DirtyBirdy

The HotSpot has been great and the Giant Bombcast is always solid. Otherwise, watching the staff be streamers isn't what I come to Giant Bomb for. If they start making more produced content for premium subscribers I'll stick with it, otherwise I'll let it lapse until they get back in the studio.

I know it was vulgar and offensive and dumb, and the community was pretty toxic, but Loadout was so much fun and I still miss playing it.

@development: It had a tumultuous and twisted path. The original developer closed up shop but then the game was rescued by a different company with a lot of promises to the PC community about ongoing support. They then ported it to consoles and promptly shut down all the PC servers, it was a bit of a shit-show. I've always hoped someone will reverse engineer the netcode and get an illegal server up and running.

@panfoot: That sounds amazing!

I've got two I still pine over: Hawken (on PC) and Fractured Space.

What do folks miss?

@fisk0: It wears its influences on its sleeve, for sure. There is also a pirate ship that looks exactly like a Kilrathi vessel from the original Wing Commander.

@gundato: The ship painting feature is really cool! I wish more games did fun peripheral silly stuff like that. I have a Pigman from Don't Starve painted across the front of my ship. You can also export a file to 3D print your ship. This game does some fun stuff.

I want to shine some light on a game that was overlooked this year: Rebel Galaxy Outlaw

If you're nostalgic for Wing Commander: Privateer or enjoyed the preceding Rebel Galaxy game and that universe, this is a solid entry in the space-trucking category. Maybe it isn't award worthy or topping any GOTY lists but it deserves a little more attention than it got. The thing I really appreciate is that the relationships you develop are genuine and the writers didn't use any cheap about-faces or betrayals to move the story forward.

It is a fun and satisfying, a little limited w/ regards to progression and activities once you hit the top tech level, but overall a really fun experience worth giving a chance. Will Smith gave it some love and I hope some of you do too.

I am also here to mention Oxygen Not Included. Klei keeps putting out bangers and they always seem to fly under the radar. They're STILL supporting Don't Starve and Don't Starve Together. Griftlands is in early access but already shows a ton of promise. Hot Lava is ridiculous but such a fun premise. I guess it isn't just ONI that I want to highlight, but Klei as a studio. They should get a lot more accolades and press than they do.

I've been play Klei's new game Griftlands and I can't say enough good things about it. It's in Alpha right now so there is a lot of balancing needed but the core experience is fantastic. Klei is such a unique and creative studio. Also, their weekly art and dev streams are super fun and informative.