Really love the diversity of these lists. Hand of Fate 2 and Hob are very tempting... Good stuff Fahey, keep snackin’.

This looks great! And just when I needed a new game to... oh, what’s that you say? I still have to finish AC:O and have dozens of games in my backlog? With dozens more on my wishlists?

I would absolutely be down with them streamlining food and potions, or eliminating potions altogether and rolling those buffs into food.

No, that’s not right at all. It doesn’t matter what the label is, if it operates like a loot box (paying real money for a randomized in-game reward) the rule will apply. I can’t legally sell you cocaine just by calling it “fun dust.” Same difference.

Yeah, I played for about a year, too. Stopped a couple of years back. As I remember it, you could buy donuts (the in game currency) and then use those to buy the items you wanted directly. I guess they had loot boxes too though? And here I was thinking it was an example of a decent in-game purchase mechanic.

We get it, you’re an anarchist.

To each their own, but I think the last thing BotW needed is a hunger mechanic. Arrow crafting I can get behind, but between hearts, stamina, weapon durability, and temperature, there’s enough stuff to manage in the game already. I think a hunger mechanic would have been one too many impediments to the adventuring and…

I understand why a lot of people were skeptical and disappointed when this was revealed to be the Portal-related game that was teased. It’s not Portal 3, therefore BOOOOO. I can respect that.

It’s Boston, all of them.

If this is a reference to (former?) AV Club poster/troll extraordinaire, Lobsters1, I see you.

Christmas music makes me angry. Any Christmas music that doesn’t involve Run-DMC can burn in hell.

Sigh, we hear that all the time. Never ends well...

Yeah that’s fair. I was aware of that baggage though, it was one of the things holding me back from jumping into the series (old games might not hold up, new games got poor reviews). I heard a lot of AC fans say that Origins righted the ship, I was just surprised I liked it just as much jumping in blind as they seemed…

That’s shitty, I’d be pissed too...

Model: I feel like I look stupid in these things.

Probably my biggest gaming surprise of 2017. I’d never played an AC game before and I absolutely love Origins. Did not expect it to be my favorite open-world game of 2017 (not necessarily the best, I recognize the greatness of Breath of the Wild even if it didn’t fully click with me), but here we are. Great, beautiful…

Great list! Can’t wait to play Nier after I finish up Assassin’s Creed: Origins. And Dajunah looks like it needs to be added to the wishlist, interesting looking game.

Agreed, they should have gone with the side quest where Geralt kills Toad and uses Toad’s hallucinogenic mushroom blood to alleviate his portal-induced anxiety. Big miss, Kotaku.

Paintings in SMO warp you to different levels (which is not spoilers if you read my mis-post).

Sorry replied to the wrong post!