2016 sucked, but it was the best year of NWP ever, so that's a silver lining you guys should be proud of. The production quality of the show went way up, and on top of that it was the most entertaining year yet for me. Great guests, topics, specials, and the format changes really worked out well if you look back.
In years past it was a little lonely commenting here, but in 2016 way more people started interacting with the show and now most of the time when I come to bring the wall of text there are like a dozen people that have beat me to it, and that's not even counting all the interaction from social media. I think it's awesome. Segments or formats that get listeners involved is working out pretty well and I hope we do much more in 2017. Whatever ideas you guys get for the show in the new year, whatever turns you on creatively, just go for it. There's a receptive and growing fanbase here just waiting to reach out.
My state of gaming in 2016 was a story of change. I made the switch to PC gaming early in the year with a mid-tier laptop produced in 2015. I fell in love and it's become the new normal for me. It's good that I'm a computer person and the fuss I have to go through doesn't bother me as much. I look for deals on Steam, GoG, and Humble Bundle regularly and I've been able to buy way more games and for way cheaper than I ever found on my 360. I learned how to install mods and alter game files as well. But the thing that perplexed me the most is that I also started playing my FPS games with keyboard and mouse after I experimented with it, which I thought would be impossible at first. I still prefer to play 3rd person games with a controller so I bought an XB1 gamepad that I use, but for first person games I love having keyboard and mouse because the mouse gives me precise control over where I look and it's faster. As a side note, that XB1 controller is super comfortable, the money they put into R&D and the ways they improved the 360 controller design was clearly worth it.
I didn't assimilate to the Borg and join the master race proper though. I played games my whole life on console up till now and I was just fine. In fact, this was the year I bought back into Playstation for the first time since my original PS2 around 14 years ago. Late this year I grabbed a PS4 Pro, which seems like a bad investment for people who have regular PS4's, but it's perfect for somebody like me who hadn't bought into the current generation yet. The Dualshock 4 is super comfortable too. The controller R&D that Microsoft and Sony both did was super fruitful and they delivered us two of the best gamepads ever, perhaps.
So I primarily play on PC with an XB1 controller and my PS4 is a thing on the side that I really wanted to have for exclusives, which sounds weird since there are so few. I don't want to be kept away from Red Dead Redemption 2 (which isn't coming to PC supposedly) and Horizon Zero Dawn. On top of that there's a whole bunch of PS3 remasters and collections that I missed out on but I can now take advantage of on PS4. I already finished The Last of Us Remastered and that was almost single-handedly worth the price of admission. One of the best stories ever, decidedly the best lighting model I've ever seen, and it's full of stealth which is my favorite genre. That was the perfect game to break-in my new PS4 Pro and I got it on sale for $10.
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