Dewar

True, but then you risk being banned if you ever connect online by accident. Now that they're making money on that stuff, they have reason to actually take action on such reports. Then again, being banned might be a blessing if it's for Metal Gear only.

I dunno about the first Witcher. Triss gave me tons of crap for siding with Shani about the boy and it had quite an impact on the ending as well. Regardless, point taken.

The "this isn't my job anymore" discussion is never a great thing, Do you have anyone in your field that you'd feel all right with handing off to? Maybe finding the right student who needs any writing credit they can get who'd be willing to spend more time on it so you can gracefully exit without burning bridges?

The game launched with the FOB invasion stuff, but the amount that you could lose was fairly minor, and you could always not sign-in and then be immune to invasions (or rather just never get the report that they happened.) What they changed is that a percentage of your resources are now stored on the FOB and aren't always available. Which means as soon as you go offline, you have maybe 1/10th of your actual resources available to build with. For a while there, you couldn't even sell stuff that was on your FOB, so jeeps and stuff that were out there were effectively worthless. No only that, but it's possible to spend your main base into the negative, then disconnect from the online before the resources transfer from the FOB, and be stuck in the negative. For other resources, this is an annoyance, for money however morale instantly tanks and people start leaving your base. On top of all of that, server stability and maintenance downtimes mean that it's not always your choice to go offline, so you can't even plan ahead for it in those instances. Oh, and you can pay 10 dollars to make yourself immune to invasion losses for a month.

Yes, you can choose to never connect online, but this hobbles you by reducing the number of squads you can send out on timed missions, as well as hurts your max personnel size which directly influences researching new guns and abilities. Also, if you connect online even once it starts spamming you with tutorial messages to build your online FOB that I don't think you can make go away.

I'm really annoyed with myself that I spoiled Soma and Cradle listening to the GB podcasts. No one to blame except myself, but I don't know if either will really be worth playing now.

I'm disappointed after they struck Fallout 4 from the list and pushed Witcher so low, that Metal Gear ended up so high. The stuff they did after release to that game has been a tragedy, and it should have exiled it from the top 5 at least.

I would agree that mastering the mechanics makes much of the game trivial. For me, I got there in exactly 80 days the first time, but then playing the second time I made it in 60 and realized that I'd kind of drained the fun out of it. From your other recent posts, it's clear your a mechanics driven person, so I don't think that 80 days has much for you on that front. The fun of it is the little stories it tells hidden here and there and mainly the disasters that can strike and how you handle them. I imagine that you optimized so well that none of the small disasters ever felt like a real risk to your goal. The little story beats that you mention being disatisfying can have more depth, but it's easy to miss a part of the chain and just never hear about it again.

It felt about on the level of interactivity of A Wolf Among Us to me. A little borderlands knowledge helps to enjoy it, but the comedy styling is in a Borderlands style without being obnoxious like the Gearbox games are. It was also second on my GOTY list so I'd say play it.

Tossed my hat in for #3 on my list, Lovers in a Dangerous Spacetime. Also realized that Kerbal wasn't on my list and probably should be? That's a weird one since it's been out in various forms for so long.

I want to hear more about Beeswing. Edit: I'm a moron, I just saw your post last page.

I think that Jeff is definitely capable of Austin-level criticism and thought, you can definitely see it in his jar time videos, but he filibusters in these game of the year discussions for entertainment value. Personally, I loved the Fallout 4 discussion, but I can see why others could be annoyed by it. In the end, I like to see passion in these things because it's so easy to get cynical about the whole thing.

What is that?

Here's my 2015 list of everything that I thought was worth mentioning, in rough order 1: Sunless Sea Sunless sea went from one of the most inscrutable games I've played in a while to one of the best and most interesting. That process of discovery is why it's my game of the year. 2: Tales from the Borderlands I have the advantage of having skipped a lot of the Telltale games over the last few years, so the gameplay here still feels fresh, the characters are awesome, they actually made some real changes in the Borderlands universe, and choices that really mattered. 3: Lovers in a Dangerous Spacetime The best co-op game I've played in a long time. My wife and I are awesome and kept fights to a minimum 4: Invisible Inc Turn based tactical games are my favorite these days, and Invisible Inc is a brand new take on a tactical rogue-like with a ton of personality. 5: Keep Talking and No One Explodes I haven't played this as much as I would have liked, but the experience of watching some new people play and figure it out is total gold. 6: Rebel Galaxy The music didn't do as much for me as for other people, but there's a great combo of naval-ish combat and space adventure here that's incredible. 7: Grow Home I have platformer fatigue, but Grow Home was charming and brief. It hit just the spot I needed at the time. 8: Massive Chalice This is a weird one since I was heavily invested in the Kickstarter all last year and played it several times during early access. It's definitely one of my favorite games I've played in the last few years, but some of the shine was already off of it before release. 9: Her Story A really interesting style of game that was marred by a pretty poor underlying story. Still a lot of fun, I just wish the "twist" wasn't so... twisty? 10: Cities Skylines The best city builder I've ever played, but also a sign that maybe I don't enjoy city builders as much as i used to. Still well worth playing. 11: Fallout 4 I had none of the bugs that people complain about, and I had a ton of fun with the gameplay, but through my own choices I managed to shoot the story in the foot. I'm looking forward to playing again when paid mods come out. 12: Rocket League Really fun, but I just don't get the chance to play enough to really get decent at it. 13: Metal Gear V While playing it, I had so much fun , but then every choice they made post release seemed to be determined to suck the fun out. I logged back in a while back to play a few more side missions, was negative in a bunch of resources, and quit. And here's my list of everything I thought was worth mentioning from earlier years 1: The wolf Among Us This might have been my game of the year over Tale from the Borderlands because I came in with little-to-no knowledge of the Fables universe and this was a hell of a primer. I started picking up the trades after this. 2: Talos Principle One of the best puzzle games I've played in a long time. A welcome break from the 2d platformer-puzzler that's become all the rage these days. An interesting story and awesome feeling exploration make it well worth playing 3: Stanley Parable I was kinda spoiled coming into this having played the PAX demo, and simply hearing a bunch about it. Still really fun 4: Race the Sun Got it for free on PS+ and is the best interpretation of an endless runner I've played. 5: Guild Wars 2 Started playing this with my wife this year. I really like the differences in their interpretation of an MMO, and the complete flexibility to be able to play at whatever level you want. Just bought the expansion and plan on continuing to buy them as the come out.

Now, at the end of the year, it's time to fiddle around with my spreadsheets. I blew past my goal of beating more games than I purchased, "finishing" a whopping 64 games and only purchasing 58. I pretty much attribute this to playing more short inde games and less full on AAA games, but who knows. Here's my list: Broken Age Part 2 Cities Skylines CK2 DLC Deus Ex: Human Revolution Dragon Age: Inquisition Dying Light Elite: Dangerous Endless Legend Factorio Fallout: New Vegas Fallout 4 Grow Home Guild of Dungeoneering Guild Wars 2 Hack 'n' Slash Her Story Ib Invisible Inc Jack Box Party Pack Just Cause 2 Keep Talking and No One Explodes King's Bounty: Armored Princess/Crossworlds Last Federation Long Live the Queen Majesty 2 Metal Gear V: Ground Zeroes Metal Gear V: Phantom Pain Nobunaga's Ambition Recettear Rebel Galaxy Rocket League Sentris Sir, You Are Being Hunted South Park: Stick of Truth Stanley Parable Steamworld: Dig Sunless Sea Tales from the Borderlands Talos Principle This War of Mine Titan Quest Uplink Warhammer 40k: Dawn of War 2: Chaos Rising Warhammer 40k: Dawn of War 2: Retribution Windward The Wolf Among Us World of Warships Xenonauts Oblivion Assasin's Creed Black Flag FIFA 2015 Halo: The Master Chief Collection Halo: ODST Lovers in a Dangerous Space Time Monster Hunter 3DS Luftrausers Race the Sun Uncharted 3 Unfinished Swan Cook, Serve, Delicious Pirates! King of Dragon Pass YOU MUST BUILD A BOAT Monument Valley That still leaves me with well over a hundred games in my backlog, but at least some of those will go away because I'm going to let my PS+ lapse.

First Contact is excellent

Isn't that what the Monday Night War series is?

Yes, the engines will charge your batteries, however, if you have no power left at all, you have no control to throttle them up.

Fiasco was brilliant.

I feel down on this year's AAA releases at least. It feels like a lot ones I was looking forward to got delayed until next year or ended up somewhat disappointing. Really the only ones I played and enjoyed were Fallout 4 and Metal Gear. There's been a ton of good smaller games though. My GOTY list is pending me being at home to take a look at my spreadsheet.

I gave into the dark side on that one after a long time of being an S.N.E.S. stalwart.

Hmm, interesting. I've never used the 3 person pod, I've always just stacked two command pods.

For your ** comment, I've done a few rescue missions and never saw that. Were you using the three crew lander pod with one empty seat, or two single seat pods? Did you maybe lose them when you reset? I've noticed that resetting/reloading when switching between multiple ships can cause odd issues.

This is pretty much the only post on the forum I can find about this game. Man, it is so easy to screw yourself by purchasing the wrong upgrades. I came so close to quitting this so many times and it's just because I never picked up any skills to get a blessings, or I didn't have a character that was high-value enough, or any number of other things. For a while there, I was starting out the dungeon and with my card draws it was literally impossible to beat the very first enemy. That being said, I'm two dungeons from the end now.