No kidding right. 

Same. The most “active” battle system I really want in JPRG is Grandia II’s, which really isn’t.

This is the type of comment that makes me pine for the days of Deadspin.

All of this. It’s why I buy so few major games anymore. If you told me RDR2 or Cyberpunk or Valhalla were 30-hour games, I’d buy them day one. But, knowing I’ll grow overwhelmed and bored of the inevitable repetition long ever finishing them, I don’t even bother.

The real saving grace for The Medium and its mediocre puzzles is that it’s free with GamePass.

Right, but as a percentage of total number of gamers at the time, it’s not quite so large a gap. The vast increase in gamers between 2000 and 2012 certainly can’t be ignored.

I adored both Puzzle Quest and Gems of War, but refused to play the latter when it went F2P and certainly won’t download PQ3 without an ability to simply “buy” the game with all its pertinent content -- and play it for as long as I want without paywall barriers.

Okay, I missed your mention of it when I posted, but yes. MSR was fantastic.

Metropolis Street Racer deserves to be acknowledged as not only a fantastic game in its own right, but the precursor to the exceptional Project Gotham Racing series which begat Forza Horizon. Kudos, Bizarre Creations!

I had a docking station with rechargeable battery packs for Xbox One controllers, but I could not for the life of me get them to fit into the Series X controller. Bought a set of rechargeable AAs from Energizer, so jokes on you Duracell. ;)

Thrilled to see Ori & Spiritfarer on the list. Two of the extremely limited number of games I played through to the end this year.

I really enjoyed Carto until I got to that part in the forest you spoke of. I was on the right track, made it past a few of the steps, then just got flustered and gave up. I considered checking online for a solution, but figured it was early in the game and I was already getting frustrated. If I was having to go to a…

I’m only a couple chapters in so far, but I’m really glad to see this get some front-page love on Kotaku.

Spent two years traveling, mostly abroad in Europe and Asia. And when it was time to come home (late 2015), I got it in my head that the Nismo Juke was the way to go. I saw Jukes everywhere in Europe and Japan and (again, I’d been traveling) thought it looked like an appropriately-sized vehicle.

So we got home and, the…

You break my heart, not including Never Alone in this list.

Not surprised that the red flashing lights were part of this.

What about games where you spend two decades hoping to avenge your father’s death, but also just sort of want to know where some sailors hang out?

This is the moment I was blown away by Quick Resume.

When it finally comes to Game Pass in 2022, I’ll download it, spend too much time with the character creator, think it incredible for 2 hours, be overwhelmed for 4 additional hours, then completely forget it’s on my system until I get the “Leaving Soon” alert from the app.

I’ve got, probably, an hour left in Hellblade: Senua’s Sacrifice which I just absolutely love. After that, it’s either Control or Haven, being that both got added to Game Pass this week.