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I don't know if it's appropriate for this thread, but I guess there's no PAX East panel this year? After what they did for PAX West last year I guess it makes sense, but it really took me by surprise. Did they talk about skipping PAX West at all?

Also looks like Waypoint/Vice Games doesn't have a panel either, which is also depressingly unsurprising given that Waypoint doesn't strictly speaking exist anymore. Real bummer considering this is the first PAX I can afford to attend in several years.

@zombiepie: With regards to Final Fantasy XV, it's fine. Just that, fine. When you divorce the game from it's decade of baggage, it's a middle of the road action RPG. I can list of a whole host of issues I had with the game, from it's mutli-media approach to story telling to its lackluster back half, but three years after I played it I mostly remember the pretty okay open world road trip that makes up the first two thirds of that game. It is far, far from being the low point, and I'd go as far as to say it's better than 13, and definitely better than 2. Worst I can warn you is that you'll get bored of that road trip eventually, and the story really does go in some dumb directions.

Edit: the worst I can say about XV is that it frequently reminds you of better Final Fantasy games with its throwbacks and homages.

In addition to the weight loss and reading resolutions I always have and then never follow through on, this year I really want to get my spending under control. I moved to a more expensive city in July and I've been having some difficulty adjusting, but I've also developed some bad habits. Lots of eating out/in (grubhub and the like) that add up to a big bite out of my budget.

Dan's going to produce the New Day's podcast. Austin is going to write the New Day's graphic novel. What is it about the New Day that draws in the Giant Bomb alumni?

So unless I missed it, it looks like there wasn't any text based recaps of the Giant Bomb GOTY award winners. Which is a bummer but that is an entirely separate conversation. So I decided to put that together myself so that people, mostly me, could have an easy thing to reference and copy and paste from. Feel free to talk about these results if you want, all I ask is that we skip the discussions about the change in format or number of awards for this thread. There are so many other places on this site to talk about that stuff.

Also, uh, "spoilers" for the awards I guess.

Best Music

• Winner: Outer Wilds
• Hypnospace Outlaw
• Ape Out

Best Style

• Winner: Control
• Ape Out
• Later Alligator

Cool Multiplayer Thing of the Year

• Winner: Apex Legends
• Kind Words
• Death Stranding

Best Story

• Winner: Outer Wilds
• Mortal Kombat 11
• Judgement

Game of the Year

1. Winner: Outer Wilds
2. Control
3. Apex Legends
4. Mortal Kombat 11
5. Resident Evil 2
6. Bloodstained: Ritual of the Night
7. Ring Fit Adventure
8. Call of Duty: Modern Warfare
9. Disco Elysium
10. Judgement

It's kind of cliche at this point, but Outer Wilds knocked me on my ass. And not just for the artsy, feelsy reasons (don't get me wrong. Also for those reasons). I also loved the puzzle solving and the exploration, and I actually like spaceship controls, even if I've slammed myself into a planet going 1km/second more times than I'd care to admit.

But I think in terms of just raw ass "fun" I'd probably say Devil May Cry 5. That's probably the best the series has been since 3, and might actually be better than 3. I really enjoyed the way they changed things up with V, though I hope that they eventually add DLC to let you play as Vergil.

I started playing Death Stranding and started a new save for Final Fantasy 15: Windows Edition.

With Death Stranding I can already kind of see what a lot of people are talking about. I'm in chapter 2 and I'm kind of just focusing on the main plot until I get to chapter 3 which I hear is where things really pick up. But I think I like the basic movement and delivery aspect of that game, and the building stuff I've heard about sounds very promising. I have not had to actually fight anything so far, which sounds like hell. The story and writing seem really rough already but honestly it's going to take a heroic effort to make a story more disappointing that MGS5 (which was otherwise my favorite in the franchise but they ruined Ocelot and I will never forgive for that).

I played FF15 when it launched and liked it well enough. After I finished it I heard about how Square was gonna go and patch in the story and plot that the original game was missing because holy shit, that game just did not seem to think that story critical events or characterization should happen on screen. I decided that if I were going to see that stuff it would be after they were done, and with all of the remaining DLC for this game being cancelled I think I can conclude that they are done.

And I'm doing all of this to kind of fill in time before the Kingdom Hearts 3 DLC releases at the end of January.

Hey so while they didn't do Most Disappointing, I think we as a community can conclude that they would have given it to Death Stranding, right? Like regardless of however you feel about the game, the crew was in general down on it, and the difference between Dan's Kojima induced hype-bliss for the game and his actual reaction to it is great enough to cause gravitational lensing.

So I have an impulse to defend the GOTY format and content because frankly some of the vitriol and whining from the community has been embarrassing, and reminds me of why I don't post to these forums that often anymore. Any accusations that the team is being lazy is ridiculous, worthless, and should be completely ignored.

That said, the recap podcasts are very long and a lot of games brought up on them come and go with very little conversation, which to me doesn't seem to reach the goal of "shine a light on the games of the year and have a chill talk about them". I think a sort of meet in the middle approach might be for each staff member to bring a rough draft of what their top ten will be, which is maybe 10-20 candidates that they haven't nailed down yet, and use those lists to create the recap list, instead of making a list of all notable games from the year. The idea is that that way it's kind of the best of the year they're talking about, every game has a good discussion to go along with it, and it's still probably a pretty damn long list.

I'd also say that they don't need to fill 5 days with podcasts. Like, if they did that and only had 2 days of recap instead of 3, they don't need to come up with another day of awards. They could just do four days.

Can't wait for you to play FF2. Don't go three tiles to the left of the starting position.