Hah, you poor sad bastard. Right now I am fucking crossing my fingers that I don't get sent on a winter FTX. I would like it on the record that the prairie provinces suck balls.

And yeah, Doc, the little fuckers w/ the tentacles. AFAIK, only the one w/ the head-shaped thing will grab you, but brr... On the other hand, if you manage to fight it off before it kills you, it's very satisfying, in a cathartic sort of way. Kinda like when you fight off one of those tentacled babies when they grab ahold of you.

TBH, I wasn't too chuffed w/ the flamer. I beat the game the first time around w/ only three weapons - plasma cutter (obviously), pulse rifle, and contact beam. Pulse rifle is probably one of - if not the most - versatile weapons in the game, and if you get surrounded, as long as they're all standing reavers, the rifle will mince them in alt-fire. Contact beam will blow the arm or leg off a brute in a single shot, and will kill just about any other enemy outright, regardless of where you hit them. Plasma cutter needs nothing to sell it.

The only other gun that really stands out is the force gun. It's incredibly effective for crowd control, and particularly for dealing w/ those little fucks. Only reason I didn't take it was b/c my friend whored the shit out of it on his playthrough, and I didn't want to play the same way through on my game. So... I am debating the relative merits of the ripper and the flamer. Oh, and the line cutter as well, I suppose, though TBH, it seems pretty straightforward. Just a much bigger plasma cutter that fires timed mines in alt-fire.

The only really effective use i've found for the flamer is taking out those little yellow things that rip you to shreds. It's pretty ineffective on everything else... unless upgrading it makes it good. But i wasted a whole ammo tank taking down ONE fucking reaver. I guess if there had been 2 or three it would have taken them all down, but it took way to long to incinerate the fucker. And I generally don't like having to get that close to my enemies if i can avoid it.

Flamer is more of a DOT weapon. You can hose a guy w/ it, then sit back and watch him burn. Unfortunately, I found I usually had to hose a guy more than once in order to kill him, and since the flamer has no knockback or anything, you either have to run around like an idiot to avoid getting hit, or hit them w/ some other weapon to stagger them, which begs the question, why not just hit them w/ some other weapon, and skip the flamer altogether...

well at least its good for killing those little yellow things. On another note, I get to pick up my copy of Little Big Planet on the way home from work today. Huzzah!

Flamer makes them run away from the fire, or if they catch on fire, they run away as well. I Uped it all the way, and I feel it can deal some damage. I just like watching things burn....