Making Silent Hill the Wiki Page of the Week is genuinely such a sweet gesture :') I love it. Thank you. Thank you all <3
Everyone's been so astoundingly kind to me in the wake of this and I'm lucky enough that my prevailing emotion is "grateful." I urge everyone to give Jason (@unstrike) and Justin (@megaberrycrunch) even more love and appreciation than you've shown me!! They're both total masters of their skillsets and kings of personality - I'm shook I got to work with either of these ridiculously talented and cool people. Please support them where possible <3
Love you, see you all around, and please be kind and patient to the remaining GB crew. Nobodywanted this, and everyone there are such talented and genuinely good people. This is a very weird situation, but I hope you can extend love and understanding to those that are still up in here, despite the circumstances. I hope you all can soften the blow for them as you have for me.
@mnzy: During the GOTY deliberations, we decided our site Top Ten via the Eurovision ranking system, where each person awards the games certain amounts of points that cumulatively rise them up the list.
@voidburger: You didn't, but my post was more so directed at Jan and Dan. And it wasn't even meant as an attack. I was teasing both guys.
I was going by your past opinions and you did give an approving "Thank you!" when Dan said Horizon was just a bad game overall during the Best Game To Bounce Off list. If I misheard that or you was directing it at something someone else said, then my bad. Anyway, you misunderstand me. I don't care if you don't like HFW. You have a right to your opinion. Please, bring out the knifes. These GOTY debates need it. Day two was pretty good.
- I'm interested in how a statement like "Jess I understand. She has made it clear how much she hates HFW, and will do so during these whole GOTY discussions I'm sure. But shame on Dan and Jan for giving into [her] peer pressure. Jess doesn't need your help bashing one of the best games of the year guys." is not directed at me. - The "Thank You" was clearly a joke. Riffing on how Jason's been razzing me about the "Horizon is Ugly" video. - I don't hate Horizon. I don't think about Horizon much. My takes on Horizon are "I don't like how it looks" and "The protagonist is a bit annoying" and "Game seems a bit dull", and none of those are held with any sort of fervency.
Jess I understand. She has made it clear how much she hates HFW, and will do so during these whole GOTY discussions I'm sure. But shame on Dan and Jan for giving into peer pressure. Jess doesn't need your help bashing one of the best games of the year guys.
When did I talk about Horizon Forbidden West during this?
@deepressed: I didn't want to get too detailed and totally dominate the Quick Look, but here's my reasoning:
Man of Medan: A lot of people hated this cuz it was the first Dark Pics Anth game (lower budget, quicker turnaround, shorter game), and it's hard to follow up something as bangin' as Until Dawn. Looking back on it though, it's a pretty good romp with some effective scares and an interesting plot (that gets ruined by the end, but I think it taught the devs a good lesson about not doing the thing they did there, and how it's a cop-out that disappoints the audience.)
Little Hope: Jump scare city!! To the point where it was pretty obnoxious. The characters were also just really shitty to each other, to the point where it was hard to have a favorite that you wanted to protect. The plot was also just kinda weird and confusing (it kinda took place in 3 different eras), but it had some SUPER cool monsters in it and very awesome deaths that made up for it. (Fun fact: This game was originally pitched to be in the Silent Hill IP!)
House of Ashes: I think this is the strongest of the Anthology series so far. Jump scares that are far more earned and aren't just "SCREAMING THING ALL OF A SUDDEN." Some hateable characters, some likeable-but-flawed characters, some hateable-but-you-warm-up-to-them-a-bit-once-you-find-out-why-they're-a-bit-of-a-dick characters. A neat premise that manages to not be "America Ooh-rah!" while being all about a bunch of marines (It ends up having more of an Aliens Marines vibe for me?) Very cool, unexpected monsters - and really dramatic/action-packed finale with non-boring pacing in general. It still doesn't approach Until Dawn or The Quarry's level of polish, but it held its own!
And here we come to The Devil in Me: This is such a promising premise! H.H. Holmes meets some SAW bullshit? Hell yeah! And then they made me do, like, 2 hours of tutorial bullshit... the opening chunk of which wasn't very interesting cuz like, you absolutely know these two randos are going to die at the hands of a mortal guy with a goofy murder hotel. And the second chunk of which is establishing 5 unlikeable and/or boring coworkers, and exploring the grounds of the mansion a little before going in (an overlong tutorial for shimmying, crawling, mantling, and an introduction to some of the individual character gimmick items that don't do much in the game). And now the jerks are wandering around getting picked off a bit while a shadowy guy in a bowler hat walks by the camera with a mildly scary sting multiple times. Just awful pacing. There's just not much intrigue going on (like I said, I'm gonna play more simply because I'm hoping the bad guy is a werewolf in a bowler hat,) and there's not enough story or character charm to keep me interested. Like, this coulda been REALLY goofyspooky (look at the SAW movies for goodness' sake) and it just whiffed it cuz the characters are so boring, and the shadowy hat man has no charisma/isn't very threatening. Plus, the animations and cutscene direction is just not as good as any of the other three :( It's a bad entry in the series that is clearly meant to be the Budget Side Series, so that makes it even sadder, cuz the other budget ones are more competent and have better pacing (despite making other mistakes along the way.) It's a step backward from House of Ashes, which learned a lot from the two before it, and that's a shame!
The only thing wrong with Rush is that Ernest Cline wrote more than one obnoxious musical moment in Ready Player One where people listen to Rush in order to go to THE GAMER ZONE or get hyped to kill bad guys or kiss a girl or fuckin whatever lol
@toysoda: hoo yeah, I steered well clear of bringing up any of the fashion/hair choices in this game cuz that's a WHOLE can of worms that I'm not equipped to open, haha
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