BabyChooChoo

XCOM is the only new thing I've played I think. I love tactics and dislike permadeath so this is right up my alley. Haven't played much of it, but seems cool.

I have Gears installed (yay gamepass!) so I'll try that out at some point.

I put a good chunk of time into it, but it's been a long time since I've played. I had fun, but I'm also willing to put up with a lot depending on the circumstances. In this case, I wanted a superhero MMO, but CoH had disappeared and Champions was and still is, as far as I know, practically on life support, waiting for someone to pull the plug. So this was my only choice.

It's clunky af. Jank out the ass. Missions are kinda insanely repetitive. It's sometimes hard to tell where damage is coming from and even if you can, it often feels like you're taking way too much. This game has a ton of problems.

But it's pretty easy to get into and just sort of simple mindnumbing fun set in the DC Universe, sooooo...meh. Up to you.

Show Tifa, you cowards! Also, looks about what I expected? i.e. perfectly fine and fun but nothing so surprising that I'm losing my shit. I like FF7 a lot, but the news that they're still splitting this game into multiple parts is a deal-breaker for me. I guess that's my fault since that was originally the plan and they never said any differently after re-starting development, but still...

@junkerman: OMFG thiiiiis. There's really no good reason for Kylo and Rey not to have joined forces in my opinion. They spend the whole film questioning themselves and everything they believe in and then, "naaaah, let's keep doing what we're doing. Cool? Cool." For all the chances some say that film takes, it chose the safest, most Star Wars ending it could have chosen.

Ace Combat 7, for all its numerous faults ("BEEP BEEP BEEP MISSILE BEEP BEEP BEEP MISSILE"), was truly something special to me. Varied mission design full of fun surprises, great music, and a surprisingly good story all come together to make a solid game.

Apex Legends is my second choice. I still have yet to even play it, but it's got people talking about and/or playing Titanfall 2 again and for that, I am grateful.

Please don't let the writing suck. Please don't let the writing suck. Please don't let the writing suck. Please don't let the writing suck. Please don't let the writing suck.

I loved Borderlands 1, but I actively despise 2. I found it to be so incredibly unfunny that it just became abrasive. Handsome Jack just might be the worst video game character ever.

Still looks as amazing as when it debuted. Not a huge fan of Dark Souls (loved Demons' and Bloodborne though), but that didn't make me any less excited for what I saw. That said, I had it preordered, but I recently cancelled it. I'm playing thru DMC5 right now and I'm loving it so much I can see myself trying to get most if not all of the achievements and that should keep me busy for quite a while. Plus, I still haven't beaten Etrian Odyssey Nexus and there's a few games in my backlog I reeeeeeally want to get around to.

By the time I have time to get around to it, it'll be cheaper, so that works for me.

Ran and the Gray World is one of those things I love more and more the more I think about it. It's one of my favorite manga ever, but it is unequivocally the one I consider best looking, at least in terms of art that appeals to me. It's absolutely fucking gorgeous. It's not particularly deep, but it deals with some themes I think a lot of people can appreciate especially if you're older.

I haven't read a ton of Western comics, but out of those that I have, Monstress is far and away my favorite. Another series that's a delight just to look at it, but the story here is excellent. It can get more than a little wordy, but solid world-building, great characters, dope action, and a good dose of occasional humor make it hard to put down.

I genuinely find Final Fantasy XV, at least upon release since I'm not sure what they added or changed, to be insulting. The story in that game was/is a fucking trainwreck. Real talk, just think about what they did. An hour or two into that game, they hit you with a montage from Kingsglaive, a movie you had you have to buy separately/pay extra for, that establishes the main conflict of the entire fucking game. A montage that paints a very barebones picture unless you've seen the movie. Not only that, this should completely change the entire tone of the game.

If you were going out with some friends and I gave you a call like "heeeeey...soooooo...the house is on fire and there's a bunch of dudes pointing guns and knives at everyone here...but I mean like...no worries I guess? Have fun, I'll catch you when you get back homie" how the shit would you feel? That's the beginning hours of FFXV in a nutshell. Shit is going down, but meh go out and have fun and we'll worry about it later. Even setting that aside, the story doesn't have a leg to stand on.

The characters are so badly developed, that they had to add DLC for each of them to finish the job. And compared to even just past Final Fantasies, they still did a bad job from what I can tell. Each of your party members goes through life changing events and you do not see it unless you play the DLC. Shit just happens to them offscreen and they come back and they're different now. You don't really ever get a good sense of who the fuck the secondary villains are or what they want. The main villain, hell even the main love interest are given a pitiful amount of screen time. They tried to recreate an Aeris moment with a character you see for maybe 20-30 minutes with tops.

They had the audacity to try and recreate one of the most iconic things in Final Fantasy history, The World of Ruin and they did abso-fucking-lutely nothing with it. You don't see any other faces besides those of your party members and Talcott the Infodump machine. There's not much of anything to explore. It's like recent Star Wars-levels of "HEY, YOU REMEMBER THIS THING, RIGHT? WE'RE SO COOL FOR REMINDING YOU THAT THIS THING EXISTED!"

Fucking go ahead and toss all that aside if you want. Doesn't bother me, but at every single turn, this story is flawed in some catastrophic way. There is literally a scene in which the main antagonist rescues the protagonists and it fades to black after they board the airship. "Two days later..." POPS UP ON THE FUCKING SCREEN and the characters go, "aw man, that was crazy, wasn't it? I can't believe all that shit that happened." And then you just go on your merry way without anyone actually saying what the fuck happened. Who the hell wrote this shit?

This game is the definition of resting on your laurels. For real, if people wanna give Destiny shit along with Mass Effect, Assassin's Creed and whatever other bullshit with bullshit stories, this shit deserves to be right alongside all of that. The story in this game is bad.

DMC5 is my top pick. Ace Combat 7 comes in a solid second place. Etrian Odyssey X finishes third because as much as like that series, and make no mistake it's one of my favorite series of all time, those other two games look fuckin nuts in the best way possible.