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Giant Bomb GOTY 2014 - Destiny Has Brought Us Here

Forget about stuff that don't matter like GOTY or whatever, here's the money question:

Do you think the Bomb Crew will reunite to return videogames to the world, or will The Day Mario Cried end with Jeff walking slowly into the sunset to a lonely guitar tune?

Jeff's part of the video will be him playing WWE Supercard. Because let's face it, it's not really a video game.
 
Forget about stuff that don't matter like GOTY or whatever, here's the money question:

Do you think the Bomb Crew will reunite to return videogames to the world, or will The Day Mario Cried end with Jeff walking slowly into the sunset to a lonely guitar tune?

Jeff's going to go off and start his rap career while rummaging through thousands of empty video game boxes until he finds a copy of Mario Party 3 at the bottom of a bin and cries at the realization that it's the only video game to survive gameageddon.
 
I also hope that Mordor doesn't win GotY simply because I didn't care for it at all. I found it to be extremely boring and shallow.

The combat feels worse than in Arkham and I'm kind of tired of that style anyway. There isn't much of a challenge to it either. The story was absolute garbage and not even Troy Baker could save the main character. The Nemesis System is indeed a neat addition but it never clicked for me like it apparently did with others. To me it's gimmick that needs a better game around it to shine and to make it more interesting.

Bayonetta 2 on the other hand is my favorite game of the year so I'm rooting for that even though I doubt it'll win.
 
Jeff's going to go off and start his rap career while rummaging through thousands of empty video game boxes until he finds a copy of Mario Party 3 at the bottom of a bin and cries at the realization that it's the only video game to survive gameageddon.

I think you might be onto something actually.

Since they said at the beginning of the first recap video that they'd finally finished playing all the Mario Party's, I think the series may end with them having to replay the post Mario Party 2 games again (or for the first time, as they've never played them yet).
 
I'm getting flashbacks to that one thread where people were angry SoM won Best Action/Adventure over Bayo2 during The Game Awards.



Crysis and Titanfall already had similar systems (Crysis with the ground pound and other super strength things and Titanfall with the boosting in different directions).
It's perfectly natural for Mordor to win a voting award just by virtue of not very many people having the access or the desire to play Bayonetta. It'd be different if Mordor was chosen on a curated list, even if the list was curated by multiple people.

That said, the Bombcast crew is the one curating this list, not people posting on neogaf, so whatever they choose is whatever they chose. It'd just bum me out that such a competent but generally uninspired game is 2014's GOTY. it's like Shakespeare in Love winning best picture in 1998, though to be fair 2014's slate of games is vastly inferior to 1998's slate of films.
This to me, undersells Shadow of Mordor quite a bit.

Yeah, the Nemesis system is the best part of that game. It's also pretty much, that game. Games these days, good games (and bad) come out built around the slimmest of mechanics. The fact that Mordor came out with a mechanic that was excellent, that was actually rather relevant to the game, that was functional and that was new, is a pretty big achievement.

Obviously somebody at Monolith realized quite early on what made the game they were making good/special, and clearly tied as many elements of the gameplay, visuals and story around that system. It's an open world game where interaction with the world actually felt meaningful, and I can't remember the last time that happened (certainly, it wasn't this year).

I also disagree it won't be remembered. My guess is that this mechanic will be copy pasted onto open world games, and maybe other genres entirely, for the next decade to some extent, and that the Mordor-esque label will be used (I'm guessing someone will come up with a better label than me though).

Mordor doesn't do anything particularly well, it just doesn't do anything besides the ending badly enough to be noteworthy. It doesn't do story better than Batman, it doesn't do world-building better than Assassin's Creed, and its combat isn't as good as Batman (not comparing it to Bayo since it's a totally different approach). The Nemesis system is the only thing different about the game when compared with its obvious influences. It's a better game than Batman or AC's most recent outings, but I don't know if "not on Most Disappointing list" is enough for a game to be GOTY.
 
Mordor doesn't do anything particularly well, it just doesn't do anything besides the ending badly enough to be noteworthy. It doesn't do story better than Batman, it doesn't do world-building better than Assassin's Creed, and its combat isn't as good as Batman (not comparing it to Bayo since it's a totally different approach). The Nemesis system is the only thing different about the game when compared with its obvious influences. It's a better game than Batman or AC's most recent outings, but I don't know if "not on Most Disappointing list" is enough for a game to be GOTY.

I'll repeat myself a little here; saying Mordor doesn't do anything well except it's new, well utilised, extremely enjoyable central gameplay mechanic is kind of insanely reductive.

Saying the game played it safe and took no chances or exceeded nowhere and got by through virtue of being totally unbroken is totally untrue. It took a huge risk in the Nemesis system, and it hit a home run. If that system was janked up; so much of the gameplay, so much of the story, so much of the open world interaction, hell, so much of the pre game coverage, would have been absolutely broken and silly to the extent it might find itself on the list for Most Dissapointing or Hottest Mess.

As an aside, I'll also say that yeah, Mordor does actually do some other stuff better than some of its inspirations. Having played Unity recently, the exploration and traversal in Mordor is vastly superior.
 
I hope Brad has gone on to organize a sport based off of DOTA to quench his thirst for DOTA in a post-video game world. I somehow want rich and snooty Jeff. He wears suits and only drinks wine.

I've enjoyed this year's stuff. Their picks and arguments don't get to me too much because I like Giant Bomb for their personalities and get where everyone is coming from because of this. It does make for some great (and strange) discussions in these threads though.
 
I'll repeat myself a little here; saying Mordor doesn't do anything well except it's new, well utilised, extremely enjoyable central gameplay mechanic is kind of insanely reductive.

Saying the game played it safe and took no chances or exceeded nowhere and got by through virtue of being totally unbroken is totally untrue. It took a huge risk in the Nemesis system, and it hit a home run. If that system was janked up; so much of the gameplay, so much of the story, so much of the open world interaction, hell, so much of the pre game coverage, would have been absolutely broken and silly to the extent it might find itself on the list for Most Dissapointing or Hottest Mess.

As an aside, I'll also say that yeah, Mordor does actually do some other stuff better than some of its inspirations. Having played Unity recently, the exploration and traversal in Mordor is vastly superior.

The point is that not everyone agrees that the Nemesis system is a home-run. In fact many aren't particularly impressed with it.
 
The point is that not everyone agrees that the Nemesis system is a home-run. In fact many aren't particularly impressed with it.

My problem with the Nemesis system is that it amounts to little if you're good at the game. I rarely died in Mordor, like maybe 5 times, so I didn't build up any relationship with any of the Orcs. I didn't even know who the hell my Nemesis at the end of the game was. Like it's supposed to be this climactic moment and it just fell 100% flat for me. It's cool that you can engineer a situation where a warchief is surrounded by 5 orcs who are all your pawns, but at the same time, the game is so easy by the end because you're so goddamn overpowered that it's more trouble than it's worth. I can just slaughter everyone with impunity or abuse the dumb AI and use stealth whenever that's more convenient or fun. I really liked the game but you really run roughshod all over all of its inventive mechanics and brute force your way past all of it if you're okay at it. I've heard from critics who are like "I died like 5 times to this one Orc and it was epic" and stuff like that, and that just baffles me. It's a really, really easy game once you've unlocked about half of your abilities.

At the end of the day, it hasn't really stayed with me, because it's too easy and the story was crap and the story missions weren't really inventive either. It's comfort food gaming, feels good, but the calories are empty.
 
The point is that not everyone agrees that the Nemesis system is a home-run. In fact many aren't particularly impressed with it.

Oh ok. If it's not something you like, I can't really argue with that.

I guess what I'm trying to get at with all my posts is, that if you are someone who liked it (such as myself or what seems like most of the GB crew) the consideration for Mordor as GOTY isn't surprising or depressing.
 
Oh ok. If it's not something you like, I can't really argue with that.

I guess what I'm trying to get at with all my posts is, that if you are someone who liked it (such as myself or what seems like most of the GB crew) the consideration for Mordor as GOTY isn't surprising or depressing.

For the vast majority it isn't surprising. The nemesis system is one of the best open-world mechanics ever created, and its potential is insane. The fact that they pulled it off so well right out of the gate is amazing.
 
Do the recap videos have any of the podcast material in it or is it all additional (original) content? Thanks!

Its all original. The first 10minutes is the usual GOTY skit and last 30minutes or so is a Quick Look of games people voted they wanted to see more of of.
 
Oh ok. If it's not something you like, I can't really argue with that.

I guess what I'm trying to get at with all my posts is, that if you are someone who liked it (such as myself or what seems like most of the GB crew) the consideration for Mordor as GOTY isn't surprising or depressing.

I agree. Even though I prefer Bayo 2,Mordor is a worthy GOTY this year in my book.
 
Jeff's going to go off and start his rap career while rummaging through thousands of empty video game boxes until he finds a copy of Mario Party 3 at the bottom of a bin and cries at the realization that it's the only video game to survive gameageddon.

Change this to Yoshi's Island / NIGHTs and you've got yourself a deal.
 
Mordor was fantastic at the beginning, but the arrow slowly moved toward boring the more powerful you get until the game really goes downhill the 20 min after you messed around with branding.

Nemesis system is pointless if you can just brute force your way through every fight midway through.
 
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How come they didn't make videos for their top 10 lists this year btw?

edit: didn't realize the last time they did that was way back in 2012. Damn.
 
How come they didn't make videos for their top 10 lists this year btw?

edit: didn't realize the last time they did that was way back in 2012. Damn.

Too much production work and lack of time probably. They only have Vinny, Alex and Patrick for a handful of days.
 
I agree. Even though I prefer Bayo 2,Mordor is a worthy GOTY this year in my book.

Yeah, neither is my personal GOTY but I can totally understand why others would go for them. I think its kinda silly to be "disappointed" that someone else didn't like a game as much as me.

Too much production work and lack of time probably. They only have Vinny, Alex and Patrick for a handful of days.

I think Jeff said exactly that. Its too time consuming
 
Watching the checking out something like Singstar was fun haha.

Singstar was soooo huge some years ago here in Europe. Kinda died down with the end of the PS3,
 
Jeff excluding Hearthstone from best debut made no sense at all.

I was listening to his reasoning and it made zero sense. Alex and co should've stuck up for it on principle because it was just Jeff being Jeff. I remember Patrick trying to convince Alex to try Hearthstone on Bombin' and it seemed like an impossible sell, and here we are and it's one of Alex's favorite games.
 
I think Jeff, Dan and Vinny will be the ones pushing for Mordor GOTY, with Alex, Brad and Patrick against it. No idea where Jason and Drew will fall. Brad seemed to have big issues with the story/lore side, and Alex/Patrick enjoyed other games more it seems like.
 
I think Jeff, Dan and Vinny will be the ones pushing for Mordor GOTY, with Alex, Brad and Patrick against it. No idea where Jason and Drew will fall. Brad seemed to have big issues with the story/lore side, and Alex/Patrick enjoyed other games more it seems like.

No way Brad goes against it, he was head over heels for that game when it released.

I was listening to his reasoning and it made zero sense. Alex and co should've stuck up for it on principle because it was just Jeff being Jeff. I remember Patrick trying to convince Alex to try Hearthstone on Bombin' and it seemed like an impossible sell, and here we are and it's one of Alex's favorite games.

His reasoning would have been acceptable enough...if they didn't end up giving it to another fucking spinoff!!!
 
Well he was one of the most vocal against it in favour of Sunset for debut game and says he hates what it did to the lotr lore.

No way he's getting Sunset anywhere with both Jeff and Vinny disliking it though. GOTY will come down to the game that most of the crew are at least "OK" with, which will almost certainly be Mordor.
 
Yeah, I'm beginning to think it'll be Mordor too, which kind of disappoints me. It's a great game, just feels a bit not right for such a high honor. I wish more of them had played Divinity or something.
 
No way he's getting Sunset anywhere with both Jeff and Vinny disliking it though. GOTY will come down to the game that most of the crew are at least "OK" with, which will almost certainly be Mordor.

Giant Bomb's Horse Trading Least Non-Acceptable OK Game of the Year
 
No way he's getting Sunset anywhere with both Jeff and Vinny disliking it though. GOTY will come down to the game that most of the crew are at least "OK" with, which will almost certainly be Mordor.

With Bayo 2 we know Dan, Patrick, Jeff and Jason all have it as one of their top games of the year. I don't recall anyone saying they dislike it unlike Alex with Mordor. Mordor can be criticised for a poor story and boring open world whereas Bayo has very weaknesses the story may not be great but it is dumb and if their is one thing GB loves it is dumb stories.
 
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