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

Merry Christmas, Giant Bomb!

awww yea!!!

wow, refresh for yesterdays and the new one pops up

PODCAST! A Christmas Miracle!

NBA Live was robbed dammit!

Lay those silky tunes on me daddy.

Apology of the Year, sponsored by EA.

What a great way to spend my Christmas. No pants, Bombcast, Risk of Rain.

More podcast is always my Christmas wish.

Meeeeeeeeeeeery Christmas everyone!

This is my favorite Christmas present this year.

"Third party games are better than exclusives 99 times out of 100."

As someone who very regularly disagrees with Jeff, I don't think he's ever said anything I've disagreed with more.

"speaking of shipping it"...drew is the best

Day 1, and 2 deliberations was so bloody. So Great!

Reading too much into things, huh. Alright.

I don't think it used to be the case but if you look at the games that came out this last generation, the majority of the best games were all multiplatform and I get the feeling it'll be the same for this next generation so I don't think Jeff's statement here is that crazy.

Little disappointed the Apology of the Year wasn't Brad's "Third Leg" Apology during the Volgarr stream.

@hobozero: Lol, yeah.

... Gone Home was made by the people who made Minerva's Den?!?

Brothers spoiler around 1.13.00

@hobozero: I don't think Brad was apologetic enough though.

@nissanskyline: Nice pic, that's so weird I listened to that song for the first time in like 2 years today haha

Christmas Day Bombcast.

It's an extreme hyperbole with a kernel of truth.

So I'm kinda confused. How come it was such a struggle to get everyone to agree to even have The Last of Us on the shortlist for best debut and then it ends up winning? Don't get me wrong I totally agree as I love that game but it seems odd that it barely scrapes into consideration and then ends up winning?

no, you cannot!

Great stuff!

People who say there is only a specific way to beat bosses in Rogue Legacy are in the same ballpark for me as those saying you need a set ship build to beat FTL. (or that there is a very limited set) They are just not very deep into those games and saying something completely not true. There's nothing wrong with not finding/experiencing those possibilities, but that's not something I feel you can levy against a game as a negative. Especially when there are dozens of ways to do so, they're not just some obscure masochistic strategies either. On the contrary, it's good that there is depth for people to dig into.

Drew = Awesome

A lot of this feels rushed this year in strange ways. They did a poor job with the lists in advance of sitting down, and then it makes it easy to straight up omit things.

Also, i cannot wrap my head around the logic they used to discount the Stanley Parable from a few categories. Early access things aren't considered officially releases, but a free mod is? Huh?

I like Patrick, but his cackling during that apology stuff seemed *really* mean spirited. It's Christmas!

Mean spirited? Come on, it's Corporations giving out awful apologies (the The Sims one...), of course you laugh at that!

@cthomer5000: The difference is that early access is a beta of the final game, Stanley Parable was meant to just be a stand-alone mod, but after it had been released for a while they decided to expand on it and release a full Version. That's hugely different. If someone decided to expand on a mod like Day Z and release it as a retail product, I wouldn't consider it a "debut" for the year that version was released.

Also I agree that that category could've been better thought out, but I don't see how the other categories feel rushed or anything.

Most people agree with what you say, but I am one of the few that does not. I think it's crazy that early access games aren't being reviewed and aren't considered released. They are out there for everyone to buy. They are not closed beta's. If you pay money, you get the product. They are fucking released. They are not completed, but they are released (since you can obtain it and the only barrier for obtaining it is paying money; as is with every product that is released).

Also, the lines between completed and not are very, very thin. Here is why I don't agree with the common accepted rule that early access games should be overlooked: I bought Prison Architect a few months back. That game is very playable and you can spend hours upon hours playing it. There are barely any rough edges. Next, there is Battlefield 4, which doesn't work when it was released. Or SimCity, GTA Online, whatever. Those games feel/felt more incomplete than Prison Architect does. And yeah, I'm not a moron, I can see the difference between technical issues, server issues and incomplete features, but for me as a gamer, it doesn't really matter why the game I'm playing is broken. Broken is broken.

At some point I'm just looking at my library of games and have two games which are both lacking in some department that I both bought and the only difference between them is that one is officially out and one is not. Both will be updated in the future. Both have asked for my money.

I really don't get why those technicalities should matter. Because they just don't. I only played SimCity and Prison Architect in terms of builder games this year, so I guess I should say SimCity was my game of the year in that concept because I'm not allowed to say the insanely good, very addictive and unbroken Prison Architect is something I played this year.

It's just dumb. They are games. The best ones should win. Technicalities should matter when you're discussing genre's, price points and whatnot. Not crap like this.

But like I said, I fully realize I'm one of 11 people in the entire world who thinks this way.

Resogun rocks. I love the hell out of that game. I also like it a hell of a lot more than Geometry Wars. I also seriously doubt that they were trying to make a Geometry Wars game.

Also, while I agree Dead Rising 3 is probably the best launch game is it really weird to get that as a launch game for Xbox One? The story is kind of bs, the length is average for a DR game, and like Jeff said the last part of the game sucks. Why does Brad think its something to expect a year from now? Feels weird. I do agreed that its the best exclusive game though I think its really just a spruced up version of a game I've played two times already.

I would say Killzone, personally, only because that multiplayer is pretty fantastic. Single player is as serviceable as Dead Risings.

Also, Brad is trolling with his BF4 comment. I am over 50 hours in and its completely playable. While there were big issues at launch, that was over a month ago. Brad doesn't play the game, Brad will never play the game, and its not DOTA2...so he sadly only knows what "the world is on fire" people are telling him. There are tiny issues here and there but if thats his attitude then the Xbox One is hot garbage and on fire.

Patrick also conveniently forgot the Vita has suspended play (and the PSP had it as well) and didn't even want to acknowledge it after Vinny or Brad brought it up, lol. Dude likes trolling the system for some reason.

Man, there is TLoU winning another category...and there is Jeff not being very hot on the game. I think the discussion for Game of the Year is gonna be very interesting.

Can't wait till I never have to hear about gone home again. Gone home is a shitty visual novel, and I like visual novels.

Blood Dragon not even getting a single mention for Best Music seems like a genuine oversight. That game at least needed to be on a huge list at the start. It's also a stand-alone game released this year, so there is no disqualifying it on some technicality.

Also really surprised Patrick didn't mention a few more URL games. Seems like he just recalled those from memory rather than look at a list of stuff he's featured. Icarus Proudbottom Teaches Typing jumps to mind.

How is "I don't want to play it" a ringing endorsement for any game? I like Patrick's writing, but man, a lot of the times the things he says just don't make any sense.

@hollitz:

Well third party games are 99% of games and most the time they are better than 1st.

I agree with Brad on Papers, Please. Amazing that it exists but after only playing 15 minutes of it, I don't want to play it ever again.

@cthomer5000: Stuff like that had happened every year though, sometimes you forget a game for a category.

I think he was exaggerating, and I'd take the third party games out now over the exclusive counterparts.

Why aren't part two and three up on iTunes yet? I can't sit by the computer for hours listening to these!

@zevvion: I'm not a fan of the early access stuff, especially when the devs price the early access version higher than the final version. That's just insane, and I don't buy the bullshit of paying for being "part of the process" or whateverthefuck.

That said, there will always be broken ass games, but the difference is that a game like Battlefield 4 was released that way as a finished game. With early access you should know that 1) you must expect the worst case scenario, that it might be broken because it is a paid beta, and 2) that there's a huuuuuuuge difference between the quality of these games. Some are released in early access more or less complete, others completely broken.

I subscribe to the theory of calling early access "a preorder where you can play some Version of the game, and where the release date often isn't known". Just because a lot of games are released broken as fuck, doesn't make that distinction any less clear, nor does the fact that early access games are released in so many different stages of development.

You can review an early access game, but then you have to make clear that you're reviewing a paid alpha/beta version of the game. And that's fair, people should know what they're buying. I think GB strikes a good balance here: They QL a lot of early access games so people can see what it is, but don't do any formal review because that would be pretty useless when you have QLs and the podcast.

Also, I think it's a good distinction to not consider early access games for GOTY discussions. These discussions should of course be about the finished product. That's a very easy rule to follow, and it's the least bad solution. I don't see any problems with it either because the devs are clearly marking the games as a work in progress. Once they actually release the full version, then it can be considered for this sort of thing.

The "best apology" debate has to be one of the best bombcast bits of recent time.