@amyh7292: I bought MH3U. It was my first time ever playing Monster Hunter. The only thing I can really say about it is that if I hadn't got the strategy guide as a preorder bonus, I probably never would have got anywhere with it.

@judaspete: WET 2 was never a thing, was it?

For myself, Mercenaries, Inc and Mercenaries 3: No Limits. The last two products under development at Pandemic Studios.

@mastermetal777: absolutely correct. But! If you're determined, you can save enough money for everything. So what it comes down to is that everyone benefits because some people buy money. The community also benefits because everyone gets all the same dlc. There's no splitting up of the community.

@raugutcon: how in the hell can you hate pozole? It's like, the best soup God ever crafted for Man's table. Read the Bible- "on the seventh day God rested. Then after a nice long nap, He created pozole." Genesis 2:2

WHO ARE YOU TO ARGUE WITH THE ALMIGHTY!?

But seriously- tomatoes could die in a fire if it weren't for all the lovely sauces they're the base for. Raw tomatoes are the worst blight on the great table of mankind.

Mushrooms are also evil, and olives are pretty bad, but neither of them has any redeeming quality unlike the tomato.

I hate fish, too, but tuna is so tasty and versatile that it gets a pass.

I don't do anything fast and easy if I can make it convoluted and awesome.

The GTA Online mission High Priority Case can be completed in under 2 minutes with a buzzard- clear the rooftops with missiles, clear the floors under construction with the guns, grab the case and land at the warehouse.

When I do it, I park my car up the street and call Merryweather for helo pickup. My partner shoots the pilot, and lands us on top of the maze bank tower. We snipe the enemies off of the rooftop, then the pilot takes the chopper while I base jump from the tower to the construction site. The chopper lands, I take another 'chute from the chopper and we fight our way down to the floor, kill everyone, refresh my armor and health, then snatch the case, base jump up the street and pull my 'chute just in time to land right next to my car where I left it. I hop in, and tear ass toward the warehouse, dodging badguy wagons and the attack chopper, flinging bullets backward at them from time to time.

Doing it fast and easy is just so boring.

I played Assassin's Creed, and I loved it. The only thing I hated was the investigations where you had to collect the flags and return in under a time limit. But eavesdropping, pickpocketing, and especially assassination investigations were cool.

I have always contended(and will continue to do so) that the reason people disliked it was because they didn't understand it. Assassin's Creed was more than 'rush through those pesky investigations to get to the assassination,' Assassin's Creed WAS the investigations. Beyond performing the investigations, it was about what you got from them and what you did with it. Didn't anyone ever notice that the bureau assassin mocked you for doing the bare minimum? Didn't anyone stop to consider that the whole point of Altaiir's story was him thinking he was so damn good he didn't need to bother with the 'trivialities' of the kill?

When you pick pocketed a courier who had orders for archers to be stationed around the site, those archers never showed up. When you overheard the captain of the guards discussing which route was deemed secure and so was lightly guarded (or not guarded at all), you got a map with a suggested escape route on it. When you beat up a politician, he might tell you where he sent his household guards to provide protection for the target, giving you another map showing where many of the guards will be positioned. But if you never dug through the menus, you might go through the whole game thinking that the tasks were nothing but locked doors barring you from the next assassination target.

I hated Assassin's Creed 2 the instant I saw it at e3. I swore off Assassin's Creed right then and there. They'd bastardized the most unique concept stealth games had seen since Metal Gear Solid into GTA: Renaissance Italy. Ledge kills, double kills, air assassinations, a fuckin' GUN! Da Vinci's flying machine? Gimme a break, right?

But then came Brotherhood. The first time I saw the add at my local game shop, I knew instantly what that subtitle had to mean. I preordered it that same day and borrowed my brother's copy of AC2. I mean, I wasn't about to play the third one without playing the second. The ending of the first one made no sense, but I was hoping the second one would either fill in some blanks or just ditch the hocus pocus from the end of the first game.

Assassin's Creed 2 just about blew off the top of my skull. It was so fantastic from beginning to end. Ezio's revenge tale, Desmond starting to piece together the incomprehensible emails from Lucy's console at Abstergo, Ezio maturing into an actual assassin, the Truth and all the conspiracies implied within, the revelation at the end... Yes, I still hated that they fell into the GTA mission structure, but at least it made sense in the context of the story. If there was ever one game I wish I could play over again for the first time, it would easily be Assassin's Creed 2. Easily.

Brotherhood built on the conspiracies and the parallel What If reality beautifully, and created the most unique multiplayer experience of all time. Finally a game that relied on skill and an understanding of how the game worked rather than sheer reflexes and knowing where the best hidey holes are. Plus, with the Brotherhood behind you, you could walk down any street like a boss and kill silently with nothing more than a gesture.

Revelations upset me. Another year, another game, and more Ezio.I just could bring myself to care anymore. Between the zip lines, the spring hook and the tower defense mini games, I was done.

Assassin's Creed 3 was also a disappointment. Not because of the ending, though. I was disappointed because after years of Ezio, I couldn't stand the idea of playing as Altaiir 2.0- all sullen silence and brooding melancholy. Plus the story was really rather pointless. I get that Colonial America is an interesting and iconic era, but with all the revelations and the urgency of the fast-approaching dove tailing of the fictional game date and the real life date, they really ought to have told Desmond's story as the focal point of the game instead of relegating it to 4 short missions crammed in between the Boston Tea Party and 'don't shot till you see the whites of their eyes!'

I didn't play 4 until just recently. I got the AC Xbox One bundle and redeemed the cards right away, but didn't actually play them for months. Unity was infuriating because it didn't work properly and parkour up/parkour down sucks compared to the old puppeteering method. Black Flag was actually pretty interesting, but was also infuriating as often as not. Learning to fight ship to ship was one of those frustrations. But it was definitely better than Revelations and 3 combined. I didn't much like Edward, but neither did anyone else in the game for the most part, so I felt it was probably a deliberate choice. For the first time since Brotherhood, it did draw me into the lore and the understory, but it was nothing earth shattering. On the whole, I feel like Assassin's Creed peaked with Brotherhood, and it'll never reach that height ever again.

On a last note, I will always give the franchise credit for canonizing the handheld games. They were referenced in a few different ways throughout the console releases, and that really means something to me, who feels like handheld games don't usually get the respect they deserve.

Pics or it didn't happen.

What 3ds needs is more 3rd person shooters and melee action games. The last good 3d beatem up the system's seen was the Amazing Spiderman in 2012. And after the colossal letdown provided by Arkham Origins: Blackgate, followed by the absurd decision to take TASM2 the Metroidvania knockoff route, I'm just so disappointed.

For Christ's sake, this is two generations past GBA and we're still getting one-button 'ARPG-lite's from an isometric angle! We need real action games, not just SRPGs and platformers.

The instant I heard about an Arkham-style hack&slash set in Middle Earth, I knew I had to have it. When I finally got my hands on it, I was not disappointed. I will say, though, that fully upgrading Talk on makes him so OP that the last third of the game is less fun than the first.

Sunset Overdrive was also a top winner for the year. Style shooters are so woefully under represented, but this ones is positively tops. It's reminiscent in tone to psp's wildly underrated Chili con Carnage, but the gameplay was a curious cross between WET and Jet Grind Radio on Dreamcast. And some of the fourth wall jokes had me cracking up for minutes at a time. Probably my GotY.

TMNT: Danger of the Ooze (3DS)was one of the best metroidvania knockoffs in recent memory, and one of the only Ninja Turtle games to ever bring across the feel of the ninja agility of the turtles. And the various nods to the previous incarnations of the turtles was satisfying.

It's hugely disappointing. Assassin's Creed was my favorite series last gen and since 3 it's all been down hill. It's still parkour up/parkour down instead of hi/lo puppeteering, and ever since they concluded Desmond's story, the series has gotten more and more ham-fisted in it's story telling. I'm just glad I didn't have to pay for it.