Nottle

@themasterds: I'm sure some people could argue that Infinite is disappointing and I could see where they are coming from, some parts of that game are just sloppy and don't live up to what was shown in trailers. Also "down to number 7" doesn't mean a whole lot when you consider that means out of the hundreds of games released this year, it would be the 7th best.

This may be weird, but in terms of a game where choices matter I think of Papers, Please and Heavy Rain.

I love Kirby but I feel like Mechanically they have never topped Super Star for the SNES? Granted, I haven't played a new Kirby game since Canvas Curse and it seems like every other Kirby game is a "nontradtional" Kirby game where you aren't absorbing powers.

Has a Kirby game had as much Depth as Super Star? Some of 64 was cool withe fusion of abilities, but I often find that his abilities will do like 1 thing now days or it's a game about whip attacks/ drawing lines/ mass of kirbys.

Mario I'd say is overall better, but I'd like to like Kirby more. It's just that Super Star was too good.

Yeah, I never understood the hate for Shinji, dude just has some mental issues, personally I find that kind of interesting.

I think about him every now and then. I was driving home from work last night and thought about him hosting something and how he was such an energetic and fun guy to watch. Definitely have a "...maaan" moment every now and then. Watching the Friday Windjammer/ other games stream you see all the fan art of the crew, a lot of good ryan material.

Also I'm trying to finish the P4 ER and it is a bit jarring hearing him shout from the background.

Turians are cool, but most interesting? Come on. They are the least interesting. I voted for salarians because they are the opposite of all the other races in many ways, where Asari and Krogans live very long lives, Salarians live like 40 year max, their metabolism is very fast, everything they do is fast, and they are responsible for one of the most interesting piece of lore, the genophage. Also Mordin is a Salarian, and he is the best Mass Effect character because he bears the genophage on his shoulders.

As people have mentioned FF8 and TWEWY are about very laconic loners, the story revolves around how they need to trust other people to succeed, hell mechanically that is what TWEWY is about, Neku is bound to another person and you have to learn to use both characters effectively to win. Also pretty much every character you get in your party exists to be a foil to Squall. Though of course ultimately the message of those games is that you need other people in your life neither are really alone through their journey.

You'd be surprised, pretty much every game outside of team based RPGS and shooters is about someone all on their own Metroid, Zelda, Half Life, Resident Evil, Dead Space, pretty much all survival horror have characters alone, getting zero help from anyone for large portions of the game. Metroid didn't even have NPCS until Metroid Fusion, and he was a computer.

In Oblivion there was a quest where you take the kings bastard son guy to some church farm near a town, some assassins come to kill the bastard, they killed the head of this church farm and some other monks and their dead bodies were there 80 hours later. I even made that place my house just because i could and had to walk across some dead bodies to get to the door.

I ended up feeling rather mixed once the game ended. I thought the main thread about your sister and her crush felt sort of Oscar bait-ish. But at the same time is felt very genuine, they had their little school magazines they were making and the comic with the sort of dumb fan fiction plot. It was cute. Also did you pick up on the other family members, the fathers failed an reinvigorated book career, the parents weakening marriage, the moms affair, the uncles suicide by morphine due to guilt. A lot is going on if you look.

The game is very realistic, you are getting all this information out of things that would actually exist as opposed to audiologs in a Bioshock game that seem a little too convenient. Also the piecing the events together is satisfying. Realizing that the sister is a lesbian was sort of a surprise. The weird hidden passage with all the picture clippings and the cross was also very memorable, very atmospheric. Though the occult stuff (Ouija board, pentagram under the stairs, and the cross) to me either seems out of place or a good red herring. I kept feeling that I was going to find a corpse at some point.

Regardless atmosphere and environmental story telling has been a thing since the game cube with Metroid Prime, and even before that with Resident Evil. They made a pretty focused and subtler version of that. I personally believe $5 is a good price for the game. I really don't think they should have gotten nominated for studio of the year, a studio like Platinum Games should have, I could argue their games are more innovative because mechanically they do things that few other games do, games like Left 4 Dead, Fallout, and Bioshock had this type of storytelling, but were also all better games.

@jugg4n4ut: No one on Giantbomb likes Smash Bros. though, because it's not a fighting game...

I really don't get their dislike for the series.