Anomareh

Runs at a solid 50 for me with everything maxed and turned on, with MSAA and VSYNC off. Latest drivers, 970, i5 3570k, SSD, @1080p. The people going crazy must be trying to run 4K with MSAA maxed or something? The game runs and looks great.

I hesitated at the price as well. Then I found out about the endless mode and the challenges. I stopped hesitating.

I always find myself worrying about how many hours a game is going to be. Then I realized I never finish most games anyways. Now my criteria for buying games is less about how many hours long it is and more about the likelihood I'll finish it.

For what it's worth, I saw this thread and the reviews and was a bit worried at first. Watched some PS4 gameplay on Twitch and decided it wasn't as bad as people were making it sound. I haven't had any FPS issues and that's even in the destruction challenges where there's a ton of stuff blowing up on screen. Don't get me wrong, it's not 60 and it dips, but I haven't had the FPS impede gameplay. It's never gotten me killed, stopped me from completing a mission, or even made the game harder. I had way worse FPS issues with Fallout 4.

The only really annoyance has been the load times which really only impacts the challenges. It's really hit or miss too. Some challenges load fine, others take forever. One that loads quick will suddenly start taking forever. The suggestion of it being due to a memory leak seems pretty spot on. Whenever it gets bad I just restart the game. I've only had to do it at the start or end of a session so it hasn't been that bad. I imagine it'll get patched soon enough.

I've been having a blast with it.

Anyone else come out of this hoping they ditch the site-wide awards next year? It seems like everyone just comes out of it bitter about something and no one is happy.

Honestly, I think it serves about as much purpose these days as review scores (which I'd love to see them ditch next year too). The site has been heading in the personality-centric direction since it's inception. Why do they still put out a site-wide list that undermines everything they've been working towards? It's like they're latching on to these last few things because for so long they've been bullet points on the list of requirements to be a site about video games.

I would have loved to have seen this year's coverage be their videos leading into their personal lists with a single special edition Bombcast where they talk about their lists and a sort of "the year in review." That way they can have the discussions we all want to hear, but they're not overtaken by people fighting for their opinions to form a list that really doesn't make sense anymore.

I miss the Lantern Runs more than Breaking Brad, but let us never forget:

It's a tie between Beyond Earth and Dragon Age for me. I was really hyped for Beyond Earth, thought it was going to be a Civ in space. Instead, they ripped the soul out of Civ 5 and filled it with a bunch procedurally generated nonsense. Dragon Age because the combat is still absolute garbage which makes an 80 hour RPG unplayable for me.

How is personality not a qualification?

I hope Giant Bomb continues to ignore the internet on this matter and hires the person that's best suited for the job regardless of gender, race, religion, or what have you. 90% of the people complaining about such things aren't worth listening to as they are usually arguing for the very thing they're fighting against in the first place.

That event is scripted, not random.

• Brad: 1. Destiny, 2. Mordor
• Dan: 1. Bayonetta, 2. Smash
• Jeff: 1. Far Cry, 2. Mario Party
• Patrick: 1. Divinity, 2. D4

For some reason I can't recall Drew really talking about anything he was crazy about on the podcast so he's a complete wildcard. Beyond the occasional Quick Look we don't really hear from Vinny a lot so no idea what he's been into this year. Same for Alex I guess except he's on the morning show, but I don't watch it :s

Overall is probably going to be Mordor. I see it being in everyone's top three.