I hope one year Brad and I share a passion game. That man will fight to the bloody end.

The opinion on destiny is either you hate it or you dislike it but can't get enough of it. I fall into the latter category, and like Brad i can name plenty of things I wish I could change or add but nothing really took away from my experience of sinking in hours into a game with some friends just shooting crap while chasing loot. The matchmaking has literally never been a problem for me in raids/nightfalls, and even though there isn't alot of loot for what this game is trying to be I find it cool that everyone pretty much knows what every exotic weapon is or which they want etc. For me the diablo 3 comparisons are totally apt but i get why some people don't feel the same way.

Classic Brad Filibuster. All GOTY arguments have been terrible in their own way; still fun to listen to though.

Honestly after awhile of listening to Brad try to convince them, I wanted them to just give him the number ten spot. The guy obviously really likes the game. Logically justified or not, if this is how he wanted to leave his mark on the list then that's cool with me. It's their collective opinion, not a factual ranking of the games that came out this year. I did get a little irritated when he tried to downplay diablo by saying it has no handcrafted loot (the legendaries and set pieces that do exist), but that's just because that was my passion game this year. And I'll be honest and admit that diablo, my passion game, kind of sucks too, but I would fight for it too just because it was my passion this year. The tip top endgame of diablo is complete shit and after 300+ hours on my witch doctor I wouldn't recommend it to anyone til they figure out how to fix it if it's even possible til another expansion or Diablo 4. So if what Brad says is correct, and Destiny's endgame is actually worth something then good for Destiny, I can admire that. But that's another point entirely. Point is I actually felt kind of bad for Brad this year and would have been a little sad if they didn't throw him a bone. That's kind of the feeling I got from Vinny too when he started to level out the room a bit and probe why Brad loves the game so much.

It was just the Skyrim argument again. "I played this game a lot therefore it's the best."

That's a fair point, although in the case of the other examples of a game making the cut because of the passion of one person, it's generally because nobody else really played it. I think Jeff was the only one that played Syndicate. Vinny was the same with The Witcher 2. In the case of ZombiU, Jeff had also played it but he thought it was good. All those situations, it's a case of somebody making the effort to highlight a game that everyone else missed. It's a case of one person voting for the game where the rest can't really have an opinion because they're ignorant to what the game actually is etc.

With Destiny, it's different because one person is passionate about it, but then there are seven other people that basically don't think it's good enough to make the cut. For Destiny to make the list over Wolfenstein seems extra crazy, because that made it onto a decent number of the personal top 10 lists, including being Drew's Game Of The Year. There's often a point where it's not being passionate, it's being stubborn, petty and a bit selfish.

EDIT: I guess I was mistaken about how Wolfenstein was actually represented in those lists, I think my recollection was skewed because it made it into a bunch of guest lists.

I agree.

I don't necessarily want to excuse Brad but Alex was pretty dismissive in his initial objection to Destiny being a contender. It felt a little like he thought the very notion of Destiny being up there was offensive and his initial voicing to that effect wasn't really nuanced or articulate compared to some of his later arguments.

Hey, they like what they like. Can't get upset about it. I've never had such a huge disconnect with them as this year, but what are you gonna do. It's their list. And Destiny is on it.

As someone who enjoyed Destiny immensely (even as I'm typing this, I'm still playing it), I don't think Destiny had a good enough argument to be on the list and I feel like there were other games that were knocked off that more people at the discussions had enjoyed. I had probably the most enjoyable experience in Destiny than any other video game this year, but that had more to do with who I was playing with than the game itself.

#rebuilding the list. Where's Wolfenstein ?

@kain55 said:

Just so you know you're not alone, I'll say that I agree with you. Destiny is my GOTY, Reaper of Souls is my #2, but people comparing Destiny to something like Diablo 3 instead of an MMO clearly haven't played more than a handful of hours of either one or both. Destiny certainly has some design issues, but they're not the ones most people who talk shit about it bring up. Most of the other 'flaws' that people try to point out are either fundamental or overwhelmingly common in MMOs, which means that most of the time I just laugh and move on instead of responding to them.

If you don't like the genre the game is in, of course you're not going to like the game. Think about the absurdity of that situation. I generally don't like anime-styled JRPGs. How completely ridiculous would it be if all of my complaints about some JRPG (let's just use Persona 4 as an example) were "the turn-based combat sucks, it should be active combat instead," "the anime artstyle is disgusting, and I can't believe the melodrama of these high school students," "this game is way too long; the story wore out its welcome 40 hours ago," etc. You'd laugh me off the face of the fucking earth if all of my complaints about a game were complaints about the genre itself and my proposed fix for the 'flaws' were that it should just be a different genre. That is certifiably fucking insane.



Now, all of that being said, Brad is absolutely a terrible debater, and I stopped listening to the GOTY podcasts after The Skyrim Debacle because of it. Destiny is totally fine to be on Brad's personal Top 10 list, but under no circumstances should a game be allowed to bully its way into the site-wide Top 10 list on the back of one person when the rest of the staff universally dislikes it. What is even the point of a site-wide Top 10 if it's just going to be each person saying "hey I know you didn't play/didn't like this game but we're not going to move on until it ends up on the list?" Maybe next year they should try something different like aggregating all of their personal Top 10s into a sorted list, and then arguing whether a game should move up or down on the list itself, if they don't necessarily like the way the top five end up.

Rewarding a game with exploitative design that relies in a bunch of pyschological tricks to create addiction and get you to do boring stuff over and over?

not cool, but whateva... it was a fun podcast nevertheless

If you combine all of the staff-submitted personal top ten lists and rank everything, Destiny still comes in at tenth place overall.

Well, that settles it?

Who am I kidding

I think it would be cool if everyone did their own personal lists and kept them a secret until the very end of their deliberations. They could do all of their debating and ranking, come up with a top ten list, then take all of their own personal lists and do an aggregated top ten ranking out of those. It would be interesting to see how the lists stacked up to one another.

This year it was pretty close. The big anomaly between the aggregated personal lists and the podcast list was Call of Duty: Advanced Warfare taking the number four position, yet Jeff was the only person to have it in his personal top ten at all.

Tell me about it, Wolfenstein was my second favorite game this year, and my number one barely surpassed it! It's, in all honesty, interchangeable. It's well written, well characterized, and it's gameplay is absolutely brilliant. I never get how games like Destiny surpass games like Wolfenstein.

Destiny was extremely shallow. Didn't have any story, barely had any lore, and had no real characters whatsoever. But for some reason, empty, mediocre games like that have weird hooks that keeps people around, which is probably why it made it's way on so many GAME OF THE YEAR lists. Personally, it doesn't even make my honorable mentions, despite the fact that, for what it's worth, it had some fun with it.

I've never played Destiny. When the first bit of marketing came out for it my first thought was that it would be another case of poorly applying an RPG/MMO template to a shooter. There are a lot of codewords in AAA marketing for "we slappeda bunch of elements of WoW on our game". I think it just doesn't work in that genre without a focused narrative ala Half Life/Deus Ex and they have really really light RPG mechanics compared to a Borderlands or Destiny obviously. I don't know if those two things really mesh. If the fun thing about your game is the way the shooting feels then it makes sense to supplement that with really interesting encounters and setpieces. It makes sense to create scenarios that require the player to apply the mechanics in unusual ways. If you gate all of that stuff behind a slow and sparse loot grind it misses the point entirely.

@ajamafalous A lot of the guys on the podcast were saying how much they like RPGs and loot games. They weren't criticizing Destiny just for having MMO mechanics, most of the arguments seemed to be about how those mechanics were implemented. Jeff and Jason I think both went on about why it works in other games but not in Destiny.

All collective GOTY Lists are victims of compromise where no one is left happy. We all know that half the games on the list don't belong because we've all made the real list that has the games in the proper order. Destiny is no exception, it has no place in a GOTY Top 10. Neither does Call of Duty.

I'd say he's too good. He can turn a bad argument into a weapon if he has too. He usually wins because he doesn't give up.

Divinity was so good. Bummed it didn't get any recognition.

RPGs, loot-lust games (Diablo-clones, if you will), and MMOs are still three different beasts, but good on the guys for not simply just dismissing the game for being an MMO-lite instead of a story-driven single-player shooter, which is what I've seen most people on forums across the internet do.

I've said this before but Brad's arguments against Saint's Row the 3rd because it was a busted game while arguing for Skyrim was insane to me. Skyrim has an entire console version that was busted while the other versions of the game were riddled with bugs but SR3 was buggy? Skyrim shouldn't have won the bug battle. As great of a game it is it's busted compared to SR3.

I hate group GOTY discussions, especially when for any given game half the people there haven't played it. It's a meaningless compromise and as already mentioned, the end result of a difference of opinion is usually decided by who is the most stubborn or persistent about it.

Meh, I never listen to their GOTY talks (or not much of it) anymore. I'm only in it for the sketches, as listening to these guys attempt to talk purely about video games for that long can be pretty agonising.

That doesn't mean he's good at arguing, that means he's good at being stubborn. That's not an impressive skill.

At the very least I think Alex should be lauded for putting up an intense fight to keep that garbage off the list. It was a good effort.

Is Destiny garbage now? Give me a break.

BUT GUYS, IT TOTALLY COPY AND PASTED A GREAT SHOOTING MECHANIC SO IT'S A+ DOUBLE AWESOME NUMBER ONES! *sigh*

Destiny is coming to be a fantastic litmus test. A great short-hand method to draw an opinion of someone's tastes from, the same way looking at their DVD or CD collection used to be.

This. At some point when everyone brought up valid points against Destiny, he countered every single one of them with "Eh, I liked it." And the extreme hyperbole he used is unmatched. What he's good at is being adamant.

Brad can have his opinion's thats fine, but the only thing he showed this year is if you cry like a baby you get what you want.

The fact that Jeff and Brad got both destiny and CoD AW on the game of the year list, just shows its a meaningless endeavor. CoD AW is nothing more then a copy and paste of every other CoD game and thats fine for what it is but there are games they dismissed completely based off of nothing more then "i didn't like it so its crap". And Destiny by their own words is a beyond flawed game that has the content of a half finished game yet Brad and Jeff both think you should spend a hundred dollars and grind up words of twenty hours in the beginning to just get to a point where you can start to play it to its full potential as the game exists right now. And the fact no one stood up to either Jeff or Brad on these to games is super disappointing and sad to me.

I am putting this out there right now, that Brad doesn't spend any meaningful amount of time with destiny in 2015, and he will have a truck load of excuses as to why not.

Destiny is number 2 on my list. It is number 10 on their list. It had all the potential to be number one on the game of the decade list. Instead in made number 10 on the 2014 list. That's a recognition of a massive disappointment. It should have made the list easily though. It is simply one of the best games of 2014.

Of course you can come up with criticism for it, that doesn't mean the game is bad and that doesn't mean it can't be one of the best games of the year. Look at their number 1 pick. Shadow of Mordor. A ridiculously easy game, that recycles gameplay from other games poorly (easier, less complex Batman combat; finicky poor free running even though it has much less obstacles to climb than an Assassin's Creed etc.), has probably the most uninspiring generic looking world design of any game all year, has a terrible story, mind numbingly boring story missions and it's only upside is that it is a proof of concept for the Nemesis system. Something which the game doesn't implement well at all since 1-4 deaths don't matter in the slightest, while dying in that game is such a rare occurrence. If that wasn't bad enough, it forces you to play the poor story missions, because if you clear out the Captains and Warchiefs, it just resets everything pretending like nothing ever happened. Exact same enemies, exact same strengths and weaknesses, exact same encounters. Basically a 3-hour progress wipe.

That game is their number one game of the year. And you complain about a game that has some issues being at number 10.

This thread shows why "Game of the Year" is a bleh idea.

@zevvion: I think the fact alone that people are this up in arms about it even being in the top 10 is proof just how poorly it vibed with most. I have played probably as much Destiny as you have, having done both the regular and hard Vault of Glass a dozen or so times and despite all those hundreds of hours spent in that game I can honestly say that yes, it's a bad game. Much like Mordor there is one thing at the core of the entire experience that is good, mainly the shooting, and it is surrounded from all sides by bad design that more often than not is aggressively working against the player. Mordor might be an average game but it doesn't seek to waste my time. I too like the reward loop found in many RPG's which is why I played Destiny for as long as I did - but at some moment you have to stop yourself and really examine how you're spending all that free time. Is killing the same archon priest for the hundreth time in the nightfall strike really that fun? Is running around Mars collecting relic iron for an hour so I can upgrade my gun all that amazing? About 20% of that game is active fun while the remaining 80% is grind, none of which is particularly fun.

Ultimately the way they handled the DLC was the last straw that really made me finally break free from that endless loop. Have I actually pulled the trigger and bought both expansions to keep playing with my group what would I have gained in the past month? I would have played the new Raid and 3 new strikes and the rest of my days would be spent doing monotonous chores. Instead I've played through Dragon Age Inquisition in it's entirety and experienced an entire new storyline and everything that goes along with it. In this time, I could have had maybe 3 new pieces of Raid loot, that is if the RNG really worked in my favor. The time investment to rewards gained ratio is just not worth it.

Ok, garbage is admittedly a bit harsh, but let's not kid ourselves here. Destiny isn't a great game, nor is it a good game, it's barely a passable game, only saved from garbage status by its art, raids, and basic shooting and movement mechanics. Compared to other modern shooters it has mediocre level design, abysmal encounter design, low enemy variety (all bosses are just larger regular enemies), terrible plot and story, basically no actual characters, madness-inducing grinding, a confusingly low amount of content, and take it or leave it PvP.

There are definitely some redeeming things about Destiny, but there is SO much wrong with it. It just doesn't belong on a top 10 list in place of games without such glaring, infuriating issues.

I don't know why I can't write under you're quote, but oh well. In any case, that's just not true. I actually love to grind. It's my favorite part of MMOs.

@zevvion: You obviously dislike Shadow Of Mordor (I haven't played it, so no personal opinion), but everyone that sat in on that podcast did really like it. It was basically universally agreed that it was a game worth commending, so much so that it was collectively their favourite game of 2014. Destiny was kind of the polar opposite of that, where the majority opinion in that room held that it probably shouldn't make the cut. This issue isn't an objection based on the perceived quality of either of those titles. I don't think it even has that much to do with the probably massively overblown ire that people have for Destiny (again, haven't played; no opinion). I think it's more the history of Brad doing this with Game Of The Year stuff, where he kind of browbeats his way to what he wants. It goes beyond spirited debate and feels a bit like a spiteful war of attrition where people are co-erced or filibustered into validating opinions they don't really hold. It kind of kills the feeling of it being a group list that represents a communal opinion. The voice of somebody like Drew can't have the same impact because he's not going to behave that way.

Advanced Warfare making it so far up the list when Jeff was the only one that put it in his top 10 is certainly also questionable, but again, I think it's largely Brad's history with GOTY stuff that has raised some hackles on this one.

As I was listening to the podcast Brad started arguing for Destiny and moments later I was asleep. A few minutes later I woke up and they were putting it on the list. I'm super happy Brad is passionate about the game, but any time they discuss that game on a podcast it's the mostest boringest thing to listen to.

I think a lot of you guys have either really bad memory, or a stupid sense of entitlement. Probably both.

Some of you guys claim that Brad fought for DOTA 2 to be on the list last year. To you I say, go back and listen to that podcast again. The discussion basically starts with Jeff saying that the only safe game is DOTA 2. Everyone is surprised, but then he explains how it might be one of the most important games ever made, and it would be stupid not to include on their top 10. Jeff said that.

The only time the argument has gotten really heated was over Skyrim. And man, Brad was so fucking right to fight for that. How could they not give GOTY to one of the best games ever made? The other candidate was a super mediocre open world game. And if you listen to the podcast a few weeks later, both Patrick and Ryan say they're glad they went with Skyrim after playing it some more over the break.

As for Destiny vs. Wolfenstein... Which game had the most impact on the Giant Bomb crew this year? How much coverage of Wolfenstein have you seen?

Brad's argument for Skyrim was that it was less buggy than SR3. That's not even close to true. Skyrim is definitely a good choice for GOTY. He could've come up with something better than that. Also SR3 is probably one of the best and most enjoyable open world games ever made. Skyrim may be better. That's all I'll say about the qualities of those games.

Also Destiny's impact seemed to have been mostly negative. They were joking about the negatives of Dota 2. They seemed sincere about Destiny's problems. Should a game that everyone seems to disdain be on the list over a game that, when mentioned, seems to have a positive reception?

Destiny did make both Brad and Drew's personal lists, so I wouldn't say everyone disdains it. And no matter how much Jeff complains about that game, he sure has played a lot of it. He even did the raid. I think his desire to play that game goes deeper than his fascination in the weird product that shipped.

Anyone else come out of this hoping they ditch the site-wide awards next year? It seems like everyone just comes out of it bitter about something and no one is happy.

Honestly, I think it serves about as much purpose these days as review scores (which I'd love to see them ditch next year too). The site has been heading in the personality-centric direction since it's inception. Why do they still put out a site-wide list that undermines everything they've been working towards? It's like they're latching on to these last few things because for so long they've been bullet points on the list of requirements to be a site about video games.

I would have loved to have seen this year's coverage be their videos leading into their personal lists with a single special edition Bombcast where they talk about their lists and a sort of "the year in review." That way they can have the discussions we all want to hear, but they're not overtaken by people fighting for their opinions to form a list that really doesn't make sense anymore.

@bargainben: haha. I was thinking the exact same thing listening to his arguments. He wasn't really making any arguments for what made the game great just repeating the fact that he spent a ton of time with it... like a hostage. I think that's a key difference between Jeff and Brads personality's, Brad is looking for something he can spend time in with other people, like Dota or Destiny, and loves the games that let him do that. Jeff recognizes that he put a shit ton of time into WWE Super-card and Destiny but thinks both those games are horribly flawed and doesn't recommend them to anyone - he also isn't looking for social experiences.

I stopped listening to the GotY podcasts a few years ago because I found the arguments exhausting on all sides. I find all their arguments, regardless of the participants, end up in the same place: "I just thought it was really fun" vs. "I just thought it sucked".

At the end of the day I'll always except Brad's passion games purely because of that passion. #TEAMBRAD

I realize this whole GOTY stuff is all in good fun but it's really easy to see it exactly how you've described at times. Alex's arguments about the quality of Destiny being met with a rebuttal along the lines of "Yeah well you already got Mario Kart and Jazzpunk on the list, so be happy with that" is the prime example that sticks out to me from this year.

I also get the impression that Jeff has a lot more fun trying to mess with the others by getting their favorite games off the list than he does getting his own on it, haha.

Yep, you were right. For all the vitriol Destiny gets from folks, it also seems to bring out the worst in this community. I understand folks want to discuss and continue to hate on Destiny, but let them have their list, it is literally an opinion that the group came together on by mishmashing a list together by sacrificing games to satisfy others in the group.

Destiny should not have made the top ten when five of the eight people actively disliked it.

I think if the group really wanted to force Destiny off the list, they could have done so. It was Brad and Jeff versus the rest of the crew. Vinny was even the person who showed initial support for Destiny. The crew could have talked Brad down and removed it from the list but they didn't. This has happened before in 2012 with Syndicate and ZombiU.

Also, most arguments in these deliberations are poor. I like listening to them cause I like the debate but only seldomly are arguments raised that have actual critiques to mission design, AI, aesthestic themes, etc. The staff most commonly bring up critiques of the narrative, criticizing the narrative buildup and release of tension or the plot devices the story used. It think this makes sense considering half the staff are writers.

All the arguments boil down to "Did I have fun with this game?" In general I think the "fun factor" is just the sum of great mechanics, or of the narrative plot, or of great design, or of stylish aesthetics. The podcast deliberations are not the best place for well thought out critiques of games.

Hahaha, that's pretty awesome.

If anyone thinks that these arguments were bad, they didn't read that screed posted on Gamesradar, how everyone was utterly blind not to see all the brilliance of the design decisions in Destiny. Coincidentally they voted it their GOTY.

I can't find the article any more, probably taken down due to everyone pointing and laughing.

Kind of off topic but I see a lot of people saying that Dark Souls > Dark Souls 2, and I have to wonder whether that's actually true or whether there is merit to the argument (brought up by Patrick) that your first Dark Souls will always be your favorite Dark Souls. We will see soon since Dark Souls 2 was my introduction to the universe and it was my GOTY. I haven't played Dark Souls primarily because the lack of fast travel is incredibly off-putting. Taking that mechanic away in a game that is already known for its difficulty feels like madness. I'm going to give it a shot though.