Teddie

A few months ago I restarted and beat Digital Devil Saga after putting it down 10 years ago, so I guess I'll say "never, apparently"?

Like seemingly everyone, I also picked up Outer Wilds. While it was very frustrating a lot of the time and I don't think I could say I loved it, I was compelled to keep coming back to it and thought the secrets were a lot of fun to uncover.

It's fine, I've been using it as background noise so far. But it really feels like they honed in on the most boring parts of their past coverage, even forgoing their better categories for the most sterile ones.

The best part for me has been the Outer Wilds talk, which I went back and listened to today (only just beat the game a few hours ago). A game that nearly everyone on staff played, and all had more in-depth thoughts to share about it. I understand why that discussion is a rarity (not just in this year's content), but seeing as the recap days were so much of one person talking at the panel, instead of with them, I would have preferred them using their new personal videos to talk about 90% those games instead.

Hell, just pre-record the recap podcasts as East and West and release them during the "GOTY Production" period, they're basically "Best of Bomb/Beastcast 20XX" already. Anything if it means they can spend more of that one week doing the group videos, as the whole crew together playing games is so rare and creates content that you can come back to years later and not feel like the moment has passed (I only just got around to 2018's Hitsmas and it felt like it coulda come out this week).

And a small note on the personal videos, while they're solid asides, the reason I love the "silly" categories is the insane conversations that arise from picking winners. I've enjoyed them, but can't help wishing "Best Skin" had a full-panel discussion.

I hope they can take some of the feedback they've been getting to help them work out the kinks of a one week schedule next year. At the very least, I think they'll focus a bit more on the group videos again because the overwhelming feeling surrounding their absence has just been sadness.

This just really makes me hope Sony is forced into full BC for the PS5 because of this. Not gonna happen, but I can dream...

Too busy wondering if I'll like it.

From a level design/interest perspective, this list is pretty spot on, though I'd swap Pirates and Toy Box simply because I really hated jumping into those mechs after a while (which wouldn't have been a problem if Heartless weren't also piloting them with huge HP pools).

It hurts to see Twilight Town in the state it was in KH3, because as much as I love Traverse Town, I got way more into the lazy sunday feel of the former as time went on (and the expansion of the latter in DDD kinda soured me on going back there again). Sure, the atmosphere and the music are still top notch, but the world being reduced to about 3 screens gave me some major blueballs.

The one world I disagree with you (and basically every one else as far as I've seen) on is Corona. More than anywhere it felt like the KH trio had good rapport with the inhabitants, and having a Disney character finally outright become a heartless was neat. I loved that the world almost had a road-trip flow to it, where you'd stop at every landmark in the forest and have some comical bonding scene. There's also the moment where you're fighting heartless in the middle of a lantern festival and it looks absolutely breathtaking, and while there are definitely good setpieces in every world, I still loved the visuals of this one more than any other flashy thing in the game.

Also just a little note, Scala is recognizable as another world from the mobile game, but only when you're in the underwater sequence. As of right now it just makes everything even more confusing, though.

I predict they won't have the category this year because it's so unanimous it won't even generate discussion.

Isn't there an extra "e" sound in that second poll option? Like, Jeff B doesn't say "Marry-ee-oh", he says "Marry-oh".

As for the answer, I pronounce it the first way, but wish I pronounced it the second way as it is far more fun to pronounce it that way. Very good mouthfeel on that second one.

Control, which isn't to say I disliked it, but with the way people talked about it I was expecting something a little more... complete?

Story kinda stopped all of a sudden with a hundred unexplored threads, characters were all just background noise, and the combat never changed by upgrading the abilities so it plateaued very early for me). All that aside, I loved the writing, the atmosphere, and exploring to find all the collectibles was especially satisfying. It really made me wonder why the main story and characters were so barren when a single document lying on the ground was usually more entertaining.

At this point it's just the world that turns me off. I could really get down with the postman loop and all those management systems if there was anything out there worth exploring, even just visually.