JosephKnows

Also giving a shoutout to Furi. What a shot of adrenaline that is. It should be vying for Best Music and Best Ssssssstyyyyyllllleeee.

Salt and Sanctuary is the best Souls-like there is right now, and it's not even 3D!

Bound is worth at least a single playthrough simply for the insane visuals.

With how most of the modern live shows with fans having been either bland or cringe-worthy, it's incredible how Mario Party Party 5 turned out to be one of the best things Giant Bomb has done. It had a story, it had energy all throughout the show, it had big moments, and it had the perfect ending.

@dgtlty: Yeah, I totally understand that feeling. Thankfully, IO was smart enough to give options to accommodate a lot of different players! If I were you, I'd try experimenting with the gameplay options you can toggle. Discovery and improvisation are the best things about this game. There are some who want to come into the missions with as much info as possible so they can set up more fun stuff in repeat playthroughs. Others enjoy the feeling of coming into the missions completely blind and just winging things. I learned soon enough that I fell into the latter camp, turning on the opportunities only for when I've played through a map 2-3 times and I want to "clean up" for XP and trophies.

Play the way that you think is fun! Hitman allows it!

@dystopiax: Whatever makes it fun for you! I ended up turning off just about every UI element in the game except for the NPC status indicators after Sapienza. Patience, observation, and a willingness to explore are enough for you to discover a good chunk of any map. NPCs are constantly chatting and signs are everywhere to point you in the right direction.

But that's just me. Whatever works works!

If you're going to have Opportunities on, at least set it to Minimal so that it doesn't feel like you're just on rails. You'll know what next step to take, but you'll still have to do some exploring instead of literally being told where you need to go, what switch to hit, which person to talk to, who's the most convenient npc to get a disguise from, etc.

I can see this popping up at #10 on Jeff's list like how Nuclear Throne made a surprise appearance on his list last year.

Although it's not necessary to have played the previous games to simply understand what happens in Uncharted 4, I don't think most of the emotional beats will land as hard for you since they're founded on the relationships that were built in the first three.

I believe that's what ultimately makes this entry special and my favorite of the series. It's not so much the nitty gritty of the plot but how Naughty Dog cashes in on the characters' histories.

If you don't care about any of that, yeah, go ahead and play it. It's still a neat story with twists and turns that someone new to the series can appreciate.

Couldn't you just play this offline? Most of those big patches have been for content updates. The campaign itself has been perfectly fine since release so it's not as if you run the risk of playing a really buggy game without the patches.

Anyone else think whatever wins Best Surprise wins GOTY? That's for sure going to come down to DOOM versus HITMAN, and I can see the arguments they'll be making for both in that category be referenced in the final deliberations for GOTY.

@wmoyer83: As a counterpoint to the other guy, I also love Overwatch, maybe more than the previous guy, and it's probably my personal GOTY, but I do think it makes top 3. It's not going to be GOTY. That's looking more and more like it'll be either DOOM or HITMAN. But yeah, Overwatch for third place!