Giant Bombcast Giant Bomb Game of the Year 2013: Day Five

Maybe it's the people who think Rockstar can do no wrong who are the crazy ones. Hmm.

I don't agree with that. GTAV is a great accomplishment, but not that fun to actually play. Jeff is really into Divekick, liking how it plays. There is no rule you need to take accomplishment over fun or vice versa. There is valid reasoning to chose either over the other.

I would chose Divekick over GTA. But then, I also wouldn't put Gone Home on there.

The only one who really didn't like GTA was Brad and maybe Patrick. Everyone else liked it but thought there were better games. Nothing wrong with that. They don't have to like the game as much as you guys do.

@tucoramires: Which is funny because Jeff said he thought BF4 was the "best looking video game he'd ever seen" during best graphics.

But blind EA hate works too.

Did Jeff threaten to fire everyone unless Divekick made the list?

@dystopiax: That is what I meant. I wouldn't call their opinion of any of the games crazy, including GTA. They all said they enjoyed their time with it except for Brad. Just not enough to warrant a spot since they liked other games better. It's not a crime someone likes Divekick over GTA, nor is it that strange.

@roboculus92: Pointless? The point is entertainment and this list is clearly just a set of compromises but the point is not the list itself. It is to hear them talk about the games, try to quantify or order the games they liked best as compared to how others liked them and see what gaming as a whole looks like. What we get is some great discussion, great moments and weighing the merits of the games against each other. None of this, everyone gets a trophy crap. There must be a winner. As people, humans, we like to see things quantified, ordered giving precedence over another. The transparency of the way they decide things is unlike anything else out there. The point is not the list, the point is the podcast.

Im glad to hear that Asheron's Call 4 came out.

i always love his hollering from the background

and his mean Edge Casey

@devoureroftime: Yeah I thought the were going to slip it back in last minute. Along with Gunpoint, that game is so good.

I think you guys might have mixed up "Alone" and "Alone in the rift"?

I've been loving that jazzy lounge intro/outro music.

AC4 and Rogue legacy were my gems this year and i'm glad they made it in. I laughed out loud when they bumped Mario.

Hearing them talk Mario out of list for trash like Divekick drove me so insane I stopped listening to the podcast at work and came to post this. How Jeff managed to quietly strong arm that POS onto the list is still blowing my miiiiind! Absolute f*cking insanity.

Time for a backlash....

The Last of Us as GOTY? Not really a surprise with the way the staff have been fawning over it throughout these podcasts.

It's a real pity that the actually playing part doesn't even get to the dizzying heights of mediocre.

Oh well....

This podcast should just be titled, "How to botch a game of the year list," with @brad railroading Dota 2 onto the list, @jeff being complicit as long as Divekick made it onto the list, the two of them working to get Rogue Legacy in, and @patrickklepek going along as long as Papers Please got onto the list at the expense of screwing over Super Mario 3D World, which was better than those four games. The only sane person in the deliberation was @alex, and he couldn't sway those madmen.

Just my two cents:

Brad - although he does seem to be dominant for much of the podcast, I do think he gets unfairly judged by the listeners. The very nature of these awards is to voice your opinion, and you can't argue that he doesn't do that. I do feel like he should've been happier that DOTA 2 just got on the top ten, considering the others never even played it, and stopped pushing so hard for it to get higher. He was sorta just pushing his luck as far as it could go, it seemed.

Drew - I understand why he didn't talk too much, since he hasn't played a lot of these games. I like the idea of him being the host next time.

Patrick and Vinny - in my opinion, these guys make the most well-rounded, unbiased arguments. The problem is, they are "too fair" about it all. Their approach is exactly how it should be, but given that there are stronger personalities fighting for other things, they get overshadowed too many times. Specifically, I feel like Patrick is all too aware that he won't get everything he wants, so he's willing to put all his chips in for one or two specific games. I feel like Vinny is so level-headed, so prone to trying to look at things at every angle to give every game its fair shake, that it ultimately means he is too willing to compromise. It's a shame he doesn't speak up more, and when he does, I don't feel like they credit him for being as straight factual as he is, if that makes any sense.

Alex - I feel for him with the whole Mario thing, but I couldn't stop thinking to myself, "If you're really passionate about it, then please, please, PLEASE make some well-structured arguments for it, as opposed to saying, 'I don't think this is right. I DO NOT think this is right."

Jeff - he's funny. He's fair. Didn't fight seriously enough for his opinions, in my opinion.

Last thing about Brad - as stated above, I do believe he makes good arguments and is fairer than most people give him credit for, but I also think he sometimes manufactures arguments to fit his current stance on a certain game. I don't necessarily think this means he makes things up that aren't true, but if he's arguing against a game, he'll find some little thing wrong with it and pipe it pretty loud as a "decider" and won't let it go. I understand that that's sorta the name of the game, once we get to this level of deliberation, you have to pick these games apart, but it sucks when it happens to one of your favorite games. :)

I love these podcasts! So much passion and interesting discussion !

I think I'm with Jeff on Burnout Paradise being the (or at least one of) game of the generation.

Remember kids Dota 2 is Dota 1 with microtransactions. :)

League of Legends....

@drewbert Hoping for a ARMA III play but no dice. Guess you didn't get to spend enough time with it. :).

I am really disappointed now in the staff now. I finally finished the podcast and the DOTA 2 arguments are disingenious at best. Does no one remember the IceFrog scandel when he was hired at Riot to work on LoL then left and went to Valve. Or how Valve pretty much is ripping off the Blizzard look. Or how both versions (1 and 2) are co maintained. It is really the same game with better polish. Heck, LoL has a larger eSports market then DOTA 2. People are leaving SC in South Korea to play LoL not DOTA.

Valve has figured out a way to sell you more expensive hats...man innovation at its finest. Even if it had to be on the list, it should have been 10 at best. It isn't on any other staff top ten. Sure, it is 1st on Brad's but that is it. This is the first year where I felt that this list is pretty much made 90% before they even walk in the room.

I feel like the biggest problem with 2013's deliberation is that no one wanted to debate game vs. game and just straight-up vote. That's just the cleanest, simplest way to resolve some of the issues they were having here, it was a two hour discussion of people running around in circles trying to find the easiest way to come up with a top ten list without stepping on any toes, and what we ended up with was an incredibly disorganized, jumbled list that they kept re-litigating over and over and over again.

People always bring up the 2010 Minerva's Den vs. Shadow Broker fight between Vinny and Brad as one of the best things from these deliberation podcasts, but it was the best because it was clean and simple. They had a debate where they fought over terminology, what was better in one game over the other, and which game had the most support. In the end of that debate, they had an up-or-down vote and Minerva's Den won over Vinny's objections.

This is what the entire GOTY section should've been. Only Patrick seemed to be approaching the conversation this way. Stop trying to trade one game for another and argue about the politics of the list, and just throw two of the biggest proponents of a game together, fight it out, and have a vote. Done. It would've saved them an hour of coming up with a half dozen different ways of narrowing down the list. All of the pouting and attempted deal making are just kind of shitty.

There are too many instances of a game ending up on the list when only one or two people played it or felt very strong about it over a game that had more widespread support. That results in a fundamentally irrational grab-bag of games that don't make much sense out of the top three.

I just don't get the love for Papers Please, sure its different but a better game than SM3DW??

Jeff's main gripe with RDR was the control scheme. He couldn't get past the first hour because of it.

After finally finishing this and hearing the end, I am absolutely down with Rock Band 3 as game of the generation. Was my #1. Burnout Paradise was near the top as well.

I am glad Last of Us got the top spot, it is by far the best game this year, like by a mile. Things like Brothers and Gone Home and Rogue Legacy are great, but their really just exemplary at certain things. Last of Us is the full package, everything about it is great. I think it controls like a dream, simultaneously tense and empowering, there are like 5+ ways to handle most encounters.

I do agree with the crew that Boston is not paced well, but that is the only complaint I have. The Multiplayer is fantastic, I have prolly put in 100 hours. Best story in any game, ever.

I am surprised (as was Brad) that Bioshock made it so high, game controls like crap, arena's all play the same, skyhook is crap. I loved the world and the story and the music and the design, but the actual game plays poorly.

To Brads point I bought Mercenary Kings not knowing it wasn't finished yet. I thought it was the final game but it was still early and missing stuff.

I am glad I did though. It was a blast! loved playing with friends. But that isn't my point. The point is I learned about early access by playing the game and my friend telling me "oh, you didn't know, this is an early access game"

I can't believe Dota 2 got this much a free pass and Mario got screwed. One guy played it. Let Brad put it on his list and be done. Only being there because he'd throw a fit was very disappointing. Every argument Brad uses against Mario could be applied to Dota. Game is 10 years old.

Then again I'd put Mario over divekick, gone home, brothers, rogue legacy, papers please, ac IV and Dota 2 in a heartbeat. God damn now I'm more unhappy.

This is long over and no one will see this, but I just want to mention it. I felt like maybe you were going about some choices the wrong way. You don't have to have played (or enjoyed) a game to recognize how good it is to others or in the industry. Papers Please for example, I hated that game, boring tedium. But I recognize how it can be affecting, unique, and interesting to others. I can see how it will influence games in the future, and it should be in the top 10 for those reasons, despite some of you dismissing it because you didn't play it... I wish at least one person there had this sort of view, just paying attention to the community you get a feel of how impactful games you didn't play are.

Cutting games is how this should be done, it brings about debate.

Brad pretending to not remember that they did the cut method every year, even though he was the one that brought up "keep" instead of "cut" every year, which was always shot down because it didn't work...is super frustrating. That being said, I do like the idea of celebrating games instead of tearing them down in these debates, so I understand where he was coming from. I'm also glad that they just agreed to do the keep method for last year before the deliberations, rather than Brad trying again to sneak that method in at the last second.

The "most important, the most interesting, and the most innovative" game of 2013 is DOTA 2. Huh.

I’m here from the future, and I’m here to say, what the fuck. How did Jeff roll over and let Animal Crossing die so quick like that. Top ten game of 2013