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Giant Bomb GOTY 2014 - Destiny Has Brought Us Here

Sorry, but nothing about that looked fun to me and I really didn't get what was going on. It looked like a bunch of random movement, not some skilled play. I don't have that problem with just about any other competitive game series.

You couldn't tell what was going on? How? They weren't even moving around that fast or anything. It's not like he linked a DOTA match in the middle of a group fight.
 
How is that not skill-based? You have to separate your dislike of the game/series from whether the game can be played at a high level.

No, I'm sure it was. It just isn't recognizable to me and I almost never have that problem with other competitive games--even ones I haven't played myself.
 
You couldn't tell what was going on? How? They weren't even moving around that fast or anything. It's not like he linked a DOTA match in the middle of a group fight.

I could perceive the motions that were happening on screen, but I couldn't understand what was significant and what was not. If you told me that was just two AI-controlled characters going up against each other in some kind of exhibition mode, I would have no trouble believing you.
 
I still can't believe AC4 got in over GTAV.

I remember Brad said that GTA had boring mission design "drive here, press button, drive back" were his words. He didn't even get past the second heist.

And yet somehow he thought AC4 was better, which still had shit tier completely forgettable mission design, a terrible story, and bunk ass mechanics (like stealth gameplay).

Granted I haven't listened to all the podcasts yet, so hopefully Brad can atone for his sins by praising GTAV this year (if they will allow that).

Jeff in particular seemed to go ice cold for GTA for some unknown reason after awarding it a 5 star review. It probably had something to do with the lacklustre GTAO...but I dont think I heard a reason why he went cold on it, I just know he always seemed lukewarm towards it whenever it was brought up (including this year's re-release)

Brad's attitude towards it is pretty bizarre if you consider his opinion of the lastgen version to current gen, apart from the gfx and fp mode....its the same game which he appeared to give more time to this time around
 
i hope this was intentional

ibx1OmUdl0eNdT.gif


fruedian slip
 
Jeff in particular seemed to go ice cold for GTA for some unknown reason after awarding it a 5 star review. It probably had something to do with the lacklustre GTAO...but I dont think I heard a reason why he went cold on it, I just know he always seemed lukewarm towards it whenever it was brought up (including this year's re-release)

Brad's attitude towards it is pretty bizarre if you consider his opinion of the lastgen version to current gen, apart from the gfx and fp mode....its the same game which he appeared to give more time to this time around

Didn't understand the hate for GTAO either (technical problems aside).

I played it since day one (after technical probs) with a small group of friends and I had some of the most fun I have ever had in an online game.

I guess if you play it alone it isn't that fun...but that seems to be totally counter to the whole point of the online mode.
 
If Shadow of Mordor wins GOTY I'll be a little surprised now. They seem to love the Nemesis system but feel like the rest of the game is good but not amazing. Maybe that's enough for it win the award, I mean people say it's one of the only true "next gen" games, but it doesn't feel like it is in line with the rest of the podcast impressions.
 
Did anyone else think that the open world part in mordor was terrible.

Mordor is the most 8/10 game I've ever played. Nearly everything about the game is decent to good, but almost never great. Decent combat, decent traversal, decent missions. The story is shit but that's what's generally expected so whatever. The Nemesis system was almost irrelevant to me before learning Brand/Command late into the game because I died probably less than 10 times in the 22 hours it took me to get the plat. Being smart with arrows breaks the combat wide open, allowing tons of free kills, and uruk captains ain't shit in a 1v1 situation.

Fun game, generally decent, rarely disappointing, but never overly exciting.
 
Sorry, but nothing about that looked fun to me and I really didn't get what was going on. It looked like a bunch of random movement, not some skilled play. I don't have that problem with just about any other competitive game series.

To honestly claim this you are saying the players in that video do not have control of the characters. Which seems silly.
 
Brad said in the Best Debut debate that he kind of regretted giving it five stars. That sounds to me like not exactly GOTY confidence.

He didn't say he regret giving it five stars, he said he hates a few things about the game even though he gave it five stars.

He likes it in spite of the flaws he can see and acknowledge (which is kind of Brad's thing; look at Destiny).

And given the pushback Brad showed when Alex said he didn't think Mordor did anything well but the Nemesis system, I think Brad and Jeff may push for Mordor tomorrow.

Then again, who knows. Secret deals and whatnot may arise.
 
It was also amusing to hear Jeff push Sportsfriends so hard while dissing Smash considering one of the 4 games in Sportsfriends is basically Smash.
 
I could perceive the motions that were happening on screen, but I couldn't understand what was significant and what was not. If you told me that was just two AI-controlled characters going up against each other in some kind of exhibition mode, I would have no trouble believing you.

I don't understand this. Have you played a video-game before? A 5 year old can tell you what was going on in that video.

Do you know what Street Fighter is? Maybe that'll help explain the video to you. Zelda just bopped Ike two rounds in a row and got a perfect twice.

How did he do that? Have you played KOF? He dodged out of all of his attacks and just had great positioning.

In Super Smash Bros. You don't win by depleting someones life bar, you win by knocking them out of the stage.

Zelda was able to do that twice in a row without getting touched once.

Pretty great and trust me, no AI would be able to do that.
 
I could perceive the motions that were happening on screen, but I couldn't understand what was significant and what was not. If you told me that was just two AI-controlled characters going up against each other in some kind of exhibition mode, I would have no trouble believing you.

Dude, that video was amazing. I don't get why you are so blind to that...
 
I still can't believe AC4 got in over GTAV.

I remember Brad said that GTA had boring mission design "drive here, press button, drive back" were his words. He didn't even get past the second heist.

And yet somehow he thought AC4 was better, which still had shit tier completely forgettable mission design, a terrible story, and bunk ass mechanics (like stealth gameplay).

Granted I haven't listened to all the podcasts yet, so hopefully Brad can atone for his sins by praising GTAV this year (if they will allow that).

Their rose tinted glasses memories of AC4 are ridiculous. Sure the boat stuff was fun and innovative but everything else was complete garbage... The land missions (which are the vast majority of the game) were AC3 level of terrible.
 
Did anyone else think that the open world part in mordor was terrible.

yeah, didn't think anything about the open world was too interesting. not into lord of the rings, though, so maybe it's more (or less?) rewarding if you are.

feels like the GTA V of the year for me, I had a fun enough time playing it at first but every time I think back to it I like it less. nemesis system was cool though.
 
So I've been saving the podcasts to listen to starting tonight, and 30 minutes in Brad is criticizing the time investment to get good at Spelunky.

...

Lord give me strength.
 
Their rose tinted glasses memories of AC4 are ridiculous. Sure the boat stuff was fun and innovative but everything else was complete garbage... The land missions (which are the vast majority of the game) were AC3 level of terrible.

Exactly. The boat stuff is okay, but even that becomes very repetitive after a while.

The rest is the same garbage - follow and tail missions, stealth sections with stupid mechanics like hiding in bushes, snooze worthy combat, complete non-story. I mean, I realize they are going for the "meta-story", but that doesn't work when the actual meat and potatoes (The Kenway plot) revolves around finding more relics and ancient magical items. Does no one else see a contradiction there? I thought the whole point of the meta faux Abstergo game studio is to get away from the rest of the bunk AC plot of past?
 
Exactly. The boat stuff is okay, but even that becomes very repetitive after a while.

The rest is the same garbage - follow and tail missions, stealth sections with stupid mechanics like hiding in bushes, snooze worthy combat, complete non-story. I mean, I realize they are going for the "meta-story", but that doesn't work when the actual meat and potatoes (The Kenway plot) revolves around finding more relics and ancient magical items.

For the same reasons I don't really get the hate that Unity gets. Except for the technical issues complaints (which are 100% warranted of course) the game itself is a totally fine AC game. Most AC fans I know actually loved the game once they got it to work properly.

I mean sure it's terrible that they are just releasing the same game year after year and Ubi deserves the flack for that but if you take AC:Unity by itself it's a fine game.
 
Exactly. The boat stuff is okay, but even that becomes very repetitive after a while.

The rest is the same garbage - follow and tail missions, stealth sections with stupid mechanics like hiding in bushes, snooze worthy combat, complete non-story. I mean, I realize they are going for the "meta-story", but that doesn't work when the actual meat and potatoes (The Kenway plot) revolves around finding more relics and ancient magical items. Does no one else see a contradiction there? I thought the whole point of the meta faux Abstergo game studio is to get away from the rest of the bunk AC plot of past?

They were very invested in the idea that AC4 saved the series and ended up forgiving a lot of flaws and exaggerating a lot of its virtues because of it.
 
Smash criticism was silly but it's no worse than all the times that Patrick boils fighting games down to "memorizing sequences of buttons". Interesting to see everyone get all uptight about this while letting that kinda shit slide...
 
To honestly claim this you are saying the players in that video do not have control of the characters. Which seems silly.

No. Again, I'm sure it takes great skill. Otherwise players in the know would not be praising it. It just looks like a bunch of random movement to me. I'm not trying to convince you that it isn't amazing. It just doesn't seem like anything special to me. For context, I haven't played the games very much, but sort of understand the basics.

I don't understand this. Have you played a video-game before? A 5 year old can tell you what was going on in that video.

That's the way to go about it! Insult people for not understanding what you take for granted in your preferred video game franchise.

Dude, that video was amazing. I don't get why you are so blind to that...

I kind of explained it already, but that's OK. Let's just not pretend this is some Daigo parrying comeback moment or something.
 
Not to continue the AC4 dogpile (for what it's worth I loved the naval stuff and had a fine time with the game overall) but I think the weirdest thing about Unity after 4 is how it seems to incorporate none of the feedback Ubi would have gotten from 4's strange voting system.
 
For the same reasons I don't really get the hate that Unity gets. Except for the technical issues complaints (which are 100% warranted of course) the game itself is a totally fine AC game. Most AC fans I know actually loved the game once they got it to work properly.

I dunno, I'm an AC fan. I think my opinion counts. I think Unity's probably a very slightly worse game than 3, which makes it the worst game since 1. This isn't even about the bugs. If it were bug free, it would still be boring, have bad mission design, Arno would still control worse than Ezio or Edward, and the story would still be almost completely disconnected from the gameplay.

I mean, at one point
Arno is kicked out of the assassins
AND IT CHANGES LITERALLY NOTHING ABOUT THE WORLD OR GAMEPLAY. This is pretty basic shit!

It would still have microtransaction garbage, it would still have prompts that can't be accessed until a waterfall of tutorial activated prompts decide to disappear, it would still have boss fights that can be stunlocked, assassination missions that can be smokebombed instead of doing any of the actual mission design stuff, it would still have the same four crowd events, it would still perform like a wet dog.

Unity is not a good AC game. It's still a pretty bad AC game. The standards for what that means have just lowered considerably.
 
Not to continue the AC4 dogpile (for what it's worth I loved the naval stuff and had a fine time with the game overall) but I think the weirdest thing about Unity after 4 is how it seems to incorporate none of the feedback Ubi would have gotten from 4's strange voting system.

How so? They mostly got rid of the chasing and tailing/eavesdropping missions.
 
Hearing AC: Unity didn't have an equivalent to the "resquiat in pace" death scenes killed any interest for me. Also didn't like black flag, it made me want to play Sid Meier's Pirates! instead.
 
the story would still be almost completely disconnected from the gameplay.

I mean, at one point
Arno is kicked out of the assassins
AND IT CHANGES LITERALLY NOTHING ABOUT THE WORLD OR GAMEPLAY. This is pretty basic shit!

This was such an annoying part of the game. Even more than in the past, the story and the basic gameplay felt completely divorced. It's like you could easily identify which parts of the game were worked on by completely separate times that didn't communicate with each other very much. The connective tissue between all of the elements was poor in Unity.

It's too bad, because I think it had potential to be quite good considering the historical backdrop (which they completely squandered), the amazingly well-realized setting of Paris, and the characters which never had a chance to shine because of a completely uninteresting and inconsequential story.
 
Is it weird that Jeff says that people that play Smash "For Glory" style are crazy people but his argument against Smash is that it's a chaotic mess?
 
Not to continue the AC4 dogpile (for what it's worth I loved the naval stuff and had a fine time with the game overall) but I think the weirdest thing about Unity after 4 is how it seems to incorporate none of the feedback Ubi would have gotten from 4's strange voting system.

Didn't people just vote 5/5 for most of those?
Anyway the cast are right, Unity was a game nowhere near finished but clearly the Ubi soft formula is designed for that and they just expanded those concepts very basically to fill space.

The game has still reviewed well and seems to have had some decent player feedback. Ubisoft probably don't really need to do much more than copy and paste their formula each year.
 
Not to continue the AC4 dogpile (for what it's worth I loved the naval stuff and had a fine time with the game overall) but I think the weirdest thing about Unity after 4 is how it seems to incorporate none of the feedback Ubi would have gotten from 4's strange voting system.

That's what happens when you release a game every year. By the time they got the feedback in from Black Flag, Unity was too far along in developpement to change anything significant.

I dunno, I'm an AC fan. I think my opinion counts. I think Unity's probably a very slightly worse game than 3, which makes it the worst game since 1. This isn't even about the bugs. If it were bug free, it would still be boring, have bad mission design, Arno would still control worse than Ezio or Edward, and the story would still be almost completely disconnected from the gameplay.

I mean, at one point
Arno is kicked out of the assassins
AND IT CHANGES LITERALLY NOTHING ABOUT THE WORLD OR GAMEPLAY. This is pretty basic shit!

It would still have microtransaction garbage, it would still have prompts that can't be accessed until a waterfall of tutorial activated prompts decide to disappear, it would still have boss fights that can be stunlocked, assassination missions that can be smokebombed instead of doing any of the actual mission design stuff, it would still have the same four crowd events, it would still perform like a wet dog.

Unity is not a good AC game. It's still a pretty bad AC game. The standards for what that means have just lowered considerably.

Fair enough
 
I don't think I've ever read a coherent criticism of the Smash Bros. series gameplay as a whole*. Like if you don't like it, sure, fine, but every attempt I've ever seen to justify that dislike as some kind of objective bad gameplay thing has always fallen flat on its face with either complete fanboy nonsense or such overly vague and general criticisms that you might as well be dissing all multiplayer games ever made. It's like seeing someone honestly trying to say that all racing games are bad with something like, "Oh so I just hold down a button and move left and right until I'm in front of other cars, and then I just stay in front of them for a while? What's the point???"



*As opposed to individual faults of the games, but even those are 99% determined by comparison to the other games in the series and are based on what you want from the series
 
I would love Yoshi's Wooly World to be a perfect game with a 100 metacritic score, and then hear Jeff tell us why it doesn't even deserve to be in the top 10 next year.
 
I don't think I've ever read a coherent criticism of the Smash Bros. series gameplay as a whole*. Like if you don't like it, sure, fine, but every attempt I've ever seen to justify that dislike as some kind of objective bad gameplay thing has always fallen flat on its face with either complete fanboy nonsense or such overly vague and general criticisms that you might as well be dissing all multiplayer games ever made. It's like seeing someone honestly trying to say that all racing games are bad with something like, "Oh so I just hold down a button and move left and right until I'm in front of other cars, and then I just stay in front of them for a while? What's the point???"



*As opposed to individual faults of the games, but even those are 99% determined by comparison to the other games in the series and are based on what you want from the series

I think Smash is a lot of fun to play but when people try to tell me how amazing competitive Smash is my eyes glaze over. I find watching competitive Smash to be the most boring fighting game to watch by leaps and bounds. I just don't get the appeal.
 
I would love Yoshi's Wooly World to be a perfect game with a 100 metacritic score, and then hear Jeff tell us why it doesn't even deserve to be in the top 10 next year.
Wooly World is designed to be the most anti-Jeff game

Nintendo is literally weaponizing their game development
 
Jeff's argument against Smash is whatever keeps it from winning anything.

It was really weird on the Giant Bomb Gaming Minute when Jeff spent half of a spot on warning people about broken holiday games talking about how Smash can brick your Wii U

a problem that effected tens of people and was tied to corrupted firmware and had nothing to do with Smash Bros and was already solved and done with weeks earlier
 
I don't think I've ever read a coherent criticism of the Smash Bros. series gameplay as a whole*. Like if you don't like it, sure, fine, but every attempt I've ever seen to justify that dislike as some kind of objective bad gameplay thing has always fallen flat on its face with either complete fanboy nonsense or such overly vague and general criticisms that you might as well be dissing all multiplayer games ever made. It's like seeing someone honestly trying to say that all racing games are bad with something like, "Oh so I just hold down a button and move left and right until I'm in front of other cars, and then I just stay in front of them for a while? What's the point???"



*As opposed to individual faults of the games, but even those are 99% determined by comparison to the other games in the series and are based on what you want from the series

I think across the whole series most of my criticisms of Smash have been purely about the aesthetics. I think it handles scale poorly, like how Starfox stages and Earthbound stages don't conform to the sizes of their representative characters (incidentally this makes the Ridley Is Too Fucking Big saga even funnier). I think that Brawl, overall, was an ugly game that tried some really odd things with muted color palettes and detailed textures that made a lot of characters look pretty dumb.

It also started the trend of throwing a shitload of bad remixes of anything Sakurai could get his hands on, which made the soundtrack a massive crapshoot. 4 has this problem to an extreme degree, whereas I appreciated how in the 64 version and Melee the soundtrack was arranged in a consistent style. On a similar note, a lot of 4's kitchen sink ideas don't really work for me, especially not 8 player Smash, which is just the worst kind of chaos in my experience.

These are personal nitpicks, but as games, yeah, it's hard to criticize them. It's hard to even compare them to other games, because it's basically a genre unto itself. Its competition is a piddly assortment of clones that come in Playstation, TMNT, or Star Wars Episode III flavors.
 
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