Dan_CiTi

I really wish there were more Agatha Christie (type) games, or at least ones that were especially good. I always love a good Whodunit, and I think they're great as single player games. Even Disney Guilty Party which was pitched as a party game was enjoyable done solo.

The time in Noby Noby Boy where BOY freaked out and vomited a ton of stuff and people and freaked out, I closed the game and didn't open it again for years.

Star Citizen isn't a video game tho. I believe more in Beyond Good & Evil 2 than that thing.

Anyway interested to actually see the game, even in a basic form (not the leak), for some reason the line "the next Grand Theft Auto" feels weird to me, I guess it will fall into place when I see what the game is like. The leak was kind of cool to see, but knowing Rockstar they probably retooled a ton as well as that leak was missing key aspects to understand what the game is really like.
I'd like to see if they're going for a more comprehensive tone like RDR2, that game just leaped out far and ahead of everything they've ever made in every way, that game was utter joy front to back. If that version of Rockstar is here for GTA, I will love this game.

@bigsocrates: Unrelated to this thread but the "spoiler-laden" podcasts of GOTY have been great some years, maybe the last couple years when there hasn't been as many interesting games to talk about (or maybe they didn't have the time to give to some of the more interesting games) - but those podcasts have also been amazing because they have little to no restrictions on what they can speak about. They are essentially far more thorough and dynamic reviewing and discussion of the various games that year and having those minds hash it out some years was fascinating and entertaining.
Don't get me wrong, a few dust-ups were a bit ugly and awkward which followed the shittiest members of the community to get rowdy (especially with Abby that first year.) But on the whole the best of those discussions were where the great experience of a Gerstmann or Shoemaker or Navarro or Ryckert really got to breathe without the time constraints of a little review but with all of the intelligence of it. It's honestly unfortunate that a voice like Austin's wasn't a part of it for more of it, he has such a rich perspective on so many games. I think it's a bit odd that you would denigrate those when they display a lot of the strengths you also mention you cherish.

Otherwise I agree, I greatly prefer the more formal and organized concept of video game coverage. The "dude with a twitch page who streams whatever all the time and has some random new thing on youtube maybe" is just not compelling to me. Sifting through an endless page of Twitch archives hoping they aren't deleted, navigating a youtube creator page trying to recall if some video was there or YT just did another meaningless redesign that moves around some types of content, and so on. Sure, there's awesome video game youtube accounts, but I'd be lying if I have gotten into any of them as much as I have Giant Bomb.
I like a more comprehensible body of work, the attention GB has had in the past of keeping the website tidy and feature rich has been very satisfying to me. Waypoint did it a bit different, but still tried to have some continuity and I really liked most of their crew and a fair amount of their content over the years. It's unfortunate that more complete style of coverage is falling out of fashion, but it's the way of a lot of media itself nowadays - people would rather have a fun spotify playlist to throw on than absorb an album front to back.

I definitely have to say the narrative in ToTK is more interesting than Breath of the Wild so far. It's not suddenly Red Dead 2 or something, it's not actually some amazing story being told, but there's something to it unlike the previous game as far as I've seen in my playthrough. I think the world they've built for these two games is really neat. I'm not one for all the Zelda timeline garbage as it seemed to be a lot of faffing about for something that barely mattered (most of the Zelda games themselves have virtually no skin in the greater timeline) as well a series that wasn't really about its narrative within the games themselves either.

I don't understand the attention towards the skin color of the characters. As great as diversity and representation can be, not everything needs to be turbo diverse and all that - if creators want to do that it is nice if not, I don't pay it any mind either. I'm not playing through RE4 Remake and being like "damn, why is everyone white?" every 30 minutes. As diverse as major metropolitan cities like NYC, LA, SF, and London are, there's also massive parts of the world that aren't and that's just as valid of a way to depict a realistic or fantastical world. And honestly, diversity and representation is and should be much more complex than race.

As for the game itself, I've only see a few videos but it does look good. Aside from the FF7 Remake, the most recent Final Fantasy game I've liked is XII so I really want this to be a winner. It already looks more fun to play than 15, which I struggled to enjoy. That game had a kind of fun world with the whole road trip motif and all that, but the combat was just sort of stilted and not fun to me and the story really didn't hook me after a dozen or so hours I spent with the game.

Just make a 2D platformer as good as Sonic Mania but have the world map and secrets of a Super Mario World, that is all. SMW came out about 33 years ago and Sonic still does not have a game of that substance. I actually think Mario vs. Sonic is sometimes a false binary, they do not always need to be compared but…come on. Give us a cool overworld, secret exits, weird secrets, bizarre one-off levels, good unique power-ups, etc. of games like Mario 3 and Super Mario World.

I loved the movie. It is not some cinematic landmark, but it takes advantage of the Mario characters, world, and all those surroundings to make a fun, cute, sharp movie filled with joyful details and references for longtime fans of the games. Everyone was great in it, especially Jack Black and Anya Taylor-Joy. I preferred how they did it to the Sonic movie, leaning into the games (which to be fair, are far richer in the case of Mario than Sonic) more than telling an more "original" story and more referencing memes that Sonic did. That being said both movies are solid fun.

Sure, if you go in as someone who knows or cares little for Super Mario as an IP, it's a very straight forward family-oriented action adventure film. Even with that caveat, it's charming and doesn't overstay its welcome and has lovely visuals. Outside of something like The Last of Us, it's not like there's many other video game adaptations that are striving for and achieving much more than this movie.

You will get everything. Enjoy yourself.

I think I'll play this on my SNES Classic Mini, sounds really cool! Hopefully GB does a good video on it as well.