JJGIANT

I really wish they would bring those streams over onto the site. The Justin TV player takes so long to load. Those early TNT's are some of my favourites.

The only good bit about these games I can remember is one bit in Everything Or Nothing. The first level where you run down the side of the building. Thats literally all I can remember.

Ok, I'm going to take a step back for a moment and think. Our basic motivation for visiting Giant Bomb is because we all "like" video games. I put like in quotes because I feel the word has varying degrees of applicability for such a diverse internet community. Some of us are casual fans, who enjoy an occasional expedition into the depths of the ever expanding gaming-verse. Others seem to almost live in and around this infant medium, leaping on every scrap of information like a pack of rabid goombas. This passion is clearly evident in the Giant Bomb wiki, a treasure trove of video gaming knowledge created solely from a legion of loyal fans, who through an unending number of keyboard taps and mouse clicks have crafted something that, within the microcosm of the gaming community, stands above the norm as a significant stamp of pride. But the fuel for this fiery passion has to come from somewhere. Some would argue that it stems from the communities basic love of video games or just the fact that people finally have a venue to open the floodgates on a furious tide of video game knowledge. I would contend however that it comes from a much simpler place. The Giant Bomb crew themselves.

Giant Bomb is a freak of nature. A website that boasts a strong and vibrant community who are intrinsically linked with the website they surround. The barriers between the audience and the Giant Bomb staff seem as minor as they could be without violating some form of privacy law. The relationship that inevitably forms as a result of this is something I like to think about often. I've never met these people in person, they have no idea who I am, they live thousands of miles away in a place I've never been before and yet to a large extent I feel closer to them than I do many of the people around me. If I were to meet Jeff, Brad, Vinny, Ryan or any other members of the Giant Bomb family in person there would be significantly disproportionate levels of excitement between me and them. Like meeting an old friend to find they don't know your name. All I've done is watch them in a little window on my computer and yet to quite a large degree I've built my life around them, constantly checking the web for their next exploits, staying up late to watch TNT episodes. I watch old Giant Bomb videos and listen to the backlog of podcasts every single day, when I'm at home there are only a few fleeting moments when I can't hear their voices in the background regardless of what I'm doing. It is weird when you think about it.

Perhaps psychologically there is a reason why I do this but I feel its merely because this website is so incredibly exceptional at what it does. At some point I feel that I don't visit Giant Bomb for video games, I visit it for the people. The crew has created a website which almost seems to transcend the conventions of your typical gaming website becuase it offers strictly human focused coverage as opposed to the mass of seemingly robotic entities who hide their faces under piles of review scores and masses of text, the only sliver of humanity coming from their name at the bottom of each published piece. The mass effect of the Giant Bomb model is spreading to other similarly focused websites who were previously guilty of this robotic approach.

The reason for Giant Bomb's success is pure and simple, the people. This is something that other websites will find very very hard to replicate.

OMG Yes!

I've heard rumblings of something called an iPhone, peeps seem rather jazzed about it....

I just have a feeling this will suck, that might seem unjustifiably unfair seeing as I haven't seen any game play footage but I just have a hunch.

@Xdsk said:

I try and S rank all the games i buy, but generally end up shelving the game im working on when something new comes along.

Yeah I always set out with good intentions but get easily distracted very quickly.

When I'm tense and anxious whilst playing a video game I just don't enjoy it, I think the GB crew said it best. Its worse for horror video games as opposed to movie because you are the one who has to push things forward, you have to see what's behind that next door. When done right this can make for an incredibly effective means of creating terror but it isn't (for me at least) a particularly enjoyable thing. That being said I played a substantial amount of Dead Space 2 and didn't find it scary at all.

@Subject2Change said:

@JJGIANT said:

As a video game player I feel it your duty to experience Grand Theft Auto 4 just so you can see what video games can truly accomplish when it comes to the creation of an engaging almost liveable vitual world.

Won't GTA5 give me that same experience, hopefully improved, in a few months?

You can pick GTA 4 up for a song at this point, it is one of the best of this generation and of all time. Neither you or I have much of what shape GTA 5 will take but I think it'll be different enough. Its kind of like saying hey why would I play Bioshock when Bioshock Infinite is coming out soon, yeah at their core levels there are distinct similarities but in other ways i.e. narrative, setting, tone they are autonomous. Give it a try, the fact that Jeff once said that he had to stop playing GTA 4 because he was crying should tell you all you need to know, very rare that a game can make someone cry. Its the most important game on that list to play.

I kind of think you answered this question in your own post. The fact that this game is specifically aimed at the "hardcore", a minor but notoriously vocal subset of the gaming community, means it can't possibly compete with the broad mainstream appeal of something like Modern Warfare. Its like asking why a David Lynch film like Mullholland Drive didn't hit the same mainstream appeal as Avatar. They're very different beasts and deliberately so. Most people i.e. your average MW3 player usually play games to have fun and not go through intense periods of fear and anxiety, the very same emotions that Dark Souls seeks to engender in the player. Don't get me wrong I think this sucks, I would love to see a horror movie sitting atop the highest grossing films of all time but I won't ever happen. Think of Dark Souls as a horror movie and Modern Warfare as your typical action flick. Personally I think that Dark Souls and Demon Souls are brilliantly designed games but in order for me to get the same level of enjoyment that I would get out of say a Modern Warfare campaign I have to go through hours of stress and hardship, feelings which often lead me to turning of my Xbox and walking away.

Dark Souls couldn't be a mainstream success because from the ground up it was designed to be categorically un-mainstream.