What I gather from listening to them whenever they read old game reviews from their history, is that basically all video game reviews were total garbage prior to, like, 2010.
Zero interest in trying to convert people who get the vapours from a lady being vaguely critical of a game they like, but keep screaming "Debate me!!!!" at people in the comments if it makes you feel better, my friend.
The "I'm so tired of nerds screaming *debate me!*" critique doesn't exactly hold much water to me when stated in a setting where a bunch of nerds literally are sitting around a table having an hours-long conversation outright entitled "deliberations." If Abby shuts down because of even the kindest of push-back, that is entirely on her for failing to stand her ground and articulate her point clearly.
I think the reason I (and a lot of other people, I guess) don't like Lightning very much is because I feel her pushed so hard in such a completely undeserving way. Lightning literally feels like Toriyama's waifu and we all have to agree with him that Lightning is the most amazing character ever or else he'll make fifty more games about her despite almost no natural groundswell for her. If FFXIII was just left as one game that Square moved on from and never really went back to, I think a lot of people would remember Lightning as "she had a cool design, she wasn't that bad" but instead we get three games with her and all sorts of bizarre real-world promotions involving her where it feels like everyone involved has legitimately concerning levels of attachment to the character.
Personally, what offends me most about Lightning is related to the way Toriyama talks about her. It's hard for me to remember the links this far out, because it was so long ago now, but Toriyama has on multiple occasions talked about how he loves Lightning because finally, Final Fantasy has a "strong heroine." Which kind of throws under the bus, to me, who I think is just objectively the most interesting and strongest female character in the series - fucking Yuna from FFX. Like, to think of what "strong" means for a heroine and have that literally boil down to nothing but "well she's got more muscles and she looks big and tough with a sword so she's a tough girl" is such a shockingly simplistic imagination. Like, there's nothing in Toriyama's mind about how characters can project emotional strength, or that their characters can show their resolve with anything but a big strong blade. Which explains why Lightning is nearly void of emotions, and Yuna is anything but, yet Toriyama doesn't recognize any strength or power from Yuna, through any of her actions, at all.
It took me twenty-five hours to get to the first Barthandelus battle. Around this point, I had an epiphany. I don't understand why we need to fight Barthandelus. I don't understand why we need to go to Gran Pulse. I don't understand how fighting Dysley fulfills our focus. I don't understand basic concepts guiding these characters from one point to the next.
This is my favorite part of FFXIII - the characters seem as confused as to what's going on or where they're going next as the player does. There's really just nothing that strings the big scenes of FFXIII together from one to the next. Most of the story of the game revolves around the characters not knowing what their focus (aka the story) means or how to achieve it, so that's how you get a bunch of random scenes of these two going over there, and those two going over there, etc. FFXIII is more unwritten than it is poorly written.
I'm unable to get this tweet out of my head whenever a discussion on Dream Daddy comes up:
Dream Daddy is like the absolute peak of 'this shit the japanese have been doing for 20 years that we slept on is good now, cause a western team did a super basic version of it'
In any case, I'm excited to finish the deliberations. They've really been something this year. I think a lot of the negativity surrounding the conversation of this year's deliberations just comes down to the fact that there were so many really great games this year - naturally there's going to be a lot more angry groups upset about the game they loved than years past.
I think they messed up this category because they forgot that it was originally more about games that are smooth and suave and have this undeniable slickness that oozes from every second of the game--it's why the category is Best Styyyyyyyyle instead of Best Style. Cuphead is a great looking game, but it already won the category for best visuals. It didn't need to win this too.
Completely agree with this, particularly the bolded. Giving Cuphead the win feels like a fundamental mishandling of what the category is supposed to mean, and why this category exists separate from Best Looking in the first place. It's a bummer.
I feel like every year there's always one "Forgotten Five-Star" game, and Horizon, looking back, seemed doomed to be this year's Forgotten Five-Star from the beginning.
Persona 5 is GotY in the same way Trump was person of the year when he was elected president. Maybe it's not actually the best game, but it's the most apt for the year we had. It's portrayal of the abuse of power in all levels of society in the context of 2017 transcends the importance of any other game released this year. It's a bit sad that no one seems to recognize this.
I completely agree with this for every reason described. It's a shame. It's unquestionably in my mind the "most 2017 video game."
Hearing Abby say that Nier: Automata's music was "generic JRPG music" was truly baffling, especially considering how she later admitted that she hadn't played many (if any) JRPGs to completion.
Generalizations about JRPGs from people who don't actually play them is unfortunately all-too-common.
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