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The GiantBomb Quick Look Thread

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randomlyrossy said:
You stopped going to Joystiq because of occasional stories posted by Arthur that you don't have to read? That's dumb as fuck.
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I rarely visited Joystiq. Him contributing was enough for me to stop visiting altogether. As for Giant Bomb, if he were to become a regular on the Bombcast, as much as I enjoy it, that would be enough for me to stop listening.
 
Foliorum Viridum said:
I think there are very obvious Japanese tropes and design choices that you don't see in Western games, but this isn't really the thread for it.

I never said it was *bad*, I just don't like a lot of things about Japanese game development these days unless you're Nintendo or making Dark/Demon's Souls :D
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That is bewildering because Dark Souls is extremely "Japanese", in that it uses those "tropes" to some extremes and the west hasn't successfully copied its mechanics like other kinds of 3D Action games(God of War) and the TPS(Gears of War).

As for the Vanquish criticisms, you can tell Gies is similar to a few other reviewers(Sterling for example) in that he is a bad player who declares the game as bad. Anytime someone calls a game "punitive" they are trying to shift the burden of lack of talent onto someone other than themselves. It shouldn't be a surprise that he hates a lack of simplified canceling with weighty animations(in other games, mainly action ones, since Vanquish is crazy smooth). A good gamer sees the rule set, adapts, and enjoys a challenge. Someone who can't adapt sees it as bad game design.

In any case, I'm surprised he didn't stop the Kinectimals QL and say something "Okay, guys, we've had our fun, but now it is time to tell everyone I am a fanatic liberal. Right now, there is a thing called Occupy Wall Street going on and please don't be distracted with Steve Jobs' death and videogames."
 
tusken77 said:
I rarely visited Joystiq. Him contributing was enough for me to stop visiting altogether. As for Giant Bomb, if he were to become a regular on the Bombcast, as much as I enjoy it, that would be enough for me to stop listening.
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One of those statements is rational and one is ridiculous. You can easily avoid reading the work of any given contributor to a web site, unlike with a podcast, which can indeed be ruined by a personality you don't like.
 
Of course there are lots of Japanese tropes in those games, but they're either different and/or implemented better.

In general I prefer European/American games and their attitude toward design. Japan still makes some great games and I'll never rule them out, but there are lots of games which don't appeal to me for various reasons.

I mean, I love the Yakuza series and that's as Japanese as you can get. It just depends on the game.
 
zoner said:
Fuuuuuuuuuck no. I'd take Gies over both of them, and I'm not a huge fan of his.
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I hope Gies stays far away from the bombcast, he's the worst thing about Rebel FM and would only do harm to Giant Bomb.
 
hey_it's_that_dog said:
One of those statements is rational and one is ridiculous. You can easily avoid reading the work of any given contributor to a web site, unlike with a podcast, which can indeed be ruined by a personality you don't like.
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Not ridiculous. I said I visited rarely. Why would that be? Because there was really only one guy there I respected (Kietzmann). Why don't people go to the likes of IGN? Because they don't respect most/any of the writers.
 
Riposte said:
As for the Vanquish criticisms, you can tell Gies is similar to a few other reviewers(Sterling for example) in that he is a bad player who declares the game as bad. Anytime someone calls a game "punitive" they are trying to shift the burden of lack of talent onto someone other than themselves. It shouldn't be a surprise that he hates a lack of simplified canceling with weighty animations(in other games, mainly action ones, since Vanquish is crazy smooth). A good gamer sees the rule set, adapts, and enjoys a challenge. Someone who can't adapt sees it as bad game design.
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I think you're overgeneralizing. Surely a design decision can be more or less punitive, and it's not purely a scapegoat for bad players. There are several ways to reinforce or punish player behavior. A game could be built that relies heavily on reinforcement rather than punishment. I'll agree that it's partially subjective as to what the player experiences as a punishment and to what degree, but "punitiveness" absolutely exists as a non-subjective design concept.

As for whether Vanquish falls into the punitive category or not, I'm not experienced enough with the game to say. But I wanted to defend, generally, what I believe is a real distinction between punishment and reward in shaping player behavior.

tusken77 said:
Not ridiculous. I said I visited rarely. Why would that be? Because there was really only one guy there I respected (Kietzmann). Why don't people go to the likes of IGN? Because they don't respect most/any of the writers.
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You changed your behavior from "rarely visiting" to "never visiting" because a new person started working there. A person whose existence could be entirely ignored. Not rational.

If you're trying to say you don't go there because Kietzmann isn't there any more, then that's perfectly rational, but it's not what you said at first.
 
There is nothing about Vanquish which is punitive. It's short, there is no cost to death beyond having to replay from the last check point, the check points are very frequent, and it's not all that challenging.
 
hey_it's_that_dog said:
You changed your behavior from "rarely visiting" to "never visiting" because a new person started working there. A person whose existence could be entirely ignored. Not rational.

If you're trying to say you don't go there because Kietzmann isn't there any more, then that's perfectly rational, but it's not what you said at first.
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It's rational. Rarely visited. Gies' appointment was enough for me to not bother with that site anymore.
 
Riposte said:
In any case, I'm surprised he didn't stop the Kinectimals QL and say something "Okay, guys, we've had our fun, but now it is time to tell everyone I am a fanatic liberal. Right now, there is a thing called Occupy Wall Street going on and please don't be distracted with Steve Jobs' death and videogames."
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It does sound like something he would say.
 
StuBurns said:
There is nothing about Vanquish which is punitive. It's short, there is no cost to death beyond having to replay from the last check point, the check points are very frequent, and it's not all that challenging.
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Your weapons drop in rank when you die, that's a typical japanese punitive mechanic :P

On-topic: It's really frustrating to see how clunky and slow menu navigation always get in kinect games, takes forever until they actually start playing. The swimsuit posing was gold though :)
 
faulty_fork said:
Your weapons drop in rank when you die, that's a typical japanese punitive mechanic :P
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Not if you reload from the main menu, which doesn't cost you any progress and makes getting the trophy for finishing with no deaths simple.
 
tusken77 said:
It's rational. Rarely visited. Gies' appointment was enough for me to not bother with that site anymore.
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So what you are trying to express is that the hiring of Arthur Gies has in some way made the site worse, even if nothing has changed other than the addition of his work? His presence has corrupted the outlet's very essence?
 
I find it interesting that the swimming game announcer yells “you are a winner” instead of “you are the winner” when you win a race.

like, they could use the same voice sample even if you lost. because everyone is a winner
 
Curufinwe said:
Not if you reload from the main menu, which doesn't cost you any progress and makes getting the trophy for finishing with no deaths simple.
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Yeah sure, you can avoid it by quitting to the main menu every time you die, but it was clearly the developers intention that dying would cause you to lose ranks. It's a pretty minor thing, but you can certainly find stuff that can be considered punitive in that game.

LCfiner said:
I find it interesting that the swimming game announcer yells “you are a winner” instead of “you are the winner” when you win a race.

like, they could use the same voice sample even if you lost. because everyone is a winner
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Yeah, everyone that plays their magnificent game is clearly a winner.
 
The progression of the Wipeout QL's has been funny, from "Let's have a stupid but fun time with this budget Wii game" to "Hey here's a janky Kinect version" to "Here's another Kinect version and its terrible." The fun/frustration ratio may have peaked in the most recent one, but I still got a kick out of it.

I wonder if the 3DS version is any good...
 
Curufinwe said:
Hah... I was just about to post that StuBurns was lucky he wasn't still listening when Vanquish came out.

http://www.neogaf.com/forum/showpost.php?p=23934173&postcount=992



He also claimed that the guns don't aim well, the shooting doesn't feel good, Vanquish does not have good mechanics, the reviews heavily emphasize the style of Vanquish over the substance, and that Vanquish is way overrated because the Godhand/Clover Studio aficionados in the press all forced their editors to let them review the game.
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And later he challenged Ryan O'Donnell (and himself) to expand on why "the shooting felt bad" in Vanquish, "what does that mean?" All I remember was "you can't reload cancel." Of course, "reload canceling" isn't just possible in Vanquish, it's fucking brilliant in that it doesn't just reward dipshit assholes who realize they shouldn't have reloaded who then slap on a button and continue firing, even though the character was in the middle of an animation and it makes no sense. In Vanquish you reload cancel by quickly morphing to another weapon during the reload, making it so you never have to stop the action and adding variety as it encourages the use of different weapons. I also think they mentioned lack of enemy variety which is... more than laughable.

I've always loathed Arthur, but I used to at least respect his opinion on games. Between Vanquish, Uncharted and now Rage, I don't give a rat's ass what he says about anything. I haven't even played Rage and was GENUINELY INTERESTED in what he was going to say about it, as I can't stand to read his reviews. They went on for like 20 minutes about that game; his comments about the game being poor were it having baked-in lighting (so does Mirror's Edge, which he loved), some weird PR (what does that have to do with the game's quality?), and when other people say it's a very competent shooter he says "not really." Honestly, his main complaint about the game was basically how it doesn't look good. Yes, he said Rage, that beautiful-looking game running at 60 FPS, doesn't look good. He sucks.

I don't like Ryan, but think he's good at GB. I don't really like Patrick, but I think he was a FANTASTIC addition. Arthur would make me cancel my subscription.

Thankfully that isn't likely.
 
Pretty good accidental place to pause this

bPVCM.jpg
 
They give shit like Michael Phelps' a QL but not a recently released gem like Solatorobo? And even Gametrailers hasn't posted anything about it... Solatorobo deserves some love!
 
Duffyside said:
And later he challenged Ryan O'Donnell (and himself) to expand on why "the shooting felt bad" in Vanquish, "what does that mean?" All I remember was "you can't reload cancel." Of course, "reload canceling" isn't just possible in Vanquish, it's fucking brilliant in that it doesn't just reward dipshit assholes who realize they shouldn't have reloaded who then slap on a button and continue firing, even though the character was in the middle of an animation and it makes no sense. In Vanquish you reload cancel by quickly morphing to another weapon during the reload, making it so you never have to stop the action and adding variety as it encourages the use of different weapons. I also think they mentioned lack of enemy variety which is... more than laughable.

I've always loathed Arthur, but I used to at least respect his opinion on games. Between Vanquish, Uncharted and now Rage, I don't give a rat's ass what he says about anything. I haven't even played Rage and was GENUINELY INTERESTED in what he was going to say about it, as I can't stand to read his reviews. They went on for like 20 minutes about that game; his comments about the game being poor were it having baked-in lighting (so does Mirror's Edge, which he loved), some weird PR (what does that have to do with the game's quality?), and when other people say it's a very competent shooter he says "not really." Honestly, his main complaint about the game was basically how it doesn't look good. Yes, he said Rage, that beautiful-looking game running at 60 FPS, doesn't look good. He sucks.
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Those Vanquish anecdotes are hilarious, but I'm happy to have missed them since the first Vanquish episode was the last time I listened to Rebel FM. I don't believe Rage is either Japanese or a Sony-exclusive, so it might be confusing for big-z to see them mentioned since he's obviously incapable of seeing the complaints made in this thread aren't based on either of those factors.

Wipeout 2 Quick Look is awesome, although I sometimes wonder what Microsoft think of they way Kinect is made to look by Giant Bomb.
 
Sesame street Kinect game "this is a kids game, clearly we shouldn't criticize this game because its made for little kids and not us"

Kinectimals/wipeout "OMG THIS GAME IS TEH SUCK! I DONT WANT TO PLAY THIS"

I know Giantbomb can show favoritism to friends of the site but Jesus Christ .... maybe its was just all the kinect QL's in one day that makes it stand out.
 
funkystudent said:
Sesame street Kinect game "this is a kids game, clearly we shouldn't criticize this game because its made for little kids and not us"

Kinectimals/wipeout "OMG THIS GAME IS TEH SUCK! I DONT WANT TO PLAY THIS"

I know Giantbomb can show favoritism to friends of the site but Jesus Christ .... maybe its was just all the kinect QL's in one day that makes it stand out.
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I'd say from what I've seen Sesame Street is a still a better game then Kinectimals or Wipeout still. The writing and pacing is far better in Sesame Street then in Kinectimals and the controls and gameplay in wipeout, to use a Giant Bomb term, is janky as shit compared to Sesame Street. The only bad things you can say about sesame street is its too simple and easy or the repeating dialog. You cant complain the gameplay is to simple or easy because its a kids game, and Ryan did complain about about the repeating dialog.

But yeah i do agree they are far to harsh on kinectimals.
 
Curufinwe said:
Those Vanquish anecdotes are hilarious, but I'm happy to have missed them since the first Vanquish episode was the last time I listened to Rebel FM. I don't believe Rage is either Japanese or a Sony-exclusive, so it might be confusing for big-z to see them mentioned since he's obviously incapable of seeing the complaints made in this thread aren't based on either of those factors.
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I haven't listened to Rebel FM in ages, but I assume that he'd be much more tolerable if he had a foil who was equally stubborn and aggressive. At least the two would cancel each other out.

I think it's because while GB hates JRPGs, they don't outright dismiss Japanese games constantly. I assume that Arthur has no interest in Dark Souls, for example.
 
funkystudent said:
Sesame street Kinect game "this is a kids game, clearly we shouldn't criticize this game because its made for little kids and not us"

Kinectimals/wipeout "OMG THIS GAME IS TEH SUCK! I DONT WANT TO PLAY THIS"

I know Giantbomb can show favoritism to friends of the site but Jesus Christ .... maybe its was just all the kinect QL's in one day that makes it stand out.
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That's because Sesame Street accomplishes its goals. It's like an interactive TV show that doesn't require much setup and doesn't really seem to "break" in the way a lot of Kinect games typically do.

Kinectimals, on the other hand, has a lot of pointless setup and plot when that's not really why you're playing that game. The opening sequence there asks that the player sit through several minutes of nearly-worthless dialog before finally getting to "play" with their pet. And the activities you do with your pet feel like they'd get old and repetitive really quickly - and given that it's a virtual pet game, you'll probably be playing fetch a lot.

Wipeout 2 on the other hand just seems like a flat out broken game. It seems to embrace the worst elements of the Kinect system - laggy response time, poor motion detection, a game that would probably function a lot better with traditional control methods, etc.

The Phelps game seemed to be just the right kind of stupid presentation-wise but there really didn't seem like a lot of meat to the game itself.
 
Curufinwe said:
The classic example was the Rebel FM episode where Matt Chandronait claimed that non-gamers would sit and watch Uncharted 2 being played like it was a movie. Arthur of course violently disagreed, and not even Matt explaining that he himself had played thru Uncharted 2 while his non-gaming roommates sat and watched was enough to change Arthur’s mind. That attitude, combined with his frequent use of the term "vaginal companion" to refer to women (while at the same time scolding anyone who dared used the dreaded "r-word") was enough to get me to stop listening, even though I've been a big fan of Anthony Gallegos since his GFW days. I just made do with listening to him on the GameSpy Debriefings until it ended earlier this year.
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Anthony Gallegos gets a fair amount of hate around here, I assume because of his immature jokes, but honestly I value his opinion more then any other person in the industry. He never seems to get caught up in hype trains, but he doesn't hate super hyped games either. He will give a third party handheld game as much of a chance as an Uncharted or Rockstar game, but not in a "i only like underground games" sort of way way. I also used to love listen to Tyler Barber's views as a person fairly new to the gaming industry, and Ryan O'Donnald evened out the cast by bringing a certain amount of professionalism and knowledge.

That podcast would be amazing if Arthur didn't ruin it. I tried to just ignore him, but, like I said, he feels the need to be in on every single conversation. Even if its about a game he never played and never intends to play. Its really not possible to ignore him.

randomlyrossy said:
I know this is the internet/NeoGAF and all but fucking hell some of you people are jerks. Not everyone likes everyone else, that's fine but try and be civil about it at least.
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Which part makes you think we are being jerks? I'd like to know especially if you are referring to me. All I'm saying is that I cannot bare to listen to him, and I do not wish to see him on any further quicklooks or giant bomb podcasts, while giving reasons why I feel that way. Its kindof hard to do that without insulting his taste and personality a little bit, since those two things are the most important aspect of modern day game journalism, especially for a site like Giant Bomb. I don't see any name calling or wishing for any harm to come to him or anything.
 
chogidogs said:
Ryan and Jeff don't know what they're talking about! TOPH IS GREAT!

Also, HER name isn't short for Christopher.
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The Avatar dork in me couldn't stand the Toph bashing in this QL ;_;

Side note: I totally agree with Ryan and Jeff that the Spongebob in this game looks like a dude in a Spongebob costume. Really freaky.
 
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