Game of the Year has long been my favourite GB content, something that I look forward to pretty much all year. I'm the kind of idiot who has re-listened to the GOTY podcasts of years past multiple times, and probably will again.
Having given this format a chance over these two days, I have to admit to being pretty disappointed. I'm not averse to GB trying something new (I liked the review videos, unlike a lot of people), but I don't like this format being a replacement for the more focused discussion that comes out of having individual categories which it seems is how it's shaping up this time. It looks like 3 days are going to be taken up with this "recap of the year" format, so I can't see they'll have time for much of the more traditional categories. GB West just don't seem to have spent as much time in SF this year for that to happen.
For sure, the "making of the sausage" aspect of GOTY has always been more important than the lists themselves. But having limited slots forced the staff to choose the games they really cared about rather than just being like "Astral Chain came out, it's kind of whatever". Having categories forced them to focus in on the specifics of what they liked about a particular game and proved out what they actually care about.
I know it's tough with there now being 9 people in the room to give everyone enough of an input, though. Dunno, just a bit bummed out and feeling less into GB nowadays, I guess.
@beefscorn: this just happened to me too. Renewed and got a store code. I think @rorie has said in previous years just not to use the code. Hopefully that's all there is to it?
@brad I’m guessing that you already knew and just forgot, but those games where known as Nemesis and Salamander here in Europe as well as in Japan. I remember the cabinet art for Salamander having this awesome cobra looking dude on it. Man, loved that game. Talking about side-scrolling vs top-down, it blew me away as a kid that Salamander switched between the side-scrolling you expected from the previous game to top-down between levels. The music that plays when you beat the first boss and it switches orientation will be etched on my brain forever, along with the dude saying “Ripple Laser!”.
LOL at Brad saying that someone on staff needs glasses but not wanting to say who. I mean by process of elimination that can only be one person, right?
I love the Beastcast, I really do, and the music discussion segment was fine and all, but it was also a good illustration why I'm not interested in a Giant Bomb music podcast, personally. I don't know what it is specifically about music discussions that they always seem to devolve into this attitude of "people who like music I don't like must be derided and mocked but everyone must like the music I like or they're bad people". I've heard people on other podcasts saying stuff like "you're wrong if you don't like contemporary pop music" and I always just think that they're trying way too hard to somehow justify their taste, as if it even needed justification or that the people listening might care one way or another.
@kevin_cogneto: in the game snooker, when you put the other player in a position where they cannot directly hit the target ball with the cue ball from where it rests, usually because other balls are in the way, that is called being "snookered". So it's metaphorically putting someone in a difficult position.
It's pronounced the same as the game itself with the long O sound, like "kook" or "spook".
I'm liking the sound of this now. Despite some negative comments about it being "just a survival game", to me it looks like they've married the resource gathering and trading of a survival game with the exploration aspect so that they'll be an additional motivation above and beyond just seeing how long you can survive for. I mean, I enjoyed what I played of "The Long Dark" but until the narrative mode they've been promising turns up, the current sandbox mode is just "how many days can you survive". At least with NMS the resource-gathering is a means toward being able to see more of what's out there. That there are alien complexes and languages to decipher is making me hopeful that there will be stuff out there worth seeing.
Have to say, I felt the total opposite to Brad on several points about Dying Light. The main advantage of the parkour was that it allowed you to avoid having to engage with the dull, shallow combat by out-flanking or going over the zombies instead. Whenever the game forces you into a situation where you have to melee your way through a bunch of zombies, or when you have to face enemies that take a lot of hits to go down, the deficiencies in the combat soon start to drag. Later in the game they just throw more and more zombie heavies at you with annoying tracking attacks which are just tedious to fight, and the less we say about the mediocre gun-play that's foisted on you midway through the better.
Varied and interesting quests? A sense of place? I just don't see it. I mean, I had some fun with that game but top 3 best game of 2015? No way.
Maybe it's that the penetration stat on the tranq sniper rifle is higher than that of the tranq pistol or something, because I swear I unloaded an entire clip of tranq darts into that bear's head with the pistol and it didn't seem to do anything. I ended up rushing the bear and punching it twice with the stun arm, which was awesome, so no harm no foul, I guess.
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