mento

@zombiepie: Not to spoil too much, but there's the big canon ending that leads to XIII-3 and a lot of false "paradox" ones. That game is an enormous mess narratively speaking. Have fun!

1. God of War
2. Tetris Effect
3. Marvel's Spider-Man
4. Dead Cells
5. Hitman 2
6. Red Dead Redemption 2
7. Monster Hunter World
8. Call of Duty: Black Ops 4

The trouble with stacking the list with AAA games, like I and many others did, is that Indies often put up a surprisingly good fight because more people in the room have played them due to their bite-sized lengths. I'm sure Into the Breach, Return of the Obra Dinn, Donut County, and maybe The Messenger or Yoku's Island Express will do well, but the staff might feel obligated to give higher spots to the bigger games for the scope of their accomplishment. It's why I suspect RDR2 will make it on there despite half the crew burning out on actually playing it.

Another thing I should've taken into account is that games released at the start of year typically don't shine as brightly because folk have had time to reflect on their foibles, or the experience of playing them has since slipped their minds. I remember Horizon taking a bath last year, in part because it was a February release and everyone had moved on and forgotten about it. With that in mind Celeste, Iconoclasts, Subnautica, Monster Hunter World, or Dragon Ball FighterZ might do worse than anticipated.

Finally, there's the ever-present Destiny Wildcard Minute feat. Bradtholomew T. Shoemaker. I don't know if an expansion campaign will qualify, but there's no ruling out a room-wearying filibuster to get it on the list regardless.

Locked by OP's request. Discussion has moved to this thread: https://www.giantbomb.com/final-fantasy-xv/3030-21006/forums/three-ffxv-dlcs-are-canceled-game-director-quits-s-1856777/

@arbitrarywater: I still haven't booted up The Bard's Tale IV yet, and I've just added Ni no Kuni 2 and Valkyria Chronicles 4 to my play pile. I'm looking to prioritize some more 2018 games over the next two months for GOTY purposes, but realistically I wonder how far into them I'll get. For all I know, I might still be playing Berseria when November ends.

@liquiddragon: Fatal Frame 1 has that issue where you don't get an infinite amount of the weakest film, right? They changed that for the sequels. I fought every ghost that showed up in FF2 and FF3 because I could always switch back to the weak 07 Film if I didn't want to waste the good stuff on a no-name spook.

It's sometimes hard to distinguish between random encounters and bosses, because the same ghost might attack a few times before getting "serious" (like the editor at the start). If you're down on film, you should probably try leaving the room (as in, triggering a transition): if the ghost follows you or the doors are locked, it's a story boss that you need to defeat. If it disappears it wasn't a significant foe, and then you can come back to the same room and keep exploring/solving puzzles until it shows up again. The game tosses random encounters at you every so often just to keep you on your toes, and they tend to be the same "Bound Man" types over and over. If you have film to spare though, I might fight the small-fry just for the upgrade points, especially if you're struggling. Otherwise, just keep an eye out for ground sparklies and try all the drawers and furniture to keep your supplies up.

Locking this down, I don't see it heading anywhere good.

Besides, Dave Lang established the official GB crew tiers years ago.

@zombiepie: Nope, no S-Rank for me. I dunno if I told you that or what, but if I did I might've gotten confused with XIII-2 (which I did indeed S-Rank).

What I did do is complete all the Cie'th Stone missions. Just apparently not to the extent of getting 5-stars for all of them. I'm also missing both the 100% achievements (Crystarium and equipment) and the one where you hunt an adamantoise (though I did kill the one in FFXV, albeit through trickery).

@riostarwind: It's a goofy idea that will take too much work for GB's overworked producers to implement. All the same it might be the thing to settle the occasional standoff, especially as they get an ever-longer list with harder sorting decisions to make.

Both the POE games are great, and only loosely based on D&D and the Baldur's Gate/Icewind Dale games that preceded them. Like Mass Effect, the POE games benefit from some fantastic worldbuilding; adjusting its dialogue and descriptive text so as not to be too exposition-heavy and instead lets you mouseover terms, people, organizations, and places for any required context. It's all masterfully done and plays to Obsidian's strengths as a storyteller (meanwhile their weaknesses, which is to say the amount of bugs their games are plagued with, is something that improves the longer you wait - between this weekend and last, they put out another major patch that enhanced the game a lot).

It's still going for that so timely Swery pun for its title I see. What's the next one going to be called? Bedly Proposition?