Can you believe that 2016 is coming to a close? In just a few days, we’ll abolish that dreaded six for ten more years, and a cool, clean, sexy seven will take its place.

2016 has been an incredible year for everything aside from presidential candidates and celebrity deaths, so as always, we wanted to share our favourite games, movies, moments and more of 2016.

First up is Adam, aka The_ACZ – take a look at his favorite things of the past year, and share yours in the comments below!

Favorite Animated Movie: Zootopia

2016’s been a pretty terrible year for movies. Most summer blockbusters ended up mostly disappointing or ended up being completely re-worked and destroyed in post *Cough DC Movies Cough*. Thankfully, with the exception of a few films, 2016’s actually been a pretty great year for animated films. The highlight of which, is Zootopia. Being the first Disney animated film released this year, Zootopia couldn’t have come at a more perfect time or year. What seems like just another funny animated film with talking animals quickly turns into a film about racism, discrimination, and tolerance. I would tell you that you need to see it, but seeing as the film has already grossed over a billion dollars, odds are you already have.

Favorite Reveal: Nintendo Switch

Nintendo’s had it rough these last couple of years. Between the Wii U being a flop and recent tone deafness of the company have made it hard to love them, but things seem to be finally taking a turn for the better for the Big N. For about the past 2 years we heard whispers of a brand new Nintendo console that was told to seemingly blend handhelds and home consoles. Commonly known as Codename: NX, October 2016 was the month that all those rumors finally came to surface as the Nintendo Switch. All of a sudden, everyone on the internet stopped fighting and came together to enjoy a new Nintendo console being revealed. Sure we could have (and did) argue about its battery life, 3rd party support, etc, but for that moment, everyone was happy to just see Nintendo finally picking themselves out of the mud after being dragged through it for 2 painful years. Most importantly, it showed us that Nintendo is going to be just fine.

https://youtu.be/f5uik5fgIaI

Favorite Game: Watch Dogs 2

I’m going to try and keep things pretty short for this one seeing as how I already covered this a bit during our Holiday Wishlist piece, but Watch Dogs 2 is a genuine surprise for me. I wasn’t really a fan of the first Watch Dogs as I thought it was trying to hard to be brooding and serious, but that couldn’t be farther from the sequel. Set in sunny San Fransisco, Watch Dogs 2 centers around Marcus Holloway as he joins the hacktivist group Dedsec as he and his partners try to take down the major corporations like Blume. To start off, the game has a great sense of humor, and the approach to missions are very varied. The inclusion of drones are also a very welcome addition as they allow you to scout out areas from afar. You also have the option of taking a stealthy or guns blazing approach to most missions depending on what play style you prefer (I choose non lethal because Marcus seems like too much of a nice guy to kill anyone.) Round that out with a great cast of colorful and diverse characters, and you have yourself one hell of an experience. If you played the first one and didn’t like it, or never picked up the series, this is a great entry as you don’t really need to know anything about the first one to enjoy this. Plus, this game is still on sale! $40 can still net you the base game, but $60 can now net you the gold edition! What are you waiting for? Go out and get it!

Most Disappointing Film: Suicide Squad

Suicide Squad is a sad tale of frustration and disappointment. What was supposed to be a saving grace for the DCEU after Man of Steel and Batman V. Superman, and the trailers seemed to echo that. Looking much lighter and more fun, the movie seemed to be just the shot of adrenaline that WB and DC’S fledgling universe needed. Sadly, due to studio meddling and bad test screenings, Suicide Squad ended up turning into an abuse victim as the film starting getting drastically stripped of whole scenes, characters, and development in favor of a choppy, confusing, and very muddled outcome that in no way even slightly resembles a movie. Even with actors like Viola Davis as Amanda Waller, The Enchantress is such a lame and boring villain with little to no set-up. At this point, I’ve been burned so many times by DC films that I can’t even trust the trailers for these films anymore. I hope for everyone’s sake that Wonder Woman can turn things around, but if it can’t.. . . .Hey! At least The Lego Batman Movie is coming out soon. Speaking of…..

Most Anticipated Film: The Lego Batman Movie

While DC seems to be having trouble just trying to make a film that can please everyone, their parent WB has been having the opposite with their newly started LEGO universe. Coming early February, The LEGO Batman Movie seems to be taking what people loved about this character in The LEGO Movie and expanding upon it further. The trailers have also done a good job making fun of a lot of the aspects of Batman (and even the DCEU at some points), but also still keeping true to the characters and knowing what does work. Can we just skip January 2017 so we can get to this film faster?

Briefly: I hated the first Watch Dogs game.

Obviously, that first E3 trailer for the game sold me on it. It looked gorgeous, open, futuristic, with mechanics and opportunities that we’d never seen (or even thought of) in a game before. Watch Dogs was to truly be the first next-gen feeling title for PS4 and Xbox One.

Then Ubisoft released a buggy, ugly, boring Grand Theft Auto clone that I sunk about 10 hours into before realizing that I’d wasted nearly $100.

Watch Dogs became the brunt of a lot of jokes in the early days of the Geekscape Games podcast, and aside from the neat announcement trailer from this year’s E3, I’ve largely ignored its sequel.

Until now, that is. I’m starting to see ads all over the place (and a myriad of commercials for the title during last night’s election coverage. With just a week to go until the game’s launch, Ubisoft has officially debuted the Watch Dogs 2 launch trailer… and it looks super cool.

Our new protagonist actually sounds interesting, the story sounds far, far more affecting than that of the first game, and the hacking actually looks really cool. Not to mention how gorgeous San Francisco looks.

In any case, decide for yourself! Take a look at the trailer below, and let us know if you’ll be picking up Watch Dogs 2 when it releases on November 15th!

Join Carlos, Josh, and Shane as they discuss the last week in video games!

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This Week:

Destiny: Rise of Iron officially announced.

Lego: Dimensions gets a bunch of new updates.

Injustice 2 gets announced.

Street Fighter V DLC and story mode details revealed.

Shane was always an obnoxious person. Check him out at the Halo 3 launch.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cUnvb0wejfY

Watch Dogs 2 announced.

Kingdom Hearts 2.8 trailer released.

Final Fantasy XII: The Zodiac Age announced.

Final Fantasy World looks better and better.

Horizon: Zero Dawn newest trailer looks gorgeous.

Final Fantasy: XIII Lighting Returns.

King of Fighters: Sky Stage.

DJ Hero 2.

Darksouls 3.

Fairy Fencer F: Advent Dark Rising.

Mission Objective:

“What is your DREAM E3 reveal?”

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Briefly: I hated the first Watch Dogs game.

Obviously, that first E3 trailer for the game sold me on it. It looked gorgeous, open, futuristic, with mechanics and opportunities that we’d never seen (or even thought of) in a game before. Watch Dogs was to truly be the first next-gen feeling title for PS4 and Xbox One.

Then Ubisoft released a buggy, ugly, boring Grand Theft Auto clone that I sunk about 10 hours into before realizing that I’d wasted $100.

Watch Dogs became the brunt of a lot of jokes in the early days of the Geekscape Games podcast, and while it’s unlikely that gamers will truly trust Ubisoft’s early looks at any point in the future, the publisher just debuted the very first look at Watch Dogs 2 which is set to take San Francisco (and the world) by storm when it releases on PS4, Xbox One, and PC on November 15th.

Seriously, I’m not going to be putting down any pre-order dollars on this one, but it sounds as though Ubisoft has certainly learned from the mistakes that they made with the first game, and are ready to fix them this time around. Take a look at the first trailer below, and be sure to let us know what you think!