Not quite what you asked, but I aspire to be more like Vinny. His calm in the face of chaos, his investment in the well-being of those around him, his directness in dealing with things that bothered him.
I feel the polar opposite way. I'm enjoying the lunacy of the story (that hand-healing moment you mention is an all-time great gaming moment for me) and I think the pacing is amazing. "Action packed horror themed roller coaster" is a perfect description. Combat has felt pretty good to me given the way the game handles its first person perspective and movement speeds.
Agree that it's nowhere near as scary as 7 but to me that's ok.
@vaiz: Really, that would have been the best gag ever if the live Giant Bombcast had started with just Jeff and a list of the Nintendo downloadable games he had missed since the last Nintendownload X-Press
@trottyvek: I feel like every hire the site has made has had a version of that Giant Bomb energy. I would expect that over time as new people come on board that trend will continue.
Just beat this last night. Anybody have thoughts on how this game is paced? I think it's done poorly, but also I think some of my own OCD exacerbated that issue. Does anyone else think this would be a much better game if it was significantly shorter and/or had less side-stuff?
I was loving it for the first 10 hours or so, and by the time I finished Act I I had done everything there was to do on the lower third of the island. When Act II started I immediately went back to the lower third to do all the farm missions. And then...I don't know what happened, but through Act II I very quickly started to lose interest in the game. The missions, the incidental incidents on the roads as you are traveling from one place to another, the combat, the side stuff, it all just felt very repetitive and the story wasn't pulling me along anymore.
My last few sessions with this game were me mainlining the story and ignoring everything else just so I could finish it and move on to something else. It had gone from being one of my favorite games this year to one of my biggest disappointments. Then I reached the epilogue.
The resolution of the relationship between Jin and his uncle floored me. I think some of my reaction is based on personal stuff (I haven't seen much of my own immediate family since the pandemic started) but I also thought it was written, staged, and acted incredibly well. I felt the emotion of that last encounter in a way nothing else has hit me this year, and it tied everything in the game together beautifully.
I thought it was incredible and it completely turned me back around on the game. Not my favorite game this year, but definitely an experience I think everyone should have. I just wish the experience was more streamlined.
"CEO Bob Bakish has told investors that the company is evaluating the sale of non-core assets — i.e., those that are not video-based"
Given that Giant Bomb is basically entirely video-based, and have the additional advantage of a subscription model, I would imagine they are safe and sound.
This game breaks people's brains. If you like it, fine, but I really think its a stretch to say it pushes the medium forward or is the game of the year or whatever. And the aggression that comes out of some of you when people dislike it is just...
It takes 30 hours to say "revenge is bad." The point of the narrative is really no more nuanced than that. It doesn't succeed as a deconstruction or subversion of AAA games in general, since it takes control away from you almost every time it tries to make that point. Ellie's motivations to go after Abby make no sense, and the creators must be aware of that since they obscure it by withholding the true nature of Ellie and Joel's relationship until literally the very end of the game. It plays well, and there are some nice character moments, but I honestly couldn't come up with a reason why anybody has to play this game, and I could come up with a bunch of reasons why it is not worth playing.
All other issues aside, I cannot imagine having 5-6 years to work on this, then being positioned as a launch title for the next Xbox, and then at some point (apparently very recently) having to tell someone at Microsoft that it will not be ready until next year. Not faulting anyone or saying I could have done a better job, just thinking about how much that conversation must have sucked.
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