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Giant Bomb GOTY 2014 - Destiny Has Brought Us Here

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...

Isn't that all fighting games are? Quarter circle forward punch punch kick?
 
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

Truth is they just usually don't like two things:
a) The gameplay mechanic of having characters health represented by a % that gives them defence to smash attacks, using smash attacks as a takedown and finally the platforming/fall mechanics.
b) Nintendo characters rather than a unique fighting cast.

Both of these things are why its popular with people though, its gameplay really is unique and using known characters allows for a good visual understanding behind their attacks that means players quickly learn what to expect from a very wide range of characters.

Instead of just saying "I dislike these gameplay mechanics" I'm not sure why they try to sell them as almost fake mechanics or a randomised system. Smash is clearly not randomised but at the same time by giving the characters weight to their health % you are adding a variable to the direction/location they will be in following your attack.

For me this is a good thing as it forces me to think after an attack rather than follow a clearly set up. Although in Glory 1 VS 1 its easy to plan a combination of attacks.

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...

Its not him criticising them. Hes just unable to play them and remember simple moves, Smash just has simple means of launching different attacks. But Pat is just saying he can't play them, not that he dislikes them for it or anything. Not sure what you can criticise him for there - he can't do anything about it.
 
Truth is they just usually don't like two things:
a) The gameplay mechanic of having characters health represented by a % that gives them defence to smash attacks, using smash attacks as a takedown and finally the platforming/fall mechanics.
b) Nintendo characters rather than a unique fighting cast.

Both of these things are why its popular with people though, its gameplay really is unique and using known characters allows for a good visual understanding behind their attacks that means players quickly learn what to expect from a very wide range of characters.

Instead of just saying "I dislike these gameplay mechanics" I'm not sure why they try to sell them as almost fake mechanics or a randomised system. Smash is clearly not randomised but at the same time by giving the characters weight to their health % you are adding a variable to the direction/location they will be in following your attack.

For me this is a good thing as it forces me to think after an attack rather than follow a clearly set up. Although in Glory 1 VS 1 its easy to plan a combination of attacks.

the truth is that the current smash has the option to play like a "normal" fighting game with health (meaning that reaching 0 will lead to a KO)
 
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:D
 
I hope Brad fights hard for Destiny. It seems like that's the only game that they're conflicted about that has a chance of landing in the top 10. Brad versus everyone else would be really entertaining.
 
Mik from Player One put GiantBomb on blast and he is not wrong. :O

I think that's a fair complaint. Why bother bringing a game up just to bring it up? Most of the time, the person who did that didn't even explain in any sort of detail why the game was worth mentioning. Complete waste of time.
 
I hope Brad fights hard for Destiny. It seems like that's the only game that they're conflicted about that has a chance of landing in the top 10. Brad versus everyone else would be really entertaining.

I'm certain it'll be in the top 10. Not sure what else they would put in front of it after listening to all the podcasts.
 
If my favorite game this year was Call of Duty Advanced Warfighter I wouldn't be enthusiastic or passionate about anything either.
 
I took the time to read all of the GB crew's Top 10s.

I don't get the saltiness over Brad's Top 10. Dota 2 is a considerably different game than it was a year ago (or the year before that). I think there's an argument for arbitrarily only considering games released on X year on only X year's GOTY list.

Some games have had post-release support that goes beyond just getting new iterations (Street Fighter 4) or piecemeal expansions (Left Behind).

For example, look at Marvel Heroes. It came out on 2013 but this year it got renamed to "Marvel Heroes 2015". There's even a seperate Metacritic page for Marvel Heroes and Marvel Heroes 2015. I know nothing about the game but it's probably different enough to warrant a second look by reviewers due to all the post-release updating by the developer. It's not exactly a new game but it's not the same game it was last year.

This is coming from someone who loves Dota 2 as much as Brad and relishes his constant gushing of the game on the podcast.
 
I'm also tired of the whole "I'm bringing up X game but it won't hang so bye X I just wanted to mention X." Quit it. If you don't care enough about a game to fight for it, don't bring it in to the conversation. These are supposed to be deliberations, are they not? That connotes a certain level of debate or argument.
 
Can someone summarize the argument and the context of what the player one guy is saying? On phone right now. I don't understand why another podcast would want to attack another site tbh.
 
Another day with more emphasis on why Mordor is winning it all. It's the only game to be on everybody's list and it's near the top for most of them.
 
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...

I was more annoyed by that than this smash bros thing if that makes you feel better. Since that's wrongly generalizing a whole genre and this is just Jeff saying some throwaway line.

tomorrow's gonna be real fun in here

edit: also I'm a day late but how does brad say Nuclear Throne is too hard and then bring up Crypt of the Necrodancer in the next sentence. Teach me how to dance, Brad.
 
Can someone summarize the argument and the context of what the player one guy is saying? On phone right now. I don't understand why another podcast would want to attack another site tbh.

Something about not being passionate about anything this year (ever?) and being anti-Wii? I couldn't really tell, either.
 
i dont want this to end... these game of the year videos are so great..

Love the Singstar one...

man i so want to buy the premier thing but cant ;_;
 
Can someone summarize the argument and the context of what the player one guy is saying? On phone right now. I don't understand why another podcast would want to attack another site tbh.

Basically; Giant Bomb don't care about video games and are jaded.
 
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...

Has Patrick ever done that? I thought he always just said the he is bad at memorizing button combinations and thus has a hard time with fighting games and combo-focused character action games. Seems perfectly fair. I don't think he ever said the genres were "nothing but memorizing button combinations," just that that is typically a big part of getting good at them.

"You guys [Giant Bomb] aren't passionate about one fucking thing."

Which was a weird thing to say, because all of the GB guys have been passionate about one thing or another.
 
Can someone summarize the argument and the context of what the player one guy is saying? On phone right now. I don't understand why another podcast would want to attack another site tbh.

They didn't attack them. They like Giantbomb. One of them just mentioned this:

I'm also tired of the whole "I'm bringing up X game but it won't hang so bye X I just wanted to mention X." Quit it. If you don't care enough about a game to fight for it, don't bring it in to the conversation. These are supposed to be deliberations, are they not? That connotes a certain level of debate or argument.

And how its because they just aren't passionate about anything.
 
They didn't attack them. They like Giantbomb. One of them just mentioned this:



And how its because they just aren't passionate about anything.

Sounds like a grievance that stems from expecting the GB discussions to be something they aren't. They say time and time again that even talking about a game is an honor, which is why they keep bringing up games they want to recognize but aren't necessarily willing to fight for.
 
Sounds like a grievance that stems from expecting the GB discussions to be something they aren't. They say time and time again that even talking about a game is an honor, which is why they keep bringing up games they want to recognize but aren't necessarily willing to fight for.

True. But I've been listening to them since they first started doing this and it's just a lot more apparent this year.
 
When dan called out jeff about smash bro was funny as fuck.

I dont get as worked up about these podcasts as most people do. We should kind of know these guys have wild and varying opinions on all sorts of games. But i did very much enjoy that moment from Dan. I think the crew generally lets Jeff get away with a little much during these deliberations (syndicate, the entire structure of that best debut category, ect...), so having Dan step up and make the right call there was nice. Because it didnt seem like anyone else was going to even though it they were mostly all for Smash Bros being on that list.
 
Sounds like a grievance that stems from expecting the GB discussions to be something they aren't. They say time and time again that even talking about a game is an honor, which is why they keep bringing up games they want to recognize but aren't necessarily willing to fight for.

Exactly. They're not kidding with the mentioning things being an honour! Knowing that your deliberations are going to be put out there changes the conversation, you know.
 
True. But I've been listening to them since they first started doing this and it's just a lot more apparent this year.

I think it's a consequence of having eight people sitting in instead of five.

You're getting more instances where someone has played a game and they're the only one (or maybe one other person has) and thus they don't feel like they can necessarily push it on a list unilaterally.

I dont get as worked up about these podcasts as most people do. Most of the people know these guys have wild and varying opinions on all sorts of games. But i did very much enjoy that moment from Dan. I think the crew generally lets Jeff get away with a little much during these deliberations (syndicate, the entire structure of that best debut category, ect...), so having Dan step up and make the right call there was nice. Because it didnt seem like anyone else was going to even though it they were mostly all for Smash Bros being on that list.

Dan's awesome. I loved that he stepped up on that.
 
I don't care that Brad likes Dota 2.
Don't care that he put it on his GOTY list last year.
Don't care that Destiny is on his list this year. Personal top 10s are personal. That's fine.
You cannot put a game that came out in 2013 on your 2014 GOTY list. Brad already put that game ON his 2013 list.
The others should put Windjammers and Pitfall on their 2014 lists if Brad is going to be like that. Or maybe Forrest Gump should win another Academy Award for Best Picture because its 1994 win wasn't enough..

>Before you ask, I really don't care if it didn't "come out" in 2014. Dota is over a decade old.
And you didn't play it.
>The beta of Dota 2 ran for years
And you didn't play it until 2012 at the earliest.
>before it technically went into release [in 2013].
And you only started playing it in 2013 (or maybe 2012, I don't quite recall).
>And even this year, the evolution of Dota 2's free-to-play model and the mainstream cultural impact of The International meant that Dota 2 was more "important" than most games that did come out this year, if you care about such things.
Importance has zero impact on the quality of a game, but whatever.

>... It's worth mentioning how much Valve actually monkeyed with the formula this year. Between drastically reworking the skills of a number of old heroes and making major changes to sacrosanct game elements like the way runes work and the very layout of the map, Dota continues to undergo changes that radically shake up the state of the game on a frequent basis. This is a refreshing contrast to the couple of years I spent with StarCraft, where balance changes are fairly drab and stat-driven. With Dota, every patch tends to make the game feel even fresher and more exciting.
I love Team Fortress 2 and I'd still think people would be dumb to put it on a GOTY list for any year other than 2007.

Although at some point we do run into the Ship of Theseus thought problem. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ship_of_Theseus

IMO, Dota 2 isn't there. It's still mostly the same thing as Dota 2 was last year. It's the Ship of Theseus with a red paint job and more aerodynamic sails.
 
Exactly. They're not kidding with the mentioning things being an honour! Knowing that your deliberations are going to be put out there changes the conversation, you know.

Yep. And really, the only people that do that often are Alex and Patrick, I'm not sure I would characterize either of them as lacking passion.
 
Holy shit.

"Swery drank with my mom.

...

Yeah. That's a story I'll tell somewhere else."

Swery conceived Dan Ryckert. It all makes sense now.
 
I don't care that Brad likes Dota 2.
Don't care that he put it on his GOTY list last year.
Don't care that Destiny is on his list this year. Personal top 10s are personal. That's fine.
You cannot put a game that came out in 2013 on your 2014 GOTY list. Brad already put that game ON his 2013 list.
The others should put Windjammers and Pitfall on their 2014 lists if Brad is going to be like that. Or maybe Forrest Gump should win another Academy Award for Best Picture because its 1994 win wasn't enough..

>Before you ask, I really don't care if it didn't "come out" in 2014. Dota is over a decade old.
And you didn't play it.
>The beta of Dota 2 ran for years
And you didn't play it until 2012 at the earliest.
>before it technically went into release [in 2013].
And you only started playing it in 2013 (or maybe 2012, I don't quite recall).
>And even this year, the evolution of Dota 2's free-to-play model and the mainstream cultural impact of The International meant that Dota 2 was more "important" than most games that did come out this year, if you care about such things.
Importance has zero impact on the quality of a game, but whatever.

>... It's worth mentioning how much Valve actually monkeyed with the formula this year. Between drastically reworking the skills of a number of old heroes and making major changes to sacrosanct game elements like the way runes work and the very layout of the map, Dota continues to undergo changes that radically shake up the state of the game on a frequent basis. This is a refreshing contrast to the couple of years I spent with StarCraft, where balance changes are fairly drab and stat-driven. With Dota, every patch tends to make the game feel even fresher and more exciting.
I love Team Fortress 2 and I'd still think people would be dumb to put it on a GOTY list for any year other than 2007.

Although at some point we do run into the Ship of Theseus thought problem. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ship_of_Theseus

IMO, Dota 2 isn't there. It's still mostly the same thing as Dota 2 was last year. It's the Ship of Theseus with a red paint job and more aerodynamic sails.

I agree with you. But you know what the problem is right? You can figure out the problem by just looking at most of their lists. They just didn't really care about anything else that came out...and I don't blame them. They keep playing the same exact game year after year. I wouldn't be excited either. Jeff had COD as his best game of the year. And they all had Far Cry 3 and Mordor.
 
I don't care that Brad likes Dota 2.
Don't care that he put it on his GOTY list last year.
Don't care that Destiny is on his list this year. Personal top 10s are personal. That's fine.
You cannot put a game that came out in 2013 on your 2014 GOTY list. Brad already put that game ON his 2013 list.
The others should put Windjammers and Pitfall on their 2014 lists if Brad is going to be like that. Or maybe Forrest Gump should win another Academy Award for Best Picture because its 1994 win wasn't enough..

>Before you ask, I really don't care if it didn't "come out" in 2014. Dota is over a decade old.
And you didn't play it.
>The beta of Dota 2 ran for years
And you didn't play it until 2012 at the earliest.
>before it technically went into release [in 2013].
And you only started playing it in 2013 (or maybe 2012, I don't quite recall).
>And even this year, the evolution of Dota 2's free-to-play model and the mainstream cultural impact of The International meant that Dota 2 was more "important" than most games that did come out this year, if you care about such things.
Importance has zero impact on the quality of a game, but whatever.

>... It's worth mentioning how much Valve actually monkeyed with the formula this year. Between drastically reworking the skills of a number of old heroes and making major changes to sacrosanct game elements like the way runes work and the very layout of the map, Dota continues to undergo changes that radically shake up the state of the game on a frequent basis. This is a refreshing contrast to the couple of years I spent with StarCraft, where balance changes are fairly drab and stat-driven. With Dota, every patch tends to make the game feel even fresher and more exciting.
I love Team Fortress 2 and I'd still think people would be dumb to put it on a GOTY list for any year other than 2007.

Although at some point we do run into the Ship of Theseus thought problem. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ship_of_Theseus

IMO, Dota 2 isn't there. It's still mostly the same thing as Dota 2 was last year. It's the Ship of Theseus with a red paint job and more aerodynamic sails.

Resposting my previous post:

I took the time to read all of the GB crew's Top 10s.

I don't get the saltiness over Brad's Top 10. Dota 2 is a considerably different game than it was a year ago (or the year before that). I think there's an argument for arbitrarily only considering games released on X year on only X year's GOTY list.

Some games have had post-release support that goes beyond just getting new iterations (Street Fighter 4) or piecemeal expansions (Left Behind).

For example, look at Marvel Heroes. It came out on 2013 but this year it got renamed to "Marvel Heroes 2015". There's even a seperate Metacritic page for Marvel Heroes and Marvel Heroes 2015. I know nothing about the game but it's probably different enough to warrant a second look by reviewers due to all the post-release updating by the developer. It's not exactly a new game but it's not the same game it was last year.
 
Will Smith's list seemed similar to what mine might end up looking like. I liked Rami's run-down, as well. It's a shame Will isn't around as much. Dave Lang's was surprising!

It's nice to see some love for Wolfenstein. Transistor.
 
I agree with you. But you know what the problem is right? You can figure out the problem by just looking at most of their lists. They just didn't really care about anything else that came out...and I don't blame them. They keep playing the same exact game year after year. I wouldn't be excited either. Jeff had COD as his best game of the year. And they all had Far Cry 3 and Mordor.

It was a terrible fucking year for games.
 
I agree with you. But you know what the problem is right? You can figure out the problem by just looking at most of their lists. They just didn't really care about anything else that came out...and I don't blame them. They keep playing the same exact game year after year. I wouldn't be excited either. Jeff had COD as his best game of the year. And they all had Far Cry 4 and Mordor.
2013 and 2014 were a little rough for games. I would have supported Jeff's 2013 suggestion of making his personal top 10 a top 10 starting at #5 and going to #15 - because it felt like the excellent games were missing that year.

Jeff has been very clear on why he likes the new CoD. It's not being fair to him to act like he's slipping into his old habits when really his argument is that it's a fresh take on the genre.
 
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