Humanoid

I give it at least even chance of it being the first Assassin's Creed instead of Origins.

People with co-op partners, basically.

I was perfectly satisfied with the combat, so it's hardly something that's being universally panned. Certainly not like PoE's is. I thought the addition of dodge in addition to roll made it less clownpants silly than the previous game, though at the cost of making it extremely unwieldy to play with the keyboard.

Also a good game, and also starring a douche. Just play Stardew Valley. You can also be a douche there, but it's optional.

Where is Karzak these days anyway?

I'm totally fine with it unless the submissions are obvious trolls (like including E.T. or something). I mean, ultimately there's nothing at stake here, and I somehow doubt the winner will print the award on their box art.

Possibly my earliest gaming memory is of Pitstop 2 in glorious CGA colour.

That should be fine. You can probably get a model which has a 1/8" analogue output but it's just as easy to find an RCA to 1/8" stereo cable. (3.5mm or 1/8" is the same thing) This one comes with a Toslink cable to save a few bucks. Then get a simple RCA to 1/8" cable or adapter. EDIT: "Digital" speakers aren't a thing, there may be powered speakers that accept a digital signal but it just means they have a DAC (digital-analogue converter, which range in price from these $10 ones to thousands) and amp built in. I'd be a bit dubious about something like that and would instead go with a separate box that contains both a DAC and amp (like the Topping VX2 or SMSL Q5 Pro) and buy a good pair of bookshelf speakers.

As a general rule, I'm not a fan of the RTS genre (and even moreso now that the genre seems obsessed with adding more and more micromanagement). But Total Annihilation gets a mention because it was a gamechanger, a quantum leap over its contemporaries. It seamlessly integrated land, air and sea units with a sensible, consistent and intuitive way. Compare it to Age of Empires 2, which is a more recent game and how ridiculously clunky unit movement was, the laughable way it handled ballistics, and the ludicrous way it implemented naval combat. And as to not pick on just one game, you could substitute Starcraft in there without changing anything else. It still had no sense of motion, no momentum, giant battleships turning around on the head of a pin and accelerating to full speed instantaneously. Total Annihilation had acceleration, momentum, *turning circles*. Destroyed objects don't just dematerialise into nothing. Even by today's measure it's an extraordinarily ambitious game. Not that it didn't have its share of problems, of course. A ridiculously bloated unit list, many of which served no clear purpose. Braindead AI. Minimally differentiated factions. But how it felt at the time was that Cavedog had just made Quake while the competition was busy making Wolfenstein 3D, it was just that much ahead. EDIT: And yes, while most games had terrible AI in those days, I remember reading a dissection of TA's AI routine. It basically breaks down into "build random thing, send thing at nearest valid target".

Time for a proper submission I guess (PMed too of course). As before, I limited myself to one representative from each series, and there's a fairly noticeable scaling factor towards games that are important to me personally rather than being the actual "best". 7 points Civilization 4 Fallout: New Vegas Heroes of Might and Magic 3 The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt Ultima 7: The Black Gate Wing Commander: Privateer XCOM: Enemy Unknown 5 points Baldur's Gate 2 Crusader Kings 2 Day of the Tentacle Indiana Jones and the Fate of Atlantis Master of Orion 2 Sid Meier's Alpha Centauri SimCity 2000 Super Mario World The Curse of Monkey Island Theme Hospital World of Warcraft 3 points Championship Manager 3 Donkey Kong Country F-117A Stealth Fighter 2.0 Freecell Jagged Alliance 2 Monaco: What's Yours Is Mine SimFarm 25 more games, that if I was compiling this list another day, might have made it. Age of Empires 2 Broken Sword 2 Deus Ex: Human Revolution Divinity: Original Sin Fire Emblem Awakening Grim Fandango Huniepop Jones in the Fast Lane King of Dragon Pass Mass Effect Mount and Blade: Warband Railroad Tycoon Recettear Saints Row the Third Sid Meier's Pirates! (2004) SimTower Skyrim Stardew Valley Street Fighter 2 Super Mario Kart Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Turtles in Time Total Annihilation Unreal Tournament Vampire the Masquerade: Bloodlines Where in the World is Carmen Sandiego

This is why you kill their families too.

In both Dishonored and Deus Ex, I very intentionally killed someone right near the start of the game just so I wouldn't be tempted into doing a pacifist run. Besides, they totally deserved it. I still do non-lethal takedowns on 95% of the enemies but it means I don't bat an eyelid when someone dies.

It's helpful to do both, because it's easy to forget some hidden gems. I read through all the posted lists before I started writing mine. I've since come up with a list of 25 other titles, the hard work now is to merge them into a singular top 25. (A task somewhat hampered by the second list only existing as a plain text file on a different device)

The whole RTS segment is why I've never played a Total War game, despite being well aware by now that it's technically skippable. It's a matter of perception I guess, I don't know how much depth the game would actually have if you only use about half of its functionality. Dragon Commander was the same, a kind of neat illustration of how adding a perfunctory feature to a game can end up taking away from it as a whole.

For what it's worth, I'm uncomfortable with that cereal promo too. Same principle that's led to some jurisdictions no longer allowing Maccas to bundle toys with Happy Meals, that kind of thing. It's not gambling but it does feel a little predatory. If it was bundled with something like beer it'd be a bit more palatable, so I guess that parallels with the proposal to put strict ratings on games with lootboxes. However as I understand it, not all places have actual legal age restrictions for software and instead just have voluntary "informational" ratings only. So the first step would be to ensure the rating is legally enforceable like booze and movies.

I want square monitors that are the same height as the standard 16:9 panels we have today. Why isn't this a thing? Essentially something the overall width of a dual-screen setup but with the view centred on the middle primary monitor. Don't want 21:9 because I don't want fullscreen games taking over the all of the vision. (Given how LG are marketing their 2:1 phone screens as 18:9, they'd call square screens 9:9)

Eh, people bought VVVVVV.

:D D:

I played 20-odd hours of Fallout 4 and never built a single thing. One factor is that I never got to do the building tutorial because the premise was absurd: you just left your home to look for your kid, and now you're supposed to go back at the behest of some kooky strangers? I don't think so. From a roleplaying point of view, there was absolutely no reason to go along with it, and so I forged on to the main city, the name of which escapes me at the moment. Mucked around there for a while and it was mainly okay, but I soon burned out when it was time to leave and explore the inane surrounds. TL;DR: Tried to roleplay in a Bethesda game. Rookie mistake.

I actually tried playing Sky a couple of weeks ago. In terms of avoiding tropiness, I note the tutorial quest is to fight rats in a sewer. Yeah... I kinda quit right after that. It's not just that one quest design of course, it was a combination of that alongside the clunky UI and controls, time-consuming (but trivial) fights and animations, blocky graphics and mediocre artstyle. Maybe I'll jump ahead and try Cold Steel someday, but these games seem to be holding their price, haven't seen any big discounts for anything but Sky1. I realise its limitations are rooted in the fact it's a port of a 2004 game on a mobile platform, but it feels distinctly 90s not just in style as mentioned in previous posts, but in usability.

Yeah, I'd play a modded version of the game where *all* the combat is taken out, leaving just dialogue and exploration. Actually, strip out the exploration too, having to creep around in stealth mode to find things was godawful and even as a thief character I couldn't be bothered. Either remove the movement penalty or remove the stealth requirement just to detect hidden stuff so I can get away with never using it. I know there's a story mode difficulty which is a baby step forward, but it's still just busywork. Or make it as fast as Ultima 7 combat which was effectively an autoresolve mechanism. (i.e. see enemy, hit the 'C' button, wait five seconds, loot)

I'm yet to leave Gilded Vale.

Just going to use this post as a scratchpad for now. No great thought has gone into this list so far, all I did was open up Notepad++, start typing out the names of games off the top of my head that seemed good until I got to 25, and then sorted the list alphabetically. It's not really a submission, at least not yet, just something to get me thinking. One self-imposed limitation is that for any given series I restrict myself to nominating the best individual entry. Alpha Centauri Baldur's Gate 2 Broken Sword 2 Championship Manager 3 Civilization 4 Day of the Tentacle Donkey Kong Country F-117A Stealth Fighter 2.0 Fallout: New Vegas Freecell Heroes of Might and Magic 3 Indiana Jones and the Fate of Atlantis Jagged Alliance 2 Master of Orion 2 Monaco: What's Yours Is Mine SimCity 2000 SimFarm Super Mario World The Curse of Monkey Island The Witcher 3 Theme Hospital Ultima 7 Wing Commander: Privateer World of Warcraft XCOM: Enemy Unknown

Maybe it matters in terms of abstract concepts like moral culpability, but I'd be more supportive of less subjective measures when it comes to drafting the actual legislation. Then we don't get the absolute mess that would ensue when EA's lawyers hold up the courts with arguments on how they're not technically targeting children, because the law would simply be that if your game contains lootboxes then it's subject to such-and-such regulation, period. It would be a right mess trying to enforce varying standards of what level of gambling is okay for games potentially as diverse as Lego, Star Wars, Battlefield, or Sexdungeon XXX Online. Like the cigarette advertising ban, this is something that would work better as a blanket rule.

I don't think the target demographic thing even matters in the grand scheme of things. It's a big talking point, yes, and is an easy political target, but why should that be the determining factor? Casinos are marketed at adults, are regulated, and still operate legally and successfully. In the same way, lootboxes can also be marketed purely at adults, can be regulated, and still can be a legal and successful revenue stream for gaming companies. A lot of the debate stems from the reporting at times using the terms "regulating" and "banning" almost interchangeably and leads a lot of people being inevitably categorised into being either for both, or against both. It turns the argument into one of black and white: should it or shouldn't it? Surely the sensible question would be about the extent to which it's regulated. Casinos, lotteries, betting, sweepstakes, and yes, competitions on the back of cereal boxes are all regulated, and are all still viable practices. Why can't there be a sensible debate on where lootboxes fit into that spectrum, and thus apply the appropriate level of regulation to them? I mean look at the laws around stuff as simple as those crane games in shopping centres, y'know those machines where you manipulate a mechanical claw to grab a stuffed toy or whatever. Those are regulated and tested to ensure "fairness". Surely it's fine in that context to apply some level of due diligence to videogame gambling just so it isn't a complete wild west scenario.