September 2015: XCOM 2
Chris: This is, I realise, a dad joke, and I am sorry.
Phil: This is one of the few times this year that a community posted a scan of the page and assumed it meant some big reveal was incoming. At least no one got death threats this time.
Samuel: Chris insists this was a good joke, other people liked it and it looks pretty, but it's not my favourite.
Phil: That was a very diplomatic sentence Sam.
Andy: This is my favourite of the lot.
Chris: SEE? Fuck you, Sam.
October 2015: Fallout 4
Tony: I like this one because it’s mine, but my abiding memory is of giving the art bod a nervous breakdown because we had about five minutes left to send it and he couldn’t grasp the concept of ‘abstract backdrop’.
Samuel: I think this is a good joke, but it came together in literally the last 20 minutes of us sending the issue to press. I feel a mixture of a hangover and drymouth looking at this. My heart beats twice as fast when I look at it. Still, I would eat that tasty dog.
Andy: The original idea for this month’s All Over was to make up a bunch of amusing Fallout perks, but we remembered we did that already around the time Fallout 3 was released.
November 2015: Metal Gear Solid V
Samuel: Andy Kelly wouldn't let us put him on a balloon (because it violates his serious personal brand and Twitter persona) so we used Phil instead. This is the best one we've done while I've been working on PC Gamer. I look absolutely fantastic in an eye patch and it got a good reception when we put it on Twitter, too. We made a professional photographer get the lighting just right for our stupid joke. Chris was good at acting like I was choking him, but I insist that we’re good mates IRL.
Chris: I feel like I’m selling this strangling thing harder than Sam is, but then again I suspect that if Sam were ever to actually choke me out he’d do it while blissfully staring into the middle distance, so I guess we’re both right.
Andy: My lawyers felt that my personal brand would be irreparably damaged if I agreed to be suspended from an imaginary Fulton balloon. I took their advice.
Phil: There was a point in photoshoots where I felt shame, but that disappeared around the time—a couple of years back—that I was playacting DayZ scenes with a banana in my pocket. I went on to use this picture of me being carried away by a fulton balloon as my official GMA awards headshot.
