PlasticFrogCG

Never really watched the Game Awards, but based on their history, they have a better track record of actually recognizing good games than the American Academy Awards do at recognizing good movies.

That's actually a pretty good discussion point. Like MadFinnish said, the editor is usually the one to suggest changes to a book, and that's normally just for clarity or grammar. A book publisher is solely responsible for the printing and distribution of a title. I've self-published at least one title through CreateSpace, but that's now switching over to Amazon's KIndle Direct Publishing (KDP), so my next title will be through that (coming January 2019!). With that in mind, I think more game publishers should go back to that model. Let the studio that made the game make the game. The publisher should only be focused on distribution...but of course, there isn't a lot of money in that, especially when they can strong arm the studio into making a product for a broader market.

Personally, I don't really swear a lot. But every time Joe starts a review like this I almost fall over laughing because his delivery is priceless!

One of these days I'm going to get over to your country! While I know there's a ton of stuff to see as a tourist, I'd love to schedule my trip at the same time as PAX AUS or some other geek convention just so I can make friends on the other side of the world.

Actually, that's a great example, but McDonald's fries usually come out really horrible because they DIDN'T change the oil. Which is what we're getting here, the same deep-fried games, immersed in the same greasy old oil as everything else!

So, uh...things are not looking good for Fallout 76...and it hasn't even been released yet.

Not that this is a bad thing, but lately I've been engaged in some rather curious gaming behaviour that I'd like to discuss. Namely, I have a whole Steam list full of games I purchased and haven't even played, but I keep going back to just two: Skyrim and Fallout 4. I really can't seem to put my finger on why. I've played both of these games up to and past the actual "end game" several times, but I just keep rerolling characters and starting all over again. I also keep finding new mods I want to try out. Skryim is currently sitting at 138 active mods and Fallout 4 is running 167. Every time I open my Steam list and try to find a new game to instal I just say "Nah, I'll play Skyrim/Fallout". Crazy! Unless of course my little sister in Washington calls and wants to play The Forest.

I don't trust IGN anymore. However, I did watch Jim Sterling's Jimpressions video of it...and it sounds pretty good. Unfortunately, as much as I LOVE immersive content, this game also sounds like an Ian Malcolm: they spent so much effort wondering if they could, they didn't stop to think if they should. Not going to be purchasing it for a while. Too many other games I still haven't finished. This is another "on sale" title for me.

Actually, I'm 70% certain massive game sizes are less about content than they are about piss-poor coding that expands the file size. The problem is the coding is part of the base engine design magnified by whatever workarounds were used to bypass the shortcomings the developers ran into. The result being a knarled angry mess that is a miracle it even runs.

While the concept always sounds good on paper...yeah, there's a reason armies don't walk around with swords and shields anymore.

So...my sister got me hooked on Subnautica. I had heard snatches about it a few years ago, but now the game has officially released...and has an ending! I love it! While I generally consider myself a person with few fears and the ability to manage the ones I have...deep open water scares the crap out of me! Even though I'm well aware that most of the really big sea creatures on our own planet aren't all that interested in little old you (whales and such), the very idea of looking down past your feet and seeing nothing but deep blue fading to black is terrifying! Needless to say, the bigger creatures in Subnautica DO very much want to EAT YOU! And I had a blast finding ways to survive while staying as far as possible from reaper leviathans. I won't spoil the storyline, but I thought it was well written, and I really appreciated that there was an actual end to the game. Usually, survival games just give you the goal of "survive and explore" or "horde phat loot", and for me, the fun wears out really quickly when there's no endgame. I wish more open-world survival games would do what Subnautica does, and it gives me a small amount of hope for Fallout 76...but only a little. And at $24.99 on Steam, I thought it was a really good value. The graphics are nice, I ran into few if any bugs and the development team seems dedicated. 8/10

Well, the only reason I still hang out here is because, generally speaking, I like the AJSA community. Now if only I actually had the drive to join them in online games, but I really prefer single-player games.

There's a mod for that... Of course, it doesn't change the fact that there is essentially no "bad" choice. Even the snarky responses push you toward being a "good" guy/girl. I have a journal mod installed that allows you to write your own player notes. I tried playing once where my personal journal made the character out to be a real ***hole who didn't care about her kid and was pissed that someone got to shoot her cheating husband before she could. It didn't mesh at all with any of the pre-written dialogue options, and I eventually gave up trying.

That little fan film is fantastic! I loved Stephen Lang as Sully and Nathan Fillion...come on, Nathan is good pretty much any time he shows up on screen.

That is mostly my feelings, but I'm worried that in the past Bethesda has shown an eagerness to "follow the crowd" with some of their decision-making processes. Fallout 4 is actually a good example, as much as I grew to like the settlement building, the only reason it was put in the game was that, at the time, pretty much every other successful game had some type of base-building/crafting system. And to be honest, I think the story-telling in Fallout 4 suffered for all the emphasis the settlements got.