The “controversy” pertains to the lack of common sense among the current community of gamers, at least the vocal ones.

Personally I would choose between these games, to surprise people with:

There are plenty of gamers out there who are actively looking for something to get angry about.

It’s funny what brand recognition can do. There have been plenty of old-school RPGs, or cRPGs, released since Baldur’ Gate and Planescape Torment, yet it takes a well-known brand like Paradox to make mainstream people realize this genre or sub-genre still exists.

The last Mass Effect game I liked was the very first one.

‘Strategy’ is a natural aspect of playing these types of games. You can’t start building a city or business empire without having some sort of [moving] strategy in place.

Well, you explained it yourself: SC2 is a competitive game not aimed at the average gamer, or even niche strategy gamer. There’s a reason you don’t see SC2 on the vast majority of hardcore strategy channels on YouTube. It’s an e-sports game.

It’s always nice to see single-player focused strategy games getting some attention. Those are all good strategy games, on your list.

‘Hate’ is far too strong a word, but I did not like the game.

Dishonored gives you an easy way out should your stealth approach fail, “regular” stealth games are much more punishing; get detected in a Hitman or Splinter Cell game and you will have a very hard time fixing the situation. 

‘Mature side’ ?

I see moves like this all the time in F1 though; Verstappen, Bottas and Rosberg have all done it for example. The overtaking driver only gets punished if he forces the other driver off the track, or into a wall, while doing this kind of maneuver.

Watch Dogs 2 is the most fun-looking one for me. There’s already been a number of pre-release videos released by select YouTube channels, like Centerstrain01. It reminds me of GTA and Saint’s Row 2.

People making a fuss over a small issue like this. The sanctions were only removed on the 7th of October, just a few weeks ago ... that is not a long time.

That’s usually how it goes with Bethesda; they easily get away with things that would break other developers.

Personally I would rather have seen a remake of the entire storyline, making it more fun and interesting. I can tolerate occasional bugs if a game’s storyline is interesting enough, but sadly that was not the case with Skyrim.

This extreme kind of Permadeath game is something that would mainly appeal to self-proclaimed “hardcore gamers” and “gaming experts”.

It’s partly a consequence of having a mono-cultural gaming media, where all journalists and critics have the same priorities and expectations, and more or less like the exact same games.

Each game comes with a DRM-free game disc (according to their website, above). So you don’t need Steam to play them.

Careful there Firaxis, you don’t want people thinking this is a flight combat game or an adventure game, keep in mind what happened with No Man’s Sky. Gamers are not that smart.