Hashbrowns

If someone asks me what the "Giant Bomb GotY" results were, I'm tempted to give them this list instead of the official top ten.

I still say, just have the staff do their personal top ten lists and the wacky "these don't matter" categories, and then have the community choose Giant Bomb's GotY winners. Everybody wins, and it emphasises just how vital the community is to Giant Bomb's unique appeal.

@Gaff: Thank you for your response. I'll respond to only a few of your points, because the others are subjective past the point of useful argument (visual differences in areas, the fenced in area being bad design, combat progression). Not that those opinions aren't valid, of course, it's just that they're so far removed from mine that I can't relate to where you're coming from.

Detective mode wasn't a problem in Arkham Asylum and it isn't a problem in Arkham City. Just don't use it. I hope that doesn't sound too flippant, but really, if the player doesn't like a feature, don't use it. It's entirely viable to use detective mode EXTREMELY sparingly. It's similar to complaining about the addition of fast-travel to Elder Scrolls games. Just don't use it so much.

The complaint against having 400 Riddler Challenges is especially bizarre. Sure, I don't read every review or listen to every podcast on the internet, but the only real mention of this "problem" I've heard is from the Bombsquad. I really just don't get it. It's a little like saying there is too much loot in Diablo. There's no mandate to get them all, and they aren't all just hidden objects, many of them are surprisingly well designed puzzles, and they unlock really compelling extras like additional patient interviews and some spectacular concept art. I actually collected them all, and I never do that sort of thing in games. If they want to make a big deal about collectibles in B:AA, they should lambaste every Assassin's Creed for that reason, but they don't.

As for random badguys being a distraction; the Bombsquad actually said it best themselves with "the game makes you feel like Batman". I never found it distracting when a shake-down sprang up while I was traveling, in fact it is pitch-perfect for a superhero game. Bad stuff happens unexpectedly, and sometimes when it seems inconvenient. To criticize a game for having impromptu and dynamic optional missions seems like an argument for more linearity and "guided experiences" which gamers rightly decry.

Thanks for the discussion, regardless.

@Curufinwe: I think that specific achievement is unlocked by doing the additional four advanced AR challenges. But the grapnel boost is acquired by completing the normal challenges, so I'm sure they all had it. Why Brad had any issues with the grapnel is beyond me, though.

@Curufinwe said:

"With Brad bumming out on Batman: Arkham City's open-world additions"

The problem is with Brad, not the game. Being able to fly all over the city with the grapnel boost showed just how limited and tied-down Batman was in Arkham Asylum. Combine that with the improved combat and far superior boss fights, and Arkham City is by far the better game.

Absolutely. I'm completely flabbergasted whenever Brad complains about the traversal in Arkham City; to the point of finding it hard to believe he played the same game as I did. This recent "backlash" against Arkham City is totally absurd to me, as I can hardly think of a single real solid criticism against the game apart from maybe some frustrating combat moments, but that's pretty iffy itself.

"It's just more Arkham Asylum" is, on its own, meaningless as a criticism. Being similar to the previous game can only be a hindrance if the previous game was specifically flawed. For example, this year many reviewers are finally taking issue with the entertaining but one-and-done smoke and mirrors campaign design in MW3, which was present and obvious since the first CoD game.

Arkham City is a vast improvement on Arkham Asylum in every category, and B:AA was amazing to start with. Density of content, quality of content, and quantity are all outstanding: Music, art design, audio, technical execution, traversal, fluid combat, writing, voice acting... from top to bottom.

I hate to oversell B:AC, but it really is that good.

Spoilers, I suppose.

I have a deep-seated distaste for Halo 3 ODST, but only from a story perspective. Like all the Halo series, the actual gameplay (shooting, vehicles) is fantastic. But the story was a pointless and shallow waste of time. If ODST had come out between Halo 2 and Halo 3, the game would have at least had the benefit of teasing the slipsace portal buried beneath Voi, but we already knew about that since Halo 3.

If the overall plotline was a non-reveal, then maybe the sub-plot and characters might pick up the slack. But they don't. The characters are awfully written, and Buck and Dare's "love story" is about as interesting as watching paint dry. The plot reveals nothing we did not already know, and the characters have little in the way of an actual arc or development.

The music, though... I think the music in ODST is easily one of the best scores in the series. The original Halo CE soundtrack is a classic, of course, and the developments Marty did in Halo 2 were brilliant, but Halo 3 was pretty much treading water; not bad but not very interesting either. Halo Reach's score was... well just sort of forgettable. But ODST's score is simultaneously immediately recognizable as Halo, yet entirely original and unique. Fantastic stuff.

Indeed, I'd go so far as to say that the music in ODST was the only thing that gave that game any significant emotional core.

Maybe they should have taken a different marketing approach and simply labeled it as a public beta, with a mandatory $60 deposit toward the final finished game, which is "unlocked" by the final patch.

In all honesty, I wish they would just do their personal top ten lists and leave it at that. Having a website GotY doesn't really seem to jive with the individual personality-driven style of Giant Bomb. And I assume it's just going to be Ryan, Jeff, Vinny, Brad and Patrick involved in the debate. Why just them? Drew, Dave, Alex and Kessler all reviewed games this year that will be up for consideration. Why would their opinions be of any less value?

The debates are sometimes entertaining, but I find it incredibly frustrating to listen to four hours of arguments without having some kind of input. The user-choice GotY awards make way more sense, and exclusively featuring it as the official Giant Bomb GotY Awards would help to promote the community involvement that is so essential to Giant Bomb. They could still produce a long-form podcast to discuss and compare their own lists in more detail than the video segments allow, and we would be sparred the rambling, circular-reasoning arguments we get during a GotY debate.

This isn't directly related to Saints Row, so sorry about the tangent.

@NTM said:

The first two Max Payne games and put it in one package. I'm going through them again, and that's one of the things I kept thinking last night.

I was sure I was going to be the first to mention this, but at least two other people have already done so! With the new game coming out this coming spring, it would seem like an obvious thing to release an HD collection for both PC and consoles (with actual widescreen being the most needed feature in the PC versions). Max Payne games have always played very well on both PC and consoles, so it seems like the rare example where everybody wins.

I would also second the suggestion of the Descent series. There still isn't anything else like those games in the current market. Sure, space-sims are a hard sell these days, but Descent is close enough in design and gameplay to appeal to a regular first-person shooter audience. Why this hasn't happened yet is baffling. If Interplay wants to make some money off its remaining IPs, Descent is the place to start.

@frondoni: I kept thinking I ought to write down my problems with Uncharted 3 just as an exercise in anger management over my disappointment with the game, but you've handled it wonderfully. Great work, and I'm eager to read more.

Look, I was a huge fan of Uncharted 2. It was my favorite game of 2009, in fact. No one was looking forward to UC3 more than I was, but I'm not going to deceive myself into thinking I liked Uncharted 3 better. It's a far lesser game in many respects. I know the gun-play argument is very subjective, but when UC2 came out, it became my go-to standard for third-person cover-based shooters, easily unseating Gears of War 2.

But with UC3, the gun-play just isn't as much fun. When I died, I didn't feel as though I was out-fought, but that the controls were simply being unwieldy. After finishing UC3, I hopped right back into UC2, and I immediately noticed just how much better the shooting was in the previous game. It's strange, but Gears of War 3 brought the gun-play of that franchise to the best-of-class status, but I fully expected Uncharted 3 to further improve it's gun-play and reclaim its throne. Unfortunately, UC3 not only did not improve on its predecessor, it actually diminished in quality and fun.

Visually, the game is also noticeably sloppier than Uncharted 2. Spin the camera around Drake in UC2, and you'll see some of the absolute best motion-blur in any game, it gave a 30 fps game a much smoother look. But in UC3 it's completely absent, really making the framerate drops (which are surprisingly frequent) immediately and drastically apparent. If I had to guess, I would say the implementation of 3D functionality might be to blame. I don't know for certain, obviously, but I'm eager to hear more knowledgeable people speak on that.

The story, while having some great ideas such as revealing Nate's past with Sully, is an absolute train wreck. Chloe and Cutter just drop out of the story never to be heard from again, and Salim (?) just appears as a plot device. Talbot is a total enigma without even the pretense of development, as is Marlowe. I know suspension of disbelief is necessary in action adventure, but one absurd event after another slaps you in the face, not even giving you the opportunity to find the story's grounding. The very ending was well done, but it works because it is completely unrelated to the main plot. I could have watched that scene between Drake and Elena on youtube without any knowledge of what happened during the game, and it would have worked just as well. The dramatic payoff is due to the actor's performances and my emotional investment in the characters during the previous two games.

I'm not going to say any one else is "wrong" to really like the game, but looking at Brad's 5-star review does make me just scratch my head and wonder if he liked Uncharted 2 for the same reasons I did, since I would hardly say Naughty Dog "did it again".

I wish they had.