How would you rate the new Giant Bomb at launch?

It's fine. A lot of the bugs will be ironed out soon enough and you can't realistically expect a bug free launch of anything. I am sad that a few of my favorite parts of the site are no more but I'll get over it. It's weird not seeing the popular topics when I scroll to the bottom of the front page but a lot of these things are just things I'll have to get use to.

@hanskisaragi: I wasn't aware of that. The only info from the staff I heard was Jeff saying that it was removed because no one used it, which doesn't seem to be the case considering how many people ask about it.

@hanskisaragi: My pill is chilled on that issue, then.

I do agree with the one poster that said "it's too slick for it's own good"

Like most modern sites it seems to leave a lot of empty swathes of space around bulky boxes. The style over function mindset has been quite dominant in modern webdesign. The new YouTube redesign is quite awful. The new GameTrailers website is terrible compared to the old one in terms of pure navigation. Yet everyone is seemingly moving towards that Windows 8 look which doesn't always work.

All bugs aside (I'm not a web designer so I have no idea how this stuff works but I'm really baffled by how rough this transition is..) I think the site looks alright but can't shake the feeling like no matter if I'm viewing it on my phone, a laptop or my desktop PC - everything looks really out of scale and wrong somehow.

HTML 5

Hate it. The new forum layout sucks. The video layout sucks. The overall layout sucks. Half the videos don't work. I really want the old Giant Bomb layout back. This one looks like some cheap piece of shit.

2/5 - Aesthetically pleasing (although I wish they made more use of the space on the front page - that big gap between the Top Releases bar on the right and the Community Showcase just looks weird, maybe the staff twitter feed would've gone better there? I like the layout everywhere else though), but at the moment it's sluggish, prone to crashing - my Chrome favourites tab has actually renamed Giant Bomb to 500: Internal Server Error! - there's a good 50/50 chance of me clicking a link in chrome and it not working, and most annoying of all, the video player has become painfully slow.

It was troublesome back on the old site, but it's even worse here - I don't have the best internet in the world admittedly, but in the time it would've taken me to load the entirety of Bradley May Cry part 2 on the old site (about 20-25 minutes for progressive/High), I managed about 12 minutes of it in the new player. It's made all the more maddening by the bizarre decision to suddenly make access to the Youtube player on all videos Members Only. I'm really hoping that's temporary, or maybe an incorrectly flipped switch during the mayhem of the site launch, but if it isn't, I think charging people to use the Youtube player is... jarring, to say the least - especially when the YT player was originally introduced to save the site some money by not having to use so much of their own bandwidth.

4/5.

Needed a day one patch.

2/5

The bugs will obviously be ironed out soon enough, but like most reactive websites it seems designed more for touch screens than mouse navigation. The videos page is a perfect example of this: It has a massive grid of needlessly large icons surrounded by a lot of empty space and requires too much scrolling to reach the bottom.

I also don't get why I still can't search for, say, "witcher 2 quicklook" and go straight to the Witcher 2 Quicklook video. Instead I have to search for Witcher 2, go to the game's page and then click on the quicklook or click on the options icon in the search bar, select videos, search for Witcher 2 and then click on the quicklook.

I love it almost 100%. I have a very slow DSL line at home so the site never fully loads for me at home but anywhere else it is lightning fast and awesome. I especially like the new video player.

Forums are worse

YouTube is now premium membership only

Error pages try too hard to be funny

No "recent forum threads" section

and the main page has so much space taken up by the most recent 3-4 items.

I'd rather have the old site back largely because of the YouTube and recent forum thread thing.

1/5. Everything I came to this site to do is now broken to the point that I can't use it or is hidden away under menus. The podcasts won't download on my phones program anymore, the forums are no longer on the front page so finding forum stuff is a pain, and the videos are unplayable on the site because they lag and won't buffer properly. I hope they fix this stuff ASAP because it really sucks so far that this "update" has done nothing but remove features from the site that I use.

2/5. Some things look nicer and others don't. I have not encountered any new features that have made great impressions, while some big ones were taken away (quests, achievement tracking). There is still lots of bugs and stability of the site and it's various functions is little weak.

I see redesign more as a means to get rid off the wishkeymedia code and services, and less as a real improvement to the site. However things are still in motion and maybe a patch or to will make this one into a better experience.

Looks absolutely brilliant, love the dynamic scaling. Of course it's acting slow right now but I'm sure there are just some creases that need to be ironed out.

OK, that is truly shitty action on the GB's part given how crappy image quality "streaming-auto" gives and how slow the "progressive-high" is.

Steam worked better during it's launch than this place.

3/5. Site's still pretty laggy but it's functional.

3. It's ok. I may just need to get used to the new site but so far I prefer the old one in nearly every way.

I agree with this. It is cluttered and I'm not big on the new age design. I don;t like the way the forums looks so cluttered now and how the metals take up parts of the avatars.

If key features that were working on the old design and in the beta were functional, it would be perfectly fine. As it is now, I'm cut off from everyone I follow, thus making the community side of the site completely useless to me.

I'm lonely.

Four stars. I like it better than the old site, aesthetics and functionality both. Still though, it will keep getting better as we go along.

3/5, the video player is pretty busted for me but thankfully the option to dump the stream into VLC was my preference anyway.

I like the new look, but it's the little things that are bothering me right now.

1. The time of livestreams are now listed in PST on the front page, previously the site had the capability to adjust for different timezones automatically.

2. I'm really going to miss the reviewer avatars, it's one of the dumb ideas that made Giant Bomb unique.

3. The aforementioned video player is totally fucking broken for me, full screen video is running at well below an acceptable FPS. I suspect users that aren't premium members are having the same problem but they lack the ability to download or stream using something else.

Golden. Fuck golden.

Let's be honest here, the launch was very rough and pretty unprofessional, it seems more stable today but it's still pretty slow. Some things look really nice, not sure about the font for titles and stuff, will probably get used to it. Mobile looks nice, but as someone mentioned before I am not a fun of the entire menu being a slow and sometimes unresponsive drop down.

I think this needed a bit more development time before it went live. I am going to be nice here and give it a 3/5.

Having some trouble understanding how anyone could give it a 5/5 as it is, but those seem to be the people just voting and not actually explaining it in the comments.

If I'm being honest a 2 out of 5. I think the site looks nice but even then i don't like some of the design choices made. The real problem is performance which is pretty poor right now. Some things work some things don't work, and even when things are working its slow.

I know its hard work to change the site from the ground up but i have seen other sites who updated with fewer problems even if i did not care for the design change.

2/5 it's ridiculously slow and a lot of things are totally broken. I know they work in the games industry but releasing a broken web site is a bit silly.

3/5

Too much empty space on the front page.

The forums are now left-aligned for some reason, and I really don't like it.

I like the overall aesthetic, but the way that stuff is positioned... not so much.

I think I'm okay with the left-aligned forums now, sticking with a 4/5. The site's pretty slow, but that's to be expected at launch. It sure does look nice.

Left-aligned forums are terrible and they need to put the forums back on the front page.

Apart from that though, it's pretty great.

It's generally fine but I haven't seen anything that was actually better.

I generally like white themes, but with the top of the front page (almost the entire screen on my browser) being black no matter what, it makes the white theme sort of pointless.

it could have been a lot worse.

A bit glitchy, but improving. I've tried it in both Firefox and Chrome and the same problems appear for me. It also seems a bit slower to load for me. It's nothing that will deter me from visiting, though.

This reminds me of the talk they have every once in a while about reviewing MMOs; when's the right time? How many days do you give it, or do you rate it from the viewpoint of the person who sat down a day after it relaunched? And how much allowance do you make for it being a re-launch?

There were things about the previous version that worked, and that I liked. Things that I liked enough to pitch in with a subscription for. Some of those were removed on purpose (achievement tracking), some are just broken (videos on my tablet). I fully expect that the broken things will be fixed, but the site as it is now seems like a step backwards in terms of what I liked about the site for most of its previous incarnation(s).

I'm trying to think of a good analogy, but can't quite find one I'm happy with, so here's an example:

I want to watch 'A Grown Man In His Underwear Tells You About Destiny', while I'm on the couch, or in my favorite chair. I can't, because the videos on mobile/tablet are non-functional. I want to use the site in a way that it was intended; in a way that it used to work.

I'm thinking currently 2/5.

well, things are still a bit fucked up at the moment, so I voted 2/5. I imagine that rating will increase to at least a 3 in the next week or so. I went with 2 for now, though, because I'm having problems with the video player, the API-related stuff is still down, I couldn't get into the chat/onto the site for a bit during TNT and Unprofessional Friday. Still, the new design is darn nice to look at and the Wiki and most of the content still has the same function as before. I really miss the Quests and, especially, the Achievements, though. Besides the content, the Achievements is the reason I visited the site the most. Without them, I don't see my rating ever reaching above 4/5, even if everything else is ironed out.

Seeing as how this is the third time I've tried posting this comment, I'd say about a 1/5. There is absolutely no reason it should be this slow and buggy. I don't mind the new layout, really, but come on. This is pathetic for a website in 2013.

I don't like that they lead with the *Light* version of Giant Bomb.

I prefer the *Dark* version of Giant Bomb.

I am afraid of the folks attracted by the *Light* version of Giant Bomb. They are evil people.

I am afraid of change. Time to turn off the *Light*. Cozy darkness keep mine Giant Bomb safe. Darkness keeps the pests at bay.

I like the forums, but everything else seems a little bit cluttered. I haven't checked the wiki much yet, so I will refrain from giving it a score.

I think this thread is a good example of how much GB community blows things out of proportion. Feedback is always good, so I guess it's a benefit that the users are vocal.

Site is fine, but it's tough to launch a new site, especially with such ambitious goals. The new homepage is gorgeous.

That Video player is a massive massive improvement from what it was previously, no longer do i have to worry about finding where i was in a video ever again cuz it screwed me over.

Really miss the forum front being gone though i could understand why you would axe it, although that was the only reason i paid any attention to the community in the first place and i know that the awesome community is there now ,but others people coming in might not have that same discovery that i did to actively want to take part in it as others and i do.

But generally for me its been pretty decent and i only received a few instability issues in the first few days of the launch so i haven't had many problems.

http://m.giantbomb.com