Giant Bombcast Game of the Year 2020: Day Three

If Wattam was released this year I feel that that would be the best party by far.

Videos are coming soon! Still in the processing process!

Love it that Ben is exiting the stage with his most ambitious mini-episode of Ben's Lens, Ben's Bed Lens

DUSA.
WAS.
ROBBED.

And if Ben and Jan had combined forces wonder-twins style to nominate Avalanche as a whole as the best party (Tifa, Barrett, Jessie, Biggs, Wedge, Marlene), it might have had a strong chance at top 3. But maybe not!

Anyway, day three was great. Good format, everyone seems to be having fun, and I like the extended talks on certain things. Unmitigated success so far!

Shouldn't it be "Giant Bomb Game of the Year" and not "Giant Bombcast Game of the Year"?

@dya: I wouldn't sweat it, if I had to guess it looks like the way the website/CMS works is that everything in this feed is titled "Giant Bombcast [insert text here]". If you go back to the very first podcast, it's titled "Giant Bombcast Arrow Pointing Down Podcast Beta" which is probably not how it was originally titled. It's just how the website titles things.

Think of it as "Game of the Year 2020", which is being posted as part of the Giant Bombcast podcast series.

Also the real Giant Bomb Game of the Year was the friends we made along the way.

The feel of Astro's Playroom IS Playstation! I've been in the PS ecosystem since the start, even playing PSP and Vita quite a bit, and there were only a couple of the bot reenactments I didn't recognize, and they were from all over the quarter of a century Playstation lifetime. I'm surprised that never came up during the conversation about feel, only DualSense feel, and they mentioned the non-controller parts in the party section.

The 'heel turn' on Tony Hawk 1+2 kinda just makes me realize either the discussion went too long or Alex wasn't paying attention to what Jeff said about it to begin with (looking at it again, NOBODY was or they just wanted to get their 'GIANT BOMB REAX' on. He made it pretty clear in the discussion.)

The deliberations are so good this year and I like the fun mix of categories. These guys have always had such a glorious chemistry together and Jan is the cherry on top. Everything about this formula works for me.

Ben, if you're into skating around enemies and killing enemies up by doing so Supergiant's Transistor let's you play like that if you spec that way.

I wouldn't have foreseen Jeff parting so easily with THPS for best feel. Hats off for him looking beyond personal enjoyment and thinking about what the award should represent.

That said, i would've liked to see it in the top 3 regardless. THPS's feel is timeless and still offers a lot of fun in 2020.

Splitting the Avalanche group into two cause them the Best crew

ganna miss you ben, god damn you.

j/k, best of luck brother, hope to see you around!

The Red Shredding

Got to say, this 2020 GOTY presentation is a huge improvement over the last couple of years, especially the disaster that was 2019. Jeff during the best feel category going to bat for Tony Hawk, only to cut it at the last minute when Jan and Alex thought Jeff was going to save it over Ori was epic. Now that is classic GB game of the year stuff. Also Brad's attempt at a filibuster to get Astrobot off the list failed. That was fun to see. But seriously, having a best feel topic and not including Astrobot on the list would have been unbelievable.

As far as best party, I haven't played the new Yakuza, but having played past Yakuza games, I'm not surprised at all that it won. Those games already had strong characters and storylines. So making an JRPG version of the game should of course make both characterization and story progression even stronger. I also agree with Jason. As much as I would love to hang out with Avalanche, especially Barrett, Tifa, Jessie and the like, I wouldn't be able to stand Cloud or that Charlie Sheen knockoff. But the main take away for that topic is one: I have to go back and play more Bugsnax, and two: I have to play 13 Sentinels.

@av_gamer: It's weird and sad but it feels like the 2020 nightmare year benefitted their GOTY stuff in a way. I've always loved every year even when it drove me crazy, but this year they have a devil-may-care attitude about it all that feels oddly refreshing.

Man they really just gonna do FF dirty everywhere huh

Really solid choices.

I was surprised Spiritfarer didn’t come up in Game Feel. That game is surprisingly really fun to play, which I was not anticipating based on the trailers and Quick Look.

Not sure why they split up the crew in Final Fantasy. They are basically all together. One of the reasons why I like the game so much is the characters, and when a certain somebody dies it hit me pretty dang hard.

Glad to see Jan fight for 13 Sentinels. That was an excellent choice for that category. My three are probably Yakuza or Hades, Final Fantasy, and 13 Sentinels.

Ben's Dens

I'm already tired of these delibirations. It's just the same games in every category.

The Red Skating.

I read the books and I'm still shocked!

Really enjoying the deliberations this year! One thing I found myself wondering during the best party discussion is where the seemingly ubiquitous perception that Aerith is some sort of hyper-aloof mystic comes from. As someone whose only experience with the FF7-verse is Remake, I don't get it. She's bubbly and headstrong to the point of being pretty much the most beloved person in her community, and the first to break through Cloud's armor of distant cool. Her whole motif is the flower busting through the pavement.

I agree. Aerith is anything but aloof. I'd say Tifa actually makes a stronger case for that label. Aerith despite her flower girl look is pretty headstrong. It's one of the main things about her character in both games, and its expanded in the remake.

Jeff is 100% still a threat.

I like how Brad removes Cook, Serve, Delicious! 3?! after Vinny says he thinks it should stay for now, and no one notices.

Confused about how the Animal Crossing villagers didn't even get put on the list for best party, but the regular NPCs did? Especially because they talked about how much fun they had hanging out with their villagers during the conversation? If Animal Crossing was going to make a top three for anything, Best Party seems like it would make the most sense.

There should be a Best Best Game Feel category, ranking games not by how good they are but how much they're like a stereotypical winner of best game.

I loved watching this live and reacting with everyone to the discussion points, great game of the year so far, despite the shaky context surrounding, Thanks guys.

I mentioned it in chat a couple times, but I think, regardless of win or lose, Tony Hawk 1+2, to speak to Jeff's point of Echo the Dolphin> Tony Hawk > Titanfall 2 in terms of game-feel; I think Tony Hawk games really equate to a 360 degree, warped and broken tetris rectangle, and YOU are the tetris piece who simultaneously, instead of breaking block lines, you're jumping thousands of points up for choosing your risk/reward versus the timer, the 'run's that people have perfected etc. It's tetris. It's infinitely replayable. Okay, so that was all a stretch, but it's true, you're juggling space, speed, multiplication, deciding yes or no, and when if, and high risk is either high reward or a run killer.

And, Tony Hawk Pro Skater is back.

Paimon is emergency food of the year.

I'm enjoying this format a lot more than last year, looking forward to the staff's TOP 10 and the best moments tomorrow!

Doom Eternal feels amazing.

Not enough people here putting respect on @janman's "kunai wit' chain" reference...

Jan is the fucking man!

I think the issue is that we all had completely different villagers that we loved for completely different reasons. It'd be like picking "my pokemon" in a pokemon game.

That's what I figured as well, since you can't really "choose" which you want. And then that devolves into everyone having to explain why each villager is awesome haha.

Damn Ben, sit up. I love you and your style but you seem lazy here. Apologies if there's a health-related reason for this I'm not aware of (its a long podcast and I'm zoning in and out as a result of it "being on in the background" so maybe there's something I missed).

To take off the Arachnotron cannon, you can use the Heavy Cannon's zoom scope, or the Plasma Rifle's pulse. All of the demons have multiple strategies for their weak points, and even more, you can gun most of them down if you're quick enough on your feet and in a hurry. I beat that game on Nightmare with a controller. Everyone always says Doom Eternal has one right way to play but that's not true and it is a bummer to hear so many people miss that aspect of the game.

@davidfox1983: He put his back out, that's why he's doing it from bed.

Yeah that makes sense. Although I think there's a case to be made for nominated on the strength of the villagers as a whole. Personally I had several villagers come and go, some of which were much stronger than others. But even the bad villagers were fun to interact with (and in some cases, try to force of the island) in such a way that, as a whole, no matter who was on my island, the ensemble of villagers was a consistent source of joy that the "Main Characters" of the game never provided.

Physical injury or no, Ben's camera in this is unprofessional and made me extremely uncomfortable