Giant Bomb |GOTY 2018| Cowboys vs. Gods

[xyla]

I really enjoyed the last 2 days this year. First year I listened to all of it.

I don't really get the criticism it's getting on here either.
Even when they were discussing most disappointing, they still showed a lot of respect for each other.
It's always fantastic to see Vinny use his dad powers to keep the group together and I could understand both sides (in this specific case) quite well.

Jason and Jeff always seem to be pretty much in the background and act as wildcards since they don't really show too much interest in the stuff the others played.
Brad was a solid moderator and his love for RDR2 was very entertaining. I truly believe that he couldn't understand how that game could somehow not become GOTY.
The rest provided really rounded and solid perspectives on their favorite games. Even the criticism was very well thought out and often clear from what angle they were approaching the game.

All in all I liked it much better than last year. More drama, better insights.

 

[No Depth]

Still the best RDR2 discussion...

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Actually the only reference I was lost on was Dan's 'cheesburger' joke. Anyone know where that one stemmed from?

 

[divisionbyzorro]

I'm pretty sure Jeff is just playing this smart. If the deliberations aren't going in the right way, he jumps in and says his piece. Otherwise, he doesn't necessarily feel to need to pile on. I wouldn't confuse that for not caring or being interested, but just for being smart to only put his voice in when its necessary.

Jason on the other hand doesn't make a point to try to play everything - that's not his role in the organization, and he's totally okay with that and totally okay to just play the stuff he loves.

 

[Crushed]

Actually the only reference I was lost on was Dan's 'cheesburger' joke. Anyone know where that one stemmed from?

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Miller's obsession with hamburgers in MGSV tapes.

 

[striderno9]

My main gripe with Dan's argument for RDR2 in Most Disappointing was his actual argument. He wanted to mimic similar passionate arguments that others have done in the past and instead of making the passionate arguments he said the word passionate over and over again. Say what you will about him but when Brad throws down for Minerva's Den he did so with a points and examples. That's the level of argument you need to pull a one man show on a game. Dan did none of that but got bailed out by Vinny cause he's a nice guy. If Alex felt like it, or if Jeff was pro RDR2 he would have pulled that argument a part easily.

Oh well, still, it was a great show this year. One of my favorites in a long time.

 

[Count of Monte Sawed-Off]

It's the complete opposite for me. Jeff is one of my favorite gaming personalities but I probably trust his opinion least of all.

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Yep. Although me and Jeff do agree which Call of Duty's don't suck. But then he goes on to love those games and I think they're ok at best. And we both like Persona 4, but I also like 3 and 5, and I can see Jeff hate those.

Brad or Alex are probably the two I'm closest to in taste, but it's still pretty far from 100%.

 

[EJS]

I rewatched Most Disapponting last night and I couldn't believe the pettiness of Dan to make Brad read the names off for Most Disappointing.

Brad thought the list was Sea of Thieves, Red Dead, and A Way Out and he even said Red Dead. The group correcting Brad to say Fallout substitutes A Way Out and then Dan requesting the names be read again was childish. I could tell that struck a nerve with Vinny and Brad.

 

[Hamchan]

I rewatched Most Disapponting last night and I couldn't believe the pettiness of Dan to make Brad read the names off for Most Disappointing.

Brad thought the list was Sea of Thieves, Red Dead, and A Way Out and he even said Red Dead. The group correcting Brad to say Fallout substitutes A Way Out and then Dan requesting the names be read again was childish. I could tell that struck a nerve with Vinny and Brad.

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Good on Dan. This is the sort of spiteful stuff that makes Giant Bomb GOTY worth watching.

 

[No Depth]

Miller's obsession with hamburgers in MGSV tapes.

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Ah gotcha, MGSV is the only one I never played fully.

 

[EJS]

Good on Dan. This is the sort of spiteful stuff that makes Giant Bomb GOTY worth watching.

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No it doesn't. It's suppose to be a celebration of games, not personal victories. It was lame.

 

[Hamchan]

No it doesn't. It's suppose to be a celebration of games, not personal victories. It was lame.

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The first 3 days are for celebrating. The rest are for arguments, personal victories and spitefullness. It was great.

 

[tadale]

I'm still working my way through Day 4.

I've been listening for ten years now - difficult to believe. I have enjoyed these discussions since 2008, and my taste in games have evolved over the years. There's not a single Giant Bomb staff member past or present whose tastes align perfectly with my own, but I always appreciate Brad and Vinny's takes on storytelling. Red Dead 2 is my favorite game this year, specifically for the reasons that Brad talks about in the podcasts - storytelling, world design, immersion, detail.

 

[EJS]

The first 3 days are for celebrating. The rest are for arguments, personal victories and spitefullness. It was great.

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Well, I disagree. I can do without the pettiness.

 

[Yerffej]

It's the complete opposite for me. Jeff is one of my favorite gaming personalities but I probably trust his opinion least of all.

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Same. If he isn't on the Bombcast one week, I probably don't want to listen. As far as tastes go, he's so far from mine 95% of the time.

 

[Driggonny]

This is the time of year to celebrate games getting stabbed to death

 

[wenis]

This is the time of year to celebrate games getting stabbed to death

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Someone needs to do it

 

[Hella]

Wrong thread for my very important question. Whoops.

 

[Avengers23]

GOTY season is when the very specific knives come out:

 

[evrythngwastakn]

Well, I disagree. I can do without the pettiness.

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Totally agree. I'm almost through day three and contemplating skipping the last two. I didn't finish last year because it just got to be too anger inducing. It's the one area of the site's content that I feel really suffers from the larger staff. When it was just four of them it felt a lot better.

 

[MattB]

The only thing that I disliked during the whole thing was red dead being on best style and octopath isn't. Like that was the only thing making me want to rip out my hair.

 

[ev0]

Sorry, when you said he didn't beat it even though he saw the main story through to its end, I thought you were implying. My bad.

Anyways, it was a cool scene but the entire thing felt a little dreamlike. Sort of toothless. Like,

Spoiler

Sadie and Charles are both put in mortal peril but everything turns out way way better than okay. It was just too happy ending, even with the Pinkerton's waiting in the wings, to feel appropriate to the rest of the game's tone.

Maybe that was just me though.

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Hmmm

Spoiler

I think that ending was happy(ish) purposely to contrast Arthur's story (but also to what you know will happen to John). It's also still a tragic ending if you take into account that because you (John) just did that you just set your own eventual doom. It was indeed showing that shit was actually working out too well and he went and ruined it. Warranted or not.
I will agree about playing with emotions cheaply with Sadie and Charles, but also because that shit worked on me lol.

 

[EJS]

Same. If he isn't on the Bombcast one week, I probably don't want to listen. As far as tastes go, he's so far from mine 95% of the time.

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Sometimes I feel like Jeff seems disinterested or very hard to please when it comes to games. Was Hitman the last time he was floored? He gave Horizon a 5/5 but didn't even consider it in his top 10 games last year.

 

[Cobalt Thorium G]

People take this shit far, far too seriously.

 

[TastyBurger666]

No it doesn't. It's suppose to be a celebration of games, not personal victories. It was lame.

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No, the mask slips on every single person round that table, and you can betcha petty scores or beefs are being settled through that discussion.

Same every year, the those idolised 'Journalists' fall off their pedestals and come down into the muck with the rest of the proles.

 

[deepFlaw]

I mean, the category is Most Disappointing. I'm very much in favor of more celebration and less bloodshedding but that one's always going to be about being real harsh about some games.

It was petty, but given how that argument went down, funny enough.

 

[Yerffej]

Sometimes I feel like Jeff seems disinterested or very hard to please when it comes to games. Was Hitman the last time he was floored? He gave Horizon a 5/5 but didn't even consider it in his top 10 games last year.

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His arguments against a thing make little sense sometimes. He found the combat in Spider Man and God of War to be "boring". Spider Man I can see getting repetitive, but from what I can tell, he never even got far enough to really open up everything. Same with God of War. I'll never understand how someone can call that combat boring. Both games, are at the very least engaging. What you said about Forza is weird as well. Even something as trivial as the cinematic camera in RDR2. He has to say some weird bullshit like "it isn't cinematic" or whatever he said. I'm like what? Motherfucker are you just saying shit to say negative shit? He's weird like that. I love him talking about games and the industry like no other on the Bombcast, though.

 

[New Donker]

Sometimes I feel like Jeff seems disinterested or very hard to please when it comes to games. Was Hitman the last time he was floored? He gave Horizon a 5/5 but didn't even consider it in his top 10 games last year.

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I think he just prefers a real gamey game. Look at his love for Mario Maker.

 

[BearPawB]

Jeff hates animation priority.
He wants to be able to cancel his moves into other moves, and dash around.
He likes speed, he likes fluidity.

RdR2 has movement like that deliberately. It isn't like they couldn't figure out how to make it snappy. They wanted to give Arthur weight/momentum. Jeff was always going to hate that.

I don't agree with Jeff a lot on games, but I feel like I understand why he doesn't like games and I am fine with that.

 

[Yerffej]

Jeff hates animation priority.
He wants to be able to cancel his moves into other moves, and dash around.
He likes speed, he likes fluidity.

RdR2 has movement like that deliberately. It isn't like they couldn't figure out how to make it snappy. They wanted to give Arthur weight/momentum. Jeff was always going to hate that.

I don't agree with Jeff a lot on games, but I feel like I understand why he doesn't like games and I am fine with that.

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That's all true, but it doesn't apply to God of War and especially not Spider Man. Neither game is hampered down by animation priority like RDR2 is.

 

[Truant]

People take this shit far, far too seriously.

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Yeah, that's my take. If I hadn't actually listened to the podcasts, this thread would make you think GB was disbanding and the crew mortal enemies for life.

Also, regarding F76. I think it's a mistake to use the announcement-vs-release as some sort of basis for how disappointing something is. Just the fact that this game exists in the state it does is a disappointment. It doesn't matter if the reveal didn't instill confidence, this is AAA Bethesda Fallout game released in 2018, and it's disappointing as fuck.

 

[divisionbyzorro]

Yeah, that's my take. If I hadn't actually listened to the podcasts, this thread would make you think GB was disbanding and the crew mortal enemies for life.

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Coworkers have a heated argument in the workplace, news at 11.

 

[BearPawB]

That's all true, but it doesn't apply to God of War and especially not Spider Man. Neither game is hampered down by animation priority like RDR2 is.

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Yeah, I think he disliked spider-man for different reasons
Mostly that a lot of the upgrades felt marginal and he had difficulty telling the enemies apart.

The thing about spider-man is it lets pretty much any playstyle work. so the combat is as boring as you are. With the right playstyle and imagination I think it shines. BUt you can certainly find success just hitting webblossom over and over again and doing basic combo chains

 

[Yerffej]

Yeah, I think he disliked spider-man for different reasons
Mostly that a lot of the upgrades felt marginal and he had difficulty telling the enemies apart.

The thing about spider-man is it lets pretty much any playstyle work. so the combat is as boring as you are. With the right playstyle and imagination I think it shines. BUt you can certainly find success just hitting webblossom over and over again and doing basic combo chains

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That's true.

 

[Ichi]

Jeff hates animation priority.
He wants to be able to cancel his moves into other moves, and dash around.
He likes speed, he likes fluidity.

RdR2 has movement like that deliberately. It isn't like they couldn't figure out how to make it snappy. They wanted to give Arthur weight/momentum. Jeff was always going to hate that.

I don't agree with Jeff a lot on games, but I feel like I understand why he doesn't like games and I am fine with that.

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huh? god of war feels like it has weight, without being bogged down by animations.

at some point, there is a limit to how much of an excuse animation priority is to be used instead of just piss poor design decision.

 

[Deleted member 13645]

Yeah, I think he disliked spider-man for different reasons
Mostly that a lot of the upgrades felt marginal and he had difficulty telling the enemies apart.

The thing about spider-man is it lets pretty much any playstyle work. so the combat is as boring as you are. With the right playstyle and imagination I think it shines. BUt you can certainly find success just hitting webblossom over and over again and doing basic combo chains

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The latter part is something I think he also had issues with in Horizon ZD. The game gives you a lot of tools to be creative in combat, but I recall him mentioning that at some point he just started cheesing it by using the whistle lure and assassinating the robots since the AI would always fall for it.

 

[Driggonny]

Jeff seems kinda like me. I'm not good at making my own fun in a game if I'm not forced to

 

[divisionbyzorro]

I really hope that the next time someone says "Red Dead Redemption 2" on the Beastcast, Dan responds by saying, "oh, you mean one of Giant Bomb's most disappointing games of 2018? That game?"

 

[Deleted member 2145]

Red Dead 2 was one of the biggest disappointments for Greg and Phil of the Player One Podcast as well

 

[Weebos]

Just finished Most Disappointing, and yeah that was surprisingly contentious.

Looking forward to the top 10.

 

[Static]

Jeff seems kinda like me. I'm not good at making my own fun in a game if I'm not forced to

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Arkham taught me to use all the things in a game like that, so I was perfectly satisfied to just focus on doing that and making big ass combos in spider man, particularly when enabled by generous timer, refreshes during navigation, and fast movement. But then I got to Taskmastrs combat trials which really made me feel I'd been playing wrong. They made it feel like playing with your proverbial food was wrong. If you wanted golds in them, combos didn't really matter. Variation didn't matter. All that mattered was efficiency. Which meant they really reinforced the value of leaning very hard on a limited section of the games skill set. It kind of broke my feelings for the combat throughout the whole game afterwards. So I feel like I agree with Jeff (and you) holding Spider-Man's abusable moves against it.

 

[Truant]

Jeff seems kinda like me. I'm not good at making my own fun in a game if I'm not forced to

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That's completely fair. You could easily argue that this is bad game design.

 

[Deleted member 42]

People take this shit far, far too seriously.

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This 139 page frightens and saddens me

 

[Hindl]

The right game won GotY

Bummed about Celeste snub but eh

 

[CloseTalker]

Every year, the Best Music category gets me riled up. Anything somewhat orchestral is written off as something they've heard before, but throw on chiptunes or Donut County's twee indie music (which is great), and it's suddenly the second coming of Christ. I don't mind if that's their personal taste, but don't pretend like every orchestral piece of music is the same thing.

 

[Deleted member 9237]

It's weird to me how Dead Cells ended up on the #2 spot with basically zero discussion. Don't have any issue with its placement, just strange to me that it was barely discussed

Name 10 games better than x - "Name 10 games better than Brothers" in biggest dissapointment talks for Way Out, also said I believe by Jeff for Burnout Paradise Remastered in top 10.

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I don't think Jeff said it about Burnout in that way, he just saying there were better games so it had to get cut, it wasn't a Brother's reference

 

[ArjanN]

It's weird to me how Dead Cells ended up on the #2 spot with basically zero discussion. Don't have any issue with its placement, just strange to me that it was barely discussed

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I figure it's basically like with Tetris in they all largely already know what games the others like and they know it's a shoo-in anyway. Also it's been around in some form a long time. I wouldn't have minded some more indepth talk though.

 

[Deleted member 47700]

It's weird to me how Dead Cells ended up on the #2 spot with basically zero discussion. Don't have any issue with its placement, just strange to me that it was barely discussed

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Yeah this slightly bothered me also, God of War was barely glossed over too.

 

[Deleted member 9237]

Also, I have to add, this year as well as last year, whoever edits the podcasts didn't leave in the extended version of the holiday theme. I would always listen to that in its entirety (~8 min) and I miss it

 

[KujoJosuke]

Jeff seems kinda like me. I'm not good at making my own fun in a game if I'm not forced to

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Yeah I'm kinda the same way. It's why I bounced off Horizon and BOTW and don't even wanna bother with Spider-Man or RDR2.

It just leads to me having a lot of downtime looking for fun things and then I get like 10 minutes of fun, back to 20 minutes of trying to find another 10 minutes.

It's why I didn't like BOTW because wandering around only found you new shrines which I never enjoyed and when I did one the only thing to look forward to was...another shrine.

 

[Jintor]

has jeff basically stopped playing the ubisoft open worlds at this point or no