TheMightyEthan

If you're gonna protest vote make sure to actually vote for a more left-leaning party, instead of just not voting. They need to see that there are votes there to be had if they would come more left. And yeah, I didn't vote for Clinton, and I won't vote for Biden. But like you, being in Kansas means I can vote however I want because it's going red no matter what, so my vote doesn't actually affect the outcome. The latest polls show Sanders up in both Iowa and New Hampshire though, so ? (I would personally prefer Warren, because I'm tired of old white men running everything, and at least she's not a man, but I certainly won't turn my nose up at Sanders).

That's legit awesome. The shading especially is fantastic, it really gives it a sense of depth.

The heating up the room part can be annoying, but a silver lining to that is that warming up the room also reduces RH (warmer air has more "room" for water, but the actual amount of water hasn't changed, so the % RH goes down) so it doesn't have to run the compressor as much as it would if it didn't warm up the room.

I don't play Splatoon, but I know some of you do, and I got a code for a free jersey and shoes for Splatoon 2 if anyone wants it.

I would be all the fuck over Pikmin 4, but I agree it's not a big holiday release like some of Nintendo's other games. We also have a rumored Mario Rabbids sequel, which I would love, but again isn't a big tentpole game.

As of right now Zelda is my most anticipated game of the year, but given the tradition of Zelda games being delayed it will probably end up slipping to 2021, in which case Cyberpunk takes its slot for 2020 for me.

@MetalCaveman That game is great, you're in for a treat.

Hmmm, MS is already bringing all their games to PC, and if Sony starts doing the same I won't have any reason to buy another non-Nintendo console again...

Awesomesauce.

Pokemon Sword I technically beat this, but there's a fairly substantial post-credits epilogue that I haven't finished yet. Overall I really enjoyed it. It was Pokemon, and it was on Switch, which was really all I wanted out of it. I know we already had Let's Go, but those games changed the way the wild encounters worked enough that, while I enjoyed them, they just weren't quite the same.

I didn't feel like there were too many systems. Yeah there are a lot of options for mods, but I don't feel like that's different from any other game with equipment, where some of it affects some stats and some affects others. I think they intend you to find a setup you like and more or less stick with it.

Out of curiosity, what changed? Why do you think you bounced off of it at first?

Yeah, that's weird that they didn't make it as deep and echoey in the other versions.

Free of Healthcare

Shouldn't it be the Isle of Amour?

Would you say it's a... game changer? ?

Nobody was killed, so hopefully we can keep from escalating further.

See, I feel the opposite. In order to fit in that size and have any kind of reasonable battery life the thing is going to have to be very underpowered compared to something like a gaming desktop, which means you're going to get all the headaches and fiddliness of PC gaming combined with all the performance trade-offs of a console. If I'm going to get console-quality gaming anyway, I'd rather just play it on an actual console and save myself all the fiddling. @Mister Jack Nintendo didn't invent that form factor, before the Switch came out Sony had the Vita and even before that Sega had the Game Gear.

The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild BotW was obviously a great game, but even beyond that, it really encapsulated a lot of the changes gaming went through this decade, and it managed to do it without losing the magic of the series (*cough*Assassin's Creed*cough*). It took a series that had been largely the same formula since Ocarina of Time*, smashed it to bits, and rebuilt it from the ground up, while still feeling like a continuation of what came before. Where previous Zeldas were divided into the overworld and dungeons, with progress gated by specific items, and puzzles that cannot be completed without them, BotW goes full open-world, with system-driven gameplay. I don't know of anything more 2010's than open-world, system-driven. You get every ability/item within the first couple hours of the game, and if you want you can completely ignore everything and run straight to the final boss (not that it's easy, but it's possible). On the flip-side of that, the game is very good at sign-posting where to go next, without railroading you into it. My problem with lots of open-world games is that they're too open, they feel too aimless, and I lose interest without a clear mid-term goal. BotW always has that mid-term goal, which allows you to screw around to your heart's content, but then as soon as you get tired of it and want to progress the narrative it's fairly clear where to go next. And it accomplishes this without cluttering the map with icons. The only icons on your map are the one quest marker (which you can determine which quest is tracked, or turn off completely) and ones you place there yourself. This means you don't just play the minimap, you actually look at the world and figure things out from there, which sounds like it could get frustrating, but the world is so well designed that you rarely lose your direction if you want to find it. The Hyrule of BotW feels huge, and open, and empty, without being desolate. It's post-apocalyptic, but it's a green post-apocalypse. There are a just few small settlements, that truly feel like remnants of a collapsed civilization, clinging to life in the wilderness. The emptiness makes it the most real-seeming "wasteland" I've yet played in. It's not Rapture, where the lore says there's a semi-functioning society still, but the world looks completely destroyed with only crazed psychopaths in sight. Nor is it the densely-populated wasteland of Fallout, which has too much civilization for how disorganized the lore says it is, but simultaneously too many hordes of bandits and monsters right next to the settlements. Each village in BotW feels isolated from the rest, but also like it could be reasonably self-sufficient, and the monster camps are close enough to be threatening without being so close as to make you wonder how the town is still around at all. And on a more minor note, the towns feel like actual towns, unlike the "towns" in Fallout that consist of two houses and five people, with one quarter-acre farm. In short, Breath of the Wild exemplifies the trends of the decade, while also doing them better than any other game I've played. Honorable Mention: Prey, for similar reasons to Zelda. Talos has all the charm of Rapture, without the ludo-narrative dissonance of there supposedly being a functioning society still around somewhere, and the systems-based approach to problem solving is a joy.

Yeah yeah, I couldn't come up with a clever name for the thread... Ace Combat 7 This game was really great. Out of 20 missions, there was only one that pissed me off, which honestly for this type of game is kind of amazing, and even that one was fun to actually play, it was just hard to get enough points within the time limit and the repetition got frustrating. I was impressed with how varied they were able to make the missions feel, considering at its core there's really only two types they can do: attack ground targets, or attack air targets. Hopefully the next one doesn't spend so long in development hell.

Yes, but why?

Yeah...

I agree. Even at the end when it had a little oddness it was charming, because it was the sort of oddness that would be at the end of a Ghibli movie.