I really hope you guys listen to feedback next year. Bring any fun and life back to GOTY or might as well not do it. This was worse than a regular week of GB content by far.
Why you would have this perosnality based site and kill all you group content and all the fun categories that made GOTY actually fun is beyond me.
Longest time they’ve spent talking about a game this year and it won’t make ANY of the main Staff top 10.
Giving the game no credit for this, no matter what you think in the end, is really fucking silly to me when most companies are pumping out open world checkbox games that are all the same.
That's where I fall on the game more than anything. It's very interesting and unique and critics are constantly saying they want that.
To give an example, probably one of my favorite clips from 2015 was Austin bringing up Anno 2205 for Best Clicker (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WldlcwA1ziA). The category was kind of whatever (I don't really play clickers ever) but Austin vehemently (if jokingly) arguing for Anno's inclusion was one of the funniest things I've ever heard.
And now we don't really have categories like that anymore. Nor do we get dark horse contenders that show up out of nowhere, because everything has already been hashed out beforehand.
I think that might be my favourite too. Listening to it again, I just had a realization - I can't believe I'm saying this but - I want these deliberations to be more like Pro Wrestling! Surprise entrants, underdogs, conflicts, stunning upsets, betrayals, all I want out of these deliberations is entertainment and I don't care if it comes in the form of fake/manufactured drama or not.
That's the kind of thing that happens when you have more fun diverse categories vs just game quality. There's silly fun arguments to be had why, yeah, some strategy game is almost a clicker or over whacky settings or which dumb character in a game would be more fun to actually hang out with.
To be clear on my feedback and that I've seen from others: it's not that we want GOTY how it was and the big argument (I like that less than this), it's that we want fun categories, ones where arguments can happen that aren't as cut throat. And speaking for myself I want some big group videos and from what they said previously there won't be as much of that.
I for one am extremely sad they continued with the 2018 format...
Pre-2018 the GOTY casts were easily my favorite of every year, and now 2 hours into this one I'm legitimately bored listening to it. It's just a rehash of what you've already said over the 100 other podcasts you've done this year
What I really hate about it is that the talk is mostly pretty quick and low depth. During the year they don't really talk in a lot of depth about the games, certainly not with spoilers, with the idea it seems to me that they will cover it during GOTY. So you don't get a lot of podcasts that talk about games in depth like GB used to as much.
I wish they did more spoilerscasts. It was sad hearing Jan had a huge list of notes for a spoilerscast. Even as not a KH fan I would have listened.
Count me as someone else not in love with this format. It feels like the wrong solution to a legitimate issue. If the crew was frustrated with how contentious some of the arguments had gotten that is fair, but to sacrifice 10-12 hours to a fix seems like overkill. Much rather see this be 2-4 hours focusing on their favorite games or games that don't get mentioned in all the other categories. Then use that time you save to make more fun content with the crew together like Hitsmas and the Winter Games, that stuff is gold and much more interesting than a yearly recap. I can deal with less fun categories if I'm getting more east and west coast together stuff.
Agree with your whole post here a lot. I had really enjoyed the videos of the group together as well but we will see what we get this year.
This format is such a waste of potential, the weird categories where the best part of the GotY stuff.
Yeah this has really been lost. Whether they were cool ways to rank games non traditionally or funny, they were just about always the best part... well plus the funny videos.
@nethlem: A bigger change than the free aim probably is the AP system. Well, really it's a return to what tactical games of the type were almost all like before the XCOM reboot. It allows you to perform whatever actions you want within an AP pool your character has vs the move and action system the XCOM reboots used. It allows for a lot more freedom.
I appreciate a lot about the XCOM reboot series and think its fantastic but I have always missed AP, being a big fan of games like Silent Storm and Jagged Alliance 2.
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