Giant Bombcast Giant Bomb's Game of the Year 2015: Day Two

@death_metalist: 6 hours next

A strategy for the long show: customarily I listen until they develop a short list, and then skip ahead to the next category. The meat of the discussion comes, I find, after they’ve eliminated a few easy items, but before they have to winnow it down to three - that’s where you learn the most about games you might not know much about. The ones that get the nod are often just the ones the most staff members have played, since it’s what they can agree on. You can always come to the website if you’re really curious what took the top three spots.

@westernwizard:

I agree. Maybe Nuclear Throne came out too late? That's the only valid reason I can think of that it wasn't even mentioned. That soundtrack is way good.

Unrelated: Westerado's soundtrack was also great.

Talking best sound and no one mentions the amazingly beautiful OST of Witcher 3..really? Come on guys. :(

Yikes. That soundtrack discussion sounded painful.

Rebel Galaxy should at least land in the top 3 for music. Fight for space cowboys, Vinny!

Oh well. Kinda figured it'd be left off.

Man, 4 hours. Jeeze.

If you are looking for other game soundtracks, OlliOlli 2 has some great songs. Listen to Gardening by Mike Slott.

I'm with Vinny and Jeff on Fallout 4, "deal with it" is not an acceptable answer anymore. I've been playing this formula since Morrowind, the slippery slope argument of having tighter scripting on main missions is getting thinner and unbearable. I keep expecting them to improve on that with each iteration.

I cannot believe HLM2 got knocked out of the Best Music category... I mean goddamn.

Had to stop during the soundtrack segment and listen to Hotline Miami 2's for the millionth time.

This one just fits so perfectly throughout the entire game.

Do you have any nostalgia for early 3D platformers? I loved the Splatoon soundtrack because it gave me some strong flashbacks to my golden years of Spyro and Crash. I feel like what I got from it what a lot of people get from certain retro chiptune soundtracks (which, with rare exception, I never understand the buzz for).

Loved the Fallout 4 Disappointment discussion, some interesting points from both sides of the table (Brad on the value of not playing 'armchair game designer', Jeff and Vinny spot on with 'you can't just say 'well they always do this'). Personally I don't find Fallout 4 too disappointing because I was kind of ready for a step-down from New Vegas now that Bethesda was back in control, and pretty much all of the emblematic problems with Bethesda Fallout were right there pre-release (focus on featureless wastelands rather than new factions, weirdly pandering save-your-family narrative, overreliance on iconic elements like Vault-Tec, Dogmeat, Nuka Cola, Mr. Handy, Brotherhood of Steel, GET YOUR PIP-BOY TODAY). At the same time, I definitely don't agree that Bethesda gets away with yet another bout of zero polish just because 'it's always their problem'.

It might be a problem of pedantry; Most Disappointing seems like it's intended as a counterpoint to Most Surprising, but I don't think something has to be a huge surprise to be incredibly disappointing (ala an addict who keeps falling out of rehabilitation). Maybe worth considering renaming it something like "Greatest Fall"?

@uninvincible: Undertale (the track) is also like a 7 minute song that they never would have gotten to the better parts of so I don't think it would have helped. I think they actually played the best stuff from that soundtrack, only missing Megalovania or Death by Glamour.

With half the staff tired of that style of music though that's just how it had to be I guess.

That soundtrack discussion was terrible. Skip to 1:23:00 to skip it.

Having played more than a bit of all of the fallout series particularly the most recent three. To me It seems like they really have reduced the number of weird glitches and bugs in 4 especially if you compare how each game was at launch before any patches. Also in my game I feel like all the random events I ran into happened at great times that helped increase my immersion in the world seems like vinny just had some bad luck there.

If that blew your mind, you should go look up the old Mailbag where they got 775 Twinkies and wait for Jeff to mention sitting on a cake, a video which came out more than THREE YEARS before that story was shared.

Shit I really need to look into more indie games, I'm missing out on some awesome music.

Edit: I commented before the Fallout 4 discussion but I have to say I agree with Jeff and Vinny, fuck Brad. Fallout 4 is a buggy mess, the story is not only awful it's predictable as all hell and there is no reason you couldn't fix the immersion issues Vinny mentioned. They had seven years and all they did was photocopy Fallout 3 with a new printer.

Dude .... that's one long podcast. I'm totally going to fall behind on these. I don't have that much free time for my ears.

Thank you, sir

I can't feel my face..........

Only Giant Bomb could, after weeks of me being sick of Undertale fans claiming it's the best thing since sliced bread, make me feel like Undertale was robbed for an award and not given its due.

Glad to see Necrodancer getting some love. I was afraid it would slip through the cracks.

PSSSSST I don't think Metal Gear should've been close to winning best soundtrack, good choice of music but other than that? PFFFFFFFFHAWWWWWW

Ok butt in chair, Check. Diet Pepsi with lime Check! Day two of GOTY deliberations, you better believe thats a Check!

How do you let Fallout off the hook for all it's bugs because of it's complexity, and then not compare it to the complexity and crazy stuff that all JUST WORKS in MSG 5 ? The fact that their engine is the excuse for the bugs, isn't actually a valid excuse.

I sympathize with Brad on the way Best Music usually goes. Maybe if Ori had a grimy electronic soundtrack it might have had a chance :P

The Fallout 4 discussion was a classic. Good podcast, guys!

I sympathize with Brad too and I appreciate he continues to represent a different viewpoint. Luckily, there was a lot of good music this year and we got to hear a lot of it on this podcast.

Again I don't agree with their choices, but I enjoy discussion. It's interesting to see where they end up sometimes after listening to a year of podcasts about these games. I am surprised Tony Hawk isn't the most disappointing game or even on the top three after watching Jeff's reaction to it.

Pretty much.

SPLATOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOON

Thank you Austin and Brad on the Fallout 4 bug issue. The thing is that game is disappointing for me but it has seriously ZERO to do with bugs. Bugs are going to occur in that big kind of game. Dave Lang summed this up when he was on the Bombcast a while back. I really don't get how some people don't get this and especially like Vinny who loves buggy nonsense in other games. And I'm not saying Bethesda is doing a perfect job with bugs either but this is just the cost of the scale they operate on overall. Like you hear developers who actually know what they're talking about say this straight up but and a few of the GB guys just refuse to believe it.

Like I said, appreciate Brad and Austin, especially Brad straight up saying "playing armchair game developer" because that's exactly what's going on there. Show me the other games on the scale that are being developed bug free please when you talk with certainty about what is and isn't possible for their type of game. If you can't do that you better bring some technical programming know how to the table otherwise where are you speaking from exactly? If someone does pull it off I will be the first to applaud that but I haven't seen anything close (hardly anyone else can even develop to completion their kind of game, the few I've played were just as if not more buggy).

Jeff's reasoning later in the argument of "well it's a new console there's no excuse"....again who else is doing it? What are you talking about when you act as if new/more power should solve the issues? Show me the game of the Bethesda scope where that is the case.

Like Austin and Brad, I'm fine with people saying "as a consumer I don't care" or "I don't like it" too. Perfectly fine! But just don't say Bethesda could've just tried harder. It is really annoying to hear Vinny straight up say "hey, your world isn't that novel anymore" as if they should clean up their bugs.... What game are you talking about? It doesn't exist! (No, Witcher 3 is not doing close to the amount of stuff they juggle in Bethesda games). I wish someone called him out on that.

Sorry to rant so long on that (again, my second long post on this issue) but it's just crazy to listen to. I like to make arguments based on facts and there's so little fact in this one that it's just hard to listen to.

EDIT: Ah thank god they do call Vinny finally on saying there are other games doing what Bethesda games do cleaner by the end when it comes back up.

EDIT 2: and the point he gets to... I only have expectations on games based on what I see developers pull off. I don't care if someone managed to make a much less simulationy game on a Wii U, it is not even relevant.

"If this was a car the government would step in." Jeff Gerstmann on Fallout 4.

I'm glad I am not the only one who gets Dreamcast vibes off Splatoon.

The Fallout 4 discussion is a great sign that Fallout 4 is going to be GB's GotY. Let's burn this place down!!!

Haha, sure.

Hotline Miami 2 had a decent chunk of tracks edited for the game, which are just in the game's directory if some on the OST/Spotify/vinyl sound off to you. And yeah Master Spy's OST by RAC had some ridiculous tracks (Check Custscene 4, Mission 5/Yacht), shame the game was just alright: https://remixartistcollective.bandcamp.com/album/master-spy-original-soundtrack

Hotline Miami 2 got robbed pretty bad. Also, I'm kinda baffled that they liked MGS5's music so much. Hotline Miami 2 using licensed tracks that you may not have heard before seems more commendable than MGS5 using licensed tracks from the 80s that prey on your nostalgia for the 80s. The music in Hotline Miami 2 isn't diagetic at all, since the game is set in the late 80s and early 90s; it's just rad music that fits the tone of the game. MGS5 has like, its pretty good main theme, and then a bunch of 80s music that is all diagetic to remind you that the game is in the 80s, in spite of all of the robotics that are far too advanced for the 80s. I agree with Jeff that the 80s soundtrack is a huge gimmick that doesn't actually make it a "good" soundtrack.

I'm glad Splatoon got recognized, because it's like the Rayman Origins of this year. What a fucking weird soundtrack.

Yeah, I agree that Luftrausers last year was baffling. It fits the game really well and underlines whenever you slightly change up your ship loadout, but it was one song.

Looking at the GotY podcasts so far, it appears Austin isn't going to push very hard for Xenoblade Chronicles X, because nobody else really played it, and Austin didn't get the time to play THAT much of it.

Jeff's most OTT comment on Fallout 4 "If this game was a car the government would step in, because people would be dying."

Seriously Jeff, it's not that bad.

@ollieg_94 said:

I seriously laughed at that comment from Jeff. It wasn't that bad. Indeed I consider F4 to be my GOTY.

Some best music games that probably should have been included.

• Witcher 3
• Tales of the Borderlands
• Life is Strange
• Bloodbourne
• Pillars of Eternity
• Everyone's Gone To The Rapture

Fallout 4 discussion is pretty much exactly what I was hoping for.

Jeff and Vinny: Just admit Todd Howard's games are not for you and go on with your lives.

every time they play a song I have to pause and listen to the songs separately. this podcast is longer than 4 hours.

Yup, definitely the highlight for me so far. Can't wait for the inevitable Mario Maker vs MGSV fight for overall GOTY, especially after how laid back last year's deliberations were.

So listening to this, I have to say it mostly makes me depressed about game development. They really need to come up with a way to build automated testing hooks into the engines so you can actually test shit beyond just playing the game and seeing what happened. Hell I wonder if they have unit testing in the industry at all....

Vinny, Alex, and Jeff are right about Fall Out 4. There is no excuse for Bethesda to keep making a buggy janky mess of game that can be barely defined as an RPG. Except that those games keep making them money.

On Brad's argument: The audience should demand better of the developers here. Especially since the style of game is static and a lot simpler than he seems to think.

Fallout 4 being disappointing for several reasons? I get it. Jeff is right for holding the game to a higher technical standard and chiding it for lack of innovation - especially given Bethesda's resources.

Fallout 4 being one of the most disappointing games of the year? I think this is an overreaction. It is doing what literally millions of people want it to do.

Yup. Same engine, same tech and 7 years after Fallout 3 one would have thought they would either change the engine or improve on the existing tech and ship a more polished games. Nope to all of that.

I literally can't believe Jeff and Vinny are having this Fallout 4 argument. They are doing the #1 thing they say they hate: armchair game developing. They have absolutely no idea what goes into making one of Bethesda's games, and no one in this entire industry does what they do, especially with no bugs. Thank God for Brad and Austin as the voice of reason, very disappointed with Jeff and Vinny, they sounded like children.