With 2015 coming to a close soon, we have a special end-of-year episode planned, probably in two weeks. The plan is to have our occassional third chair host Bill join us to talk about our favorite games of 2015, our prediction results for this year, what we're looking forward to in 2016, and our predictions for next year. In anticipation for next week's episode, where our Question of the Week is going to invite listeners to submit your own 2016 gaming predictions (anything from wild speculation to the safe bets), go ahead and start sending those in. We'll collect them now, to read on that episode in two weeks.

Anyway, the off-topic lead-up to news, email, and game discussion in this episode is a little longer than usual. Somehow, we get sidetracked talking about video game collecting and my collection in particular. Then in listener email, we read answers to recent Questions of the Week. In fact, this week's new question comes from the same email. What are the most memorable character names you've encountered in a video game? We share ours (although Addie has no opinion on the matter), but write in to let us know yours!

But that's not all. The same listener provided us with an element-themed quiz for this week, where we guess the real game title from the fake in ten sets featuring earth, air, fire, and water. We make our choices and compare the results toward the end of the episode.

In the middle, for What We're Playing, Addie talks some about math puzzle game Power Lines (PC). In my pre-recorded segment, I talk more about KillZone: Mercenary (Vita/PSTV), Xenoblade Chronicles X (WiiU), and the Alawar-developed point-and-click adventure game Paranormal Pursuit: The Gifted One (PS3).

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