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Giant Bomb GOTY 2014 - Destiny Has Brought Us Here

That's how I feel about Destiny. It makes me rage because it's misses the point in so many ways, and it's miles away from what it could have been, but the shell of a game we got instead is still one of the most important piece of gaming I played this year, and it's definitely in my top 10, if not in my top 3.

Most disappointing doesn't mean worst game.

I think there is precedent for that in the GB GOTY too. I remember a similar discussion about how a disappointing game can still be a great game. I dont think thats true fo Destiny, but Brad def does.
 
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Asking a Smash fan to relax, is like asking Dan who crafted the One Ring.
 
this is what happens when the first thing you do every morning for four days straight is check giant bomb



Dave is definitely the hardest to draw; something very difficult to capture about his look. To my surprise both Alexis and Jason were a lot easier to capture than I anticipated, possibly because Jason it turns out just looks like a more built Tintin. Rory was a mite difficult but if you just put a dog on his shoulder everything works out.
Those aren't half bad. Good job. Do you have a Tumblr or one of those new-fangled blogamajigs?
 
this is what happens when the first thing you do every morning for four days straight is check giant bomb

Dave is definitely the hardest to draw; something very difficult to capture about his look. To my surprise both Alexis and Jason were a lot easier to capture than I anticipated, possibly because Jason it turns out just looks like a more built Tintin. Rory was a mite difficult but if you just put a dog on his shoulder everything works out.

These are sick! My only suggestion would be to put small bags under Alex's eyes. Otherwise you pretty much nailed'em.
 
Those aren't half bad. Good job. Do you have a Tumblr or one of those new-fangled blogamajigs?

I have a tumblr but I haven't updated it for half a year or so :-|

It's pretty hard to get Dan's beard just right; he's right on the edge of 'deranged woodsman' and... well... 'even more deranged woodsman'
 
"Jeff's disinterest in Smash is only surpassed by Smash fans inability to understand it." - Abraham Lincoln

Yeah, the whole Smash discussion over the past few+ pages has been really strange.

"He (they w/Brad) doesn't get it. They're wrongfully dismissive of the game/fans and won't articulate why." accentuated with, "Well just look at their Top 10, they like CoD/DOTA!"...strikes me as both strange and at odds with with the entire foundation of the argument against them.

They're incompetent for not liking your fave, Smash, but they're also idiots for liking your not-fave, CoD/DOTA. I'm sensing incongruities here.
 
Listening to last year's shows and how they came to choosing Proteus for best looking game is so hilarious. I still don't understand how that won, lol
 
Them not picking smash makes a lot of sense, and I really have no problems with it whatsoever. I'm a huge Nintendo fan, but even I can understand them going with something a little more new and original than the fourth game in a series that's barely iterating at this point.

I think the reason Nintendo fans get bent out of shape over this kind of stuff is mainly because they want Nintendo to be held up to that AAA standard of "being included just because it's a big AAA game" even though it's been a niche for quite a while. GB tends to treat it like a niche, with Jeff and Brad (although, really just Jeff, Brad's pretty cool with a lot of Nintendo games) coming from a background that doesn't really line up with the majority of Nintendo fans here. Smash and many other Nintendo games have the whole added appeal of "being a Nintendo game" that really attracts Nintendo fans (duh) but does nothing if you didn't really grow up with that.

None of that logic makes any sense, but that's probably where the mindset's coming from. I've got a good lock on the GB's crew's personalities, likes, and dislikes, so I'm just used to at this point and I can enjoy their picks based on what I know the crew's into. That's why I'm glad they have these podcasts: Sure, X game may not have won the X of the year award, but you can see who did like it and why, even if it's not articulated well. Just like the rest of the site, it's built around their personalities, not just arbitrary scores and a veil of secrecy. It's also why I really like the personal top 10 lists and the guest lists more than the overall categories. They even know how dumb awards really are and build in some really funny content to frame it all in.
 
Sorry if discussed.

So with today's schedule of Vinny, Kasavin, Shawn Allen, Giancarlo and Zoe, do they put up more today or are we figuring tomorrow is Jason, Stardust, Alex and a couple others?
 
IMO the "Best Styyyyyllllleee" section was pretty unnecessary and the joke wore pretty thin after a while.

However, the "Hottest Mess" category is incredible. Drew's little rant was great. Incredible that DriveClub and Unity were overshadowed. Love the quips about EA not being nominated.
 
Sorry if discussed.

So with today's schedule of Vinny, Kasavin, Shawn Allen, Giancarlo and Zoe, do they put up more today or are we figuring tomorrow is Jason, Stardust, Alex and a couple others?

I'm thinking they put up everything today. At least 6 guests, and all the other staff lists. They might push a couple of the staff lists to tomorrow though, no way to be sure.
 
I think the reason Nintendo fans get bent out of shape over this kind of stuff is mainly because they want Nintendo to be held up to that AAA standard of "being included just because it's a big AAA game" even though it's been a niche for quite a while. GB tends to treat it like a niche, with Jeff and Brad (although, really just Jeff, Brad's pretty cool with a lot of Nintendo games) coming from a background that doesn't really line up with the majority of Nintendo fans here.

Yeah, I can certainly see this. I think the big head-scratcher for me is the implication (painting in broad strokes here) that if one is not a vocal Nintendo fan then they're an Enemy of the State. What makes me put on the brakes is the understanding that not every GB member is going to be a Nintendo guy. Nor do they need to.

Dan is treated as a hero for bringing Nintendo into the conversation. Patrick and Alex to a lesser degree. But in my mind, all the guys have their unique tastes to bring to the table.

Brad is big on MOBAs. Drew gets jiggy with the hardcore flight sims. Jeff likes 1v1 fighters and retro classics. Patrick likes smaller indies & horror. Alex is the sports guy. And yes, Dan champions Nintendo.

So what's the problem here? That Jeff is dismissive of Nintendo? That's just one piece of a very diverse pie. And quite frankly, I find the insults thrown his way for not liking/supporting the company or its fans rather selfish. I personally think the podcast and video content from Giant Bomb would be an utter bore if every contributing member were clones of each other in regards to personal tastes.

I can see where Nintendo fans might feel slighted by Jeff's dismissive attitude toward the company/fans, but honestly isn't that liberally sprinkled around in other areas? How much griefing do Ubisoft, EA, Activision, etc. "enjoy" when they mess up? How much trashing has MS gotten over the past couple years over Xbox One?

Everyone takes their lumps in due course. Just as everyone enjoys their time in the sun when earned. Not sure why Nintendo has to be an unassailable special snowflake in this regard.

The guys are just gonna like what they like, simple as that. Seems kinda foolish to expect their personal tastes to line up with one's own. Even doubly so to get bent out of shape over it.
 
Matt Boch and Stardust have been put on the schedule. So that's those two plus Greg Kasavin, Shawn Allen, Zoe Quinn and Giancarlo as the last batch of guest top 10s today :)
 
Yeah, I can certainly see this. I think the big head-scratcher for me is the implication (painting in broad strokes here) that if one is not a vocal Nintendo fan then they're an Enemy of the State. What makes me put on the brakes is the understanding that not every GB member is going to be a Nintendo guy. Nor do they need to.

Dan is treated as a hero for bringing Nintendo into the conversation. Patrick and Alex to a lesser degree. But in my mind, all the guys have their unique tastes to bring to the table.

Brad is big on MOBAs. Drew gets jiggy with the hardcore flight sims. Jeff likes 1v1 fighters and retro classics. Patrick likes smaller indies & horror. Alex is the sports guy. And yes, Dan champions Nintendo.

So what's the problem here? That Jeff is dismissive of Nintendo? That's just one piece of a very diverse pie. And quite frankly, I find the insults thrown his way for not liking/supporting the company or its fans rather selfish. I personally think the podcast and video content from Giant Bomb would be an utter bore if every contributing member were clones of each other in regards to personal tastes.

I can see where Nintendo fans might feel slighted by Jeff's dismissive attitude toward the company/fans, but honestly isn't that liberally sprinkled around in other areas? How much griefing do Ubisoft, EA, Activision, etc. "enjoy" when they mess up? How much trashing has MS gotten over the past couple years over Xbox One?

Everyone takes their lumps in due course. Just as everyone enjoys their time in the sun when earned. Not sure why Nintendo has to be an unassailable special snowflake in this regard.

The guys are just gonna like what they like, simple as that. Seems kinda foolish to expect their personal tastes to line up with one's own. Even doubly so to get bent out of shape over it.

Nintendo didn't really mess up though. They had one of their best years in a while. So your argument makes absolutely no sense.
 
Nintendo didn't really mess up though. They had one of their best years in a while. So your argument makes absolutely no sense.

But if you don't like Smash or MK that much, it doesn't really mater if they didn't mess up. Mario Kart is Mario Kart, and Smash is Smash. If you don't like the Smash franchise, the newest version won't convert you.
 
But if you don't like Smash or MK that much, it doesn't really mater if they didn't mess up. Mario Kart is Mario Kart, and Smash is Smash. If you don't like the Smash franchise, the newest version won't convert you.

Even if you don't like those, its not like DKTF, Toad, Bayonetta 1/2, and from indies, Shovel Knight, The Fall, all didn't come out on the WiiU.
 
Even if you don't like those, its not like DKTF, Toad, Bayonetta 1/2, and from indies, Shovel Knight, The Fall, all didn't come out on the WiiU.

I'm not sure what your point is here. Jeff pushed for Wii U to win Best Exclusives and was pretty bullish on the system's current/future library yesterday.

Jeff: Super strong year for [Nintendo], felt that way coming out of E3 you know, like some of the stuff they have coming next year, I think they are making good on games for that system that are worth playing. Even if they don't take advantage of that screen or hardware, I look at Splatoon and go 'fucking yeah man'.

It's at 1:02:55 for me on Day Three if you don't believe such words could ever pass his lips.
 
Even if you don't like those, its not like DKTF, Toad, Bayonetta 1/2, and from indies, Shovel Knight, The Fall, all didn't come out on the WiiU.

I don't think anyone's disputing that. But I'm talking about the two franchises Nintendo fans generally gets most upset about others not liking.
 
Nintendo didn't really mess up though. They had one of their best years in a while. So your argument makes absolutely no sense.

I'm not suggesting that they messed up. Only saying that when a company doesn't deliver, dirt gets kicked around on the podcast. And for Jeff, Nintendo hasn't delivered with their legacy IPs., hardware construction, or online infrastructure. You can chalk it up as, "That crazy old Jeff." but its hardly an unheard of sentiment.

You might also notice that he's been pretty high on Bayonetta 2 and Splatoon, so it's not even a black & white issue in spite of him being more skeptical of Nintendo than not.
 
I'm not sure what your point is here. Jeff pushed for Wii U to win Best Exclusives and was pretty bullish on the system's future library yesterday.

Same day we also had the whole recommendation on WiiU subject segment that was very bizarre as well... he may have pushed the "best exclusives" but it felt incredibly begrudgingly and only because Sony may as well have lit itself on fire this year and Microsoft didn't have the # of quality titles.

He's got a definite fatigue and, seeming, bias against the Nintendo staples but all the same seems incredibly not-that on other franchises that have an even more regular and samey production cycle. That is definitely spilling over into other discussions and titles unless the game is entirely NotNintendo Nintendo.

It's at 1:02:55 for me on Day Three if you don't believe such words could ever pass his lips.

I know he said it, lol. Its more the overall.

I don't think anyone's disputing that. But I'm talking about the two franchises Nintendo fans generally gets most upset about others not liking.

I think the problem there was the way they were dismissed. Smash came down to a tautology, and Mario Kart was nonsensical "it becomes unplayable in four player" with the title getting marked down for working at a locked 30FPS (an industry standard) because it works at 60FPS otherwise.

I don't think anyone (not crazy) has any actual dislike for people who don't like the titles. Its more a matter of being honest with the fact not coming up with closed logic loops (also was there really a need to insult people who like competitive Smash?) or otherwise.
 
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
Smash is a game that has literally changed nothing in mechanics over the course of a decade. That's primarily my criticism of it, I'm bored of it. It's the same game every four years with slight increments to the graphics and tweaks to physics. It's kind of sad that the Call of Duty series has advanced more than Smash Brothers.

Another reason why I think the Bomb crew doesn't like Smash is that it's an extremely methodical fighter that is incredibly basic in its move set. The combination of these things makes it feel "boring" to Brad.
 
Nintendo didn't really mess up though. They had one of their best years in a while. So your argument makes absolutely no sense.

Even if Nintendo had their best year ever, it's absolutely fine to not be really big on that stuff.

Liking Nintendo's output is not mandatory. That said, Nintendo have - and I'm sure with todays podcast, will continue to - get its fare amount of dues for their output this year on these podcasts. I feel like Jeff has been plenty positive on Nintendo where he's felt he wanted to be, and that's totally fine. There's absolutely no harm in not pushing for Smash Bros in a world where Nidhogg exists.
 
Smash is a game that has literally changed nothing in mechanics over the course of a decade. That's primarily my criticism of it, I'm bored of it. It's the same game every four years with slight increments to the graphics and tweaks to physics. It's kind of sad that the Call of Duty series has advanced more than Smash Brothers.

Another reason why I think the Bomb crew doesn't like Smash is that it's an extremely methodical fighter that is incredibly basic in its move set. The combination of these things makes it feel "boring" to Brad.

If Smash Bros. had as many games as Call of Duty I might see your point, but as it stands there are only four major iterations of Smash and they all have different rosters, stages, physics, and feature sets, which is about all Call of Duty changes year to year as well. I'm not sure what else you could ask for from a fighting franchise.

Also, calling Smash's movesets "incredibly basic" is a bit... completely wrong? It has a simpler control setup than traditional fighting games but that's about it.
 
Smash is a game that has literally changed nothing in mechanics over the course of a decade. That's primarily my criticism of it, I'm bored of it. It's the same game every four years with slight increments to the graphics and tweaks to physics. It's kind of sad that the Call of Duty series has advanced more than Smash Brothers.

Another reason why I think the Bomb crew doesn't like Smash is that it's an extremely methodical fighter that is incredibly basic in its move set. The combination of these things makes it feel "boring" to Brad.

Its seven years between Smash titles except the original to Melee. CoD launches every year, of course it'd need constant changes to the gameplay.
 
I think the problem there was the way they were dismissed. Smash came down to a tautology, and Mario Kart was nonsensical "it becomes unplayable in four player" with the title getting marked down for working at a locked 30FPS (an industry standard) because it works at 60FPS otherwise.

I don't think anyone (not crazy) has any actual dislike for people who don't like the titles. Its more a matter of being honest with the fact not coming up with closed logic loops (also was there really a need to insult people who like competitive Smash?) or otherwise.

Jeff's "they're crazy people" at people who like competitive Smash is of course not meant as a serious insult. I've not played Mario Kart with 4 players, but that was Alex and to a lesser degree Dan: Alex just didn't like how it felt with 4 players. And he likes the game. That wasn't them trying to find a reason to push the game off the list, it was mostly Alex not liking how that felt. Jeff and Brad didn't weigh in on that.
 
Same day we also had the whole recommendation on WiiU subject segment that was very bizarre as well... he may have pushed the "best exclusives" but it felt incredibly begrudgingly and only because Sony may as well have lit itself on fire this year and Microsoft didn't have the # of quality titles.

He's got a definite fatigue and, seeming, bias against the Nintendo staples but all the same seems incredibly not-that on other franchises that have an even more regular and samey production cycle. That is definitely spilling over into other discussions and titles unless the game is entirely NotNintendo Nintendo.

I mean, I'm guessing there's more nuance to your opinion here, but it seems like you're basically saying that Jeff only argued Nintendo had the best library this year because it clearly had the best library this year.

Nor do I think Jeff gives other annualized or frequently produced franchises any sort of pass. He is very hard on Assassin's Creed. He is very hard on Halo. He is very hard on Call of Duty most years (yep; he liked this years, but go back and hear what he said about Ghosts last year). He is very hard on Forza.

That he finds Smash unappealing when it serves up the same thing core aspects he's found unappealing several iterations in a row is not shocking or hypocritical to me honestly.
 
Jeff's "they're crazy people" at people who like competitive Smash is of course not meant as a serious insult. I've not played Mario Kart with 4 players, but that was Alex and to a lesser degree Dan: Alex just didn't like how it felt with 4 players. And he likes the game. That wasn't them trying to find a reason to push the game off the list, it was mostly Alex not liking how that felt. Jeff and Brad didn't weigh in on that.

It's hard to tell what is meant seriously and what isn't, that whole thing just was a clusterfuck of Smash for Jeff with the whole: its too chaotic, the game is only fun when its chaotic. The added jab, even if in jest, just didn't really feel right when the whole segment was a mess.

MK8 drops to 30FPS which is likely what Alex means when he says he doesn't like how it feels but to call it an unplayable mess was complete hyperbole. In that part I felt like Dan had no idea what Alex was even saying. But yes, you're right that it didn't have Jeff or Brad doing much chiming in.

I mean, I'm guessing there's more nuance to your opinion here, but it seems like you're basically saying that Jeff only argued Nintendo had the best library this year because it clearly had the best library this year.

Of course they got the award for winning the award. To have it feel like a begrudgingly (that part comes in more when they get to the "would you recommend a WiiU" part) handed out award doesn't take away from there simply being no competition.

Nor do I think Jeff gives other annualized or frequently produced franchises any sort of pass. He is very hard on Assassin's Creed. He is very hard on Halo. He is very hard on Call of Duty most years (yep; he liked this years, but go back and hear what he said about Ghosts last year). He is very hard on Forza.

That he finds Smash unappealing when it serves up the same thing core aspects he's found unappealing several iterations in a row is not shocking or hypocritical to me honestly.

Like I said, I don't think there's anything wrong with not liking Smash or finding it unappealing in how it plays. Its the way the segment went about with how he criticized it via a tautology and fought fairly hard against it to the point where Dan had to actually call him out on it. There was definitely something very off with that part for him (Jeff) when it came to Smash. There's nothing wrong with him being critical and not liking the title, he just needs to articulate that and not do what he did that got a lot of people to reply in this thread with big ?wtf? posts.
 
If Smash Bros. had as many games as Call of Duty I might see your point, but as it stands there are only four major iterations of Smash and they all have different rosters, stages, physics, and feature sets, which is about all Call of Duty changes year to year as well. I'm not sure what else you could ask for from a fighting franchise.

Also, calling Smash's movesets "incredibly basic" is a bit... completely wrong? It has a simpler control setup than traditional fighting games but that's about it.

How is the moveset not incredibly basic? Every character uses the exact same control scheme and there is little to no variation between them? I don't think that's an insane criticism, that's just the way it is.

As for the iterations between games, I don't see why Smash Brothers should get a free pass because it has four years in between each game. If anything, I'd expect a lot more differences in between each title with that much time being spent on it. (See the Halo franchise). The additional new features added for the Wii U version are unexciting aside from the awesome addition of 8 player multiplayer, that being said (the board game nonsense and the removal of the Subspace Emissary) were pretty big disappointments.

Now I realize Smash purists don't want to hear that since they want the game to remain mostly the same. But this is coming from people who are tired of the formula or didn't like the formula to begin with in Brad's case.
 
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