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2013
Blew my pants off with the quite frankly astonishing level of detail packed into Los Santos, but I never really delved into GTA Online, so it hasn't elongated itself into years of replay quite like the Elder Scrolls and Fallout series have.
2014
A really nice surprise! It did some quite tidy things that its makers, BioWare, really nailed—character development, story beats, its overall scope—but failed to match that with real depth. It was beautiful, epic and really quite soulful, but for every great thing there was an empty objective or a fetch quest. I clocked 90 hours on the fucker, but looking back I'm not really sure whether it's as good as I thought it was.Dark Souls II
Yeah decent, maybe even great, but whatevs.
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2015
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"Sure, let's play."
"He's none of my concern."Prefer reality to fantasy? Bend your neck the way of VICE News.Now, I was mildly curious about what the latter option would mean for my pal, but I didn't want to risk calling the bandit's bluff. Had I gone with it, he might've let him go, but I didn't trust his sadistic nature not to just kill for the sake of it. So I agreed to the bet and sat down for a game of Gwent, the entire time thinking: "You have never even played Gwent, what the fuck are you doing?"Moments later I had lost. I don't know how I lost, but I had. My companion was stabbed in the back, right in front of me. It was then that the game threw me into combat so I could avenge my dead friend, but it was too late: My stupid arrogance had cost me. Not in gold, but emotionally, and I actually cared. My sitting down to play a game of Gwent, a game I'd never played before, felt important.Whatever Bethesda does with Fallout 4, if they can make something as seemingly innocuous as a game of cards feel important, feel memorable, and in its own way completely crucial to the wider story, then they'll prove that they're still ahead of the curve. And if not, well, we've already got The Witcher 3, so perhaps another traipse around the post-apocalyptic wastes of North America won't seem so essential.Follow Sam on Twitter.