longshot’s one-shot gun). This gun is a very nice gun, rivaling the longshot in distance, and can be modded for any mission. The “laser” light is just a red light, and isn’t nearly as pinpoint as a real laser is. It does, however, produce a nice amount of light for scouting out those really dark corners.

This is, of course, more expensive than the maverick, but it is cheaper than the longshot. It is a perfect match for people who want to keep their options flexible and play as both offense and defense.

The Vulcan:

This gun is a belt-fed rapid-fire beast. It has a motor in it to make it automatic as well, and the Vulcan can use any type of dart with ease. It comes with a belt of 25 darts, and additional belts are relatively cheap to buy. I would definitely suggest buying extra belts, as it amps up the fun. Austin and I own a Vulcan and two additional belts of 25 darts each and it is far more fun. The Vulcan is a very good gun for holding a position or thinning out a cluster of enemies.

The gun does not handle reloading very well, since you either have an entire belt set up and ready to go, or you spend several minutes loading a belt with darts then loading the belt into the gun. This gun does very bad solo, since the enemy can just run around until you expend your cache of darts. The gun takes a half second to start up, which is enough time to move from point to point effectively. Basically, I would not suggest going solo with this gun, you definitely need a teammate or two to help defend you during your downtime, or help you flush out hiding foes.

The Mobile Fortress:

This is a very nice and versatile shield. It can be folded, then held like a regular shield, or it can be unfolded and set up as a fortress. Once set up, it is much shorter than you, but can still be moved around fairly easily. A nice feature of the mobile fortress is that it has a slot for you to shoot through and still keep your head protected. With one, you can be a great offensive team player. Alternatively, if you gather multiples of these, you can make yourself a really nice fort.

If you get tired in the middle of a match, you can set it up inside of a cushion fort, and sit on it. It works just like a chair, (but don’t confuse it with a chair, it verily isn’t.)

A game of magic typically ends when a player’s life total reaches zero. Whether the total is reduced by burn, beat-down or life-loss, the winner is victorious because his opponent’s life total dwindles to nothing.  Today we will be looking at a deckthat does not necessarilywin by doing this.

Fall Into Felidar

Creatures

4 Steppe Lynx

4 Grazing Gladeheart

3 Felidar Sovereign

2 Vampire NIghthawk

2 Knight of the Reliquary

Spells

4 Harrow

4 Captured Sunlight

3 Sanguine Bond

4 Khalni Heart Expedition

3 Sunspring Expedition

3 Angel's Mercy

2 Ajani Goldmane

Lands

6 Plains

6 Forest

4 Swamp

4 Terramorphic Expanse

2 Khabira Crossroads

The idea behind this deck was originally fairly simple; get to 40 life and stay there until Felidar can win the game with his alternate win condition.  Cards like Grazing Gladehart (especially combined with landfall acceleration cards like Harrow, Khalni Heart, Terramorphic Expanse and Knight of the Reliquary), Captured Sunlight, Angel’s Mercy, and Sunspring Expedition all help the player’s life total climb up.  Steppe Lynx provides some early gameaggression with landfall while Vampire Nighthawk grants blocking power and lifelink.  Finally, just in case removal spells catch Felidar or some other misfortune befalls him, players can still fall back on Sanguine Bond to hurt their opponent every time the deck gains life (this method can yield >30 damage in one turn).

FNM play with this deck showed records of 4-2 and conversely 2-4 so tournament effectiveness is questionable.  Where this deck really shines is in multiplayer, because opponents must decide between targeting the lifegain deck or the other players' (almost inevitably) more aggressive decks.  While opponents are busy hurting one another, this deck can easily build up to 40 life or charge up Sunspring Expeditionsuntil Sanguine Bond hits the field, ideally giving the player the ability todeal “8 damage to target player” three times and gain 24 life in one turn.

Thenks for reading, and until next time, keep experimenting with unorthodox paths.

-Ballistic

            So the blue-red control was not so beautiful Friday night, so we decided to taboo that FNM for this week.  Instead, I’ve got a new decklist that I have been testing on work station for the last week.  It’s as fun as could be, and it is pretty inexpensive if you use the life gain, come into play tapped, dual lands.  However, with the M10 dual lands, this deck is definitely a viable option at your local shop on Friday or Saturday nights.  Here it is:

Main Deck

Spells

4 Cancel

3 Day of Judgment

1 Hindering Light

3 Journey to Nowhere

3 Oblivion Ring

4 Path to Exile

Creatures

4 Aven Mimeomancer

4 Meddling Mage

3 Sphinx of Jwar Isle

4 Wall of Denial

3 Wall of Reverence

Lands

4 Sejiri Refuge

4 Glacial Fortress

8 Island

8 Plains

Sideboard

3 Scepter of Dominance

3 Negate

3 Hindering Light

1 Day of Judgment

1 Oblivion Ring

4 Celestial Purge

After the demise of CrypticCommand, I am out to find a control deck that has the power to do without it.  Many people say it’s not possible, but I think with the huge bounty of white removal spells that are in the format right now, that I may prove them wrong. This deck is running ten removal spells main decked including Day of Judgment as mass removal.  The Cancels and the Hindering Light are in there for those things that you may not want to waste your removal on, or the enchant hate that you may see. 

Onto the creatures.  All of these creatures provide their own sort of control to the deck. You’ll first notice that there are FOUR meddling mages main decked.  After worlds this weekend, I think that we will be seeing quite a bit of increase in the amount of Naya and Jund that is being played.  Both of these decks are fairly easy to pigeon-hole.  That being said, it would help immensely if you worked hard on recognizing the metagame.  These mages do require it.  Wall of Denial is an obvious choice, and Wall of Reverence provides you with a nice life addition when it’s needed (not to mention you get a 1/6 flying blocker).

Sphinx is the finisher here, but I think it is about time to talk about the creature you all are furrowing your brow about.  Aven Mimeomancer saw play in one deck at worlds this weekend.  I am a HUGE fan of this card for many reasons. First off you’ll notice that Meddling Mage is the only creature without flying.  Mimeomancer and the Mage together make a pretty nice little combo. All you have to do is make the Mage a flier and you can swing for 6 every turn while not worrying about those damn Lightning Bolts.  Also, as Wizards already talked about, the Mimeomancer has the ability to make those Baneslayers VERY blockable.  Every creature in the deck will kill aBaneslayer if it is a 3/1 bird (minus the Wall of Say No, of course).  With a Baneslayer that easy to kill, I don’t know where you can go wrong with this creature. 

As far as the sideboard is concerned, Scepter of Dominance is just a really good card in general.  It comes in handy in quite a few situations.  It does not say “non-land permanent,” so if your opponent is hurting on mana just tap one of their tri-lands during their upkeep.  Before the Baneslayer attacks, tap it.  If they want to kill your Wall of Reverence with wolf tokens, and they only have just enough wolves, tap one in response to Master of the Wild Hunt’s ability.  It can definitely be a good time.  The Negates and the Hindering Lights are for those spell-heavy decks.  I would even throw these cards in against Jund to counter the Bit Blasts, Blightnings, and Bolts (holy crap how many B’s does Jund have?). Hindering Light is amazing against Jund since it counters all of those “target you” spells AND gives you a nice source of card advantage.  Another Day of Judgment for the creature-heavydecks, and the last 4 removal spells for obvious reasons. 

I have been wanting to throw Jace into this deck, and I am still trying to work on making it fit.  It shouldn’t be to difficult, it is Jace after all.  Anyway, this is a really fun build, it goes against the metagame, and if you want to know the truth, it rather trounces Jund.  Give it a shot if you want a fun time, even on work station or Lackey.  Thanks for reading.

P-Rodrigy12

Okay, so we at the Sanctum have been having some issues lately.  Crexis and I have decided that it would be best for everyone involved if we just took the week off.  In this week, we'll still be writing, but there will be no updates.  This will keep us from missing any more scheduled article releases.

I hope that everyone understands the predicament we're in, and that you will continue to support us in the future.

-Rikente

I am hoping to hold a nerf war soon, and I plan on talking about nerf wars and battles from time to time, so I think it is only fair to talk about the many different nerf guns. This is the nerf guide part: part 1.

The Maverick:

The first gun I am going to talk about is the maverick. It is the cheapest of the guns, and the most basic. It is a common choice for basic defense against nerf attacks. It is a 6 shot revolver that can shoot any type of dart (but we find that it shoots sonic darts the best). The maverick has to be loaded by opening the chamber, inserting each dart one by one into the 6 holes in the chamber, then closing the chamber. This method is good for loading that single dart you find laying on the ground, but isn’t very effective against people who load entire clips at a time.

This gun is a basic, yet effective gun. If you want to join in nerf wars without having to spend much, this is the gun for you.

The Longshot:

This was the first clip based gun we used.   It came with an adjustable stock, a small stand, and a removable front piece. This front piece doubled as a single-shot gun, and both guns use streamline bullets pretty much exclusively. The gun came with two clips, and slots to hold each, and each clip holds 6 shots. The clips take about as long to load as 1 to 2 shots in the maverick. The downside is that if you find a lone stray dart, you have to hope it is a streamline. You then have to take a clip, put the bullet in, and load the clip. This gun isn’t necessarily the best when it comes to saving your ass in a tight situation, as its only tight situation defense is the single-shot gun. However, this gun has the best range on it and definitely is one of the more badass looking guns.

If you are willing to spend a little more money for your gun, you might enjoy having a longshot to improve your nerf war experience.

The Needler:

 

Hey everyone, Austin here to tell you about the tied-for-first X-Box 360 game of the year (in my opinion, the only opinion that matters): Gearbox's "Borderlands". (written before COD5 and L4D2 came out) If you want to tl;dr this, scroll to bottom where an abridged review is.

In borderlands you play as a mercenary who goes to a hellhole of a planet called Pandora. When humans discovered the planet had alien ruins on it, a party went to colonize and investigate. The party supposedly found a vault in the side of a mountain with no way to open it. After the adventuring party mysteriously disappears, rumors begin to surface that the vault is filled with alien technology. Corporations jump on the bandwagon of adventurers who want to get the alien tech for themselves. After 7 earth years of searching to no avail, the planet goes from its winter to its spring, bringing out all of the monsters who had been in hibernation. Everyone who could afford to get off the planet did, leaving nothing but settlements of poor folks, raiders who roam the countryside, and hordes of monsters. Your character arrives after the corporations left. Each of the 4 playable characters have their own backstory, but they are hardly mentioned and do not affect the game in any way (as far as I can tell) Through the game you are led by a "Guardian Angel" who appears in your HUD device (given to you by a clap trap when you arrive). She tells you of important people in the different settlements who have problems. Coincidentally, all of these people's problems lead you closer to finding the vault and opening it. Through your greedy rampage through the story (because that's what it always becomes, just a rampage of death to everyone that looks at you funny) you save the remaining peoples from raider and monster bosses that keep the people down, making you somewhat of a hero. (but remember, you're here only to get rich, screw the commoners)

Two big claims were made from the game's advertising, the first being the myth of a "Role Playing Shooter". Let me tell you, this myth is absolutely amazing and true. When you start you pick from one of four different classes, who in general are: Soldier, Sniper, Tank, and Siren. Each class has their own class-specific ability. IE Soldier can drop a turret that shoots at enemies and can be upgraded to heal allies and/or regen ammo. Along with their class-specific ability, each character has 36 different skills, spread into 3 trees with 4 tiers. With so many different combinations possible (36 different skills per class), a variation to gameplay emerges. Where your friend's Mordecai may be a sniper, you may put all your skills into the gunslinger tree and use revolvers. And like all other RPG's the game scales the enemies levels to how far along you are in the game.

Speaking of the guns, the second claim that Gearbox made that really turned heads was "over a bazillion guns". They described it by comparing their game to Diablo's dungeon and loot system, and that's essentially what it is. Whenever an enemy would spawn with a gun or when you open a chest, weapons are randomly generated by the AI from millions of different gun parts. Each part gives a certain stat to the gun and by theory (according to Gearbox), can be distinguished just by looking at the gun itself. There is much complexity to the levels of guns, the manufacturers, and elements. I always rushed to the rarer choices, distinguished by color (White < Green < Blue < Purple < Light Orange < Dark Orange).

The magic of the gameplay is when you take all of the implementations of the awesome ideas and combine it with the possibility and probability of multiplayer. Whenever you're playing, you can invite friends to jump in, regardless of their class, level, or how far they are in the story-line. Their character gains experience like normal, and whatever guns they find and keep they bring into their story-line when they return. There's also an open game system, where you can play single player or with a friend or two, and any person who chooses to jump into a game can end up in yours. This system isn't perfect by any standards, players aren't sorted into levels very well, and when I first started playing openly, many players joined in who were 20+ levels higher than me, leaving me no choice but to kick them or put up with them killing everything in sight.

The game is great without co-op, but it's a little on the easy side. Playing alone, all the creatures are leveled to an area's level, and with the amount of traveling I did back and forth, I quickly over-leveled the creatures and they posed no challenge. Even the bosses I took down single-handedly without any trouble at all. All of that changes when another player jumps in. You get the message "The minions of Pandora grow stronger", and that's exactly what happens. Every batch of creatures then becomes a challenge and a struggle for life. My friend and I played together and wasted a lot of time just killing creatures who were effectively 5 levels higher than us because we were simply playing together. I would even go so far as to describe this game as a "Party-game." If you have 3 friends over you can each pick up a controller, start a new character and just play. It's that easy and fun.

So you beat the game in a couple days, now what? After beating the main quest you can go back to the main menu and start with the same character and go to a second (and according to sources a third and even fourth) playthrough. When you start the next playthrough all of the enemies start their level where the enemies were at the end of the previous play. Normally this is about 34 for second playthrough. You keep all your skills, guns, money, and level, at the cost of difficulty. The difficulty increases more than the increased enemy levels imply. The best example of this was that on my first playthrough, there was a boss that I completly decimated, I beat it without trying at all. On my second playthrough, I was level 49 and had the best guns I have heard of (even from stories on the internet). The boss handed my ass to me 3 times before I adopted the coward's strategy of standing on a platform where he couldn't directly reach me. Even then, it took me a good half hour to beat him, when the first time took me 10 minutes or so.

Throughout the entire game some music can be heard, I guess. I never noticed it above my constant gunfire and the screams and shouts of my enemies. From what I hear as it's on now its soundtrack is kinda nice, nothing hard or really soft, just there. It isn't something that was too developed. Speaking of aesthetics, the game is pretty visually appealing. I've heard a lot of crap that it looks like Fallout 3. While the first level is dull and gray and desolate like ALL of Fallout 3, the later levels become much more colorful as you explore Pandora's differing landscapes. The game is cell-shaded, not as much as TF2 or Wind waker are, but enough that it's artful without being cartoonish. There are instances of the landscape looking different than the game physics says it is. One example of this is a certain ridge that would make an epic shortcut if you could jump it in your car next to a road you travel often. I wanted to get to the lower road beneath this ridge so I tried to jump off. There were rocks that looked like I could easily turbo over with no fear of death cuz i'm badass like that. My car got stuck on my first try, leaving me to walk to my next objective. It isn't much of a problem, but it's annoying at times. The game tries to push the point of a poor class of people being constantly oppressed by everything on the planet with a pulse, and it sticks well. Everything that isn't cowering inside a town is trying to kill you, and at times you'll be 20 against 1(or 4 if you have friends), and it becomes satisfying when you come out of such struggles with epic loot and barely a scratch.

Abridged version and ratings.

Story - Unimportant, it's there, but after learning how fun the killing and leveling is, you'll stop caring and just jam A to every quest screen so you can get out there to kill some more stuff. The closest to caring about the story is when you are forced to listen to one of the character's journals when you pick them up. 4.0/10

Gameplay - Perfect, a little easy first time through on single player, but perfect on co-op. When every group of enemies becomes a struggle and you don't get tired of struggling you know they found a good ratio to difficulty and fun. 9.5/10

Replay - A lot. It sounded repetitive to me when I heard that I would be playing the exact same game again with enemies leveled to me, but luckily I was wrong. 8.9/10

Atmosphere - The music is there as much as the story is, unimportant. When there are enemies around every corner (outside of towns) and every enemy loves to shoot at you and taunt you, there's never a quiet moment. Even in towns every vending machine (stores) and questable person shouts it's advertisements at you. The game is very visually pleasing and though some mapping problems, still very fun to explore. 9.0/10

Other - This game is hilarious, from the clap traps intro "i am cl4p tp. clap trap for short". To the main character/boss intros: Sledge, a beast of a man in full body armor with a giant sledgehammer slams his hammer on the ground, freeze shot of the hammer slam. "Sledge... p.s.. you guys aren't friends". Even the "depressing" parts of the game are hilarious, hearing the main researcher's journals of keeping a dying fat girl who she despises alive just to have someone to talk to made me chuckle. (no rating applied)

Overall - Despite the low score in Story, I really feel in this situation, with the whole emphasis being a fun RPS party game that can be almost literally picked-up and played, story is irrelevant. The Guardian Angel character keeps you moving on from story quest to story quest and fills you in on enough story to keep you from forgetting that the game even has a premise above kill everything that moves, where the game is most fun. I love this game, and I think it's tied for my favorite 360 game currently. Final verdict. 8.6/10