ragnar_mike

Livin' that Ms. Pacman life.

There's some real quality of life things that are totally not mentioned by the game or at leats easy to miss that really helped me. The main one being that for a long section I had no idea you could boost the jetpack and basically Iron Man fly with A. But there's two more important lessons I learned on Brittle Hollow: 1, look for shortcuts. There's a major one that saves you several minutes of traversal and lets you get way deeper into the hanging city. 2, Change the options in your ship. If you go to the rack in your ship where the suit hangs, you can change some of the mechanics. You can make the suit boost automatically and a few other things, but the real time saver is freezing time while you're reading in the computer or translating. I think the dialog one is on by default, but not having to worry about having to rush through the notes was very helpful for me.

I think it's just the setting that doesn't vibe with me for Rorie on UPF. Much like when Brad helms a game and has to hold a conversation at the same time, it's not something he seems entirely comfortable doing. But, Brad and Rorie on podcasts are great. And Brad on Quick Looks when he's not using the controller is great, too. They have strengths that I think didn't play well in this UPF and lot of them recently. But that's what mixing up the roles does, it gives them experience doing stuff they haven't focused on more time to become natural. There's always gonna be some teething issues though.

That might be the logical conclusion, I think. End of the Year Review where they just chat about stuff like a big fancy podcast, or similar to E3. More of the Specialtacular stuff and less of the debating. I could see that being far less taxing on them and allowing for far more content and each person can still show off what they loved that year. Lists are a holdover from it being a review site which honestly hasn't really been what the site is about for half a decade or more, really.

100% Agree. Some fantastic progress made this year. I'm not sure how I feel about the new format, but overall the quality of discussions improved tremendously so something must be working, I guess!

lol I had to scroll down a bit to find it.

The Winners of Everything

As I get older I end up appreciating Vinny and Jeff's voice here as the GB elders. Jeff made his argument for COD4 and while I pretty much could care less about that game, his opinions seemed to support it sneaking in there.

Jan and Abby have been a great addition to these discussions in a similar but unique vein to Austin, where they both introduce more joyful and less commonly thought of games for awards into the mix. Alex and Jason also do this through more esoteric and slightly more Japanese gamedev inspired choices that showcase a different mindset about what storytelling or play experiences in games can be. And while Dan and Ben are sometimes agents of chaos, they also encourage meaningful discussion about these choices rather than just assume the norm is correct.

I absolutely understand his love for the game, but man Brad learned some terrible lessons from earlier years and presumably the Gamespot days. Victory through attrition is such a discouraging way to go about discussing things we all love. I think Ryan was able to temper his staunchness with...well, being Ryan. Whether that was him being devil's advocate to counter dismissal of opionions or just keeping the flow of the debate moving to prevent vitriol, it was always more of a "Brad loves this game, lets hear him wax poetic about it and see where that leaves us" before and now it's more of a mood that he knows there's gonna be a fight and is willing to ignore anyone's opinions for the sake of winning the argument.

I don't blame him for picking up that habit, life is life, but it is a habit that should probably be addressed. Brad's wearing a lot of hats these days and while he generally does a fantastic job, you could tell he was struggling expressing his opinions and managing the overall discussion at the same time.

I'm all for her perspective. I think the fact that pretty much nothing else besides the format of the discussions being talked about in this thread shows that anyone who watches UPF or has been around with GB for a while doesn't need to watch these to know how pretty much everyone besides Abby will have on their lists shows that their perspective are well worn. I would like to think that's why it's focused on Abby, but well...fairly apparent that's not true.

When Vinny says something along the lines of "Well to be fair Kratos kills everybody..." The crew laughs. And Abby basically says "Well I don't fucking care."

That exchange is basically why this is being brought up at all and its entirely based on perspective. Did Vinny mean to be dismissive in his persuit of a joke? Almost certainly not. Did it come off as that way? Yep. Certainly to Abby which is fair, since she gets dismissed much more than anyone on the crew. Did the laughing at a joke about Kratos murdering everyone in the game frustrate Abby to then dismiss what Vinny was talking about before he made the joke because she felt like she wasn't being taken seriously? Seems that way. Which is also a valid response. You can't sit in a room and have long talks about things that you have strong opinions on and not offend or disagree sometimes. I think they did a huge disservice by switching back to basic game discussion there. It leaves room for interpretation like we're seeing on this thread. Which I mean, whatever, internet gonna internet.

But you don't improve these kinds of interactions by running away from them or from hoisting either side up as a straw man. Vinny said a thing that was dismissive, probably without realizing as much, and Abby should have said so, and Vinny should have explained or apologized or any number of things and they all could have improved a bit and finished their thoughts about the nature of traditional stories and the role women have played in media and all that junk that GoW really struggles with. Instead they shyed away from it. Pretending this site isn't personality driven and is ultimatly about the people here doesn't help. More voices and more opinions being expressed is better. I had hoped Waypoint would become that, but its become an echochamber of likeminded individuals, which is fair. You hire people you like. It's just fairly obvious (in my mind at least) that everyone has very strong opinions and that without expressing them openly and without malice we come off as dismissive and antagonistic. Golden rule and all that.

True that. I think part of the problem is that it paired down the cast so much that you end up condensing a lot of roles into one character. There's a lot of lore and gods to play with in norse mythology, even if you just wanna go with the stuff people recognize from Marvel you have some fun female characters who are just like...regular old gods doing norse stuff. But when you condense the overprotective parent and wise old wizard and trickster and shit all into Freya, she becomes a bit of a mess plot-wise. The fact the game has such a huge baggage of boning minigames and choking motifs and just general...glorification of aggression, I guess...It's very easy to see how it could sour anyone's experience. I also super agree with Abby's opinion on Nier. A game can be both great and gross at the same time. I can't speak for her, but maybe she mistook Vinny's inquiries as challenging her opinions, which as others have said here, seems out of character, but hey, we aren't even to the category discussion yet. Shit's gonna get real on some of these, I think.

I feel like that happened the week after they first covered it. You can really fall into a Vinny collect-a-thon in that game and when some folks realized that half of the gametime was gonna be similar puzzles and missions they soured a bit. Which is fair, I think.