Unasked for advice from someone who's beaten it about 10 times:

I think I'm on the last mission of XCOM II, so almost-finished? I wanted to max everything and get connected to every region, but the Avatar counter filled up, and I didn't have time to contact the two regions I would have needed to in order to get to the next base assault mission before the timer ran out. So I…

I'll likely try Ironman and/or Long War after I finish the vanilla game. I feel like there's just so much of a penalty for not knowing the basics that I can't deal with permadeath on my first runthrough. This morning I decided to ignore work for a couple of hours and toasted that one mission I've been save-scumming…

My gaming continues to be very sparse, but I will likely continue The Witness and XCOM II.

XCOM 2 is basically just a slightly better EU/EW, as far as I'm concerned. I still haven't beaten it, mind you.

Long War really is a thing of beauty. I played through about 20 hours of it, never got close to finishing and got my ass handed to me multiple times.

You said you weren't going to describe them. I feel like I should demand my money back.

Agreed, and it’s part of the annoying All Anti-Trump All The Time focus of the AV Club these days.

Clayton is attacking the claims that reality is subjective and belief changes the world, and noting that one of the reasons he dislikes these claims is because they are part of a philosophical position that has recently played a part in things like Trump's election. All of which I think is true, but is maybe a bit…

They're fucking great cars.

I can tell you just from that description that it was one of those sales jobs that insists it's not a sales job, and the pay was mostly commission.

Agreed.

The AV Club is a huge De Palma booster, so I dunno if it's a criticism per se.

Eh, I think (based on @avclub-7f0d5ceefd00ad8303401bdcf213eb83:disqus 's comments above) that there's likely a misunderstanding of the game in the review. But yeah, there's definitely a douchey + ethics in video games journalism vibe about the comment.

Right. Not having played it, I don't have a dog in this fight, I'm just trying to keep the arguments straight. So you'd disagree that the game advocates the "reality is what you believe hard enough" philosophy?

I sympathize, having given up on P4 at, christ, I don't even remember, but I think I'm well over halfway through. I haven't even got laid yet, being quite awful at the social rank thing, and I can't remember anything well enough to keep going at this point. I think the grind in JRPGs just wears me down (although these…

Wait, you actually disagree with that? Can you elaborate?

ARGH. NO.

The review doesn't claim that the game is about Trump (any more than it claims that it's about The Secret).

I'm confused by the reaction to this. Are people actually saying that journalism, history, science, and organized dissent are not appropriate ways to fight corruption, and better ways than belief and being popular?