Yeah, but isn't that true of all multiplayer experiences - that the quality of the experience would depend heavily on who you are playing with? I suppose something more cerebral and discussion-orientated like Portal 2 would probably have an even greater emphasis on that though.
Giant Bomb's Game of the Year Thread: Skyrim? Skyrim? Skyrim? Skyrim? Skylanders!
- Thread starter The Dutch Slayer
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Yeah, but isn't that true of all multiplayer experiences - that the quality of the experience would depend heavily on who you are playing with? I suppose something more cerebral and discussion-orientated like Portal 2 would probably have an even greater emphasis on that though.
Uncharted 2 set up a lot of astoundingly high expectations for 3. It seems like for a lot of people those expectations weren't met and it ultimately ends up not resonating with people as much. Can't blame them for just not really feeling the game.
Uncharted 2 should've set high expectations for other games; not just the sequel.
Definitely disappointed that they picked Skyrim, ultimately they are both 5/5 games everyone should play, and while history might show that Skyrim was 2011's best game, I go to Giant Bomb for the zeitgeist, and I don't think any game has ever captured the hearts and minds of that community (including the staff) so completely as Saints Row The Third.
Jeff said it's a game he wishes he could take credit for, Vinny and Ryan agreed with that sentiment, I think that should have counted for more.
Ah well, anyways, it was 5 days of amazing content, the green screen stuff was incredible, congrats on a great year Giant Bomb folk! Hopefully 2012 is the year Ryan decides to see how long he can make Brad argue for his GOTY pick.
Jeff said it's a game he wishes he could take credit for, Vinny and Ryan agreed with that sentiment, I think that should have counted for more.
Ah well, anyways, it was 5 days of amazing content, the green screen stuff was incredible, congrats on a great year Giant Bomb folk! Hopefully 2012 is the year Ryan decides to see how long he can make Brad argue for his GOTY pick.
While it would apply to all multiplayer games, with Portal 2 it's never going to be as good as the first play through. You'll remember most of the solutions and most people won't appreciate you telling them the answer if you play with someone different.
They said in many ways they felt 3 was a worse game. That's the main reason I think they discounted it so easily.
Officerrob
Banned
I have no problem with Brad. He loved Skyrim and defended it the best he could. My three biggest problems continue to be:
1) How everyone refuses to call out how every argument that Brad makes against SR3 can be directly applied back to Skyrim.
2) Mortal Kombat got shit on for it's broken online yet Skyrim wasn't held to the same standard for it's numerous bugs and flaws. They keep laughing at the backwards flying dragons like it's cute. Guess what, Skyrim is trying to take itself seriously and that kind of bullshit should be held against it. Combine that with the texture issues, freezing, and the fact that the PS3 version is a fucking mess and I feel that there was a double standard here.
2) The whole Ryan voting for a game not in his personal top 10 for GOTY over the game he put at #1. Makes zero fucking sense.
1) How everyone refuses to call out how every argument that Brad makes against SR3 can be directly applied back to Skyrim.
2) Mortal Kombat got shit on for it's broken online yet Skyrim wasn't held to the same standard for it's numerous bugs and flaws. They keep laughing at the backwards flying dragons like it's cute. Guess what, Skyrim is trying to take itself seriously and that kind of bullshit should be held against it. Combine that with the texture issues, freezing, and the fact that the PS3 version is a fucking mess and I feel that there was a double standard here.
2) The whole Ryan voting for a game not in his personal top 10 for GOTY over the game he put at #1. Makes zero fucking sense.
Hey I'm going to keep doing this but Deux Ex is 90% copy paste textures/geometry. Pretty much every game suffers from this. Every quest in Deus Ex is obviously scripted!
Officerrob
Banned
I agree, the problem is that the radiant quests with recycled geometry are argued as some kind of innovation that should be praised.
It's weird how everyone has forgotten how good Portal 2 was. This is like that Oscar thing where the best movie comes out in the Spring and then people get caught up in the blockbusters and forget what good is really like.
Also, while I like Skyrim, it's far too buggy and broken to be a GOTY. I guess this is GTA mentality all over again. If you let people be awful in games, they don't seem to care if their character shoots arrows out his butt because of terrain glitching.
Also, while I like Skyrim, it's far too buggy and broken to be a GOTY. I guess this is GTA mentality all over again. If you let people be awful in games, they don't seem to care if their character shoots arrows out his butt because of terrain glitching.
Foliorum Viridum
Banned
I was pretty sure Ryan would push for Portal 2 because I remember him absolutely loving it when it came out.
EmCeeGramr
Member
What? No it doesn't. You don't go into 20 different Area 51s or Castle Clintons or Liberty Islands with rearranged layouts.
They're also completely different styles of RPGs with incredibly different scope and goals. DX isn't an open-world game, it's a mostly linear story based experience where they let you run around in one sandbox filled with sidequests with a defined character before dropping you into the next one. Skyrim is a classic Bethesda game, where you have a blank slate of a character who wanders around a giant open world exploring in the classic RPG mold.
But sure, comparing a notoriously buggy on-release game from the year 2000 with a great but non-open world to a AAA release in 2011 that proclaimed itself to have ultimate freedom and unscripted quests sure does make Skyrim look really good in comparison. Next up: we defend Saints Row jank by pointing out that the old Driver games were janky too!!!!
fadetoblack
Member
How bad is the gameplay in Saints Row 3? I mean, really, how bad is it? Because the Giant Bomb guys gave some really conflicting messages. On the one hand it was "this is average to downright bad" on Brad's part, to Jeff's "yeah these things are shit but I did them anyways and had an okay time with them". Jeff seems to have gotten really blown over by the humour of the game, which makes me wonder whether or not he actually enjoyed some of those missions.
And I hated Saints Row 2 just like I hated Red Faction: Guerilla, to be honest. I'm not sure I like Volitions's games but with all the insane hype these guys are giving the game I wonder whether or not I should give this a go in spite of my gut.
And I hated Saints Row 2 just like I hated Red Faction: Guerilla, to be honest. I'm not sure I like Volitions's games but with all the insane hype these guys are giving the game I wonder whether or not I should give this a go in spite of my gut.
Forgotten enough to end up at #4 on their overall list?
I thought the combat was pretty good, but if you hated Guerilla you probably won't like it.
fadetoblack
Member
What I hated about Guerilla was the drive here and shoot a dude, then drive here and shoot this other dude. I didn't essentially dislike the combat but more like the way the game was paced and structured.
lowrider007
Licorice-flavoured booze?
So Resistance 3 got completely dismissed then?, I thought it would of made at least one persons list, even if it's at the bottom, may not of been GOTY but it's was definitely one of the best FPS's of 2011.
AFAIK no one played it extensivelly at GB office.
Patrick did ans still this game while not good is not really something I would herals as the bes tof the year.
The entire crew seemed pretty burnt out by the FPSes this year as a whole, not just Resistance 3. Killzone 3, MW3, Crysis 2 and others got nothing more than a "meh."
Riposte
Member
You are too kind to Heavy Rain and quite a few nonsensical indie games.
LA Noire is the biggest piece of shit least deserving of the reviews it got, that's how I would put it.
Yeah, I think that is th reason. With so many FPS on the market that year, everyone assumed the same old with R3. I don't blame them really, we had all kinds of FPSes (and some dissapointing ones at that)
I'd say it's fun. The cops don't try to arrest you, they try to kill you. The cars drive like arcade perfection. The helicopters and jets are easy to use, which is a great bonus coming out of Battlefield 3. The weapons (especially the explosive pistols, which let you do fun mid-air ragdoll juggles) are always satisfying to use.
Everything is so easy, and so entertaining. The 'bad gameplay' thing is just another incorrect assertion used to try to discredit someone's arguments. And then they don't bother to counter, because it's so off base, leaving it sounding valid. You don't have Jeff (playing it three times), Vinny and Ryan (knocking points against it because it's so good he ends up wanting more (?)) saying it's the most fun they've had all year if is the gameplay isn't there. Some of the missions aren't actually all that great - it's the sandbox and variety that draws me in.
Note, I haven't played any other Volition game and the last urban open world game I played was San Andreas (I got off the boat in GTAIV and quit).
The boat that is the intro movie? You quit before you actually played the game?
The face tech already makes it worth a look IMO.
Vyse The Legend
Member
Very disappointed that they went with Skyrim. It's a great game saddled by having only decent quests from start to finish. Nothing was particularly memorable, but everything was enjoyable.
I didn't play SR3, but I think Jeff made a much more compelling argument.
I didn't play SR3, but I think Jeff made a much more compelling argument.
Count of Monte Sawed-Off
un33dab@dpu$$y
You hit the nail on the head.
Singing the Sublime song in the game was not nearly as good as what happened in SR2. In SR3 it was a scripted event that had to happen, in SR2 I was flying around in my helicopter doing nothing in particular when all of a sudden my character just starts belting out that take on me song for no apparent reason. That was awesome. Then I get an achievement and just sat there for a moment wondering what the fuck just happened.
Yeah, although I'd lean more to a 6. It's kind of like SR3 for me. They're games I had high hopes for, but both significantly failed to reach those hopes. So while at their core they're decent games, it kind of makes me hate them all the more.
Isn't the company now dead?
My guess is that the facial technology* is proprietary, and the the holders of those patents have shown no interest in sharing it. Not to mention that the studio has collapsed.
To see more facial technology, please come visit my hardcore android porn website.
It is definitely worth looking at, but that's it.
fadetoblack
Member
The Team Bondi story is more complicated than that. The technology is owned by a group called Depth Analysis which McNamara has some shares in. You'll see it in more games, but they'll probably only be games McNamara is associated with most likely.
Count of Monte Sawed-Off
un33dab@dpu$$y
That's fine with me. It was interesting, but I could definitely live without it.
I agree with this. I like SR3, but wackiness doesnt elevate a game above something with much better mechanics. There were a lot of games last year that played better than SR3.
CrunchinJelly
formerly cjelly
Exactly. Video games aren't supposed to be fun.
AAA, brown, interactive tedium simulators or GTFO.
Wackiness is not a synonym for fun.
Not sure how you got that out of what I said. We're talking about GoTY, not just a "fun" game. SR3 is fun, but it only really stands out because of the wackiness. I think GoTY should stand out for better reasons than that, especially when the candidates were so great this year.
Riposte
Member
Down with good game mechanics? Good game mechanics don't lead to fun? Wackiness indeed.
mongomondo
Member
What reasons should they be? All I care about in a game is if I have fun playing it.
StevePharma
Member
"Video Games are a GREAT way to have fun!""
I agree with this statement. Especially considering the GiantBomb editors and site members. They are not some snobby site who plays Dwarf Fortress because they like to write a paper on psychological immersion. They just want to play cool stuff.
The thing that got me most was Vinny's story on how he couldn't stop playing SR3 after he already started Skyrim. Was in one of the previous Bombcasts a couple of weeks back. I had the exact same feeling, and I played a LOT of games this year. The fact that a game can do this to you is something that you don't experience very often.
That's stupid. For starters, you're talking as if GOTY meant anything. Second, you're seriously dismissing the enjoyment someone has with a game as criteria? Whether or not you like SR3, Ryan, Jeff and Vinny liked the game more than anything else this year.
MarshMellow96
Member
Skyrim having better mechanics?
Officerrob
Banned
Packing a game full of 100 hours of mostly boring quests and bad combat doesn't make it more compelling either. The fact that Ryan's argument against SR3 was that he "only" got 30 hours out of it while Skyrim is just so much longer (even though he might have only played a few hours of it) is just stupid.
I don't know why you're replying to that post with some random rambling. I just said 'wackiness' should not be reiterated as 'fun', something can be wacky and shit, and it can be serious and fun. It's not an indication of quality.
Officerrob
Banned
Just how 'longer' should not be reiterated as 'better'. A game can be super long and still be repetitive and uninteresting. Length is not an indication of quality