The HotSpot - Episode 393

@dan_citi: When you say Tetris Effect moved you I am jealous. That's the way the GB crew talked about it too. I should have felt that same emotional response because many of my earliest gaming memories are of Tetris on the Game Boy I got for Christmas as a 7 year old kid. But I just didn't experience that.

If anything it was Tetris 99 that gave me those feelings of nostalgia. Playing Tetris again on a Nintendo handheld just felt right and the competitive aspect brought back memories of playing over the Game Boy link cable with friends as a kid.

Tetris Effect is awesome and I think it's really cool that Tetris won game of the year in 2018 but I guess I'm broken because I can't honestly say it moved me.

@the_god-king_of_switzerland: That "mediocre, nearly DEAD game" is one of the most profitable and most played games in the world, according to Valve.

https://www.gamasutra.com/view/news/356261/These_are_the_highest_grossing_Steam_games_of_2019.php

https://www.rockpapershotgun.com/2020/12/26/valve-reveal-steams-best-selling-games-of-2020/

I love looking back at what I considered my top games of the year and reevaluating them. I played BOTW on Wii U and thought it was good, but not great. I decided to give it another chance on Switch, though, when it was on sale for Black Friday, and my opinion has completely changed. It's incredible. My favorite game out of 2017 was Mario Odyssey, but now I'm not so sure . . .

beasts all over the shop

Wow, so much Skyrim hate. I can still go back and play that anytime.

Breath of the Wild is still over-rated though. And I'm a giant Zelda fan.

I still don't get why Jeff loves Mario Maker 1 so much and hates MM2. 2 added so much great stuff (though I miss the Amiibo skins a lot).

This was a ton of fun to listen to. So much insane history, great people and weird choices, so much drama! The blindspot on the Dark Souls-series is fascinating. Good times all around. One thing, I had the exact same experience as Jeff with Outer Wilds and Control. I had a miserable time with the first game and Control is one of my favorite games of this decade.

Honorable mentions for me would be Senua's Sacrifice (Brad at least spoke of it, but that game is just God of War but with an actual pace and a much stronger story, it's so freaking great), Sekiro (another DS-snub, but that game is kinda contentious) and OF COURSE Fallout: New Vegas which I would've thought Jeff would've called out.

This episode is #1 in GOTY discussions :D

I think they are way too harsh about Uncharted 2. Uncharted 3-4 I can give or take, though.

Great podcast. It's fun to hear how your views and opinions have changed over the years, especially with stuff like Saints Row 3 and Skyrim.

My personal top picks for each year:

• 2008: Lost Odyssey, Persona 4, Fable 2, The Last Remnant, WoW: Wrath of the Lich King, Final Fantasy Tactics A2
• 2009: Demon's Souls, Dragon Age Origins
• 2010: Mass Effect 2, Ni No Kuni, WoW: Cataclysm
• 2011: Skyrim, Terraria, Dark Souls, Bastion
• 2012: Journey, Dishonored, Guild Wars 2, Diablo 3
• 2013: Zelda: A Link Between Worlds, Etrian Odyssey IV
• 2014: Dragon Age Inquisition, Dark Souls II
• 2015: Bloodborne
• 2016: Dark Souls III, Pokemon Sun, Dragon Quest Builders, Final Fantasy Explorers
• 2017: BotW, Final Fantasy XII: The Zodiac Age, Mario Kart 8, Mario Odyssey, Ever Oasis
• 2018: Monster Hunter World, Forza Horizon 4
• 2019: Death Stranding, Link's Awakening
• 2020: Animal Crossing, Astro's Playroom, Demon's Souls

Prolly forgot some games but whatever. I think 2008 stands out as the best of the bunch, but 2017 was fairly close. 2015 is a funny one because I remember it fondly, but in reality I didn't play much else than Bloodborne. Then again.. BB was bloody amazing so it basically carried the whole year.

FF7R was particularly disappointing to me, but that's a remake I've been dreaming of since the early 00s so my expectations were just too high. FFXIII and XV were also major letdowns. But hey, at least I got a great FFXII remaster.

Very confusing how some GOTY and lists were lauded because they were the games that set standards for future games and others were dismissed because they set standards that future games followed.

I got my premium subscription back and I missed y’all so much! Thanks for all you guys do - I have a lot of video to catch up on

Boy, really no love for Dishonored back in 2012, huh.

Outer Wilds ascending to its rightful throne.

This was brilliant. The way you guys can just dismiss the Uncharted games really annoys though lol. Good with the bad though, agree with Jeff regarding BoTW and Outer Wilds. Both are meh.

Mario Maker should never have won. Ditto with Tetris but you covered that here and PuBG I can’t stand. Along with all battle royales to be honest - keep trying and keep bouncing off - but understand why it won. Anyway, just want to reiterate how good this was to listen to.

Glad Jeff has become more aware on the issue of broken launches, for too long we overlooked the issues going back as far as Fallout 3.

I've been waiting almost a decade for them to add in a particular missing game into a discussion and I thought we would've gotten it......

AND WE FUCKING DIDN'T.

PERSONA 4 is the best game of 08 compared to GTA4 and MGS4 and I think the would've ended at that conclusion. God dammit.

Watching this before GoTY 2020 and now I'm way more excited.

BOTW and Dark Souls easily best 2 games of the decade.

I'm with Vinny and Jeff with Breath of the Wild. All that openness and exploration was neat and all but then you soon realize that there isn't much to find. Exploring for the sake of exploring is only interesting up to a certain point then you realize that the map is 10x the size it should have been. Tsushima takes the concepts that game introduced and makes good on them by actually having a graphically amazing world that contained things to do.

I'd take Fenyx Rising over Breath of the Wild. Yeah, Fenyx goes silly with all the icons and crap but the world is a lot more fun to explore, is a whole lot smaller and the combat isn't the most basic, tedious thing. If BOTW 2 has that adventurous sense but in a better video game then I'll call that an instant classic but I honestly find BOTW to be the most over-hyped video game in this industry's history.

I truly wish I played the game a lot of folks have but I merely liked it instead of loving it.

Some other 2013 games they did not mention:

Tomb Raider

AC: Black Flag

Fire Emblem Awakenings

Super Mario 3D World

Spelunky

Rayman Legends

The Wolf Among Us

Rogue Legacy

It was a great year, the storm before the lull (2014). There's plenty more loved games I didn't list either.

What a fab and fun podcast. I always love these game of the years lists because I love to hear the stories behind why someon loves a certain thing. I dont come to this lists seeking confirmation that my games of the year match those of the Giant Bombs, I come to hear personal and unique takes from a bunch of people I find real great.

Ah, good times. So many takes, but you forget them as they move onto the next year. It was honestly hilarious to hear them be aghast that a certain game didn't make the site list in their respective year here and there. That's exactly what the entire audience was saying! lol

It will never not be ridiculous that Dream Daddy made the top 10 in 2017 of all years. It manages to overshadow the other ridiculous choice of PUBG winning. I had mostly forgotten about it, and then hearing it read off elicited a double take.

You've got my axe, Brad. BotW is the most important game to come out in a long time and one of the greatest of all time.

I expected Jeff's hatred for Uncharted 2 but I think his claims that the gameplay is pure garbage are totally unwarranted. I would actually say that Gears feels like shit after getting used to Uncharted. I tried Gears of War remastered and it felt pretty terrible, and I was kind of shocked to find out that this was supposedly the holy grail of third person shooters, the great grandfather of all cover-based action games that came after. Everything about it just felt off; the aiming, the horrendously laborious way you have to lob the low-impact grenades, even the train-like movement.

However, I understand Gears was highly influential and give it full credit for that, even if I don't like the way it feels, looks or care about its story or characters at all. I don't think you can say one is necessarily better than the other, it just depends on what you want as a player and what you've gotten used to.

I'm still salty over Shovel Knight losing to Luftrausers for Best Soundtrack.

. . .That is all.

It's kind of funny how they talked about how difficult it was to find all the past lists, then not have these lists anywhere either.
Or this years goty lists either.

Hitman over DOOM was the correct choice.

Oh, and @brad is 1000% right about Breath of the Wild.

God the whole "you can't climb cliffs in the rain" thing is such a dumb argument to me. When it rains, you could stop and cook/make some stuff, find an alternate route, or rush to find some shade for a fire and wait it out. I completely understand not wanting your time to be wasted, but if your solution to that obstacle is giving up when the game gives you the tools to circumvent it, then...*shrugs*.

Maybe it didn't communicate its nature well enough, but I think the game loses its soul completely if it didn't push you to improvise. BOTW was a very flawed game but the world actually invited exploration because it was dangerous and there was friction to what you could and couldn't do. I found almost all of the rewards for BOTW's quests to be underwhelming but it was made up for by the journey itself usually being interesting. Which is good, because playing this game is 98% journey and 2% rewards.

Maybe I'm being harsh but every time this "cliffs in the rain" argument comes up I wonder if people REALLY want to go on adventures in games, or just tick boxes off a checklist like they're doing chores or something.

It is fascinating how almost every game Jeff vehemently hates or dislikes is a game I really like (Uncharted, Last of Us, Red Dead Redemption etc.). I would love to try and put together a top 10 list of games of the decade with him and try to find like the 3 games we both agree are good. At least I know we both like Apex and Tetris Effect... and um... I'm sure there's something.

Nuclear Throne?

I really hope that all the issues they had navigating their own website and finding their own content means they realized how hard it is to find anything on GB and we will finally get it fixed.