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[MrDaravon]

He didn't play FFXII or FFXIII at all, and probably played very little of FFX if any, but he still ranted for the best part of 10 minutes about how Final Fantasy was the one series in the videogame world that most needs to take a break.

So his trolling of Limbo and RDR was very mild by comparison. At least his views on those games are based on more than conjecture, things other people have told him, and stuff he made up in his own head.

You could make the argument that he didn't play 12 or 13 because he was already tired of it, hence him saying the series needs a break. Plus I don't think that's really a very uncommon opinion; I played the fuck out of both of those and they definitely need to take a break or seriously go back to the drawing board. Honestly right now I would have absolutely zero faith in S-E to do a good FFXV.

Also that's not even addressing the million other titles of varying quality that S-E slaps the Final Fantasy name on, which is probably a bigger issue in terms of franchise fatigue on that one.

 

[Htown]

Man. Really? You're going to eliminate Mario Galaxy 2 from GOTY contention and have a fight between Need for Speed, Civ 5 and Pac-man for a slot?

Jesus.

Is the rest of the podcast funny? Otherwise I'm done.

 

[Curufinwe]

Guitar Hero? Used to be Call of Duty-big. After the past two years, consumers stopped caring. Same seems to be happening for Final Fantasy, in the west, for these guys.

Look up the sales for FFXIII in the west and compare them to the numbers for Guitar Hero Warriors of Rock. Just in North America, FFXIII moved 1.3 million in its first month while GH Warriors of Rock sold only 86,000 copies.

Part of the reason for that is that there have been way more Guitar Hero games released since 2005 than Final Fantasy games. Which would have been a good reason for giving the Take a Break award to Guitar Hero, if Jeff didn't have a thing about a series he doesn't play and claims not to be interested in.

 

[MrDaravon]

Man. Really? You're going to eliminate Mario Galaxy 2 from GOTY contention and have a fight between Need for Speed, Civ 5 and Pac-man for a slot?

Jesus.

Is the rest of the podcast funny? Otherwise I'm done.

Opinions something something. I would personally put Pac-man above Mario (which is still in my top 10), and haven't played enough of the other two to judge. I don't know about NFS, but I would bet you would find a good number of people that would put Civ 5 above Mario. Sorry dude.

 

[Zabka]

Not even counting FF11 Expansions, 11 Final Fantasy games have been released since 2005.

Also Advent Children was released in 2006.

 

[Curufinwe]

14 Guitar Hero games have been released since 2005 if you include Band Hero, which I do. And there has been a mainline Guitar Hero game released every year for the last six years.

Guitar Hero
Guitar Hero II
Guitar Hero III
Guitar Hero: World Tour
Guitar Hero V
Guitar Hero: Warriors of Rock
Guitar Hero: Rocks the 80s
Guitar Hero: Aerosmith
Guitar Hero: Metallica
Guitar Hero: Smash Hits
Guitar Hero: Van Halen
Guitar Hero: On Tour
Guitar Hero On Tour: Decades
Band Hero

So my point stands.

 

[cr_blah_blah]

14 GH games have been released since 2005 if you include Band Hero, which I do.

Guitar Hero
Guitar Hero II
Guitar Hero III
Guitar Hero: World Tour
Guitar Hero V
Guitar Hero: Warriors of Rock
Guitar Hero: Rocks the 80s
Guitar Hero: Aerosmith
Guitar Hero: Metallica
Guitar Hero: Smash Hits
Guitar Hero: Van Halen
Guitar Hero: On Tour
Guitar Hero On Tour: Decades
Band Hero

So my point stands.

If I had to guess their argument would be Guitar Hero needs to die, not break. The rhythm genre was great but is taking time away and coming back really going to cause a resurgence in creativity and interest? Final Fantasy, on the other hand, reached its peak 10+ years ago and keeps getting worse based entirely of their own doing (not fatigue). Maybe a "Get Your Shit Together Already, We've Waited Long Enough" award would be a more proper fit?

 

[Kusagari]

Guitar Hero should have got the 'Take a Break' award 3 years ago. The series just dead now. FF can still be saved if Square were to retire it and make it into the event a release used to be.

 

[TheChewyWaffles]

Guitar Hero should have got the 'Take a Break' award 3 years ago. The series just dead now. FF can still be saved if Square were to retire it and make it into the event a release used to be.

FF release cycles are so long it's almost the same as retiring it (whatever that means). You're saying you want them to wait 20 years before releasing a new one?

 

[Zabka]

And if you go back to 2004 and include FF11 crap, 19 games have been released. Plus Advent Children, which counts as 5 because it contains 5 games worth of bad cutscenes. So that's 24. Also FF14 counts twice because it is a god damn embarrassment, so that's 25.

Higher numbers win the argument!

 

[ShockingAlberto]

FF is still a main event

Square-Enix fucked up this year by

A) Making that event suck
B) Branding FFXI-2 as a mainline FF and making that really, really fucking suck

 

[C-Jo]

FF is still a main event

Square-Enix fucked up this year by

A) Making that event suck
B) Branding FFXI-2 as a mainline FF and making that really, really fucking suck

I agree with this, but I think branding is equally at fault. Crystal Chronicles, 4 Warriors of Light, etc. All of these spin offs should be their own damn IPs. The Final Fantasy name has been run into the fucking ground.

 

[Deleted member 30609]

Man. Really? You're going to eliminate Mario Galaxy 2 from GOTY contention and have a fight between Need for Speed, Civ 5 and Pac-man for a slot?

Jesus.

Is the rest of the podcast funny? Otherwise I'm done.

their rationale was that it was specifically about what they perceived to be new experiences this year.

I don't think you'll find much argument from a lot of, say, this community in regard to their GOTY choices this year. I mean, as far as my memory is concerned, Galaxy 2 was an amazing game, but to me it was just an extension of an already great thing. If anything it served as a way of enhancing an already great memory rather than creating a new one.

It is, almost without question, one of the finest games I have ever had the pleasure of playing, but it would be like giving the GOTY to a WOW expansion in my mind. I don't say that derogatorily, I feel like 'expansion' shouldn't be a dirty word.

You could argue that the criteria in my mind for a 'new experience' basically boils down to mostly superficial changes to already existing formulas, and I probably wouldn't have a good counter-argument to that, I guess. In the end it's about how I perceive something, and looks will always play a pretty huge part in that.

 

[hamchan]

Man. Really? You're going to eliminate Mario Galaxy 2 from GOTY contention and have a fight between Need for Speed, Civ 5 and Pac-man for a slot?

Jesus.

Is the rest of the podcast funny? Otherwise I'm done.

Haha, Hot Pursuit and Pac Man are amazing games. I really liked Civ 5 too but hardcore civ 4 fans say it's bad and I suppose they'd know the inner mechanics better than me.

 

[megalowho]

This probably the best I can do. Its a pdf file which contains all the information from the Galactic Codex in Mass Effect I and II. I just popped the pdf into the iBooks app, and its made for some great reading.

Heres the scribd link:
http://www.scribd.com/doc/46148473/Galactic-Codex

If you cant download from scribd, heres another download link:
File Size: 0.7MB
http://hotfile.com/dl/93576009/8dea866/Galactic_Codex.pdf.html

Hey, that's great. Loaded it up on mine, I will definitely be using this - thanks!

 

[seady]

Jeff never really has a good argument on why he dislike Red Dead. All he kept saying is it doesn't click with him, and he never articulate why he loves GTA so much but not RDR. Wish he has something more reasonable to explain his hatred. He is usually very good at making his argument, but here it's definitely not.

 

[Ryu]

This probably the best I can do. Its a pdf file which contains all the information from the Galactic Codex in Mass Effect I and II. I just popped the pdf into the iBooks app, and its made for some great reading.

Heres the scribd link:
http://www.scribd.com/doc/46148473/Galactic-Codex

If you cant download from scribd, heres another download link:
File Size: 0.7MB
http://hotfile.com/dl/93576009/8dea866/Galactic_Codex.pdf.html

This is fantastic. Dropped this onto my iPad via Dropbox. Thank you very much!

 

[AmericanNinja]

Really disappointed in their game of the year pick.

 

[LiK]

Jeff never really has a good argument on why he dislike Red Dead. All he kept saying is it doesn't click with him, and he never articulate why he loves GTA so much but not RDR. Wish he has something more reasonable to explain his hatred. He is usually very good at making his argument, but here it's definitely not.

He's mentioned it more than once before that he hates Westerns. Just his personal taste and I can understand that.

 

[Don]

I know that it wasn't going to get the award anyway, but their reason for taking Bayonetta off the multiplatform list was stupid.

 

[War Peaceman]

I know that it wasn't going to get the award anyway, but their reason for taking Bayonetta off the multiplatform list was stupid.

It made some sense, but I guess not really a great deal given that Mass Effect 2 won it in the end.

 

[LCfiner]

I really love the Giant Bomb year end deliberations and GOTY content. great stuff.

I probably disagree personally with around half their decisions (though I happen to agree with ME2 as GOTY) or so but I still enjoy the transparency of it all. They really make no effort to hide how subjective this all is and how the tastes of the different members of the team clash.

A couple things that I do want to point out as they struck me as being odd. They apparently eliminated SMG2 as a GOTY finalist as it was iterative on SMG1... yet AssBro is right up in there in the running and that's a game that's all about minor iterations and improvements on its predecessor.

And their reasoning for giving Final Fantasy the "take a break" award seems more like reasoning to give it the "most disappointing" award. it's been ages since the last mainline FF and FF XIII was certainly disappointing for many (including me) but I don't think it's a tired franchise yet as there's just not enough console FF games out there for it to be reaching saturation levels. I know they included FF XIV in there but that's really aimed at a different audience, imo.

Personally, I think that COD is a shoe in for that award. the gunplay and scripted, linear shooting gallery gameplay barely changed at all in the last 4 years and just feels increasingly more stale. but I'm looking at it from the POV as a single player guy so I suppose I'll never really be excited about COD the way they are.

 

[Aaron]

Personally, I think that COD is a shoe in for that award. the gunplay and scripted, linear shooting gallery gameplay barely changed at all in the last 4 years and just feels increasingly more stale. but I'm looking at it from the POV as a single player guy so I suppose I'll never really be excited about COD the way they are.

They've talking about COD in the past that the next game really needs to change it up, or they should take a break from the series. So it's likely to make the list next year.

I wish New Vegas wasn't so damned buggy. It should have trounced ME2, but it's hard to justify when I'm still having crashing issues two significant patches later.

 

[f0rk]

I really love the Giant Bomb year end deliberations and GOTY content. great stuff.

I probably disagree personally with around half their decisions (though I happen to agree with ME2 as GOTY) or so but I still enjoy the transparency of it all. They really make no effort to hide how subjective this all is and how the tastes of the different members of the team clash.

I agree, transparency is what makes it so good. Also the biggest problems with the process has been when they made decisions (or maybe forgot) outside of the podcast so completely skipped something they really probably shouldn't have.

 

[DaBuddaDa]

I agree, Final Fantasy 13 and 14 should have shared the "most disappointing" award, while Call of Duty should have gotten the "take a break" award. Black Ops did make two of their Top 10 lists, though :/

 

[Darklord]

Sorry if this has been said but games are spoiled in the day 6? I heard there are quite a few. Just the winners and runners up?

 

[f0rk]

Sorry if this has been said but games are spoiled in the day 6? I heard there are quite a few. Just the winners and runners up?

Red Dead and Starcraft 2 are definitely spoiled. Mass Effect 2 is sort of, but I'm not sure I'd be too bothered as the main plot is weak anyway. They avoid specifics about Brotherhood except it has a big ending.

 

[Curufinwe]

When Ryan was putting forward his theory that a game that is in development for a really long time will always be mediocre, it would have been nice if one of the other guys could have brought up Half-Life 2. Cause that's a pretty big hole in the theory.

 

[Massa]

When Ryan was putting forward his theory that a game that is in development for a really long time will always be mediocre, it would have been nice if one of the other guys could have brought up Half-Life 2. Cause that's a pretty big hole in the theory.

And ICO/SOTC, every Blizzard game, Red Dead Redemption...

 

[witness]

Really disappointed in their game of the year pick.

.

 

[firehawk12]

The GOTY was always going to come down to ME2 and RDR though. GB are the last crew to pick something weird like what GameSpot did with Demon's Souls last year.

I sort of want to know what Dave's tie breaking vote would have been though. Amnesia!

 

[PepsimanVsJoe]

Good for ME2 I guess. I would have went with Deadly Premonition but oh well.
ME2 is a respectable choice.

 

[Do The Mario]

I thought they were a little quick to dismiss Super Mario Galaxy 2 when there were several other squeals in the mix.

Nonetheless, these awards are fairly subjective. I really enjoyed the podcasts.

 

[kman3000]

Good for ME2 I guess. I would have went with Deadly Premonition but oh well.
ME2 is a respectable choice.

I love DP, but this was never going to happen.

 

[eznark]

Just finishing up day 3. I cannot believe there are people who cover games for a living who think Civ V is better than Civ IV. Stunning.

 

[ShockingAlberto]

Giant Bomb dismissed the original SMG equally readily.

There was no chance SMG2 would ever be more than a passing mention in their GOTY deliberations.

 

[PepsimanVsJoe]

I love DP, but this was never going to happen.

Of course it was never going to happen. Doesn't mean I can't be disappointed.
It always seems like "safe-choices" get the pick for end-all GOTY awards.

Which is fine, some people are like that, and their appeal as a website does not come from being ultra hardcore difference fetishists. The "safe choice" is basically their slogan, though.

Says a lot about the quality of their work then. I know a lot of times the only reason I read some sites is because they talk about obscure stuff nobody else will cover but even when Giantbomb is talking about ME2, RDR, and so on I still find it interesting.

 

[ShockingAlberto]

Of course it was never going to happen. Doesn't mean I can't be disappointed.
It always seems like "safe-choices" get the pick for end-all GOTY awards.

Well, I mean, yeah. They're safe choices for a reason. It's not like developers shipped a bad game and said "Oh, click the safe choice box, if we don't do that then we might not win GOTY."

That said, these guys in particular are not any type to buck trends. Giant Bomb generally finds niche gaming - by which I mean games with budgets under $20 million and resolutions under 640p - as quaint and cute, with possible exceptions of a download game here or there that someone wants to fight for until they no longer want to fight for it because it's not like it had an advertising campaign or anything.

Which is fine, some people are like that, and their appeal as a website does not come from being ultra hardcore difference fetishists. The "safe choice" is basically their slogan, though.

 

[firehawk12]

Well, I mean, yeah. They're safe choices for a reason. It's not like developers shipped a bad game and said "Oh, click the safe choice box, if we don't do that then we might not win GOTY."

That said, these guys in particular are not any type to buck trends. Giant Bomb generally finds niche gaming - by which I mean games with budgets under $20 million and resolutions under 640p - as quaint and cute, with possible exceptions of a download game here or there that someone wants to fight for until they no longer want to fight for it because it's not like it had an advertising campaign or anything.

Which is fine, some people are like that, and their appeal as a website does not come from being ultra hardcore difference fetishists. The "safe choice" is basically their slogan, though.

Yeah. I think they're unapologetic about the types of games they like - which is why Yakuza 3 didn't even warrant a mention, but Joe Danger is almost shortlisted for the PS3 award. :lol

 

[kman3000]

Giant Bomb dismissed the original SMG equally readily.

There was no chance SMG2 would ever be more than a passing mention in their GOTY deliberations.

Ryan was the only one who actually played it too. So thats probably another reason no one really talked or fought for it.

 

[Nert]

Giant Bomb dismissed the original SMG equally readily.

Do you mean that they did this for GOTY stuff, or just in general? Giantbomb didn't even exist until mid-2008.

Or are you talking about their GameSpot days?

 

[REV 09]

Great round of podcasts guys. My 2 complaints would be:

1. Easy on the spoilers. You can talk about the quality of a game and even the ending w/o dropping spoiler after spoiler w/o warning. I've luckily finished most of the games, but some endings are so great because you don't see them coming. It's a disservice to your listeners to spoil some of this years greatest games.

2. Failing to even namedrop huge games for certain categories. GoW3 didnt get a peep for best visuals. Bad Company 2 never was mentioned for multiplayer. I don't think FF13 was mentioned for biggest disappointment. By all means, choose the games that you love for the winners, but some of these deserve to be part of the discussion.

 

[Oxx]

Damn. I go away for a few days and I come back to find eight-hours of Giant Bomb audio.

Is there anything I can safely skip? This Bioshock 2 vs Mass Effect 2 DLC debate is already going on far too long.

 

[GillianSeed79]

I though the deliberations were pretty fair for the GOTY. People forget they all have their own top 10 personal GOTY's. It was pretty much between RDR, ME2 and AC:Bro. If they stuck to their personal top 10's and didn't budge an inch the podcast would have been probably six hours long or at least as long as the Minerva's Den argument.

 

[MattyFTM]

Giant Bomb dismissed the original SMG equally readily.

There was no chance SMG2 would ever be more than a passing mention in their GOTY deliberations.

Giant Bomb wasn't around when Super Mario Galaxy came out. They weren't here to dismiss it. And it did get nominated for their 2008's 2007 Game of the Year. Sure, we don't know exactly how much it was considered for the award since they didn't have the super transparent deliberations they do now, but it's clear they did recognize it as one of the best games of 2007.

Also, Brad, Ryan & Vinny were all still at Gamespot when GS gave Super Mario Galaxy their 2007 Game of the Year award.

 

[benny_a]

1. Easy on the spoilers. You can talk about the quality of a game and even the ending w/o dropping spoiler after spoiler w/o warning. I've luckily finished most of the games, but some endings are so great because you don't see them coming. It's a disservice to your listeners to spoil some of this years greatest games.

Fuck that shit. They need to include more spoilers. Jeff had it right when he told Brad to stop being a baby because of spoilers.

I haven't played Minerva's Den nor have I played Shadow Broker, so I skipped the first hour of the gotycast. But I'm looking forward to hear their thoughts on it as soon as I've played both.

Also I find it weird how they can come to any kind of agreement of what the best game is if they don't discuss the game in more than a superficial way that can be glanced by the launch trailer. That would make the deliberations worthless.

I want in-depth discussion about things and not this superficial crap. The spoiler threads on GAF are the best to read as people can also write without considering every sentence to be spoiler-tagged.

Spoiler it up, gentlemen!

 

[Jibber Hack]

Agreed. They couldn't talk around what made a lot of these games great. I was very happy when Jeff told Brad to man up. If you don't want the spoilers, just read the lists. The discussions were much more interesting when they could talk about specifics.

 

[Fantastical]

I just listened to the Paul Barnett podcast and I was rolling my eyes most of the time. Foursquare in GOTY discussion? I know he stressed how these games all had great concepts but the list is "Game of the Year" not "Greatest Game Concepts of the Year." Listening to his podcast felt like talking to a music snob that only likes obscure random stuff and tries to hard to be anti-establishment.

I'm not saying the games he chose aren't good, I just think most of them have no place in a "Game of the Year" discussion.

I completely agree. I am listening to it right now rolling my eyes... he can be really funny sometimes... whenever he is not talking about games. It's like when he talked about that toy that he thought was so great.

EDIT: Mahjong?!?!?! Holy shit...

 

[Haunted]

Damn ME2 GOTY? Maybe I should play Mass Effect? Is it good?

Both are great. Don't bother with the consoles and get them on PC.

 

[LiK]

Here's how it worked out because one person didn't play a specific game.

Ryan struck down Starcraft 2.
Jeff struck down Red Dead Redemption.
Brad struck down AC: Brotherhood.

Vinny was the only one who played all 3 of those I think. He's the real winner.

"Shadow Broker"