Pete0r

The recent Star Trek: Bridge Crew is quite good, if a little shallow. VR is no longer a requirement, and it makes for quite a good social game if you can find a good crew to have a good time with. They have recently put out a TNG dlc that has a new bridge to play around on as well as Romulans and the Borg as enemies.

Sounds like DEFCON: Everybody Dies

Maybe Space Engineers would do it? I haven't touched it in years, but it certainly has ship/base building and possibly survival elements. Medieval Engineers is made by the same people and seems like the same gameplay but with a different theme.

They both support multiplayer if that is a thing you're looking for.

The video format wasn't really suitable for so much information, so it is now available as a 64 volume book collection, or the Bombastica '95 CD edition in local stores.

GOTY discussions are already polarising enough without removing the middle ground of just 'liking' something.

The attention to detail in the world is really impressive to me. This might be the first time I have seen a water powered mill in a game that looks like it actually does work rather than just looking like set dressing.

I appreciate being able to read through the codex about characters that I'm not familiar with and be able to get a sense of the way things were.

I was having huge problems with the combat early on, getting completely devastated in every encounter, but recently I've ditched my shield and levelled enough where I was confident enough to take on four bandits fairly well. Now I've just got to find someone who will pay for these ears...

@mostlysquares: The only thing that comes to mind is Cruise for a Corpse. Several things don't line up, but your description of the intro and study place bring these images to mind:

Gallery

I think only Vinny and Alex are into games that come into this category, so unless they had their own goty podcast where they have a nice cup of tea and discuss the games like adults rather than bickering teenagers, I can't see them being brought up at all.

There must have been some aligning of the stars for xcom to win the other year, but even with that Jeff talks about playing through for the story and never going back. I just don't think the way they play games for site coverage lines up with non-campaign type games.

For discussion of management/strategy games I usually listen to Three Moves Ahead.

@streets_of_vlad: This sounds like one of the Commandos games to me.

If you are a parent reading this: give the gift of Bubsy this Christmas.

Or anyone in fact, this is a lesson we should all take to heart.