Sno

2015's Games of the Year?

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I think my 2015 GOTY is Subnautica. Its an underwater survival game being made by the studio behind Natural Selection 2. I had heard nothing about the game and found it via the Steam discovery queue. I love the sense of weakness and loneliness that the game imparts. You are all alone on an alien world where there are many large predators that are stronger and faster than you. They built the inventory system to make resource gathering slower and make scarcity feel real. It takes a while to have enough lockers to actually store all the materials you can gather. The game is also really pretty, even before I got a new video card it was one of the best looking games I have played. I wish I had a VR headset because this game is perfect for VR.

Technically the game isn't finished, but I have been enjoying playing the game with each new content release. I can't wait to see what the finished product is like.

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I've been playing the hell out of Subnautica recently too and it's really good. I like how simply throwing you into water is enough to make the environment alien and threatening to the point where you don't instantly start thinking about what kind of mega-project you want to build to ruin the environement you are in. I get a real feeling of shelter by returning to my base here.

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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.

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Grow Home produced the most beatific grinning of the year, and not only on account of its being very cheap. Top game! I also have a sneaking suspicion that if I had played Undertale this year, it would be one of my faves, but alas, I only played the demo.

The Witcher 3 was my biggest "I-wish-I-had-a-better-computer" game of the year. Even after much downwards tweaking, it only ever wavered around 30fps, thus impacting my enjoyment of both sightseeing and combat. Poo.

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So as I've been thinking about my other games of the year, I realize that Beeswing is my game of the year. Its major competition was Rainbow Six:Siege, but the thing I realize when I think about it is that Rainbow Six: Siege feels like an addiction. It's replaced my Rocket League-addiction. There is a certain class of games in my life that I play for brief highs. To me, they are pinball-derivatives; they provide me with obstacles I have a 60%-20% chance of hurdling if I concentrate, I can come up with a variety of plans on how to surmount , attempt an execution on those plans, receive explicit feedback, have a little bit of time to think about what happened, and then quickly have another opportunity to apply what I just learned. Rocket League and Rainbow Six: Siege are of this class for me. They are time-sinks that I enjoy. In comparison, Beeswing makes me feel like there is an enormous amount of creative potential in my everyday-surroundings.

 

That said, I'm going to include a video I made that essentializes one aspect I enjoy about Rainbow Six: Siege and talk about what makes this game significantly different from the Call of Duty series and Shadowrun (2007)

 

 

While Call of Duty games allow players to become intimate with paths and advantageous nooks, those paths and nooks are rather static. There is a tiny bit of dynamism based on the characters' abilities (long streets are changed when a sniper is positioned on them for example). Shadowrun (2007) focused on amplified player-ability to make the maps more dynamic; players can choke entries with strangle, create cover with the tree of life, and subvert walls with enhanced vision and teleportation. The potential combinations of team-rosters and their powers in Shadowrun (2007) demand that players conjecture on the abilities, races, and possible routes of both their enemies and their teammates; this act makes it feel as if I am playing with other people and getting to know them. Players flock based on their shared ability to fly across the level together while teleporters teach each other routes as they bypass walls to get into position.

Battlefield: Bad Company 2 has a taste of this map-dynamism by taking a more environmental route, some structures are destructible. Every Battlefield game that comes out after Bad Company 2 will be haunted by demands for destructible environments because the dynamism it allows makes player-hypothesis incredibly rewarding and worthy of more risk. But the explanation for why that system can't be fully implemented in the Battlefield games is that there is enough fire-power and the matches are long enough for the entire map to be flattened by the end. Rainbow Six: Siege has a moderate approach to destructible environments by having the short round take place in maps of much smaller scale. Almost all of the rooms in Rainbow Six: Siege have breachable walls and barricades. Some have breachable ceilings and floors. But every time an attacker breaches, they are making themselves vulnerable (with the exceptions of the characters Ash and Thermite). Attackers also have limited resources for breaching and more importantly, limited time. Defenders have the ability to reinforce breachable surfaces, set up traps, and fortify positions before the match starts. It's an asymmetrical competitive multiplayer game with Call of Duty: Modern Warfare's style of gunplay and movement. Attackers have powerful guns, grenades, and video-drones. Defenders have weak guns, known positions to fortify and defend, and time on their side. Since teams alternate attacking/defending, every kill inspires a new plan on how I should approach the next round (who to use, the path to create, or the teammate to support). Just one more round, just one more round, just one more round.. I need to go to sleep. 

The game currently has a lot of problems beyond making me feel like I'm wasting my life though. Connectivity issues are common, evidence of cheating is growing rapidly, and about a fifth of the players on PC are noticeably petulant. I really enjoy playing Rainbow Six: Siege while I'm playing it, but when I'm not playing it I feel worsened.

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I want to hear more about Beeswing.

 

Edit: I'm a moron, I just saw your post last page.

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Gotta remind all y'all again that if you liked a game this year, maybe you'll also like to talk about it for this unreasonably large GOTY list I am hosting. I'd love to get as many people and as many games as possible on there, to counteract the boring canon of normative top ten lists.

 

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.

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The community of volunteer developers over at Promods has continued to work away at its map enlargement and refinement project for Euro Truck Simulator 2, and released Promods 2.0 the other week.

That means a ton of new roads, vistas, cities, even whole new countries to explore / topple over on / crash into / receive speeding and traffic offense fines in, and as it coincides with me getting back into ETS2 in a pretty fun way over the last few months, I wanted to give it a mention here.

It's a huge free addition to the base game, and good for the ETS studio if my experience is even partially representative - I ended up buying one of the official expansions a good deal earlier than I otherwise would have.

Thank you Promods.

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Some honorable mentions to games I played in 2015 that came out previously and are therefore ineligible for GOTY 2015 status as defined by me.

I got a 3DS for Christmas last year, meaning I got to spend a lot of time in 2015 playing games that I had missed out on by being fairly late to the party

1. Hatoful Boyfriend - one of 2 games to make me cry last year (the other was Dropsy), supremely touching, funny, and creepy. I will wait forever for you mr. math professor-senpai. We will be together someday.

2. Story Of Seasons - a return to the parts of Harvest Moon I like best - farming & finding a husband. Improves farming by speeding it up, provides crops to farm in the winter which improves greatly on what made the older games a slog through the winter & cutting out the unnecessary mining save scumming mini game from before. Highly recommend if you like Harvest Moon

3. Pokemon X - Man, I just really love Pokemon you guys. I'll play this game as many times as Game Freak will make it.

4. Animal Crossing: New Leaf - Played a LOT of this, loved it. I enjoyed having the new shops and businesses open up. It kept me coming back every day for like 3 months.

5. Pokemon Art Academy - yo, this is just super duper fun.

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1. The Witcher 3: I really, really enjoyed The Witcher 3.  I've long ago left behind the idea of doing everything in these big open-world RPGs, but I did damn near 100% of The Witcher 3.  The writing is impressive, the Bloody Baron stuff is an incredible Act 1, and the game closed strong.  There's a ton of monster hunting quests that at least have some sort of story element to them.  There is an impressive size to everything in this game, and the game looks gorgeous on PC.  There have been some times I just had to stop and stare at the way the trees in the forest were blowing as the sky grew black and a storm was about to start.  It's a game I put 100 hours into, and I regret none of the time I spent with it.  A fantastic experience I cannot recommend highly enough.

2. Her Story: There is something really powerful in Her Story.  The total non-linear construction of the story, letting you fill in the details for yourself, is a powerful thing.  And the writing for that game is very strong, when you take into account that the search engine means that every word is meaningful.  Because you have a section that you'd like to conceal for at least some period starting the game, you have to think about the actual dialogue in those videos and all the important words.  What words would get someone into this dialogue without hitting the 5 result limiter?  What common search terms need to be in those speeches and so need to show up past the 5 result limiter?  It's a staggering undertaking from this angle, and Her Story pulls it off magnificently.  The FMV work really works to sell the older time period, and Viva Seifert gives an incredible performance in a big spot where a bad performance could have cost the game everything.

3. Ori and the Blind Forest: Ori always looked gorgeous, but I was skeptical going in.  I feel like there is always this certain type of cutesy platformer that looks gorgeous and just feels right, but is also not all that challenging.  I had kinda slotted Ori into this category, and boy was I wrong.  The combat is very simplified, but that's because the platforming can be actually challenging.  Ori uses enemies in platforming in a way I don't think I've seen any game do before.  The game smartly adjusts for this by giving you total control over where you are checkpointed to.  My biggest gripe about the game is that the game features a small number of boss areas that contain collectables in them.  Should you miss any of these collectables while traversing the area for the first time, you are locked out, as the areas change when you complete them and are left inaccessible.  Also, along this line, when you beat the game, your save is complete.  No going back into the world to clean up anything you missed after the game's finale.

4. Rocket League: Rocket League spent most of my summer as my Witcher cleanser.  Every time I wanted to play something but didn't have time to get into Witcher, I was playing Rocket League.  The feel of that game is just incredible.

5. Splatoon: Who knew that the best shooter of the year would be a Nintendo game?  The short round length means the game has that same appeal as Rocket League, of just one more game.  

6. Super Mario Maker: I did not play as much Mario Maker as I need to, but this still ranks.  I'm always a tourist in these games, because I'm coming to them for the levels that other people make, but there's still plenty to enjoy here, and I've even tried to put together a few ideas from time to time, giving the editor way more of a shot than I usually would.

7. Olli Olli 2: I played the hell out of Olli Olli in 2014, and was very excited when I saw this pop up.  There is just a feel to how Olli Olli plays that is top notch, and Olli Olli 2 extends that with a few more tricks and manuals for extending your combos.  Here's a spot where I have to caveat: I played both Olli Olli games on my Vita.  The Vita doesn't have any of the input lag you might get from using a modern HDTV.  What feels precise and sharp on the Vita feels kinda mushy on the PS4.  Which is a shame, because Olli Olli 2 is really fun when it hits right.

8, Cibele: Cibele is a great example of how games can use mechanics that are not fun in and of themselves to invoke a mindset.  The MMO portions of Cibele are really rote from the perspective of wanting to engage mechanically with a game, but they do a good job of putting you in the mindspace that you're sitting in front of your PC kinda wandering through whatever task has been put before you in this MMO.  It's the right mindspace for all the conversations that you focus on while mostly idly clicking around.  It feels in the same vein as Cart Life pushing you to the point of mechanical overload to replicate that feeling of just barely keeping your head above water from poverty.

9. Metal Gear Solid V: The Phantom Pain: The first 20-30 hours of this felt amazing.  The music works well, the gameplay is top notch, and everything just feels compelling.  By the time I finished Part 1, I felt kinda done with the game.  At some point in part 2, I went from wanting to finish the game to kinda feeling obligated to just finish it out and be done with it.  And about 20 hours after that, I was.  Y'know how I said I didn't regret any of my time with The Witcher 3?  I regret spending as much time as I did on MGSV after finishing it.

Quiet has the potential for an actual cool character, but so much work was done to make the camera angles maximally gross when she's present and those fucking rain and shower scenes do her such a disservice, and Kojima can't help but head back to the Gross Tropes about Women bargain bin when it comes to the finale of her story.  This is a flawed-ass game, but even at the end of my time with that game, the base infiltration gameplay was still exciting.

10. Fallout 4: This game is probably badly hurt by timing.  It's a big time-consuming open-world game in a year where I played 3 other games in that vein before it.  There are clearly some improvements in the writing from the companion relationships, but this in many ways feels like more Fallout.  Which is good and bad, but good enough that it stays on this list.

A few items I nearly used to replace Fallout 4:

Axiom Verge - Very early on, it seems like Axiom Verge is just trying to be another Metroid.  It sets that expectation, and then starts to branch out in ways that defy that expectation.  It has some really cool glitch effects and has a really strong pixel-art style.  However, it started to run out of steam for me near the end of the game.  And this ran into when I got The Witcher 3 and kinda didn't look back.  Every so often, I get the urge to finish it, but it's been so long and I'm so near the end of that game that I am probably going to have to start over if I ever want to finish this.

Amplitude - This technically doesn't come out until 2016, but screw it.  I paid for one of the higher Kickstarter tiers for Amplitude and got it 2 days before Christmas, and it's just more Amplitude.  The music's good enough and has a bit of variety, the gameplay feel is perfect and I'm happy as shit with what I've got.  But it's not much more than just more Amplitude (which is enough for me).

Hacknet - I have not played enough Hacknet to justify knocking off any of these other games.  But I loved Uplink and this makes me think of how Uplink made me feel while also incorporating a command line element to the game that does so much to improve immersion in the much the same way that Cibele and Her Story use the desktop simulation.

And for my list of things I feel ashamed that I didn't get to this year:
Rise of the Tomb Raider (I have an Xbox One, but I'd rather play this on PC)
Undertale
Life is Strange
Tales from the Borderlands
Read Only Memories
Grow Home
Westerado: Double Barreled

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Man I am always so, so far behind game releases. But a quick top three of games I actually played right when they were released this year:

 

3. Box Boy 3DS, so far I have seen no mention of Box Boy on this thread. It is a puzzler created by Hal Laboratory (Nintendo). I would say it was 2015's Pushmo/Pullblox. Very simple to get into, totally slick as any HAL product is and doesn't overstay it's welcome.  I really couldn't put it down, check it out.

 

2. ProjectCARS PC, also haven't seen this one mentioned. Usually I am not into racing games whatsoever but I got a new graphics card (GTX 970) and had a 30" monitor so I thought I had to get something shiny to test out on it. What a great racing simulation. This is probably the first racing simulation where my enjoyment came mostly from the cars' handling characteristics as opposed to making progress, competing with AI etc. Of all of my hours spent in ProjectCARS I would say 90% of it was spent in time trials with no opponents. Just driving the cars around some of these tracks is so much fun. I am not enough a racing nut that I would buy a steering wheel; even just through the controller it is great fun.

 

1.MGSV PC- This will have to be 'game of the year' for me. Running it at full spec on a 30" monitor, a Hideo Kojima game! a simultaneous PC release! perfected open world MGS gameplay! The pacing was totally not metal gear and the story itself was rather thin, but the gameplay was glorious. I admit after I got the Part I ending I called it quits because I had already dropped so much time into the game (I just watched the rest on YouTube) but it is still my GOTY. The week of its release, despite working about 45 hrs that week in front of computer screen, I still opted to drop 35 hrs into Metal Gear. Sleep, eat, work, Metal Gear. For a whole week.  

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I don't generally play all that many games but I have a top 5 I guess, just ordered approximately. I will first give a special mention to Splatoon, it was everything people say here but I only played for a few hours on my brother's Wii U so I wont claim it's a 'true' GOTY.

 

Dr. Langeskov and the really long title

I just played this recently, but it was a lot of fun and the voice casting was spot on. It was mentioned on the cast, but it was a short free game in the vein of Stanley Parable by one of its creators, who has now started a studio. I suspect it was made to demonstrate that this style of game isn't a one trick pony and there's more fertile ground to explore, and it absolutely succeeded.

Nintendo Badge Arcade
This game is fantastic. It's a free to play 3DS game where you play claw games to grab badges to decorate your home screen. I don't decorate the screen but I've collected over a hundred badges over the past month. The game restricts your resources heavily if you're not paying. You can get one practice go every day, which will not get you badges, just gives you the chance to win a couple free plays at real badges.

Then there's the fact that the actual claw game is physically simulated. Just because you're holding a badge doesn't mean it will stay in the claw. All the badges can slip and slide around. The different levels are designed to exploit this too, like puzzles. I managed to collect 6 badges the other day just by picking up a single well placed badge. It reminds me a little of the breadth of responses I had to Desert Golf despite it being such a simple game, it tunes the interactions right to make it feel like each moment has real weight since you can only play a couple minutes a day.

Box Boy
I will echo the above sentiment. I grabbed Box Boy for the Christmas break and it's fantastic. Each new world throws a new mechanic at you, until it then pulls back to start combining the mechanics more heavily to make even more creative puzzles. This makes me want to go back to HAL's back catalogue since I also love Kirby so much.

Crypt of the Necrodancer
This was my go to game for months, it literally contributed to this list being so short. I liked Spelunky a lot, and wanted to play some more rogue-likes afterwards until I found out that often the tile based set up is actually quite unengaging at the lowest level. Spelunky's movement is incredibly satisfying and a large part of why I dove headfirst into the game, but most rogue-likes I tried had very basic, boring movement because they were essentially tile/turn based, and you're meant to go slow and careful due to the limited resources.

Necrodancer is the opposite. Every single step is juicy, satisfying and a tiny challenge. If you go out of rhythm, there's consequences, but staying in rhythm creates an amazing feeling chain. The result is that every step matters, you have to keep moving and so it kept me engaged even on my 1000th replay of level 1 as the original character. It also helps that there's a wide array of difficulty, so while I can beat the game pretty easily, I have never gotten passed the first boss with one of the harder characters.

Undertale
Nothing is perfect, Undertale has flaws and is not for everyone. But my experience with Undertale was perfect. I could slide right through that game, never getting caught on the flaws or niggling details that make other people bounce off. It hit all the right notes for me. It is basically what I want from games, and I hope that people can learn intelligent lessons from how Undertale was written and designed. There's lots of ways the game knows what you're doing or thinking, and anticipates it so well. It's an idea that's not new, but the execution was fantastic and there's clear choices to discard traditional game design where it wasn't necessary (such as what a 'save' even is).

 

Also I love the soundtrack and continue to listen to it months later.

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My games are limited by favoring adventure games, and, most of all, by only buying PC DRM/Steam free. However, I've been blessed with a lot of satisfying experiences 2015. I'm leaving out the ongoing episodic Dreamfall Chapters, because it started in 2014; but with three out of five episodes released in 2015, it definitely kept giving this last year. 

 

Not grading those on a scale, but here are my personal Secret Outsider GotYs 2015. With the AAA fest going on here, you may even see new stuff (edit: I just checked and it seems like NONE of these games were even mentioned in here. WTF? Or did I just blink??). :P

 

 

Abe's Odyssey New & Tasty

Never played the original. Well, I had a PSX demo back then, so I've experienced the general concept. But this one looked so good and played so smoothly, I even managed the patience to save 100% Mudokons. With the expanded life option the game so generously included. And now I'm an Oddworld fan. Better late than never. And I see this is a 2014 game, but I only got it last year...

 

 

Technobabylon

As much as I'm looking forward to Thimbleweed Park, I'm not a pixel enthusiast. Still I love a good cyberpunky sci-fi story and a fitting 1980s style soundtrack to go with it. Wadjet Eye keeps delivering, and I especially like that Dave Gilbert doesn't want to exploit his successfully created IPs. His stories have beginning, middle and end and are in no need to be continued. Technobabylon hit all the right buttons, and looked into the future of the internet without slapping all too obvious negative connotations on it.

 

 

Evoland II

Bought on a whim, and it's a whim I would advise everyone to sport. Well, everyone who shares a console past, owned a NES and/or SuperNES and especially favors Zelda and Chrono Trigger. If you poured those two games in a mixer and added a heap of spices from all over video game history, you'd have Evoland II. It's incredibly varied and insists on challenging you: Sometimes you get the impression that you are supposed to be a master at two dozen historic video games just to play this game (blood and sweat during the Street Fighter sequence, I tell you). I finished rather satisfied, but with a mere 92% of secrets found and mini-game challenges completed. Time well spent.

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Triple AAA fest? This year the GOTY lists I've been privy to look more similar to a 4-H fair. I totally agree with Sno's observation:

 

 

I'm very surprised to see a lot of people really down on how this year went for games.

If nothing else, the broad range of picks present in this thread seem to indicate that there were a whole lot of different kinds of games for a whole lot of different kinds of gamers.

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Triple AAA fest? This year the GOTY lists I've been privy to look more similar to a 4-H fair.

 

You're right. Maybe I just registered the mentions of MGSV, Witcher 3 and Fallout4, then searched in vain for the games I mentioned. :o

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Funny that Witcher 3 is actually sold as DRM free first as opposed to most AAA, GOTY games.

 

If I may start a tangent, I am always surprised by just how much people care about the DRM-free part. We can all get behind hating SecuROM and UPlay, but most "DRM" AAA titles are things I buy on Steam, can play offline, and never have to so much as enter an activation key. What are those titles doing so wrong that "DRM-free" is a major talking point?

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I believe it's more about the principle though I'll note that last I checked Steam's offline play isn't entirely smooth. It requires the game to have been launched online at least once before (this doesn't automatically happen when you download it), so if you've downloaded but never run a game you need internet access to launch it.

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If I may start a tangent, I am always surprised by just how much people care about the DRM-free part. We can all get behind hating SecuROM and UPlay, but most "DRM" AAA titles are things I buy on Steam, can play offline, and never have to so much as enter an activation key. What are those titles doing so wrong that "DRM-free" is a major talking point?

 

I think Vainamoinen is the only person on the forums that refuses to install Steam.

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Nah there are other weirdos here and there.

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[off topic]

 

At this time, Valve could basically hand out DRM free .exe installers without even asking their business clients, and I wouldn't rule out they'll do it one day.

Which wouldn't solve, but indeed point at the real problem, i.e. Valve's power, market influence, console like distribution monopoly for the PC platform and the fact that this monopoly is maintained and strengthened as long as Valve continues to get exclusive content handed on a silver platter, e.g. through "indie"=dependie developers (and factually through Early Access).

 

The call for "DRM free" today may basically just mean "not distributed exclusively via Steam". This is the way the term is e.g. used in Kickstarter campaigns (KS devs eventually distributing "DRM free via Steam" thankfully still face cruxification by their backers).

 

Valve makes things very convenient for developers, which is great, but a benevolent monopoly is still a monopoly while real competition among distributors has once been THE argument for PC games.

 

 

As to the reasons why I "still refuse to install Steam", maybe watch

. He's basically talking about DLC, microtransactions and similar crap, but the reasons why he just won't shut up about those things even after they've been around for years and generally accepted sound very similar to the reasons for my continued protest.

 

[/off topic]

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I've been playing the hell out of Subnautica recently too and it's really good. I like how simply throwing you into water is enough to make the environment alien and threatening to the point where you don't instantly start thinking about what kind of mega-project you want to build to ruin the environement you are in. I get a real feeling of shelter by returning to my base here.

Just making it back to the sub before a kills you is a great feeling, and happens a lot. I am glad the devs are limiting weapons in the game too. Really keeps it dangerous and scary.

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Since I started it on the evening of December 31st, I guess I can add Metal Gear Solid 5 to my list right below my GOTY, Kerbal Space Program.

It probably has the best open world gameplay I've ever experienced. And such a shockingly different game from 4. It's gonna be hard to play any other stealth game after this because everything about the sneaking around and infiltrating is tuned to perfection.

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I try to buy DRM free (GoG / Humble) whenever I can and I do find myself in situations where not having to go online to authenticate is a plus, or when I'm glad a game doesn't auto update because I enjoy a specific version of it more. I like having control over the software on my computer.

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