Giant Bomb's Game of the Year Thread: Skyrim? Skyrim? Skyrim? Skyrim? Skylanders!

Patrick and Brad went with Skyrim, Jeff and Vinny with SR3. Then Ryan with Skyrim, despite it not being in his top 10 list at all (which features SR3 in the number 1 spot).

It's was kind of ridiculous.

Maybe Ryan is able to recognize Skyrim is a better game even though it doesn't fall with in his personal tastes?
 
Not really. Skyrim is pretty awesome, but I couldn't help but think that every single argument Brad made against Saint's Row also applied to Skyrim.
In the end, the only comment that makes sense is Ryan's almost irrational point - Skyrim is better than Saints Row 3 because it is longer.
 
Burtisnotpleased.gif


was bored, final GIF of 2011 from me. :D
 
ah that makes seance.... I was doing my maths wrong.

Actually having 5 people pick GOTY seems silly since it will almost always come down to the last man. They should skype Alex or drag Dave or even Kessler in next time to have even 6.



Kind of dumb that Ryan would agree to giving GOTY to a game he hasn't played.... They should make sure that doesnt happen again next year.

Like I said, it wasn't really a 3vs2 vote thing. They came to an agreement after some discussion.
I think Ryan went with Skyrim because he agreed with Brads negative points about Saint's Row.
 
Brad runs for President of the United States, after an eight hour debate in which he repeatedly says "I would be the best president, come on," and "You guys don't have any experience being President," the other candidates finally give up and concede.
 
Maybe Ryan is able to recognize Skyrim is a better game even though it doesn't fall with in his personal tastes?
Considering it's a game of the year discussion for a site based on their personal tastes, no, it doesn't make sense. And it doesn't seem like he was necessarily swayed by the arguments considering it sounds like he left the room.
 
Why don't these guys do a video podcast as no one has 4 hours spare where they can listen to an audio only podcast.
Speak for yourself. Lot's of people listen to podcasts while working, on their commute, while playing a game, out on a walk or at the gym. And it's not like you have to listen to a podcast all at once.
 
These type of site wide goty lists are even more pointless than movie lists.
On top of the common issues with movie lists, with games there is no way that people can play all the potential candidates unlike you can watch a two hour movie, even if you are not particularly interested. In games, goty candidate has to have a wide appeal even more so than in movies, just so that people even bother to play a game. Site wide gotys are an awkward compromise.

In my top five list there would be 3 games(Witcher 2, Shogun 2 and Frozen Synapse) that probably very few in gaming press has even played.
That's why i find individual lists way more interesting, since games with more limited appeal have better change to do well.

I did enjoy their discussion tho so it was not completely wasted effort :)
 
Why don't these guys do a video podcast as no one has 4 hours spare where they can listen to an audio only podcast.

exact opposite for me. I can listen to audio out of the house easily. video is a pain. takes up more space and takes longer to transfer to a portable player.

also, do you think video would enhance the experience of seeing 5 guys not moving in a single room for 10 hours?
 
I haven't listened to the podcast yet, but maybe Ryan took a step back and thought about the perceived professionalism of their business/website journalism with Saints Row 3 as GOTY?

Don't get me wrong, SR3 is awesome, but GOTY?
 
Do I have to do this again? You haven't played the games (not on your Steam list, not on your XBL list), so grow up and back out of the discussion. It shits up the entire discussion when someone prances in and tries to discredit something without knowing anything about it. The blind Saints Row hate is really insane.

Ouch. Truth, though. If you haven't so much as played SR3 then you really do not know what the fuck you're talking about.

All I know is that this year I would never have played Witcher 2, Dead Island, or Saint's Row the Third if it weren't for Giant Bomb. I would literally have missed out on 3 of the finest releases.
 
exact opposite for me. I can listen to audio out of the house easily. video is a pain. takes up more space and takes longer to transfer to a portable player.

also, do you think video would enhance the experience of seeing 5 guys not moving in a single room for 10 hours?

They could make it around 1 hour 30 instead and have the guys talking in a small corner of the screen and videos of the game they're talking about occupying the main screen. 4 hours of just audio is wayyyyy too much for anyone.
 
Considering it's a game of the year discussion for a site based on their personal tastes, no, it doesn't make sense. And it doesn't seem like he was necessarily swayed by the arguments considering it sounds like he left the room.

I figured there was a distinction between what the site top 10 was vs PERSONAL top 10.

Not that the arguments made weren't retarded from both sides. Brad said a lot of stupid things, not just about Skyrim or SR3.
 
4 hours of just audio is wayyyyy too much for anyone.
Except that it's not. I get through probably 20 hours of audio podcasts a week while I'm at work or exercising. Just because it doesn't work for you doesn't mean you can generalize that to the other seven billion people on the planet. Just listen to it while you play a game or something, but expecting them to do even more editing work for something that they have explicitly said is not there to provide entertainment, but to expose their GOTY process? Its not happening, nor should it.
 
They could make it around 1 hour 30 instead and have the guys talking in a small corner of the screen and videos of the game they're talking about occupying the main screen. 4 hours of just audio is wayyyyy too much for anyone.

ah, I see.

well, they sorta do this with the daily video updates. each one is 30 minutes and shows video of a single game being played while they talk about it.

I don’t want them to touch the podcasts. if you don’t want to hear the deliberations, that’s fine. But I’m glad they are there and unedited in all their gory details.

maybe they can add chapter markers for the different category discussions for easier navigation and skipping around /shrug.
 
Why don't these guys do a video podcast as no one has 4 hours spare where they can listen to an audio only podcast.

yea, Tested has video for their podcast for Premium members. dunno why GB didn't do the same thing. they could ask Will to help them with that.

They could make it around 1 hour 30 instead and have the guys talking in a small corner of the screen and videos of the game they're talking about occupying the main screen. 4 hours of just audio is wayyyyy too much for anyone.

no it's not. 4 hours is half my day at work. besides, no one is forcing you to listen to them all in one sitting.
 
Has Ryan ever outright said he has never played Skyrim? I can't remember that at least.

In any case, you are all taking this waaaaaaaay too seriously. Seriously, listen to yourselves "WHAT THE FUCK RYAN HOW CAN YOU CHOOSE THIS GAME OVER THIS GAME AHHHHHHHH" like their top 10 actually matter for anything. And so what if Ryan hasn't played it, I'm sure he can still make a perfectly passable judgement on it from being exposed to so much of it. I doubt the list even matters that much to them; as someone said earlier, Jeff has stated it's just a fun thing.
 
I haven't listened to the podcast yet, but maybe Ryan took a step back and thought about the perceived professionalism of their business/website journalism with Saints Row 3 as GOTY?

Don't get me wrong, SR3 is awesome, but GOTY?

Oh yes, because it wouldn't be professional unless they toed the line and gave the safest award to the game that had the most hype.
 
To SR3 ignorant people, SR3 is perceived as the equivalent as an Adam Sandler movie. Low brow, crass, cheap rubbish.

Okay

Yeah, there would have been a bit of a shitstorm if SR3 won.

Ultimately the fact that SR3 doesn't take itself as seriously as Skyrim went against it.
 
yes because a site that produces over a hundred hours of underage anime girl dating sim action and sells a shirt that says 'i'm a wizard and that looks fucked up' is concerned with their perceived professionalism
 
yes because a site that produces over a hundred hours of underage anime girl dating sim action and sells a shirt that says 'i'm a wizard and that looks fucked up' is concerned with their perceived professionalism

I think this is a case where Ryan was. It's a much better explanation than "SR3 was just TOO good."
 
ryan davis, renowned stodgy professional who spends 90% of his day retweeting memes and ironic twitter celebs and making sure that year after year a top 10 list gets on the site because its writer has a funny "swearing in all caps" gimmick

he was probably thinking of the business logistics of skyrim versus saints row the third and how it would have looked to advertisers, for sure
 
Ugh that was just frustrating. I understand these things are basically meaningless but I really felt Saints Row 3 had a better case than Skyrim, at least based on the arguments.
 
ryan davis, renowned stodgy professional who spends 90% of his day retweeting memes and ironic twitter celebs and making sure that year after year a top 10 list gets on the site because its writer has a funny "swearing in all caps" gimmick

you can always unfollow him ya know.
 
To SR3 ignorant people, SR3 is perceived as the equivalent as an Adam Sandler movie. Low brow, crass, cheap rubbish.

And it deserved it after the first two Saints Row games, which I didn't think were very good at all.

I was extremely skeptical of Saints Row the Third, but it turned out to be damned incredible.
 
Skyrim's copy-paste dungeons are the exact same thing as past Bethesda games, just disguised slightly more and with a new coat of paint.
Have you actually played Skyrim? Because honestly, I've seen dozens of unique dungeons in the game and never noticed any obvious copy/paste going on. Unlike Oblivion (or DA2 for that matter, which was even worse).

On the other hand, I certainly played a lot of repetitive missions in SR3 (outside of the main story missions which are pretty varied -- but the main story dungeons in Skyrim are at least equally as varied).
 
you can always unfollow him ya know.

i wasn't complaining about him

Have you actually played Skyrim? Because honestly, I've seen dozens of unique dungeons in the game and never noticed any obvious copy/paste going on.

35 hours in, seen the same fortress dungeon, cave, tomb, tomb/cave environments dozens of times each. I can recognize the pieces and how they've been rearranged in each one to make it seem different.
 
Anyone who has played Skyrim for more than 30 hours or so surely must recognize the overlapping segments of Skyrim's dungeons. While they may not be exactly the same, you should start experiencing a lot of deja vu not too far into the game.
 
35 hours in, seen the same fortress, cave, dungeon, dungeon/cave environments dozens of times each. I can recognize the pieces and how they've been rearranged in each one to make it seem different.
Well, you're clearly much better at this then I am. Just today I was exploring a dungeon with a larger open cave inside with a lake and waterfall (and even the obligatory behind the waterfall treasure). In my 89 hours of Skyrim I hadn't seen anything at all like that before. And I feel like there are locations like that in pretty much every single dungeon I enter.

They may (in fact, they most probably do) reuse small connecting corridors and the like, but when I'm not actively noticing it and each dungeon has some unique features I don't really mind that. It's certainly no DA2, ME or Oblivion where the reuse was obvious and annoying.
 
Anyone who has played Skyrim for more than 30 hours or so surely must recognize the overlapping segments of Skyrim's dungeons. While they may not be exactly the same, you should start experiencing a lot of deja vu not too far into the game.

they do reuse textures and certain sections but the layouts change up enough that it's hardly copy and paste. EmCee makes it sound like they're like dungeons in DA2 and Oblivion.
 
"Copy paste dungeons" I don't agree with but they certainly do recycle pretty heavily. Practically every dungeon has some variant of the bear/dolphin/eagle puzzle. Practically every dungeon has a spring loaded spiked door or poisoned darts triggered by a pressure sensitive stone on the floor. Practically every dungeon is draugar or fallmer or both. I killed so many goddamn draugar.
 
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