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

They were likely not considering bayonetta to be on their list anyway, and used the PS3 version as a scapegoat to not even really discuss why.
 
Oh Funkystudent...

Anyway I can't say I agree with Skyrim being #1, played it on PC and really do think it's one of the most overrated games of the year and if the PS3 version is as bad as everyone says? Yeah fuck Bethesda.
 
Hahaha, I don't think you should be tell me that when you are the one bringing it up first in your posts.

well saying that stature was stuffed full of money was clearly meant as a joke and not meant seriously but it sounded better in my head. :/

maybe it was because it was sandwiched in between the bastion thing and the whiskey media emailing me about my expiring membership / credit card thing that confused people.


I did solve the email thing though.

actually new page. quick everyone just dont reply to me now and I wont reply to any of your replys.

Ill go away and play some starcraft and this page doesnt have to be full of angry people being angry at me for being angry and you can all discuss the long ass podcasts I havent listen to yet.

everyone wins.

later duders
 
If this is true Giant Bomb has reached new levels of hypocrisy.

I'm listening to the podcast right now and I am really looking forward to seeing how they ultimately decided the winner, because they spend so much time talking about how Mortal Kombat's multiplayer being broken is completely and utterly "indefensible". They go on about how it is an "back of the box feature" and shit... well, I mean, Skyrim on PS3 is broken for everyone, right? How did that get a pass then?

So weird. At this point I'm not really invested on their opinions, I still like the guys, but some of them make some pretty shitty arguments, especially Brad.
 
I think it's ridiculous to 'punish' Bethesda for a buggy game. The fact is that nobody is making games as complex as Bethesda makes them nowadays, and I'll take something as dense as Skyrim and make do with the bugs instead of something as linear and streamlined as 95% of games on the market today.

People keep saying this, and I'm not sure I buy that it's true.
 
I'm listening to the podcast right now and I am really looking forward to seeing how they ultimately decided the winner, because they spend so much time talking about how Mortal Kombat's multiplayer being broken is completely and utterly "indefensible". I mean, Skyrim on PS3 is broken for everyone, right? How did that get a pass then?

So weird. At this point I'm not really invested on their opinions, I still like the guys, but some of them make some pretty shitty arguments, especially Brad.

Jeff flat out said the PS3 version is not winning anything and wouldn’t make it into a top 10 due to its problems.

they’re basically seeing it as a 360/ PC game.

I can’t argue with that, to be honest, since I’ve been playing it on PC and I couldn’t diminish the great experience I have a had with with the game by referring a version I would never play.

As long as they’re clear that you should stay away from the PS3 version, I don’t think they should do much more.

but, whatever, it doesn’t matter since the REAL GOTY, Portal 2, didn’t win :P
 
I'm listening to the podcast right now and I am really looking forward to seeing how they ultimately decided the winner, because they spend so much time talking about how Mortal Kombat's multiplayer being broken is completely and utterly "indefensible". They go on about how it is an "back of the box feature" and shit... well, I mean, Skyrim on PS3 is broken for everyone, right? How did that get a pass then?

So weird. At this point I'm not really invested on their opinions, I still like the guys, but some of them make some pretty shitty arguments, especially Brad.

Aren't they pretty much just taking the 360 and PC version of Skyrim into account? Jeff said the PS3 version wouldn't have made it onto his list.

Doesn't explain the Bayonetta thing, though I don't know the full story behind that because I don't recall much from last year's deliberations.
 
Skyrim is awesome but Saints Row really fucking deserved this, I haven't had so much fun in a video game all year. Fuck you Brad, fuck you Ryan. I'm indifferent with Patrick.

I'll hold this grudge for a whole day.
 
I like to imagine that all "GotY deliberations" at other publications are like this. Puts things into perspective.

EDIT: Could have been worse. Could have been Minecraft, everything bad about Skyrim done much worse.
 
Sooo... I was under the impression that the GB top 10 was somehow supposed to reflect the cumulative result of their individual opinions.

Guess I was wrong, since GB the detached entity apparently picked skyrim for its own goty...
 
I like to imagine that all "GotY deliberations" at other publications are like this. Puts things into perspective.

EDIT: Could have been worse. Could have been Minecraft, everything bad about Skyrim done much worse.

They probably are. Doing lists like this is always awful. I remember doing something like this for films at the radio. I hated every minute of it.
 
Sooo... I was under the impression that the GB top 10 was somehow supposed to reflect the cumulative result of their individual opinions.

Guess I was wrong, since GB the detached entity apparently picked skyrim for its own goty...

Blame Ryan if you want to know why Saint’s Row lost out. If he hadn’t abandoned the cause, Brad would’ve been hopelessly outnumbered. :)
 
Yeah, skyrim is amazing in so many ways, but in overall story and combat, which for me are two huge things, I think it is just plain bad. The melee combat system is just jank, and the main story is shit.

this is true, a lot of the sidequests are much more interesting than the main story.
thankfully, there's plenty of them.
 
@LCfiner, @SmithnCo

Oh, OK. I haven't got to that part yet, or I must've missed it. Well, I can see that if that is the case. I am loving Skyrim on PC as well, it's just that they seem to apply a bunch of double standards in their arguments and seeing how most of the loved SR3 I kind of wondered how they got where they ended. I mean, I don't go to them for informed opinions on anything, but some of stuff they say about games comes out of nowhere.
 
I don't see how Skyrim could be considered more complex than a lot of open world games. Unless by complex they mean filled with terrible fetch quests. Red Dead Redemption is complex but it wasn't completely borked on one of the consoles. It of course had glitches on release but they weren't that bad. But what does being complex have to do with the game breaking halfway through. This isn't some rare quest item that could crash the game that no one found, it's something that definitely should have come up in testing. Unless they don't test playing the game for periods of over 30 minutes.
 
I think Bethesda get given too much of a pass by just pumping out their sheer volume of content. When you romanticize it all there's some great stuff you do in that game, but easily 90% of the quests are just you and your sword in a dungeon full of Draugr. Maybe you'll have to twist some pillars and get shot with darts, maybe they'll be Forsworn or conjurers, maybe a Daedric prince sent you there, but so much of that game is just dungeon crawling. There are a handful of truly excellent things in that game, and once you learn how the game works and know how to avoid the chaff you can have a great twenty or thirty hours with it and be done. I say this as someone who's played it for sixty hours, though; maybe it's my fault for burning myself out on the bad stuff, but I still hear so many people talking about that old cliche of being able to walk in any direction and find dozens of fun things to do. I just don't think that's true in Skyrim. The content is there but the quality isn't.

I was thinking about Red Dead Redemption a while ago and I think that game did everything that Skyrim does but better. The greater emphasis on the way your character fits in the world, like the animations and the control (even the way you can press a button to say 'Howdy' to people') makes that world feel so much more real. You aren't jankily skating over the geometry, juddering up staircases and squaring off with characters saying the same lines with the same voice actors all the time, it just looks and feels so much more polished. And I had far more fun exploring and getting lost in RDR's world than Skyrim because it's just a better place. It's gorgeous, the sound is better (both ambient and music), it's more densely populated. The draw distance is better: you can climb a hill and look out over the world and say "I'm going to go and see that", whereas in Skyrim nothing really loads beyond a certain distance so you just look at your compass thing with the icons on it and trust that something will be there. There are sidequests, fewer of them but they're so much better on average and they fit the world and add to it so well.

Skyrim made the comparison itself: I found a treasure map on some guy's body that was exactly the same as the ones in Red Dead. The difference was that in RDR I looked at the picture and I realised, "Hey, I know that place. I think I could actually find that". In Skyrim the map had the word 'Riverwood' written at the bottom of it, and the item's description was 'A treasure map of Riverwood' or something, because nothing in that world really sticks out enough that you could recognise it by sight.
 
Wha? Intro of what? Skyrim?
Look, it's easy to view your achievement and progression on Giantbomb itself. You completed the first 30 minutes.

While also posting replies feigning completion such as:

"No. I found it be pretty bad (and short). Some of the praise it's getting is crazy.I thought the first two games were trash as well, though. "
 
Brad's kind of blanket 'nothing's wrong with Skyrim' defense was pretty annoying, especially when talking about the breadth of the game. There sure are a ton of quests, but also a ton of quests that play out reaaaally similarly. It was a real bummer when you get to a mage's guild quest that is like 'research this' (at which point I'm like 'yes! variety!') and then it turns out you have to go into a cave or tower to fetch an item left at the bottom of that cave. Luckily for you, every cave has a one-way only door that leads from the bottom to the entrance, so you don't have to backtrack!

At least Jeff and Vinny pointed out that the game isn't that different from Oblivion or Fallout. (I'm playing through Skyrim, and it's fun, but so was Fallout 3. Fallout 3 had a lot fewer quests, but it felt like each one was more realized.)

Ryan's change of heart was the weirdest, though. 'Yeah, I love the game, I played a ton of it, I just wish there were more of it, so I'll pick this other game I haven't played'. Judas.
 
Look, it's easy to view your achievement and progression on Giantbomb itself. You completed the first 30 minutes.

While also posting replies feigning completion such as:
Yeah, I certainly didn't ditch the 360 version because of shoddy framerate and access to a different platform. Obviously the only people in the world who don't like Saints Row 3 didn't actually play it.

Creepy.
 
I think Bethesda get given too much of a pass by just pumping out their sheer volume of content. When you romanticize it all there's some great stuff you do in that game, but easily 90% of the quests are just you and your sword in a dungeon full of Draugr. Maybe you'll have to twist some pillars and get shot with darts, maybe they'll be Forsworn or conjurers, maybe a Daedric prince sent you there, but so much of that game is just dungeon crawling. There are a handful of truly excellent things in that game, and once you learn how the game works and know how to avoid the chaff you can have a great twenty or thirty hours with it and be done. I say this as someone who's played it for sixty hours, though; maybe it's my fault for burning myself out on the bad stuff, but I still hear so many people talking about that old cliche of being able to walk in any direction and find dozens of fun things to do. I just don't think that's true in Skyrim. The content is there but the quality isn't.

I gave up after 10 hours for the same reason I gave up in Oblivion. The world is just boring and the missions end up being some variation of "go to cave, collect some shit".

I feel like this is like someone saying a 5 hour movie is good simply because it's 5 hours.
 
lol what the eff, this is going to be a great listen. Shocked that Ryan didn't back SR 3 fully.
Fully? More like AT ALL.


Narc AND Traitor
i2cj3.gif



PS: I'm cool with Skyrim. I think people are more upset about the bad arguments (like Brad saying how average the gameplay was in SR3 while defending Skyrim) than the actual winner.
 
GiantBomb just shot themselves in the foot.

I don't know how much the rest of you know about gaming culture (I'm an expert), but having the correct opinions is a huge part of it.

GiantBomb, publicly apologize and change your GOTY or you can kiss your business goodbye.
 
Yeah, I certainly didn't ditch the 360 version because of shoddy framerate and access to a different platform. Obviously the only people in the world who don't like Saints Row 3 didn't actually play it.

Creepy.
I'm actually specifically targetting you here because that kind of 'well this game I haven't played isn't deserving' shit is just fucking stupid. And no, it isn't in your Steam (or PSN) achievement list either, which you just removed from your profile. When you play half an hour, you don't post something like:

I'm actually a little stunned at how much the GB staff love it. My experience with the story (haven't done any of the side activities) could not have possibly been more boring. Maybe I just don't get it *shrug*
Damn, SR 3 getting mad overrated.
A well written and diverse list without Saints Row. How refreshing.

Get out of here. And anyone contesting two games so furiously needs to have actually played both.
 
What would you like them to do differently?

That's a broad question. Personally I don't see the point beyond each dude having their own top 10. If there is to be a GotY, pick the most common/high-rated game among them. Year after year we've seen that when it comes to arguments they tend to be very inconsistent and outright nonsensical at times. At least that is when it comes to serious criticism categories. So why not just have them not argue anymore?

But if it has to be deliberations, since that is what we are talking about, that's tricky. Just having better formed opinions and showing a greater range and understanding of videogames as a whole could go a long way. Then again, what I really have in mind is asking too much, to have them change their opinions basically. I am way more mechanically focused when it comes to games, so these weird problems centered around "experiences" and feelings they had playing the game don't come up for me. It is sort of a trade off, because Skyrim or Saints Row the Third could never be my GotY because they are both mechanically weak, shallow games which are popular for the "experience" their aesthetics or gimmicky mechanics bring.
 
Steam achievements? I haven't had a gaming PC years.

If you're a Volition employee, I apologize for offending you. I'll go delete my negative comments if it'll make you feel better.

Edit: XD @ PSN trophies. Quality sleuthing there. Totally up to date.
 
Does anyone have a timestamp for the Catherine spoiler talk? I will probably listen to the podcast tommorow but won't get playing Catherine until the PAL release in February and would like to avoid spoilers for it if possible.
 
Listening to the podcast, I'm sure Brad wouldn't have been so adamant against Saints Row's deserved win if he didn't suck at games.

The complaints about dying during gunfights, not having AI buddies work properly...it just reminds me of the terrible quicklooks where he's just playing wrong.

Did he really complain about SRTT's difficulty? I think everyone generally recognizes that the game is actually quite easy, especially as you get further on and essentially get the ability to pay for cheat codes that make you invincible and have ridiculous, unlimited firepower.

I'm about 8 hours in and my fully-upgraded pistol with incendiary rounds is a beast that takes down helicopters in, like, 8 shots (1/3 of a two-pistol "clip") and my health regenerates pretty damn quickly. I still died, like, 4 times so far, but I wouldn't call the game anywhere near "difficult". I'll have to listen before passing judgment--not that my judgment matters one iota, haha.
 
Blame Ryan if you want to know why Saint’s Row lost out. If he hadn’t abandoned the cause, Brad would’ve been hopelessly outnumbered. :)

Ryan's change of heart was the weirdest, though. 'Yeah, I love the game, I played a ton of it, I just wish there were more of it, so I'll pick this other game I haven't played'. Judas.

Yeah, gotta love the gb guys. Why even bother if you're not gonna give your honest opinion, just throw the sodding dice and get it over with, to bad it always seem to land with the "skyrim face" up for all of these review outlet guys.
 
Ryan has SR3 as his personal GOTY and then doesn't have it as his GOTY 2 days later.. interesting. Having said that, like really... Is it that big of a deal which game won lol
 
Steam achievements? I haven't had a gaming PC years.

If you're a Volition employee, I apologize for offending you. I'll go delete my negative comments if it'll make you feel better.
I'm asking your to present yourself better, not be a fanboy, and maybe experience something before raging at it. It'll improve you as a person and your won't come off as an anonymous nerd online making false claims. That kind of crap really just ruins any kind of discussion in GOTY threads.

If you really think I'm wrong here, and that you've buit enough experience with something to have a voice, let me know. All versions of the game are connected through progression systems. You removed your PSN name from your profile (and Steam achievements from GB), so there's not much else I can do to make sure you aren't talking out of your ass.


Here's what I had to say about Skyrim: link. I haven't said much more about it anywhere, because that's how little I felt like bothering with it until patches. Try doing that next time.
 
Ryan's change of heart was the weirdest, though. 'Yeah, I love the game, I played a ton of it, I just wish there were more of it, so I'll pick this other game I haven't played'. Judas.

Absolutely. I just got to that part myself and I think he did it just for the entertainment value to be honest.

He's like "Hey, it's the top game of my list, I fucking loved it and showered it with praise, I admit that I haven't played that much Skyrim, but Jeff, I can't go with you down that path. Skyrim > SR3." Like, WTF, Ryan... LOL.
 
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