cerberus3dog

A Yakuza game. I'd probably choose Yakuza 0. It can be any one really. I just want people to give a Yakuza game a chance. I'm overjoyed that it seems the media have begun to recognize these games since 0 came out. They are incredibly iterative games and all basically use the same map, and yet I keep wanting to come back and play the next one. I love the melodrama, the machismo, and the heart they put into their wild stories.

Sounds great. I hope it picks up some steam.

@ottoman673: Is it the Unofficial Giant Bomb Discord? Here's the link I found for anyone interested. https://discord.gg/0aqJaW1chMpCwYd5

Maybe people here might find it worthwhile.

@bigsocrates: The subreddit is something I hadn't considered. I frequent it a couple of times a month and it caters to a different crowd than these forums do it seems. There is more commenting on the staff's tweets and reddit in general is more "meme-friendly" I guess. As you said, the landscape of video game forums has changed some in the ten years since this site began operating.

As for the forums becoming less of priority, I didn't focus on that because I don't blame them for following the trends of the games media industry. It's sad if that means forums will continue to decline. I'm grateful to Matthew Rorie for taking the time every now and again to make new threads on the forums.

It's my opinion that Giant Bomb forum activity has decreased in recent years. I remember back in 2013-2014, after Ryan's passing around the time of Spookin' With Scoops, there was so much activity in the forums. Everyday, popular threads would have dozens of new comments and new threads appeared frequently. What got me thinking of this was the increased activity I'm seeing here right now around GOTY stuff. IMO, there has been more activity here than I've seen in months I suppose. I thought it was a good time to pose this question. Please correct me if I'm misremembering.

I'd like to ask some of the duders, especially the veterans and mods, who have been here longer and more active than myself:

• Do you agree that forum activity has decreased in recent years?
• If you agree, what reasons do you think have caused it?
• Do you think there is anything to be done to make the forums more active?

This entire question hinges on whether you agree that forum activity has dried up. If you don't agree, please feel free to comment as well. Maybe I'm missing a lot of community activity since I don't catch a lot of the live shows. So maybe the activity has migrated to other parts of the site I don't frequent as much.

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As for myself, one of the reasons I think activity has decreased is that I believe the community here has gotten older. This is certainly true for myself, life and its responsibilities have taken larger roles in my free time and I don't play as many games as I used to. This has led me to feel ill informed about many of the games this site and its community takes interest in. This stops me from commenting on these games I haven't played or know nothing about. Another lesser reason is that there are a lot of games nowadays that cater to a lot of different interests. Perhaps there isn't much overlap in the active parts of this community except for Giant Bomb related threads and those larger, broader titles like God of War, Red Dead, and the Witcher etc.

One organic solution I can think of is for users who care about this place to motivate themselves to participate more. I've always been more of a lurker here and I dissuade myself from commenting often to avoid confrontation. I'm willing to be more active on the forums making new posts if it means there will be more activity here. Let me know what you think.

@damenco: If you'll feeling like another scifi book, IMO you can't go wrong with The Martian. Near future scifi where a astronaut gets stranded on Mars. There was a movie based on the book that came out a couple years ago.

1. Mass Effect 2
2. The Last of Us
3. The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim
4. Uncharted 2: Among Thieves
5. X-COM Enemy Unknown (I care about 1-5 on this list, I don't have strong opinions about 6-10)
6. Middle-Earth: Shadow of Mordor
7. Hitman (I really enjoyed watching Giant Bomb's Hitman videos, wasn't nearly as fun playing it myself)
8. Grand Theft Auto IV
9. Super Mario Maker (I thought I would have liked it more than I did, it didn't stick with me. 3D mario > 2D Mario any day of the week)
10. PUBG (Haven't played it/ most likely won't)

@nutter: @soulcake said it well with it being a lot of wacky comedy with a pinch of satire. I enjoyed the funny, satirical stuff but I personally don't think the side content matches the Witcher in terms of quality for the more serious stuff. I was more highlighting the cool, labor intensive features Rockstar made to meet their vision. There is one set of side missions I liked that dealt with the consequences of being a debt collector. Arthur's characters changes and evolves as you complete those quests and that was a cool, novel thing to see. Looking at the Witcher 3 side quests (it's been a while), only that set of debt collector missions felt as interwoven as Return to Crookback Bog did in the Witcher, where more development is given to the Bloody Baron and his family. So I'd still give Witcher 3 the edge there, there are moments when RDR2 comes close though.

@theht@bmccann42 I'm spoiler blocking my response for others who may be reading this thread.

Sigh, I see what you mean with the word revolutionary, are these things a paradigm shift that the industry will follow like z-targeting or Left-trigger/right trigger? No, probably not. Its use is too specific, few will implement it just because of how intensive implementing all that stuff is. However, I believe it has risen the bar for the level of immersion in big, story games. To me, it is above impressive. It is so awesome that they could do that. So if revolutionary is the wrong word, I can't think of another term to use that expresses what I think of the game, based on how awestruck I was when I realized the complexity that went into the parts I have mentioned. I'll stick with super duper amazing or incredibly awesome for now I guess.

I'm seeing a lot of comments bringing up the hyperbole of calling RDR2 revolutionary. I guess I'm gonna defend RDR2 here. The fact they recorded dialogue for every side mission/conversation *spoilers incoming turn back now* for both Arthur and John is "revolutionary" in my opinion. It's like brute forcing complexity and depth through sheer man power and time. It's crazy. For each unique diary entry, they also developed a different style of handwriting and a drawing style for both of them. That is nuts. There are definitely aspects of this game, like the scope and detail of the world, like the voice acting, to be deserving of all the praise it's received. This isn't to gloss over the annoyances I have with the game like the crafting system and the cumbersome menu navigation. It's these little things that remind me most often that RDR2 is a flawed game, though one I still enjoy immensely.

I can't comment on GB's criticism of the game. I'm a week or so behind.