Really surprised Persona 5 isn't even mentioned. I'm not even a big fan of the game but it looks really nice.
Also strange how quickly BOTW got dismissed. It has technical shortcomings but some unique art design in places. I found it much more inspired and inviting than Destiny 2 or Horizon and again, I don't even care much for the game so it really is about the visuals there.
I think I'd actually put Mario #1. It was so fun seeing what came next and all the cute characters. Cuphead is neat but kind of one-note, while Mario kept surprising me with its worlds, twists and details.
persona is probably being saved for style, which I can get.
Aesthetics being split up into three categories doesn't make sense. Best Style and Best Looking should be one thing.
I actually think since they've kept best style as "flashiest/most swag thing" there should be an additional category for like, best overall aesthetic that's not swagger and isn't necessarily art.
I find it funny that at one point 6 of the 8 were ok with dropping Destiny 2 from the list yet it still remained, hopefully that's the only time they let Brad pull that "be here all night" card.
given how contentious this year seems to be I doubt this will be the last time anyone pulls the "I'm going to sit here and keep arguing until I get my way" card
Really hated how Brad railroaded Destiny 2 in there. If all it takes to get something on the list is to threaten to bitch and moan until you get your way, then there isn't much value to this list.
The filibuster has been a huge part of the deliberations and has been the worst part every year. The Destiny 1 on the list, the Skyrim debate, the Shadow Broker vs Bioshock DLC, etc. The "I'm going to fucking argue forever and that's my biggest argument" take is awful and I wish they'd take a conscious step away from that.
Brad inner child going for "If you try to cut [my game] we're going to be here all night." just ruins it some times.
yeah his (and others') ultimatums are the worst part of these deliberations. I wanted Pyre to be in there but I think I would have been ok with the decision if Brad's declaration didn't feel like a big reason Pyre got cut.
The irony is that Assassin's Creed seems to follow the Witcher 3 blueprint to a T but since it's Assassin's Creed it won't achieve that absolute level of perfection Witcher 3 does in so many people's eyes.
(AC seems better. ;) Combat and movement feels nicer at any rate.)
the writing of AC does not even come close to the Witcher's. I also thought the loot/weapons were a lot better in Witcher than in AC, where a lot of the weapon sets and stuff felt meaningful rather than a rather empty, tacked on loot treadmill.
Also for their first deliberations I loved Abby and Ben on these. The best parts of the deliberations- well thought out arguments, not stubborn/dying on a hill for no reason/being the final holdout when the consensus seems to be swinging the other way.
It boggles the mind that people are still disappointed by NFS. A series that has been bad for years and on top of that killed an infinitely better series and its studio to boot!
Only getting by on name recognition.
The E3 demo looked great and hard to fuck up that concept though. The crew seemed jazzed about it after that and I know I was too. They didn't even mention the shitty progression system on top of all the other disappointing shit.
I feel like the mordor discussion came down to everyone having the opinion it was disappointing and Brad being "nah I liked it". I can see where he's coming from in that he liked it but he kind of just seemed dismissive of the others' opinions. It seemed like his argument was "that game is pretty ok" but everyone else seemed to like it a lot less than he did on top of having higher expectations.
Hell yeah a mention of Yakuza! Might be my game of the year. Great to see it on a guest list cause I don't think it would be mentioned on any of the staff's.
@eribuster: I got the Chain Attacks more like 11 hours in but yeah. I actually like the slow unfolding, it felt like it was giving me time to get used to systems without being too slow, but that's probably going to be more subjective.
Some people think the Japanese VA sounds better overall. Like the inflections and the like. I personally couldn't disagree more. To me, MOST of the English VA is... fine. Maybe not perfect, but its fine. I especially like Pyra's.
I think I'm on the "it's weird and messy but they're trying something different and that's interesting" side of it. Some of the delivery is weirdly flat or oddly timed, but I like that they went for a new direction with all the different accents rather than making the ten thousanth anime game that has the same voices for the same archetypes, like Nia didn't get a cutesy loli voice and Mythra didn't get the same tsun voice and Tora doesn't just sound like any other JRPG mascot. At points I want to switch to the Japanese because a cutscene will have a ton of bad delivery but then they introduce new characters or I get to a new region and I leave it on because I want to know what they sound like.
Wow.... way to generalize a whole genre. Its like saying Harvey Weinstein is a good representation of what's bad about men or the Patriots are a good representation of whats bad about the NFL
This is a pretty good representation of what is bad about Anime.
Anime Is For Jerks was a good goof 8 years ago that the community has latched on to and just repeats as if the same punchline will stay funny for that amount of time. I'm not mad about it it's just tired of it, and I speak as someone who did parrot that joke back in 2010 or whatever
Also RE: the lip synching, it's not even that it's tuned to the Japanese, I don't think it's tuned at all, there are some cutscenes where the mouth flaps well after the characters stop speaking, pretty sure they just said "this line will take around 2.7 seconds to go, have the mouth animate for that long"
As for my overall impressions, I got a switch right before black friday. Saw the "end" of Odyssey and got 5-10 hours in both Mario+Rabbids and BotW. I've dropped all of it for this game, 20 hours in, despite all its flaws. I think it has a major lack of polish and a ton of issues (voice acting uneven despite the fact I like it, the map sucks, you can't go back and look at tutorials so I end up taking screenshots every time a t utorial pops up or resorting to google, the fetch quests are too RNG in terms of gathering poitns, etc.), but the world design and story (so far at least) and combat are enough to keep me hooked. I think Austin said something like "it's a 7.5 but a 7.5 can be great" and I think I agree with that. I'm about 20 hours in but so far I would definitely put it in my top 5 games of the year (which I realized yesterday was almost entirely Japanese games like P5 and Nier, which is wild) so far. It's a great "put on with something else going on in the second screen and do sidequests/run around the world" type game. And when I do have to pay attention to cutscenes and stuff that has been great as well.
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