@larmer: so just because one thing is bad or worse we shouldn’t talk about crypto’s environmental impact? Especially given that crypto is useless to most people and doesn’t function in any way like an actual currency? These false currencies are commodities and energy hogs at that and we should never stop talking about that. At least video games bring people enjoyment, unlike crypto, which just serves to line the pockets of wealthy technolibertarians. Both have energy problems. They both deserve discussion. One of them is a complete con job.
If they both have energy problems, why is the discussion only about how wasteful one of them is? The problem is not discussing, the problem is absolutist statements like the one you've made and I've bolded above that are both hypocritical and based on zero fact. How can a commodity anyone can buy, even with $1, be "a con job" that lines the pockets of the wealthy? Guess what, the entire video game market is putting literal billions in the pockets of millionaire and billionaire stockholders and shitheel hedge funds that own stock in every video game publisher you can name but has that changed the buying habits of any of the crypto-socialists complaining about how much energy blockchain uses? I'm betting not.
Telling future generations that we wasted millions of kilowatt-hours of energy playing video games "because it was fun", should a climate disaster happen, is going to sound as clownish as Boomers sound when they effectively say "Well, we shredded the social safety net we grew up with so we could have nice summer homes and a second car." One waste of energy is not magically more valid than another just because you like it. They're both wasteful and if you defend one and bemoan the other, especially with a one-dimensional understanding of the latter, how is that anything less than hypocritical? "The waste of energy that doesn't benefit me is wasteful, whereas the waste of energy that facilitates my hobby is completely valid". Please...
Glad to see Hitman 2 made the list. I skipped the first one (well, I bought it but never got around to playing it) and damn did I go in hard on it this year. It definitely has some rough edges (I'm getting a fair amount of BSODs on PS4, ran into some bugs that make certain challenges hard/impossible to finish, most of which have been fixed over time) but man that core gameplay is just amazing fun with good, albeit evolutionary, tweaks and additions in this sequel. It's probably my personal #2 this year after God of War. Maybe even #1. I don't even want to count the hours I spent playing it, but I didn't want to stop. I did season 1, season 2, every escalation, every feat and every challenge (apart from a few of the Ghost Mode ones) and it's still all I want to play. Now I'm just replaying escalations trying to get as close to perfect as I can on them. Guess I have the Patient Zero stuff from Legacy GOTY to hold me over until the DLC hits.
The GOTY discussion seemed to go relatively smooth this year. I'm with Dan and Jeff on RDR2 though. I got 30+ hours in and just gave up on finding any redeeming qualities in it, and RDR was my game of the generation. I don't want to dunk on Brad or Alex but I did feel they were being slightly petulant at times in the Most Disappointing discussion.
That whole Arenanet situation seems really bizarre. Yeah, the lady really overreacted to a pretty benign if stupid suggestion, but that hardly is grounds for firing her. It's almost comical that her colleague lost his job as well. I don't agree with people implying she was completely in the right either though. She was straight up rude to the guy and at the drop of a hat. She still didn't deserve to lose her job for it. Not even close. A proverbial slap on the wrist at most. I really hate that we've devolved to the point of weaponizing people's employment over the littlest transgressions.
Valkyries are difficult but certainly not cheap or bs. Its just that they are the most Dark souls like encounter in the entire game. Learn moves and patience.
Nah, they're kinda bullshit. Well the ones with the AoE that cover almost the entire arena, anyway. That crosses the line from difficult but fair into cheap. They're still totally doable though.
I think as a game Nier is fine. The combat is more varied and deep than most give it credit for, but it's average for the genre. The art style and design is okay. Character design is mostly good and the voice acting is inoffensive, if not particularly well done. That said, if any video game can be accurately described as "greater-than-the-sum-of-it's-parts", for my money, it's Nier: Automata. It's not just that Nier has a good story. For me, it makes games previously considered by most to have a good story (TWD, TLOU, RDR) look amateurish by comparison. Even after finishing those games and enjoying them all, there was no lasting effect. They were good stories. Ones that made me feel emotions, but nothing really past that. While I enjoyed TWD, I think it's about as emotionally sophisticated as a Hallmark Holiday movie. All the emotion stem from putting a big-eyed little girl who's parents are dead and gone in constant danger. It couldn't be any more emotionally manipulative if Clementine was a cute little puppy who was licking your face in between bouts of being dangled off a cliff. Only a sociopath would have felt anything but protective.
Nier on the other hand raises questions that you rarely see raised in good movies or TV, much less a video game. "Are robots human?" and "what does it mean to be human?" are the surface layer of what it addresses, and it does most of it surprisingly deftly. The one argument I could see against it is that it merely raises these questions in interesting ways and leaves it to the player to ruminate on the subject and find their own answer. Whether it's the question of self-worth and where that comes from and why do we place so much of our self-worth in the opinions of others, to where feelings of hopelessness and desperation come from and if that is a uniquely human thing or is it something all sentient life feels when their existence lacks purpose or connection. I concede that a large portion of these interpretations and more is potentially the player filling in gaps with their own insecurities and worries, but to me that's no more or less of a disqualifier than the majority of fun many people have with PUBG being based on the social interaction with friends and the opportunities it provides for bonding and shared experiences. Both provide an arena for the player and the experience you get out of it is largely dependent on how much effort you put in.
It's my game of the year by a country mile and I'm pleasantly surprised to see it so high on Giant Bomb's list (I honestly didn't expect it to get any higher then the appeasement slot of #10) and loved listening to various discussions throughout the year about the game and it's themes and hearing how others interpreted it. It's easily the game from 2017 I'll remember the most and it might be the first video game I'd ever consider to be a work of art, imperfections and all.
Even now after listening to the Best Game convo, I'm still a little shocked that Jeff was one of the ones carrying the Nier banner. Shocked, but pleasantly so. Didn't strike me as his type of game at all. Also a little surprised Jeff played Wolfenstein and Origins on XOX instead of PC.
Most shocking though is Giant Bomb opening offices in Baltimore.
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