Fenixp

I was trying out Xenonauts. After 2 hours of doing quite fine I sent out a dropship with my best soldiers with expensive equipment to investigate a UFO landing site. When my dropship arrived at the destination, game informed me that it was shot down and only one of my soldiers survived. The game never informed me of this being a possibility. I sighed, hit uninstall, and went on to continue playing XCOM. I did have time for this kind of crap when I was 12. Now... Not so much.

More like Zune, am I right?

Obsidian had to put effort into backer NPCs? Why? The dungeons integrated into the main plot were short, fun and to the point, while the megadungeon served the role of a dungeon dedicated to people who enjoy dungeon crawling. It's the best of both worlds really, it's not like there would be more plot content in 4 level dungeons than there is in 1-2 level dungeons, it would just be pointless filler for those who want to experience the story. Let's drop Defiance Bay and properly develop the actually interesting city then :-P I enjoyed BG2 a lot less than BG1. The focus clearly shifted from a game focused on "adventure" and exploration to a much more story-based RPG.

Yes, the way she's written shoves her down the player's throat. You can't ignore her, there's just no way to do so. When playing an RPG, I value freedom of choice - not being able to choose characters I travel with (and she always travels with you) quite simply feels like a downside to me. As for being annoying, I'm glad you liked her. She just doesn't gel well with how KOTOR works, her advice is disassociated from what gameplay encourages you to do and there's no way to shut her up from constantly forcing you into decisions which don't necessarily suit your character. In the way she works she'd be a fantastic character for a book, but I'm not a fan of how she's implemented into a videogame. Are you contradicting me just for the sake of being contradictory? Of course her character arc is easy to understand, understanding and appreciating something are not one and the same. You said earlier that you're unsure whether her story arc would be suitable for your kids, I thought you're posting this in order to get opinions - I am of the opinion that I've appreciated her mainly because of my experience with other games and media, I'm sorry.

If you disliked any other character you could just leave them behind on ship and (almost)never interact with them again. It was apparent -someone- wanted player to take note of her whether player wanted or not. The way Kreia functions contradicts the game's mechanics, which is probably also the biggest downfall of that particular character. KOTOR is built in such a way that choosing a side and always sticking to it brings you great benefits - doing anything but that weakens the player character. Absolutely, and that doesn't apply to the force alone - she was generally written as a character to deconstruct binary decisions in RPG genre overall. Which is why I'm saying that the more experience you have with the genre and generally with binary ideologies, the more you'll appreciate the character. Kind of like RPGs, fantasy and appreciating the entirety of Planescape: Torment

She's a good character, but I feel like you need a lot of experience with a ton of various characters (especially videogame characters) to really appreciate her. Without that, she's just an annoying hag who's constantly shoved down player's throat (seriously, while replaying KOTOR2, I was not all too happy that I can't just disable her interruptions) and doesn't really work well with the game's mechanics which were never designed to support a neutral character.

Which will be useful as soon as IQ test are actually accurate at measuring individual's intelligence, which, as it turned out, is not really something you can compress into a single number "I'm okay guys, I'm 145 intelligent!"

At first I thought their stories are somehow going to be tied to the game's sidequests, possibly main quest as well - you know, as means of getting more background information, possibly give you more options in some conversations on account of having that information. I thought that would be really cool. Well, they weren't and it wasn't.

Why would you inflict Kreia upon your own children? Edit: Do you just want to familiarize them with your plan of installing webcams all across your house and surrounding neighborhood and then calling them with sage advice every time they do something?

I have read all of them that I managed to find, and I'm quite a completionist so I don't think I have missed more than just a tiny fraction. That being said, they add very little to the game and there's no real point to reading them, so if you skip them, nothing'll change about the game. I sure as hell won't read them again.

The industry has a thing for sci-fi RTS games. I don't understand it either since the genre works perfectly well with fantasy. Eh. I don't actually enjoy StarCraft II either, then again I just generally don't enjoy Blizzard titles - they're always too safe for me, not really trying to bring anything innovative to the table. Not necessarily a bad thing, still, by the time Blizzard comes up with something, I've already played it to death in other titles. Nonetheless, I find it generally worth recommending given how popular the game is. You haven't played Homeworld!? No wonder since you think it's 4X I suppose... Well, it's not. It's... I'm not even sure what to compare it to. Let me start off by saying that I have never played the game's multiplayer, but I guess you don't really care about that so I can skip that particular bit of information. It's a singleplayer, one-of-a-kind RTS game. You collect resources, you upgrade your Mothership which serves as a base along with other construction, research and resource collection ships you might come across and you construct your fleet to crush your opponents. And you go trough an amazing storyline which is much more akin to a mythical legend than a sci-fi story - technology is kind of a given, nobody even stops to think about it, but stories of faraway lands, mysterious beings and themes of exploring the unknown are ever present in the game. To me, playing the game felt almost magical, like reading a Thousand and One Night story which would be an apt comparison given the inspirations this game draws from. And combine that with amazing sense of progression where all your researched technology, credits and built ships carry between missions, this is one of the best RTS games I have ever played. And that's not nostalgia speaking - I could never get into Homeworld due to tiny draw distance before remasters came out, but when they did, everything just clicked for me and I have finished both this year. If you have not played Homeworld, you owe it to yourself to at least try and do so. I do hope this jumps at you as something you'd like since it's not really a product of modern gaming industry :-P Planetary Annihilation has a very hit and miss SP mode. I enjoyed it a lot, but you might not. As for Grey Goo, it's great for a single playtrough - pretty good story, fun factions and units, very much in the vein of Command and Conquer games. Still, it's not the best thing ever, the game's "merely" very good. Definitely give them a shot. Excellent FPS games, and The New Order even has good narrative with some interesting themes explored - not something I'd ever think I'll say about a Wolfenstein game. All in all, fun, fast-paced, oldschool shooters. Definitely wasn't perfect. Had issues. A lot of them. Still, I've never played anything like it and I really value innovation. It's also a game I dreamed of ever since seeing the original Alien, yet all I ever got delivered were shooters. It's a game which respected the original on all accounts and was designed in such a way that it evokes the feeling I've had when watching Alien perfectly - that's what I loved about it. Wait for a sale I suppose. Age of Decadence is fiendishly oldschool and if you have not played Shadowrun, feel free to start with Dragonfall.

Act of Aggression, Grey Goo, StarCraft II: Legacy of the Void? Technically Homeworld: Remastered Collection and Planetary Annihilation: Titans, but that's cheating a bit. Still, when it comes to RTS games, 2015 was pretty great (Amongst other things on account of next to no RTS games coming out whatsoever past 5 years or so.) Edit: Cities: Skylines and Prison Architect! How on earth could I forget these two management RTS games? They're stellar, both of them, and both for entirely different reasons. Far Cry 4 got released but that's quite derivative. Wolfenstein: The Old Blood - that one was a lot of fun. And Dying Light's pretty damn great take on the genre - in spite of the zombies. Alien: Isolation is technically game that you're playing in First Person and can shoot men, but it's definitely worth mentioning, because it was absolutely stellar. Dirty Bomb is multiplayer only, but it's the game which made me interested in MP shooters again after 10 years, so of course I'm gonna mention it :-P Not sure how good Vermitide is in SP. Seriously? What kind of RPGs do you like? Shadowrun: Hong Kong Age of Decadence UnderRail Pillars of Eternity Witcher 3 Bloodborne All of these are fantastic. Well I can't attest for UnderRail as I have not actually played that and then there's Fallout 4 and Dragon Age: Inquisition, still, they should be good. And there's a great selection too - from first person shooty things trough rtwp party-based RPGs to both turn-based party and solo games, from post-apocalyptic trough cyberpunk and Lovecraftian horror to traditional fantasy. The issue with rating 2015 is that so many stuff came out choosing the quality titles was a bit difficult since there's a ton to choose from and it's not that difficult to miss the ones that stand out. To be fair I don't really care about "really big titles" - I care about good games, no matter their size.

He heard all about other grandpas and how they told their kids all those stories about their youth, so now he feels cheated. I'm pretty sure there's a proper motivation somewhere, but they would have done well to communicate it properly straight away instead of presumably saving it for next episodes - as it stands, villain just felt bizarre to the viewer, he was neither relatable nor threatening.

Well you sure played a lot of games then :-P Edit: You've got to have very particular taste to not have found a good game this year, I don't think I remember a year when so many good games of such variety came out. Nothing wrong with particular tastes mind you.

I have defeated DRM in Witcher 3.

I love how reactive the game is. Not only do the abandoned settlements get reoccupied by friendlies when you kill monsters/bandits occupying them, after noticing that a bandit camp I have cleared in Velen was filled with refugees when I happened to return later on, I started noticing these things a bit more - apparently, people repopulate a lot of locations that you clear, shrines get frequented again when they're safe etc. That's a really nice touch, makes you feel like you've left your mark on the game's world.

Oh yeah, you're right, I somehow forgot that Shadowrun is a very linear game. Stupid me. Still, I thought UnderRail was supposed to be a very open game. I have not played it myself, just info I got from friends who did so it might be entirely incorrect. And yeah, I can certainly say that Age of Decadence is excellent, albeit flawed. As for games which give you an objective and allow you to explore, New Vegas comes to mind. There's a whole lot of Bethesda games based around this premise, but I suspect you also want meaningful interactions with NPCs for your RPG games, otherwise you'd most likely note their existence. I'm mentioning Bethesda titles because the last game which gave me huge sense of wanderlust (aside from Age of Decadence - its world is constructed so well that there's no way you wouldn't want to find out more about it) was probably Skyrim with mods to remove distracting crap like the compass. Then there are STALKER games, but STALKER games should be mentioned everywhere, all the time. When somebody asks for recommendations for story-based adventure game with no combat, you recommend STALKER and they're gonna like it.

There's UnderRail, there's Shadowrun games, there's Age of Decadence - if anything, these games are slowly resurfacing again, which is making me extremely happy. Still, let's be honest - it's not like there's ever been overabundance of such titles. I'd argue that dialogues were Planescape's gameplay. "Gameplay" doesn't need to automatically imply murdering things.

Planescape Torment is brilliant, but also completely outlandish - I wouldn't call it the best RPG I have ever played simply on the basis of it being a lot more of an interactive book than an RPG. If you asked me about the best RPG ever right now, I'd bark "Pillars of Eternity", but that'll most likely change once the game fades from my memory over time. Might go back to being "Fallout 1" again.

I don't think you're supposed to take anything in the new Mad Max seriously.

Nothing holds a candle to Mad Max. I went to see Avengers 2 right after seeing Mad Max and the entire time I thought "That's so bad. That's just so bad."

You mean "Some people agree with me, the others don't get it"? :-P I can pretty much guarantee you that everybody understands your point, it's not difficult to grasp. If you want a bit more balanced discussion, not ignoring points being raised which contradict what you're saying would be a good start. And yes, posting criticism of a game on a site which is filled with fanboys will generally mean a lot of people'll disagree with you, unless you raise a point which is widely criticized about the game. Since the game's class differentiation seems to be one of the things most people agree on being exceptional, well...

No, why should it bother me? The lore already mentions paladin orders and monk schools, if I want my character to belong to one of the factions the very rich lore provides, I will construct my character in such a way that it fits these. There's nothing stopping me from doing that. But if I want to do something untraditional, like a man who's been suffering his whole life and managed to find strength and equilibrium in suffering, thus gaining same set of talents as a monk but using methods very untraditional for a monk - I can do that too and there's nothing stopping me.