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

rudds said:
Yeah, "just wow" really raises the level of discussion in here. I wanted to stay out of this mess, but holy shit are there some runaway egos on display in this thread. Do you have a counterpoint to go along with that smug indignation?
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I think all but a few are kidding around. At least I hope so.

You guys had to get your thick skins on this year because this was such an amazing year for quality games, you knew there'd be some venom no matter what you picked.

For those who are calling you out for being stubborn I think they're missing the larger point, which is that Patrick and Ryan were on board with Skyrim from the start, it's not like you were the lone voice.
 
I don't see how they brought the Bastion situation upon themselves considering they knew and worked with Greg well before he became a game developer, let alone well before Bastion or Supergiant Games was even formed.

Yaboosh said:
Reviews are just as much purchasing advice as GOTY lists.

They should have reviewed it, or they should have exempted it from awards. Preferably the former.
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Bastion wasn't the only game they didn't review this year.
 
rudds said:
I still haven't gotten into the civil war stuff, but after the peace negotiation scene in the main quest you can visit the basement of the castle in Solitude and find all the Empire-friendly jarls you deposed--and they certainly haven't forgotten it's your fault they're no longer in power. That's of course in addition to there literally being new rulers on the thrones of whichever cities you decided to rearrange. To say nothing you do has a lasting effect on the world is just inaccurate.
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But what is the impact on the player experience or the world? A new NPC with some bits of throwaway dialogue that heavy-handedly underscore the decision you made?
 
Dany M said:
Because no one is getting paid for previews, exclusives, videos, pics or videos.
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Because the video game enthusiast sites are getting taken advantage of by the big publishers. Giant Bomb, and sites like it, are the bitches of the big publishers. They do lots of the pr work for no pay other than what meager amounts they can drum up from Site traffic and advertisements.

Giant Bomb has already done some good by not being about exclusives, or breaking news, or big cover stories. They are about the personalities of the cast and simply sharing their passion for video games with their viewers.

So simply taking the idea of Quick Look EXs, and monetizing it, makes so much damn sense. The only thing holding it back is some crazy idea of impartiality that doesn't even matter to what they do at Giant Bomb. They have no reason to want to be seen as being impartial.
 
Yaboosh said:
Because the video game enthusiast sites are getting taken advantage of by the big publishers. Giant Bomb, and sites like it, are the bitches of the big publishers. They do lots of the pr work for no pay other than what meager amounts they can drum up from Site traffic and advertisements.

Giant Bomb has already done some good by not being about exclusives, or breaking news, or big cover stories. They are about the personalities of the cast and simply sharing their passion for video games with their viewers.

So simply taking the idea of Quick Look EXs, and monetizing it, makes so much damn sense. The only thing holding it back is some crazy idea of impartiality that doesn't even matter to what they do at Giant Bomb. They have no reason to want to be seen as being impartial.
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Giant Bombs is all bitches! BITCHES DAMN YOU!
 
giant_frying_pan said:
I don't see how they brought the Bastion situation upon themselves considering they knew and worked with Greg well before he became a game developer, let alone well before Bastion or Supergiant Games was even formed.


Bastion wasn't the only game they didn't review this year.
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Yea, but they absolutely 100% would have reviewed it had they not done the series on it.
 
Zabka said:
Giant Bombs is all bitches! BITCHES DAMN YOU!
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Yes, because they provide free PR to the big guys for no return.

But like I said, they made good steps of getting away from that by not being tied to getting big cover story exclusives or even depending on them to give them review copies in many cases.

The next step is to get paid for the advertising they give big games. Fusing advertisements and their personalities seems like a natural progression for a site like this.
 
Yaboosh said:
Yea, but they absolutely 100% would have reviewed it had they not done the series on it.
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So what is your position? They should have reviewed it, but not talked about it during their GOTY features? If Vinny truly felt that Bastion was one of the three best games he played this year, you would actually like him to not say it?

That seems crazy to me.
 
Duffyside said:
So what is your position? They should have reviewed it, but not talked about it during their GOTY features? If Vinny truly felt that Bastion was one of the three best games he played this year, you would actually like him to not say it?

That seems crazy to me.
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No, I am saying that they should have reviewed it and included it in GOTY talks.

Edit: My point is simply that it is stupid for them to worry about appearing impartial, because they aren't and shouldn't be. They aren't journalists.
 
I think the real issue we should all be upset over is that F3AR was robbed of "Best use of 3" this year.


COME ON! It's right there in the word itself! There's no better use of 3!
 
giant_frying_pan said:
I don't see how they brought the Bastion situation upon themselves considering they knew and worked with Greg well before he became a game developer, let alone well before Bastion or Supergiant Games was even formed.
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That is a problem, but one that is pretty unavoidable. When a press release is issued saying that you're going to basically be willfully advertising a game for a year, you're completely opening yourself to criticism.
 
Yaboosh said:
Yea, but they absolutely 100% would have reviewed it had they not done the series on it.
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100%, huh? Are you an alt-account for Jeff Gerstmann, reviews editor for Giant Bomb?

I'd rather have the Building the Bastion content (none of which was behind the paywall, by the way) than one person's opinion on the game (which we got in the end anyway, just not with an arbitrary score attached).
 
BSTF said:
That is a problem, but one that is pretty unavoidable. When a press release is issued saying that you're going to basically be willfully advertising a game for a year, you're completely opening yourself to criticism.
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Any video game website is one big advertisement.
 
giant_frying_pan said:
100%, huh? Are you an alt-account for Jeff Gerstmann, reviews editor for Giant Bomb?

I'd rather have the Building the Bastion content (none of which was behind the paywall, by the way) than one person's opinion on the game (which we got in the end anyway, just not with an arbitrary score attached).
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I absolutely agree that the Bastion content was great and it is awesome that it exists. Where did I say otherwise?

I am saying that they shouldn't have refused to review it because of some weird worry about appearing impartial.
 
BSTF said:
That is a problem, but one that is pretty unavoidable. When a press release is issued saying that you're going to basically be willfully advertising a game for a year, you're completely opening yourself to criticism.
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So being open about it up front is bad? You've said that the relationship was 'an issue'. Why? They never misled anyone and didn't use their position to inflate the Metacritic average, which they could have done. There is no conflict of interest, even if you perhaps want there to be one.
 
snoopeasystreet said:
LA Noire's failure was grading the player. If that wasn't present, I might have called it my GOTY.
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For me LA Noire's failure was the story from Murder onwards. I actually enjoyed the first half of the game a lot but what they did with the story really annoyed me. But it's still got some redeemable features.
 
Someone mentioned that Brad was catching a fair amount of static but nobody in the thread was calling out the rest of the group. I'll take that up and mentioned that I thought Jeff didn't do a great job of expressing what made Saints Row: The Third so great. He kept mentioning over over the top things got to be. But that's not what made SR3 so great.

Here be massive SR3 spoilers.

What did make it great was the effort Volition put into crafting those moments. They got Hulk Hogan to do VO where it wasn't necessary, anyone who could do a wrestler voice would have sufficed. They didn't just use some dramatic, Hans Zimmer-esque knockoff music created by a studio composer with a music degree and a copy of Hollywood Strings, they licensed Power. They didn't have the protagonist VOs record the same script over and over, they let them ad lib and sing along with Sublime and interact with each other. SR3 has some of the most charming VO moments I've ever heard in a game. The interaction felt genuine, it brought the characters to life. The script and plot were very clever and funny, it never took itself seriously and yet it delivered an experience that showed just how seriously Volition took their jobs of producing an amazing experience. They went to what I bet was a considerable amount of trouble to simulate lag for the sake of a throwaway gag. It was just the extreme moments, it was all the craft that was put into making them.
 
FStop7 said:
Someone mentioned that Brad was catching a fair amount of static but nobody in the thread was calling out the rest of the group. I'll take that up and mentioned that I thought Jeff didn't do a great job of expressing what made Saints Row: The Third so great. He kept mentioning over over the top things got to be. But that's not what made SR3 so great.

Here be massive SR3 spoilers.

What did make it great was the effort Volition put into crafting those moments. They got Hulk Hogan to do VO where it wasn't necessary, anyone who could do a wrestler voice would have sufficed. They didn't just use some dramatic, Hans Zimmer-esque knockoff music created by a studio composer with a music degree and a copy of Hollywood Strings, they licensed Power. They didn't have the protagonist VOs record the same script over and over, they let them ad lib and sing along with Sublime and interact with each other. SR3 has some of the most charming VO moments I've ever heard in a game. The interaction felt genuine, it brought the characters to life. The script and plot were very clever and funny, it never took itself seriously and yet it delivered an experience that showed just how seriously Volition took their jobs of producing an amazing experience. They went to what I bet was a considerable amount of trouble to simulate lag for the sake of a throwaway gag. It was just the extreme moments, it was all the craft that was put into making them.
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Well that's a lesson in how people see things differently. You really think stunt casting a VO, licensing popular music and repeating a moment from the previous game only this time jumping up and down going 'hey, hey look, remember that thing you liked in SR2, here it is again, isn't it great, see we're being funny, do you get it' shows an extraordinary level of care? Clever is not something I'd attribute to SR3. Throw anything at the wall and hope something sticks is a more acurate description of the writing in that game.
 
Yaboosh said:
I absolutely agree that the Bastion content was great and it is awesome that it exists. Where did I say otherwise?

I am saying that they shouldn't have refused to review it because of some weird worry about appearing impartial.
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Well it isn't their duty to review Bastion or any other game. They review the games that they think most of their readership want verdicts on the most. Bastion certainly falls into that category, but there are people out there (not saying this is you by any means) that seem to want them to review it just so they have an excuse to criticise Giant Bomb's credibility or so they can cry, 'GOTCHA!!' or something. Choosing to not review the game avoids all of that.
 
jgminto said:
For me LA Noire's failure was the story from Murder onwards. I actually enjoyed the first half of the game a lot but what they did with the story really annoyed me. But it's still got some redeemable features.
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From a story standpoint, it was stacked toward homicide. Although the overarching story was pretty noir, they never pulled it off.
 
FStop7 said:
Someone mentioned that Brad was catching a fair amount of static but nobody in the thread was calling out the rest of the group. I'll take that up and mentioned that I thought Jeff didn't do a great job of expressing what made Saints Row: The Third so great. He kept mentioning over over the top things got to be. But that's not what made SR3 so great.

Here be massive SR3 spoilers.

What did make it great was the effort Volition put into crafting those moments. They got Hulk Hogan to do VO where it wasn't necessary, anyone who could do a wrestler voice would have sufficed. They didn't just use some dramatic, Hans Zimmer-esque knockoff music created by a studio composer with a music degree and a copy of Hollywood Strings, they licensed Power. They didn't have the protagonist VOs record the same script over and over, they let them ad lib and sing along with Sublime and interact with each other. SR3 has some of the most charming VO moments I've ever heard in a game. The interaction felt genuine, it brought the characters to life. The script and plot were very clever and funny, it never took itself seriously and yet it delivered an experience that showed just how seriously Volition took their jobs of producing an amazing experience. They went to what I bet was a considerable amount of trouble to simulate lag for the sake of a throwaway gag. It was just the extreme moments, it was all the craft that was put into making them.
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Pretty much. For the problems I have with the open world, the main story totally makes up for it. It's extremely self aware and some of the satire even rivals R* material.
The wrestling mission is so overacted and ridiculous. As someone who used to watch wrestling I found that extremely funny.
 
giant_frying_pan said:
So being open about it up front is bad? You've said that the relationship was 'an issue'. Why? They never misled anyone and didn't use their position to inflate the Metacritic average, which they could have done. There is no conflict of interest, even if you perhaps want there to be one.
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When you're rating something you want to be as neutral as something, that's an unrealistic obviously so you have to be up front about it. Which I didn't have an issue with, Ryan said something like we know those guys, but we still think it's a great game. No problem, with that. I had a problem with the sarcastic mocking tone that happened afterwards.
 
I don't get the love for the dark elf thing in Windhelm. In over a 100 hours of play, the squalid living conditions have barely come up at all, save for the drunks harassing the dark elf woman on your first visit to Windhelm. And even then, they waltz right into the inn in the centre of town and dance and make merry with the dark elf bard. That doesn't scream racial oppression to me, that screams this game doesn't give a shit about what it's presenting or how it's doing it.

Far better done in the Witcher series, but of course they are backed by actual literature and not whatever fever dream the Elder Scrolls lore arose from at the Bethesda studios. I've read I don't know how many books in-game, and it still sounds like a load of nonsense.
 
finally watched the recap videos.

Vinny's is clearly the best made and most planned out. it has a little story arc to it. a costume change... a few distinctly different backgrounds.


I really wish Dave had one :(


also NEED MAKING OF FOOTAGE!!
 
Gestahl said:
I don't get the love for the dark elf thing in Windhelm. In over a 100 hours of play, the squalid living conditions have barely come up at all, save for the drunks harassing the dark elf woman on your first visit to Windhelm. And even then, they waltz right into the inn in the centre of town and dance and make merry with the dark elf bard. That doesn't scream racial oppression to me, that screams this game doesn't give a shit about what it's presenting or how it's doing it.

Far better done in the Witcher series, but of course they are backed by actual literature and not whatever fever dream the Elder Scrolls lore arose from at the Bethesda studios. I've read I don't know how many books in-game, and it still sounds like a load of nonsense.
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Yeah I didn't really feel the whole Windhelm thing. But I will say I did enjoy the Forsworn quest in The Reach but then Bethesda kinda screwed that up by not allowing me to join the Forsworn.
 
Gestahl said:
I don't get the love for the dark elf thing in Windhelm. In over a 100 hours of play, the squalid living conditions have barely come up at all, save for the drunks harassing the dark elf woman on your first visit to Windhelm. And even then, they waltz right into the inn in the centre of town and dance and make merry with the dark elf bard. That doesn't scream racial oppression to me, that screams this game doesn't give a shit about what it's presenting or how it's doing it.

Far better done in the Witcher series, but of course they are backed by actual literature and not whatever fever dream the Elder Scrolls lore arose from at the Bethesda studios. I've read I don't know how many books in-game, and it still sounds like a load of nonsense.
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Eh, it comes up more than that, though it's still pretty simple "we are forced to live in a ghetto and then people hate us for it... are we so different after all!?"

There's a book where some racist dude basically says, "Look at how well they've integrated in Riften, while they're lazy entitled layabouts in their Little Morrowind slum in Windhelm. Look at the Argonians, they're practically our children with their adorable hard work," or something else that sounds like it came from Free Republic or a Fox News comments section. Although it too gets a little too hamfisted at points (the author swings back and forth between the more insidious, far more public, and vastly more realistic thinly-veiled "concern" racism, to cartoon villain levels of straight up calling them inferior beings with no civilized society).

There's even an Dark Elf who acts like an Uncle Tom with all the subtlety of a South Park episode.
 
jgminto said:
Yeah I didn't really feel the whole Windhelm thing. But I will say I did enjoy the Forsworn quest in The Reach but then Bethesda kinda screwed that up by not allowing me to join the Forsworn.
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They kinda screwed that by making Markarth a hellhole of broken quests and bugs. The House of Horrors permanent blur filter, for myself personally the Forsworn Conspiracy is completely borked at the end, I'll have to use the console to fix it oh joys, and entering the Dwemer museum again retriggers the associated thieves guild quest (reminds me that the last larceny quest for the thieves guild DELETES ITSELF when you kill the guy who HAS THE LARCENY TARGET. My shelves will be forever incomplete...).

Not a pleasant place to loiter around
 
What a great game of the year deliberations, what fantastic video content, what amazing discussion, and what hilarious bitching. I certainly don't agree with many of their choices but that's what you get when there's so many incredible games for so many different types of people this year. Bravo.
 
Dance In My Blood said:
The most interaction that ever really occurs between different ideological beliefs is Bethesda's rather flaccid presentation of civil war, where the player is sent to identical preset castles on a wave clearing mission. A city gets sacked and burned at the end, but ultimately that has no bearing on the outcome of anything. The town goes back to being pristine, and its inhabitants seem to have no recollection of the events. As great of an asset as the open world is for Skyrim it also notably hamstrings the storytelling.
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My view is that the mechanics built into their engine just can't support the type of story they want to tell. Almost everything that isn't combat is supported by single button interactions, be it stealing, pick-pocketing or interacting with complex devices, and all NPC behavior is heavily restricted by their schedule/AI system. It's almost the opposite of feature-creep -- they should be building more complex subsystems to handle some of the more unique moments in their plotlines, because what they have just drains all excitement from the game. This game's marriage has to be the dumbest implementation ever -- I actually found myself going 'gee, I wish this game was more like Fable 2', and I've never thought that before of any game, ever (I never played Fable 3, see).

Also, the whole immortal NPC thing is quite ridiculous. Forget New Vegas, none of Bethesda's own games were as bad as this. Sure, in F3 and Oblivion there were some people you couldn't kill, but they were tied to the main story questline. This time Bethesda just seemed so enamored with even the dumbest quests that they couldn't bear you breaking any of them. Not to mention that the company that let us kill Vivec and continue the game (with just an 'oops!' popup) should probably look into alternate quest resolutions.

Luckily, that sort of thing can be fixed easily with console commands, and I imagine mods will be out soon to address it.
 
Reading over the last day or so of discussion and man, a lot of you doofuses like... retroactively wreck my enjoyment of things.
 
To preface this, my personal GOTY is still Portal 2.

But, man, is it me or is there a lot of vitriol in this thread? Can't people be happy that they gave us an entire week of awesome podcasts topped off with a four hour podcast for free? That was amazing.

And, to be honest, I was actually super psyched to play Saints Row The Third today to see what all the fuss was about. I did not have a good first impression. For starters the game crashed in the in the first 15 minutes. Not just crahsed to desktop, but my PC turned off. Then, even on medium to low settings, I was getting severe frame rate dips while driving. It was so annoying that I just switched to playing in DX9.

Now, granted, I haven't played that long at all, but even with the crazy opening two missions it hasn't hooked me as much as that first 20 minutes of Skyrim. Until I finish SR3I can't say which game is better, and, honestly, I don't care so my opinion isn't worth anything.

I guess what I'm trying to say is that why so much anger?
 
GillianSeed79 said:
To preface this, my personal GOTY is still Portal 2.

But, man, is it me or is there a lot of vitriol in this thread? Can't people be happy that they gave us an entire week of awesome podcasts topped off with a four hour podcast for free? That was amazing.

And, to be honest, I was actually super psyched to play Saints Row The Third today to see what all the fuss was about. I did not have a good first impression. For starters the game crashed in the in the first 15 minutes. Not just crahsed to desktop, but my PC turned off. Then, even on medium to low settings, I was getting severe frame rate dips while driving. It was so annoying that I just switched to playing in DX9.

Now, granted, I haven't played that long at all, but even with the crazy opening two missions it hasn't hooked me as much as that first 20 minutes of Skyrim. Until I finish SR3I can't say which game is better, and, honestly, I don't care so my opinion isn't worth anything.

I guess what I'm trying to say is that why so much anger?
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There isn't much anger.
 
I always hate brad come GOTY season
especially this year with him hating on my favorite game of the year, rayman origins

but after a while I go back to loving him
I like the entire giant bomb staff
they entertain me so much.

ALSO SAINTS ROW 3 GOT SO FUCKING ROBBED
But whatever. its a video game award.

Im super fucking drunk btw. Just so you know.
 
Yaboosh said:
There isn't much anger.
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Yeah, I gotta agree. With the exception of a few posts, the tone here seems to be fine.

Certainly much better than all the crankiness that occurred back when god of war 3 wasn't nominated for best looking game. Goddamn that thread became a shit show.
 
I didn't feel like Jeff made a very good argument for SR3 to be in the top 2, or even the top 5. I haven't played it, and it sounds like something I would really enjoy, but all I got from his argument was that it's really crazy and dumb and he likes crazy and dumb things.

Also, Portal 2 at #4 and their complaints against its co-op make me want to make awful posts. :(
 
AcciDante said:
I didn't feel like Jeff made a very good argument for SR3 to be in the top 2, or even the top 5. I haven't played it, and it sounds like something I would really enjoy, but all I got from his argument was that it's really crazy and dumb and he likes crazy and dumb things.

Also, Portal 2 at #4 and their complaints against its co-op make me want to make awful posts. :(
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I'll never understand what they dislike about Valve games.

I mean, different opinions at all, but they've never done a good job of explaining what they dislike about Valve games.
 
AcciDante said:
I didn't feel like Jeff made a very good argument for SR3 to be in the top 2, or even the top 5. I haven't played it, and it sounds like something I would really enjoy, but all I got from his argument was that it's really crazy and dumb and he likes crazy and dumb things.

Also, Portal 2 at #4 and their complaints against its co-op make me want to make awful posts. :(
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It's really not a dumb game. The humour and set pieces are actually really well crafted. It's not like Duke Nukem Forever or the Postal games. They don't just overwhelm you with gag after gag. It's really about the spectacle. Missions like the "Power" mission or the final Deckers missions work because they are really well done. You're never really overwhelmed, whether it's from the humour or the set pieces. When they go big you notice it.
 
I can't believe Jeff didn't like Portal 2's co-op. That shared moment of "Ah-hah!" is one of the strongest things I've felt in videogames for a long time, and one of the greatest ways to utilise a collaborative experience.
 
Jintor said:
I can't believe Jeff didn't like Portal 2's co-op. That shared moment of "Ah-hah!" is one of the strongest things I've felt in videogames for a long time, and one of the greatest ways to utilise a collaborative experience.
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It would depend who you're playing with though. If you're directing them around all the time it can get annoying for both parties.
 
faridmon said:
From what I played, LA Noir is one of my favourite game this gen. See, Its your words against mine...
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Hmmm, I think I'll choose "Doubt" and see if I can nudge some more information from this witness..."You lying asshole!!!! Tell me what really happened you fucking lying piece of shit!!!"
 
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