Predict 2019's Winner of Biggest Disappointment at GOTY

I think given the response from the majority of the staff that it'll be Death Stranding with Anthem as a runner up.

I'm still excited to play Death Stranding and will give Anthem a chance at some point no doubt but what do you think the staff will give it to this year?

It's got to be Death Stranding. Anthem could be a contender, but I feel like most of the crew were pretty cold on that before launch.

I can't imagine it being anything besides Death Stranding.

I feel like most people knew well enough that these games were questionable before release. I guess it depends on what the disappointment window is.

You gotta imagine Dan will lobby hard for Death Stranding.

Crackdown 3 is another that COULD have been great, but always looked a little iffy.

Dan will shoot one staff member per hour until Death Stranding is chosen.

@nutter: Crackdown 3 will be in the mix, but it didn't ever have any buzz about it. Especially not among GB staff.

Some will advocate for Anthem, which means Dan will get the opening to have another RDR2 moment. I cannot see Death Stranding losing this one. It's fresh in our memories and had oodles of interest due to Kojima. Anthem was getting side-eyed before release, I'll say.

Probably Death Stranding but I got a copy early and i'm already having a better time than I did with Anthem.

It’s gonna be a showdown between Anthem and Death Stranding. I think Death Stranding will be more likely to take it. Anthem showed some red flags with different ways people could buy it and those who got the game early gave gave others a fair warning for how grindy and repetitive it got. Despite how strange release footage for Death Stranding looked in pre-release footage, most GB crew were still intrigued and excited to see what DS was gonna be like. Most folks who were interested in this site have came away disappointed.

I feel like while Death Stranding may be some of the staff's most disappointing by far considering what Kojima has produced in the past, it's definitely not biggest disappointment for everyone (Vinny for example).

On the other hand, Anthem and the world they were trying to build completely fell flat. This was supposed to be Bioware's Destiny, with years of post launch content and support, most of which might not happen.

Additionally, just because Death Stranding is obtuse and probably not enjoyable for most people, that doesn't necessarily make it a bad game. It definitely might not be the definition of fun, but it is a functioning and gorgeous game. Anthem STILL does not function as a game, and is definitely trying to be more fun.

At the beginning of 2019, I was looking forward to both games. After reading all of the pre-launch reviews, Death Stranding is the one that I still ended up buying.

Regardless of whether everyone is on board or not a lot of goty stuff goes to whoever is the most passionate about it..or stubborn.

I have a feeling Dan will radiate powerful energy during this whole discussion.

@rahf: I just feel like the crew kinda spotted iffiness in this year’s let-downs early.

Even Andromeda, as many warning signs as there were, was kind of a shock. Launch Destiny 2 (I hear folks warmed up to it, eventually) and Fallout 76 were similarly surprising falls from grace.

Death Stranding...I feel like there was a lot if head-shaking early...Shenmue 3 levels of head-shaking. Crackdown never looked like it took form. Anthem...look, Bioshock released Andromeda, we were prepared.

@nutter: perhaps, but Dan is potentially the proverbial bull in a china shop with Death Stranding.

Wasn't there one E3 session where they were like 'woah...This time around anthem actually plays & looks really promising?' I bet Jeff will bring up that moment. But yeah, i expect it to be Death Stranding given that it's fairly likely no one in the room actually ended up liking Kojima's next game.

I predict they won't have the category this year because it's so unanimous it won't even generate discussion.

@rahf: Agreed. I think he’d prefer Kojima kick his dog to the release of Death Stranding.

@onemanarmyy: You know, that core feel to Anthem is actually fun. My biggest gripe was all the load times and load points.

Fly to high, load in. Fly to far, load in. Someone flies into a cave, everyone loads in. Fly back out, load in.

For a game where the core selling point is the fucking flying, the engine is a fucking deal breaker.

Actually, Anthem, as much as there were warning signs, might be my most disappointing game for the sole reason that the flying could be amazing, but that the game is hamstrung by the frostbite engine.

Blizzard's fanbase at Blizzcon

I think Death Stranding will actually fall into a case of it being more or less what people on staff expected from it. I think most people knew going in that it would be a bunch of Kojima's weird nonsense, "unfiltered", and that always had the potential to be something "bad". I'd except Anthem to take it from the perspective that it was supposed to be EA's next big thing, and it super wasn't. Where as Death Stranding always looked like it was just going to be a weird Kojima art thing.

Stadia, if it has a poor launch or runs crappy on a regular internet connection.

Aaide from the obvious games above, Wolfenstein: Youngblood might be a possibility since Jeff seemes pretty positive at E3. It turned out to be rather bland, even if I enjoyed my time with it. Similar to Rage 2, but not sure if the staff will feel strongly enough about either of them.

@brian_: man, I'm almost becoming Dan in my adamancy.

I haven't seen or heard any negative or tepid reactions on Death Stranding, before the crew got their hands on it. Remember that Kojima's last game was a serious GOTY contender, ending as runner-up. Then the lingering memory of MGS4, which tells me they loved it--despite or because of the lunacy.

@chartroy1: Anthem for me is a strong contender because of how they setup the future content at the end of the game and then abandoned it, I'm reminded of how Brad felt about ReCore during that year's discussion. While I don't think it's the end just yet it might be that "Anthem killed Bioware" is the new "They killed Mass Effect".

For better or worse Death Stranding is walking away with this award. In fact, the disappointment overshadowing this game will likely make discussion on any other contenders limited.

What will be very interesting is what sort of divide we see this year among the media outlets that say Death Stranding is GOTY (Game of the Year) and those that say DOTY (Disappointment of the Year). Does this discussion boil over? Will some well know games media person pull a 'Martin Scorsese' by saying other reviewers "didn't get it"? I don't mean some small fry dork with a blog, I mean a WELL KNOWN personality who will start tossing other reviewers under the bus.

GameSpot did score at 90%, the game still has decent Metacritic scores as of 12 noon today (Fridays Nov 8th); so this game will be divisive. I do wonder what Verge, Waypoint, Polygon, Edge, or Eurogamer will say? Those outlets likely hold more weight on the score at Metacritic, so it current score of 83 could dip into the mid-60s in a few days. Or, like Kotaku, they may all love it and be more positive than negative.

This here game is divisive as hell - that will make for some interesting discussions.

@monkeyking1969: Most of those outfits have already posted their reviews the day the embargo was lifted. Most were positive to mixed but some won't have bearing on the meta critic since a few of the ones you listed don't have a score.

The only high profile site that actually hated it flat out was Ars Technica.

I guess there's no way for this game to not be Giants Bombs most disappointing games seeing as how most of the crew had something about Death Stranding that they were looking forward to be it Kojima Strangeness or to see how the early trailers can possibly be a coherent game and ultimately finding that it really was a walking sim with a story that they either hated or just didn't find interesting. I'm really hoping there is one person who will attempt to defend it just to see the GOTY podcast room turn into a scene from goodfellas.

I guess I don't get how Metacritic STILL functions if they don't count Ars Technica, Verge,/Waypoint, Polygon, Edge, or Eurogamer. They talk about them and say their reviews are Inprogress & Unscored? But, reality is they will never count them - ever.

It's not like I want the game to fail, I'd honestly just rather see the discussion from reputable sites. What we have now appears to be a white wash. Its would take too much effort and cost too much capital to just say what they think. It is an interesting game, it is just not THAT interesting.

I think it's going to be a bit more of a tight race between Anthem and Death Stranding, but ultimately go to Death Stranding. Jeff and maybe Brad might fall on the Anthem side of things cause they seemed cool on Death Stranding even before it came out, but a combination of Dan's extreme personal disappointment plus the more general sentiment I've seen from the crew will give it to Death Stranding.

I think Alex might be leading that conversation. His review and everything he's said seems to point to being disappointed that the game never fully commits and generally seems unsure of itself. Given that one of the main draws for the game for many people was "Kojima weirdness unleashed", that's a bigger disappointment than a looter shooter that was obviously trend chasing being lame.

@monkeyking1969: Those sites don't attach numbers to reviews, Metacritic is based off numerical reviews. Not sure what an alternative would be: sentiment analysis by either a person or machine is not a good solution.

Death Stranding would likely take it. With west coast team's indifference and east coast team's resentment, Kojima Productions' "debut" seems to let the outlet that began with a 5 star review on MGS4 down.

Anthem probably, I don't remember them having any really high expectations for Death Stranding (besides Dan) and it was always more of a "wtf is this going to be" which I don't think would count as a disappointment since there were no real expectations.

@rahf: rdr2 was loved by half the cast

Death stranding doesn’t have that problem.

@monkeyking1969: Eurogamer stopped numbering their reviews a while ago.

Can't imagine it not being Death Stranding.

I think it has to be Anthem. How little EA has kept up with marketing anything new with Anthem, could be the biggest contributor to the disappointment. EA never really drumming up any excitement for post-release. Completely ditching the roadmap and postponing a lot of content. It is really a disappointment even once expectations were tempered once people saw the whole game. How unpopular it ended up being to a core audience, also feds into weighing the disappointment.

Death Stranding and Anthem will be the big contenders. Dan will argue for Death Stranding because he hated the game despite being a huge kojima and MGS fan. Jeff will argue that Death Stranding isnt that huge of a disappointment because he never expected it to be amazing because the marketing made it pretty clear it was a game where you deliver packages in all of these obtuse systems. Whereas Anthem was marketed as a game a lot of people would like but failed to deliver on the majority of its promises combined with game breaking bugs and paper thin content. It's also a game that pulled a lot of bioware's talent and has nothing to show for it and we're now watching from the sidelined as positions involved with Anthem leave bioware. People will join take sides of both arguments and who knows what will win. Whichever side stands strong the longest.

Imo Anthem should win because it's a live service game from bioware/ea that is talked about as if it's dead (which it may be) before even a year has passed. At least with Death Stranding you know you're signing on board for some bull shittery, and it's still a game that delivers what it marketed despite what your tolerance for Kojima's nonsense is.

I think anthem is a bigger disappointment, for the crew it might be death stranding.

Death stranding just missed it's mark, and it is an interesting mess. I couldn't even talk about Anthem for more than 10 minutes without going into the mess.
It might not win, but for me it is Anthem all the way.

One thing Death Stranding has that Anthem doesn't is support from it's publisher. EA just dropped Anthem in a field and then left it to fend for itself.

Death Stranding

@shindig: because it was dead on arrival. You don't spend time or energy resuscitating something when it was limp to begin with. The online buzz and preview hype changed its trajectory as trailers and gameplay demos started coming in.

I feel like Death Stranding and Anthem are very much at the front of this thread. What's interesting in that sense is that both games had a different time-to-reaction cycle. I always felt like Anthem's expectations slowly dwindled as we neared release, to finally be dashed by the middling reviews. Whereas Death Stranding has been somewhat of a flash in the pan for me. All of a sudden it was topic of the week, for weeks.

The emotional baggage of Anthem does not measure up to Death Stranding, not from what I've seen of the GB crew. The snapshot for me is Brad seemingly just disappointed, though he rarely goes off completely as the moderate voice he is. But Jeff and Dan...wow.

While it will likely be one of the two main games already talked about here, Anthem or Death Stranding, I don't think it should be either. Most disappointing is suppose to be that game that people were really looking forward to passionately but it let them down, and I don't think either of those games did that. Anthem was not hotly received during the first few alpha/betas, and with the travesty of Andromeda no one on the staff had many vocal hopes. Death Stranding was pretty much a "well this'll be weird but probably not in a good way" for most the staff sans-Dan from the earliest available looks at the game.

I'd hope for a dark horse out of nowhere as the victor. I almost think you could make an argument for Super Mario Maker 2, based on how much the first one was beloved and, while still enjoyed by the staff that plays it, Jeff has had some misgivings with it that didn't exist for the first game, due to a combination of Switch specific issues and Nintendo's failing to really "get it" as they are want to do.

Yeah I don't feel the crew (other than Dan) were that hyped for Death Stranding... Super Mario Maker 2 or Outerworlds (East don't seem to keen on Outerworlds) might take it. You could also make a point for Rage 2 & Breakpoint ..

I never saw Death Stranding as having hype, which I connect with positive affirmation and hope. The game just had expectation: expectation to be weird; expectation to be somehow transcendent from Metal Gear, as the corporate shackles are unlocked and drop to the floor. Maybe it wasn't hype, but Death Stranding had buzz from the first teaser. I can't remember anyone saying the game was looking to be excellent, rather I saw recurring excitement for the unknown, whether negative or positive.

Anthem had minor hype that dwindled before release.

Death Stranding was a complete unknown, which made it all the more interesting to follow. It's such a shame the game ended up as a potential...giant bomb.

That's maybe what the category should be called, to have another element of god-awful wordplay: Giant Bomb's Giant Bomb of the Year.

I can't have that down as an unknown when there is so much marketing being thrown towards Death Stranding. I literally cannot escape the banner ads for the game, soundtrack or the BBC documentary in my youtube recommendations.

Sony's pushed this hard.