Rest of the Council meeting. Maybe they are following the playbook that the people did when they tried to ban Dungeons and Dragons?

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That's a more committed dungeon master than i ever played with.

They finally made a sequel to Dungeons and Dragons The Movie. But I guess they couldn't afford Jeremy Irons this time.

I was 13/14, games back then were magical. Anytime I was on a plane or in the car I was reading PC Gamer or CGM drooling over the demos (or shareware!), ads, previews and reviews. Remember those days? When information on gaming was largely through print?! I still remember those Dark Forces previews, I could have shot a load. PC gaming at that point really was fucking cutting edge.

1997 & 1998 also hold a special flame in gaming for me - 1997: Ultima Online (actually learned HTML and had a website for UO cuz I was a NERD), Fallout, GTA, Age of Empires, Dungeon Keeper, Quake II, Myth (incredible multiplayer component probably even still).

1998: Starcraft, Half-Life, Baldur's Gate, Thief, Grim Fandango, Fallout 2, Tribes, THIEF, Unreal, Commandos.... so many innovative games back then. Now we just build on them over and over and over again

LMFAHS

I love The Onion's movie reviews.

Yes, I haven't seen it, but this movie does remind me of my own coming of age story, just like I'm sure it does everyone else.

Contracts... Iron masks... Dungeons... Slaves... Nipple clamps... Blood stains... Ah, those innocent teenage years...

At least Obama put a stop to it. Except for the CIA facility at Mogadishu's airport where they held people in an underground dungeon and comforted them with some electric current through the genitals. Yeah, except for that.

Also, let's not talk about the torture camps run by the military, by contractors or by the Iraqi forces trained and instructed by folks like Colonels James Steele, who had already run Salvadoran death squads. And while we're at it, let's not talk about the outsourcing of torture to the goons of Gaddafi, Assad and Mubarak.

By the way, Brazil just published documents about 20 years of torture. Who trained the torturers? The usual suspects...

I thought the whole point of the Hobbit was to integrate many parts of Tolkien's works into the main framework of the Hobbit. Honestly, even tho it dragged a bit here and there, I am loving these movies way more than LoTR, book or movie. The Hobbit is a good, relatively well written book. The LoTR is a dungeon master that's narcissistically held you captive in his basement while he shows you all his figurines.

OMG, I loved this show as a kid. This and the Dungeons and Dragons cartoons are what made weekends great.

ED is certainly one of the best games of the year. I got a HOTAS for it myself. Would love to have a Rift or even head tracking to support it.

Got to disagree with @shagen454 a bit on Shadow of Mordor which I liked a great deal. Wildstar was okay, but it and ESO both need to be F2P or B2P (ala GW2). AA, I dumped $150 on, and that is disappointing, though it was great at the time, I just burned myself out on it. Not as disappointing as Evil Within, my biggest regret of the video games I got this year. I agree Alien Isolation, was great, and I haven't spent enough time with Divinity to really evaluate it much. Hearthstone I can't even make it past the AI missions... lord I suck at video games.... probably shouldn't have got Lords of the Fallen given that I'm so bad at games as that game is brutal.

For others we have Gauntlet as a fun diversion, Hand of Fate, Nosgoth (been in since early beta), Road Redemption is a decent homage to Road Rash, South Park: Stick of Truth, Starbound, Zombies Monsters Robots is a fairly good F2P shooter... I can't remember if Kerbal Space Program came out this year or last... The Endless series (Dungeon of the Endless and Endless Legend)... The Evolve alphas (well, one alpha down so far, which was great and one coming this weekend, and more a next year game anyhow)... Titanfall was a great deal of fun.

At or at least near the top though is ED (I personally didn't stream it or make as many videos about it as I did others, it's still a great game). I'm glad I went with ED over Star Citizen, at least as they stand now. I seriously looked into head tracking, but it's just too pricey for me at the moment. I got a Thurstmaster X Flight HOTAS though off Craigslist for a decent price and that helped the game. I haven't updated it to Beta 3 yet, I'm sure I'll need to rebind stuff on the HOTAS and in Voice Attack... and this weekend is the Evolve alpha, so I'll probably be busy with that, especially as there is no NDA this time.

This has been a damn good year for games even though a lot of the games that should have been good were really sort of rehashes/boring with subpar indie games, Ubisoft reskinning Assassin's Creed for every franchise (I'm looking at you Shadow of Mordor) and then there are all of the bland ass MMO's that looked decent but ended up sucking (Wildstar, ArcheAge). Not that they're bad, theoretically they are decent games but they just don't have the innovation or oomph.

I've NEVER spent $75.00 on a game needless to say a beta, but E:D is definitely worth it. It's my top game of the year (even in beta form). Closely followed by Divinity: Original Sin (fucking awesome RPG), Legends of Grimrock II (fucking awesome old school dungeon crawler (Ultima Underworld / Myst puzzler), Wasteland 2 (awesome Wasteland comeback) as well as Alien: Isolation (great concept, nailed the visuals & sound -- super intense). And then there was Hearthstone which I definitely spent more time playing than anything else.

But, Elite: Dangerous is stunningly brilliant, best sound I've ever heard in a game- it's so fucking good that I invested in a HOTAS & Oculus Rift (haven't gotten it yet though).

Downloading the update now - can't wait to see the changes.

God, that dungeon master’s answer was terrible.

The job of the DM is first and foremost to make sure everyone is having fun. If you’re not fudging rules (or making them up on the fly) for the sake of dramatic storytelling then you’re not really getting into the spirit of D&D, in my opinion.

I suspect the girls' reaction to the game has a lot to do with how the game was run. Back when I was those kids age, we were mainly playing dungeon crawls looking for epic loot--basically a “Monty Haul” campaign. The role-playing aspect was minimized while combat was heavily emphasized. The story only existed to drive us to the next combat encounter. Sure there might be some girls into that (just like in video gaming there are some girls into hardcore FPS games) but I wonder if these particular girls would have been as okay with D&D if the game were run that way.

Thought you might enjoy http://videosift.com/video/Boys-React-to-Girls-Playing-Dungeons-and-Dragons

Pssst, hey you know dragons aren't real either, and dungeons are not where medieval folks went when they wanted an adventure, right?