**** does NOT deserve TRS's GoTY (IMO) *SPOILERS AHEAD*

[TheArcadeFire]

IMO it should have been Bioshock without a doubt.

Now Im not saying that CoD4 isn't a great game, because it is, but after playing it for awhile I've noticed some really annoying design choices.

First off the grenades are HORRIBLE!! The grenade indicator icon is way too general. I honestly never know whether Im running towards or away from a grenade. This is because the indicator has no sense of depth to it--it only shows direction. So half the time in my attempt to run away from a grenade I actually run into it!

Another thing is the ability to throwback grenades by pressing the RB. I have been able to successfully do this ONCE! This is mainly because it takes about 4 seconds to accomplish--so unless I've timed it perfectly the grenade will just blow up in my face.

These issues wouldn't be that bad but I've been in plenty of games where it seems like the only weapon people use are the grenades.

Another thing is the knife. I really really don't like the idea of the knife. To me it is just a modified version of the plasma sword in Halo. It seems incredibly clunky and irregular. Countless times I've walked right up to someone pressed the knife button and nothing happens. It just gets annoying after awhile. I think they should've just used a standard weapon melee instead.

Also moving around in this game feels extremely cumbersome. For some reason in Infinity Ward's pursuit of realism they decided that if there is anything on the ground that is not flat then you can't just walk over it. So many times I'll try and run somewhere and suddenly get stopped, most of the time I'll look down and see that I ran into the corner of a stair, rock, etc.

Also, the whole "press A" to climb through the window idea is very annoying. It takes all of the control out of the process. I could manually jump through that window much faster than the animation gets me through it.

I think I'll stop there.

But in conclusion Bioshock got robed! You could tell by the look on Jeff's face that he really didn't want to give it to CoD4.

Also, Alex seemed to be somewhat argumentative this episode. Like when Jeff brought up that there have been many fantastic games that came out this year and Alex said something like, "what moron said that?" I couldn't believe it.

Anyways, Happy New Year Everyone!

[wideawakewesley]

Dude, cheers for spoiling the show for me.

:p

[TheArcadeFire]

I do apologize if I've spoiled anything for you, but honestly you had to of known it was either going to be Portal, Bioshock, or CoD4.

[az0madman]

'tis the way of all game awards. Not everyone agrees.

Although, I don't think Bioshock deserves the TRS award either considering both Alex and Dan didn't put it in their top 5. In terms of GotY in general, it'd be in my top 5, though I didn't have a mind-blowing experience as I did with CoD so I wouldn't rate it higher than CoD, but that's just me.

[TheArcadeFire]

Correct you are! I probably should've named this something like...

"CoD4 does not deserve GoTY award (IMO)"

Sorry for the confusion.

[wideawakewesley]

Actually I was expecting Puzzle Quest.

:D

[TheArcadeFire]

Actually I was expecting Puzzle Quest.

touché my friend

[AndyAldrich]

I think that Puzzle Quest is a much stronger candidate than the TRS boys acknowledged. If they looked back to the episodes they filmed at the start of the TRS, when Alex said he really wanted to take out his DS in the the middle of a cinema and start playing Puzzle Quest in a bad film, that Dan said he'd mostly given up on TV-based console gaming and was losing sleep because he was enjoying Puzzle Quest so much.

Of course Alex has been gushing about CoD4, so I'm not saying it hasn't been getting rave reviews from the whole team in the way that Puzzle Quest did...so maybe it should get the Alex Albrecht game of the year award.

I think that innovation counts for a lot in video games. We've seen so many rehashes of familiar genres this year but Puzzle Quest and Portal (IMO) did something new. OK so Portal is a kind of a progression of Narbacular Drop, but I'm going to ignore that for sake of brevity. I don't know if I would want to give game of the year to CoD4 when there have been games released this year such as Puzzle Quest and Portal which add a twist to a genre, or Mario Galaxy, which (as we all know) is very different to all other platformers, not just in its control system but in its level designs.

[poltah]

I totally disagree with the stuff you say about the grenades. I think what they did is very intentionally. In the heat of battle, I bet it's pretty hard to notice grenades and stuff like that. So I like how they only give you a hint, but not like a big red sign saying "RUN IN THAT DIRECTION TO AVOID THE GRENADE".
Same goes for the throwback. It should be hard. It shouldn't work everytime.

It works like 50/50 for me.

[LeroyJenkinsFtw]

portal ftw anyone?

[DarthEnder]

Honestly, I'm right there with Alex. I can totally see what an achievement Bioshock is, and how the game is a total work of art...but that doesn't change the fact that the game is creepy to the point of making me uneasy playing it, which make it not fun for me.

Like Alex said, he wasn't listing the top 5 games that achieved greatness, he listed the top 5 games he enjoyed most.

And by that criteria I wouldn't have picked Bioshock either.


Orange Box all the way for me.

[masherscf]

I played the "Bioshock" demo for about 20 minutes and I didn't see why it's all that. Maybe, I have to try it again...

[Parkinsons]

I can appreciate both Bioshock and CoD for their innovativeness and style but I had little fun while playing them.

CoD suffered from infinitely respawning enemies and controls (clearly designed for a controller then just ported over to a keyboard/mouse).

Bioshock was set in a beautifully created world but suffered from repetitive game play and a large part of the game felt like filler.

Orange Box was hands down the GoTY for me. HL2 ep. 2 (they never talked about it on the show, do you that effected the results?) and Portal were AMAZING. I am still picking up portal every now and again playing custom maps.

[satori]

Bio-shock should of got this. I simply loved the incredibly rich story line. It's a far more cerebral game than almost anything I've played before. It's inspired all sorts of people to go out and read Ayn Rand's Atlas Shrugged which can only be a good thing. More importantly it's brought in many of the intelligentsia to look at video games as a way to tell a robust story, and not simply run around shooting at everything to get around it. I mean if someone now tried to release a game based on Sung Tzu's The Art of War I think that people might actually be open to it.

I've shown Bio-Shock to my architectural friends and some of them have bought it because of the design. They're not gamers. The great thing about Bio-Shock is that it really evolved gaming to be more accessible to those that have formerly looked down on Gaming. COD4 simply updates and refines existing constructs of a game on Rails.

[Parkinsons]

Bio-shock should of got this. I simply loved the incredibly rich story line. It's a far more cerebral game than almost anything I've played before. It's inspired all sorts of people to go out and read Ayn Rand's Atlas Shrugged which can only be a good thing. More importantly it's brought in many of the intelligentsia to look at video games as a way to tell a robust story, and not simply run around shooting at everything to get around it. I mean if someone now tried to release a game based on Sung Tzu's The Art of War I think that people might actually be open to it.

I've shown Bio-Shock to my architectural friends and some of them have bought it because of the design. They're not gamers. The great thing about Bio-Shock is that it really evolved gaming to be more accessible to those that have formerly looked down on Gaming. COD4 simply updates and refines existing constructs of a game on Rails.

I agree with you that bioshock may have brought video games to the realm of “art” alongside games like shadow of the colossus, but I believe it failed the “game” part of video games. Bioshock just was not fun for me (similar to shadow of the colossus).

[satori]

I found it insanely fun. I loved hearing the different stories that made up the overall story arc. I really enjoyed the puzzles, and coming up with strategies to over come the amazing level design.

[lindqvist]

Considering how all of the TRS guys have been obsessed with how great Puzzle Quest is, and for such a long time too, I agree with those saying that they should have picked Puzzle Quest as the TRS GOTY.

After all that, how can it not be the game of the year after all that?! :)

Well, of course, that's just my impression from watching the TRS shows.

[kickarse]

If you feed the trolls expect to get burned by them.

[tsmith15]

I would have given the CoD4 beta the goty if I got my say anywhere because I didn't get the game, but I religiously played the beta one day when I was sick and it was SO. MUCH. FUN.

[satori]

If you feed the trolls expect to get burned by them.

I haven't seen a troll yet, everyone is simply politely expressing their points of view. I'm not clear how that falls into the troll category.

[TheArcadeFire]

I totally disagree with the stuff you say about the grenades. I think what they did is very intentionally. In the heat of battle, I bet it's pretty hard to notice grenades and stuff like that. So I like how they only give you a hint, but not like a big red sign saying "RUN IN THAT DIRECTION TO AVOID THE GRENADE".
Same goes for the throwback. It should be hard. It shouldn't work everytime.

It works like 50/50 for me.

I can definitely see where you're coming from. Im sure in a realistic setting grenades may be hard to spot. But this is a videogame and with that comes many limitations. All I was trying to say is that the indicator should help a little more than it does. No I don't mean a big red arrow pointing to the grenade, but maybe they could have changed the color of the grenade icon depending on whether you are getting closer or further from the grenade. Just a little sense of depth to it would be perfect.

[svgamer]

The reason it is hard to throw back grenades is that most people cook them before throwing (Hold the RB a couple secs). This also makes it harder for people to run away when they get the indicator on the HUD.

[satori]

I just want to add that i don't think it's really a holistic look at these games as Alex didn't even play some of the games all the way through beause he may not of felt comfortable with them at first. Not playing a game doesn't really make a good review to me.

The reason it is hard to throw back grenades is that most people cook them before throwing (Hold the RB a couple secs). This also makes it harder for people to run away when they get the indicator on the HUD.

Everyone used to do that on Team Fortress Classic, and later Return to Castle wolfenstein. I think it unbalances the game if you do that even if it is more like reality.

[TheArcadeFire]

I just want to add that i don't think it's really a holistic look at these games as Alex didn't even play some of the games all the way through beause he may not of felt comfortable with them at first. Not playing a game doesn't really make a good review to me.


That's a good point. I thought the exact same thing while I was watching ep. 41. Alex is one of my favorite hosts on rev 3 but giving reviews on games you haven't played all the way through seems a little off. I hate to say it but honestly he should just suck it up and beat the games. I would probably be more understanding if he had to review tons of games or really crappy games but he doesn't. On average the games they review are pretty good. There just doesn't seem to be a good excuse as to why he isn't playing them all the way through. Especially when you consider that he is getting paid money to play/review these games.

[satori]

That's a good point. I thought the exact same thing while I was watching ep. 41. Alex is one of my favorite hosts on rev 3 but giving reviews on games you haven't played all the way through seems a little off. I hate to say it but honestly he should just suck it up and beat the games. I would probably be more understanding if he had to review tons of games or really crappy games but he doesn't. On average the games they review are pretty good. There just doesn't seem to be a good excuse as to why he isn't playing them all the way through. Especially when you consider that he is getting paid money to play/review these games.

agreed, but by the same token an RTS game can never win game of the year because Alex doesn't like them. Given their differing criteria of reviewing movies to games where movies they look at how good the movie is and ignore how much they like it, Games are simply reviewed based on how much they like it. Personally I think if they're going to get into a game of the year situation Alex should recuse himself and leave it to Jeff and Dan. That or they should use the movie review formula and have Alex actually play all the way through the game. I think Alex is a great host, and he makes me laugh, but we should have a fair game critic section imho.

[gobias]

I love CoD4 but I do have some issues. My main problem is that it seems to be confused whether it should be a realistic game or your normal everyday FPS. Some parts of it are very realistic while others feel far too arcade-like for my liking.

That being said, I do believe it should definitely be in the top 3 of best games of '07.

My #1 would have to be Portal though. It doesn't matter that it's short. It's the most fun I've had since I got my NES when I was a little kid.

[bobafettjm]

I think I would have to agree with COD 4. While I loved Bioshock and played through it multiple times, COD 4 will be the game I keep going back to all the time.