Giant Bomb

The Community Spotlight 2022.04.23

1 year 11 months ago

Welcome to the latest edition of the Giant Bomb Community Spotlight! I, @zombiepie, am once again honored to be your host as we look back at the best community-created works from the previous week!

Things were a little more chill on the site this week, but that doesn't mean the community wasn't up to great stuff. This week marked the return of Reel Layers with a video essay on the horror implications of The Santa Clause (1994).

For those of you asking about Arcade Pit, the show will return in a few weeks. If you do not think that is soon enough to get your Arcade Pit fix consider following them on Twitter and be aware a new non-Giant Bomb episode airs every Sunday at 8pm EST/5pm PST.

Friendly reminder to the Giant bomb community! Mr. Rorie wrote a pretty detailed post on the site for everyone that is still reporting encoder/video issues. If you want to know what is up or report an issue, this is the post for you! The good news is that the issues with Adblock and the site player should be resolved! With all of that in mind, let's jump into the latest edition of the Community Spotlight!

Author
Marino - Brad Lynch

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The Community Spotlight 2022.04.16

1 year 11 months ago

Welcome to the latest edition of the Giant Bomb Community Spotlight. I, @zombiepie, am honored to be your host as we once again look back at the best community-created works from the past week!

First, I want to start things off thanking all of the community members that showed up last weekend to support the Giant Bomb Community Endurance Run! Thanks to everyone's hard work and support the event was able to raise over $13,000 for Pencils of Promise! Special commendations to everyone that streamed video games for the event and many thanks to all who donated. If you missed the event, the team page will be up indefinitely. So, you still have plenty of time to donate.

Besides that, we have a LOT of updates regarding bug reports about the site.

Author
Marino - Brad Lynch

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The Community Spotlight 2022.04.10

1 year 11 months ago

Hello, everyone. Welcome to another edition of the Giant Bomb Community Spotlight! I, @zombiepie, am once again honored to be your host as we look back and enjoy the best community-created works from the past week! The big announcement is that THIS WEEKEND is the Giant Bomb Community Endurance Run! From April 8th through the 10th, catch the HOT ACTION on the Giant Bomb chat! If you are interested in watching EVERY community-stream, consider heading over to explosiveruns.com! If you are feeling especially considerate, check out our team page and consider donating to some of the team members that did not quite reach their fundraising goals!

Consequently, I want to thank everyone in the Giant Bomb Community that donated to my charity drive last week! For those of you that do not know, I (ZombiePie) will be participating in the GBCER and need help reaching my fundraising goal. Even if you can only spare a small donation in the single digits, every bit helps. Right now, I'd like to be able to reach $2,000 before the end of the event. If you can't donate, please consider spreading the word.

Author
Marino - Brad Lynch

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The Community Spotlight 2022.04.02

1 year 11 months ago

Hello, everyone! Welcome to the latest edition of the Giant Bomb Community Spotlight. I, @zombiepie, am once again honored to be your host as we look back at the best community-created works from the past week!

Well, we have a lot to discuss this week in terms of charity and overall site-related stuff. As most of you are interested in the latter, let's talk about those first. Many of you have been using the forums to ask about when certain premium shows will be returning, and many of the questions are already answered on the Programming Schedule and Show Notes page. If a program is not on the page, you can assume it will not air this week.

Now let's talk about bugs on the site. First, several of you reported that the "All Videos" premium RSS feeds are missing content, and Mr. Rorie has an update on the situation and has filed a ticket! Second, those that have experienced issues video issues related to the RSS feeds, API, set top boxes, and apps. Again, Mr. Rorie has an update and wrote something up about the possible sources of these issues! Finally, many of you are still reporting that you are constantly getting logged out of Giant Bomb. Mr. Rorie has taken the step of consolidating all of the tickets about the issue and hopes to report back on the progress the engineers have made on this issue shortly.

Author
Marino - Brad Lynch

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The Community Spotlight 2022.03.26

2 years ago

Hello and welcome to the latest edition of the Giant Bomb Community Spotlight. I, @zombiepie, am once again honored to be your host as we look back at the best community-created works from the previous week! You wouldn't think it, but the community was incredibly active even though the gaming universe seems to be afflicted with some sort of post-Elden Ring stupor.

Rorie has a handful of updates for those of you concerned about the technical side of things. First, he updated the Giant Fire Bomb Chat! Give it a read if you want an update about technical issues with the Giant Bomb chat. Speaking of which, have you still had issues with being logged out repeatedly on the site? If recent fixes to the issue have not improved things for you, here's a link to the bug reporting thread where you can let out a yelp!

I have been promoting the upcoming Giant Bomb Community Endurance Run for two weeks, but now I'd like to take this time to issue a bit of a personal appeal. For those of you that do not know, I (ZombiePie) will be participating in the GBCER and need help reaching my fundraising goal. Even if you can only spare a small donation in the single digits, every bit helps. Right now, I'd like to be able to reach $500 raised before the end of the weekend. If you can't donate, please consider spreading the word.

Author
Marino - Brad Lynch

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The Community Spotlight 2022.03.19

2 years ago

Hello, everyone! Welcome to the latest edition of the Giant Bomb Community Spotlight. I, @zombiepie, am once again honored to be your host as e look back at the most impressive user-created works from the past week! While some people thought it was a quiet week for games, the community and the site's staff members kept things busy.

First, Jeff Bakalar was a a guest on the weekly video game podcast The Besties! Before you ask, yes, Jerf talked about pinball. Speaking of Jeff B., a few Giant Bomb members have been asking about being able to watch The Very Online Show on YouTube and he wants you to know that the site has you covered with the Nuke Dot Com YouTube account!

Rorie has an important update for the Giant Bomb MtG Kamigawa Community Tournament! Many thanks to those of you still participating! If you are interested in signing up for a future tournament, drop a comment and tell Rorie you would be interested in him hosting another tournament.

On a more frustrating note, The Giant Bomb team is aware of members getting logged out of the site. An engineer will look into the issue after the weekend and Rorie will report back when the issue has been resolved.

Author
Marino - Brad Lynch

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The Community Spotlight 2022.03.12

2 years ago

Hello and welcome to the latest edition of the Giant Bomb Community Spotlight! I, @zombiepie, am honored to be your host as we look back at the best community-created works from the past week! With the community waiting with bated breath to play Kirby and the Forgotten Land, Tunic, and GhostWire: Tokyo, the community in general has subsided a bit regarding Elden Ring, Horizon, and other recent releases.

Speaking of which, Rorie has a survey of sorts on the forums where you can share their most played games in February and provide input on any releases from last month you feel were not covered enough on the site. Likewise, Rorie checked out the RV office and you can read all about it and what they think the future will hold by reading the most recent Giant Fire Bomb Side Chat!

Author
Marino - Brad Lynch

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The Community Spotlight 2022.03.05

2 years ago

Hello and welcome to the latest edition of the Giant Bomb Community Spotlight! I, @zombiepie, am once again honored to be your host as we look back at the best community-created works from the last week! With Spring right around the corner, people are having a fun time with video games again! As you might expect, Elden Ring is STILL the main talking point among the community and the staff. Speaking of which, please join the rest of the community in thanking Tamoor for what he shared during the Bombcast about the Elden Ring embargo and needing to work long hours for his review.

Some important promotions happened over at GameSpot! First, Jean-Luc Seipke, who you may have seen covering for Jan on the site before, has been promoted to the position of Senior Video Producer at GameSpot!

Second, Mat Elfring has been promoted to "Senior Entertainment Editor." You may not know Mat, but he was originally a Comic Vine community member that chased their dreams, got a job writing about comics at Comic Vine, and now is the guy who talks to you about comic book backstories on GameSpot. It's certainly what we call a "character arc." There are others of you who have gone on to do things bigger than you could have imagined when the site first started. Lest we forget, a certain moon king is now working at Hardcore Gaming 101.

Author
Marino - Brad Lynch

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The Community Spotlight 2022.02.26

2 years 1 month ago

Hello, everyone! Welcome to the latest edition of the Giant Bomb Community Spotlight. I, @zombiepie, am once again honored to be your host as we look back at the best community-created content from the previous week!

With the release of Elden Ring and Total War: Warhammer III, people are excited about new video games! If you are in need of a good laugh, might I recommend this stealth comment Mr. Rorie made in response to a recently bumped thread titled "Which season of Star Trek Discovery aired on broadcast tv?" And if Rorie-based content is what you need in your life right now, might I recommend the Magic the Gathering podcast that he guested on hosted by Deep Listens? If you want to hear him and others discuss the meta of the new Kamigawa Set, then this is the podcast for you!

Likewise, here's your bi-monthly reminder to follow the Nuke Dot Com YouTube account if you wish to enjoy unedited Quick Look and non-premium video content. For those that wish to watch the first episode of Arcade Pit via YouTube, this account has you covered!

Author
Marino - Brad Lynch

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The Community Spotlight 2022.02.19

2 years 1 month ago

Hello and welcome to the latest edition of the Giant Bomb Community Spotlight! I, @zombiepie, am once again honored to be your host as we look back at the best community-created works from the last week. Whelp, there were a number of big stories about the site worth review so, let's start simple. Season One of Run For The Hills wrapped up and what a wild ride it was! Huge props to Jess and Jan for seeing the first Silent Hill game through to the end and providing hours of priceless content as a result.

Speaking of premium content announcements, Jan and Matt Shipman have started a new season of Armed and Rangerous! Additionally, the big news a lot of people are excited about involves JeffJeff's Bizarre Adventure, which is a new podcast series which looks at all of the anime adaptations of JoJo's Bizarre Adventure with special guest, Eyepatch Wolf. You can also watch the first batch of episodes on Spotify, Apple, or RSS Feed.

Finally, Rorie has a pretty important Fire Bomb Side Chat update. For those of you that used your PayPal account prior to January 4 or so to buy premium, your renewal will most likely be declined. Read why that's the case, and get caught up with other site-related news by clicking the link!

Author
Marino - Brad Lynch

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Super Eyepatch Wolf joins Giant Bomb for a new podcast

2 years 1 month ago

From the exact same website that brought you All Systems Goku comes JeffJeff's Bizarre Adventure, Giant Bomb's newest podcast that will publish every other Wednesday, starting February 16.

So it turns out Jeff Bakalar has never watched an anime before, and his first is going to be JoJo's Bizarre Adventure. With the help of Tamoor Hussain, Lucy James (who also hasn't seen it) and Super Eyepatch Wolf, he'll dive right into the deep end of one of the most popular anime series of all time.

JJBA will cover the first two story arcs of the anime, Phantom Blood and Battle Tendency. Each podcast will wrap-up three episodes at a time, so we strongly recommend you watch them along with the gang. As of this writing, JoJo's Bizarre Adventure is streaming on Netflix.

Author
Giant Bomb Staff

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The Community Spotlight 2022.02.12

2 years 1 month ago

Hello and welcome to the latest edition of the Giant Bomb Community Spotlight! I, @zombiepie, am once again honored to be your host as we look back at the best user-created works from the previous week! Well, I think we can officially say the site is moving on from GOTY. If you want to see how every single game ranked during Giant Bomb's Community 2021 GOTY voting, Rorie has you covered with an exhaustive write-up on how every single vote broke down! Also, I want to personally thank the one Giant Bomb user that voted for Hatsune Miku: Colorful Stage!!

However, the big site-related news from the last week is that ArcadePit is coming to Giant Bomb each and every week, starting Wed. Feb. 16! If you don't know why this is exciting news, Arcade Pit is a weekly 2v2 retro game show that has teams compete in thousands of gaming challenges, as well as trivia, drawing, music and screenshot identification and more. Here's a link to their YouTube playlist of previous shows they have done.

Author
Marino - Brad Lynch

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The Community Spotlight 2022.02.05

2 years 1 month ago
No Caption Provided

If you want the HARD NUMBERS on the staff's GOTY lists and the many guest lists on the site, check out @marino's Data Dump: GOTY 2021 Staff & Guests Breakdown. If you want to know what would be the site's 2021 GOTY if it relied on HARD SCIENCE, then this is the post for you! Additionally, remember to check out Superkenon's Giant Bomb GOTY MEGATHREAD where they annotate and compile all of Giant Bomb's GOTY content into a single post!

Speaking of the site's GOTY content, if you tined into it and a the Bombcasts after it, you might have noticed a new version of the Giant Bomb theme song! This music is spectacularly brought to you by Vektroid/Macintosh Plus. Oh, and the Community 2021 GOTY voting results are up for you to marvel over! Read which game the community thinks should have been the site's 2021 GOTY!

Author
Marino - Brad Lynch

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Community GOTY 2021 Winners

2 years 1 month ago
I'm writing this article so I'm putting a picture of Days Gone (PC) up top here. No, it didn't win anything...except my heart.
I'm writing this article so I'm putting a picture of Days Gone (PC) up top here. No, it didn't win anything...except my heart.

Hey everyone! These are the results of the community GOTY - the results of which (resultingly) have been resulted below. This year, 1655 of you submitted a top ten list, for a total of 12670 votes (not everyone always puts in ten games, which is fine!) on 807 different games. Wow! Amazing!

Author
Matt Rorie

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Rami Ismail's Top Games of 2021

2 years 1 month ago

Rami Ismail is a game development consultant, game developer podcaster, and a budding airplane pilot. You can find him on Twitter at @tha_rami.

No Caption Provided

2021 is over, for better or worse.

Let’s get two things out of the way. First, I did not play Halo Infinite. Since I was 13 years old, I have played every single Halo campaign we could with the same group of friends, in co-op. Halo Infinite does not have co-op campaign yet, which means we’re waiting until we can play it together. Second, I’ve been a bit of a mess so this list is going to be a bit of a mess.

Author
Giant Bomb Staff

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Samantha Kalman's Top Games of 2021

2 years 2 months ago
No Caption Provided

Samantha Kalman is a game designer and musician. She's currently at Respawn Entertainment working on Apex Legends.

Wassup bomb kids? Bomb fam? Bombarinos? Bombadillos? Bombaramas? Fans of the excellent PS2 puzzle game Bombastic? And duders of all genders? It’s 2022 but with the ongoing time warp it might as well be 20XX, the exact year Megaman X occurs. I suppose our robot tech has come a long way, but Replicant tech is still lagging behind Capcom’s clairvoyant fortune telling. Honestly I’d take a robot apocalypse over this very real and very boring one. But enough about the droll of miserable reality, let’s talk about video games!

I have a short list for 2021. A lot of great games came out this last year, but unfortunately I wasn’t in a position to fully adopt 10 whole lovable games. I had to be selective about what I wanted to play and only a handful of games spoke to me enough that I really stuck with them.

Author
Giant Bomb Staff

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Albummer!'s Things of the Year!

2 years 2 months ago

Hello beautiful babies,

We're Albummer!, the first show on Giant Bomb to scientifically prove sincerity is the ultimate cringe, and selling ringtones is the only true art. Since everyone at this wonderful and foolishly supportive website is starting their Game of the Year conversations, we thought it might be kind of cool to give you our individual Game of the Year answers in the art form made most popular by The Heavens Gate cult, a blog post.

Jordan Olds

No Caption Provided

My game of the year was The New Therapist I Started Seeing. This one has a much better open-world map and also she isn't constantly threatening to steal my dog that she wrote an emotional support letter for.

Author
Giant Bomb Staff

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Harris Foster’s Top 10 Games of 2021

2 years 2 months ago
No Caption Provided

Parris Fosteer is a Community Developer for Finji, a believer in pizza bargains, and a quality follow on TikTok.

Hi, I’m Harris Foster. Normally I’m doing community work for games like Night in the Woods, Zelda Like a Fox, and Chicory: A Colorful Tale. Around the Giant Bomb world, you might know me as that guy who constantly gets his name spelled wrong. This happened once during Giant Bomb @ Nite 2018, and then many, *many* times after that. It even somehow came up during the Ghost Recon Breakpoint Quick Look. I still don’t know how this happens. It’s not even that hard of a name.

Author
Giant Bomb Staff

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Kenny Omega and Xavier Woods (and Adam Cole's) Top Games of 2021

2 years 2 months ago
No Caption Provided

Kenny Omega is one of the co-founders of All Elite Wrestling, and is also known for his video games-inspired persona. He's @KennyOmegaManX on Twitter.

Austin Creed (AKA Xavier Woods, AKA King Woods) is a member of the Tag Team crew known as The New Day, and the host of gaming YouTube channel UpUpDownDown and G4TV. He's @austincreedwins on Twitter.

Adam Cole is Adam Cole BAY BAY! He tweets from @AdamColePro.


Confined to a remote cabin in a remote location, free from all distractions while working - remotely - on this year’s TOP 10 video game list, only one burning question remains... Where’d I leave the remote???

Creed: Okay, I can see leaving the intro to you was a mistake already. Is this all supposed to be clever?

Author
Giant Bomb Staff

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aurahack's Top 10 Games of 2021

2 years 2 months ago
ASCARI
ASCARI

aurahack is an illustrator and character artist that works in both games and music. You might’ve seen some of the vinyls she’s made or some of the buffoonery done for videogames.com in the past. Currently, she is chairwoman of the Ascari Respect Zone, headquartered on her Twitter, which is also where she regularly posts art and great opinions. You can support her on Patreon or find her on Twitch where she streams art every Monday and Thursday @958 .beats.

Author
Giant Bomb Staff

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BAKOON's 10 Favorite Games He Played in 2021 In No Significant Order

2 years 2 months ago
No Caption Provided

Bakoon is a cool dog who makes crazy-cool photography art. Follow him on Twitter, you won't regret it.

Hello again, friends. It still feels like 2020, and that I made another list just months ago. Time has gotten weird as hell, but it has managed to unfold itself in such a way as so I could game like a heathen finally. Here are some I had fun with in no real significant order (Returnal is probably the best out of them this year, if I had to pick):

Psychonauts 2

For some reason I was sort of bummed about this finally coming out! I loved the original and just sort of assumed it wouldn’t be as neat but it was neater and meatier (no meat circus though). It was nice to go back into that world and see those little people again. Some really clever bits. Pop psychology based enemies and devices, and they made the platforming fun this time.

Author
Jess O'Brien

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GOTY 2021: Arcade Pit

2 years 2 months ago

Arcade Pit is a weekly streaming gameshow in the spirit of Nick Arcade, but better! Brutal trivia and silly challenges, every Sunday at 8pm EDT! Since Arcade Pit is being represented by two people, this is a COMBO GOTY LIST. Emily’s top 5, plus Smight’s Top 5. Put ‘em together and, baby, that’s what I call ten. It’s Arcade Pit’s Top Ten Games of 2021!

Smight: This year has brought me even further into the realm of indie games; I played them almost exclusively. There were some tremendous releases that offered a lot of innovation and beautiful artwork. I also ran into some fresh roguelikes aiming to absorb hundreds of hours of my time.

Emily: 2021 was a hell of a year! Thankfully, part of what made the year was an absolutely great track of new releases. Even weirder was the number of highly anticipated sequels that were like… a decade in the making? NEO: The World Ends With You, New Pokemon Snap, No More Heroes 3, Metroid Dread- it’s like some kind of stars aligned just right to see people get exactly what they’d been asking for. Maybe it was the universe’s way of apologizing.

But regardless of why they happened, I’m here to talk about my personal favorite releases of 2021! (Things that didn’t make the list that I recommend checking out, by the way: Monster Hunter Rise, New Pokemon Snap, Inscryption, Loop Hero, Resident Evil 8.) Unlike Smight, I played a lot of mainline stuff this year and it definitely shows in my picks! Hopefully at least one of them might be new to you, because I recommend them all highly.

Smight’s #5: Nuclear Blaze

Author
Jess O'Brien

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Chris Tilton’s Favorite Games of 2021 That He Will Not Finish Until 2022

2 years 2 months ago
No Caption Provided

Chris Tilton is a composer and he’s written music for a few TV shows (Fringe, Zoo) and video games (SimCity, Assassin’s Creed Unity, Black). You can hear Chris Tilton’s latest work on the upcoming Epix horror series, From.

When not working, he can be found playing video games, or perhaps procrastinating in chat on a Giant Bomb live stream.

Even though I made little progress towards completing games in 2021, I sure did have some fun! But first, my obligatory 2021 “didn’t get to these yet” list: Umurangi Generation. Beyond a Steel Sky. Disco Elysium: Director’s Cut. Inscryption. Psychonauts 2. Forza Horizon 5. Guardians of the Galaxy. Now, on to the games I DID play.

5. No Man’s Sky: Frontiers

Author
Matt Rorie

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Greg Kasavin's Top 10 Games of 2021

2 years 2 months ago
No Caption Provided

Greg Kasavin is writer and creative director at Supergiant Games, the small independent studio behind Hades, Pyre, Transistor, and Bastion. Prior to Supergiant, Greg worked at 2K Games, Electronic Arts, and GameSpot. He’s @kasavin on Twitter.

Author
Giant Bomb Staff

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David Galindo's Top 15 Games and Tabletop Games of 2021

2 years 2 months ago
No Caption Provided

Hello! My name is David Galindo, aka chubigans, and I run a small little indie company, Vertigo Gaming Inc., known best for the Cook, Serve, Delicious! series and a new Twitch-only free game called ChefSquad! I love making games and will continue to do so until the company either makes one hundred million dollars or declares bankruptcy, whichever comes first. Woo!

The Tabletop Zone

Before we get into my games list I wanted to talk a little bit about my favorite tabletop games of 2021!

Author
Jess O'Brien

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Ben Pack's Top 10 Games of the Year

2 years 2 months ago
No Caption Provided

Hi! My name is Ben and if you’re reading this then you probably know that I used to work here. If you didn’t know that, welcome to Giant Bomb! You should know that Giant Bomb Premium gives you an incredible ad-free experience and access to hundreds of hours of premium content.

I’ve been very busy this year but managed to play ELEVEN video games that made an impact on me this year, so I cut one (sorry Pokémon Unite) and ordered the rest. You know how it goes.

Unfortunately, I am still in podcast jail with Sarah Koenig and The Office Ladies, so this might be my last message to the public for a while. Keep up the good fight,

-Ben

10) Back 4 Blood

Left 4 Dead more like Dead on Arrival if getting three of my friends to play this with me is any indication. But it turns out you can have fun even with a mediocre zombie survival shooter.

9) Valheim

Author
Matt Rorie

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Rich Gallup's Games of 2021

2 years 2 months ago
No Caption Provided

Rich Gallup is Executive Producer at OtherSide Entertainment and the scruffy on the outside, soft on the inside Zamboni driver for his family’s backyard ice rink. Find him on the side of the road scanning cars for a Wyoming license plate, or on Twitter.

Hello everybody!

It’s true, another year has passed! What a weird time to try and track time. I’ve written and rewritten this preamble, trying to capture the emotions that emerge when reflecting on another year of bunkering down with my wonderful family, while feeling so much concern for people around the globe, and so much frustration with others. Just know that if you are reading this, I wish you well and will do my best to fill some of your day with lighthearted stories about how my family and I spent our isolated leisure time in 2021.

Author
Matt Rorie

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Mike Drucker's Top Games Of 2021

2 years 2 months ago
No Caption Provided

We all lived through the same dirty glass backwash that was 2021, so I won’t go through the whole rigmarole of how games were and whatnot. Games were good! Some companies that make games are awful! We learned some important lessons that we’ll never our lesson from.

10. Hot Wheels Unleashed

The weirdest part of this list will be having three racing games from me, a man who does not know how to drive. I don’t mean I’m bad at driving. I mean I don’t have a license to drive. But in Hot Wheels Unleashed you can drive a tiny Ninja Turtles van through an abandoned construction site, sooooo.

Author
Matt Rorie

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Cohen Edenfield’s Games of the Year 2021

2 years 2 months ago

Cohen Edenfield writes games and plays them. You can find them on Twitter, Twitch, and Youtube. They have a Master’s degree in literature in a landfill somewhere.

I played more games than usual in 2021, just like I did in 2020, for the extremely obvious reason that we’re living in what threatens to be a forever-plague. Desperate as I was for distraction, it seems strange to judge games for how “good” they were. Any game that got me to stop thinking about the circumstances of our shared existence for longer than a few minutes gets a 10/10 from me. I was an easy A.

That caveat aside, some discrete elements of the new games I played this year have managed to stick in my head for weeks and even months after I put them down. My list is an attempt to explore and examine these things. Some of them impressed me, some delighted me, and some of them pissed me off, but they’re all still on my mind. Given the state of my mind these days, that’s quite the accomplishment.

Author
Jess O'Brien

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Steve Kim's Top 5 Games Of 2021

2 years 2 months ago
No Caption Provided

2021 was a hell of a year for me. My life went through innumerable changes and challenges; some good, some bad. One of the good ones was a return to guilt-free gaming. Just being able to enjoy a hobby without feeling bad about it is a powerful and healthy thing and what a great year it’s been for games. Here are the top 5 games, in no particular order, that I played in 2021.

Metroid Dread

Author
Matt Rorie

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Slowbeef's Top Five Games Maybe You Haven’t Heard of in 2021

2 years 2 months ago

Slowbeef is one of the first Let’s Players, and currently streams and creates content on Twitch, YouTube, and Twitter.

Hi everyone, thanks for coming to my piece, I appreciate you. Listen, I don’t know about you, but I like video games. Actually, I really like the ones off the beaten path, as it were. Stuff that maybe you want to lean around Lady Dimitrescu’s 9’6” frame to take a peek at. Or squeeze by the Narcacuga, rub your eyes and go, “Hey, me, what’s that game off in the distance that I might not have played? Also how did the writer remember Lady Dimitrescu’s height without reference and why is he freely admitting that on GiantBomb?”

Look, shit happens, it was a weird year for all of us, but grab a chair and I’ll tell you about five games that my schedule allowed me to pla- I mean! Games that deserve a good look. I do promise that all of them are either:

  • Better than The Game Awards’ Game of the Year 2021 “It Takes Two” or at least...
  • Contain one less drawn out scene where your maim and torture a sentient toy who pleads for her life than The Game Awards’ Game of the Year 2021 “It Takes Two” or at least...
  • Seriously, what tone was “It Takes Two” going for there? Like is this a Pixar-kind of “getting back together story” or-

Anyway.

Author
Jess O'Brien

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Lena Raine’s Top 10 Games of 2021 & Some Fun Bonuses

2 years 2 months ago

Hi! I’m Lena. You’ve probably heard my music in Celeste, or from this year: Minecraft, or Chicory, or Moonglow Bay. Maybe you saw my list from 2020 and just had to know what I thought for 2021. Whatever your reasons for browsing over to this list, hi! I write music & make games. I also have lots of opinions about them.

2021 in games was honestly good to me. People have led a lot of round-up articles talking about how there was no “big standout game” for people to rally around, and honestly I think that’s a wonderful thing. We didn’t, because the gaming space continues to grow more diverse every single year. Instead, we got a lot of really amazing and unexpected gems, some really sick remakes & ports of older games, and the kinda unbridled glee I get from seeing the dominant AAA games being 3D platformers (Ratchet & Psychonauts), a racing game (More Forza Horizon), and a shmup-like 3rd person shooter (Returnal).

None of those games are in my top 10 though, so let’s dig into some specifics on where my gaming tendencies led me in 2021. I played a ton of games. Here’s some of them!

Neat Games I Didn’t Play Enough Of (Yet)

I am an easily distracted person, and sometimes games become a little too strenuous on either my brain or my hands to complete. But I still wanted to give some words of recommendation to these few games that really left a good impression on me.

Author
Giant Bomb Staff

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Alex Boniello’s Favorite Games (and other stuff) of 2021

2 years 2 months ago
No Caption Provided

Alex Boniello is a wildly talented stage and screen actor, producer and musician. You can catch him currently in Whisper House.

Hello lovely Giant Bomb community. This marks my third year in a row that I have been asked to write a list for my favorite games site, and I’m happy to do so again! It has continued to be an incredibly weird year for us all, and while the situation in the NYC theatre scene is currently especially bleak because of Omicron, I’ve been thrilled to watch the theatre return, slowly but surely. To celebrate that, I’ve decided to share my favorite theatre moment of the year, as well as some other favorite moments across all forms of media, before hopping into my Games of the Year. I took a lot of comfort in enjoying these things and I wanted to share them. Because it’s my list!!! And I can!!!

Theatre of the Year: Hadestown’s first performance back

(Full Disclosure, I’m a co-producer on Hadestown)

Author
Giant Bomb Staff

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Super Eyepatch Wolf's Top 10 Games of 2021

2 years 2 months ago
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We are honored to have Super Eyepatch Wolf contributing to our 2021 Game of the Year guestlists. If you're unfamiliar with Mr. Wolf, he has a supremely great YouTube channel where he makes videos that shake the entire internet with each release.

His most recent upload, "What The Internet Did to Garfield," is not just perfectly on the nose for the GB Extended Universe, but has also been viewed over 2.5 million times.

But perhaps best of all, we're currently working on a new podcast with John that will begin to air in February.

Honourable mentions

Inscryption, Shin Megami Tensei V, Metroid Dread, Little Nightmares 2, Binding of Isaac: Repentance.

Author
Giant Bomb Staff

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Dan Ryckert's Top 10 Games of 2021

2 years 2 months ago
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Former Giant Bomb man-child Dan Ryckert has graced us with his top 10 list for 2021. You can catch Dan in the debut season of Bak 2 Skool, the Fire Escape Cast and on Twitch.

And quite possibly, in the time it's taken you to read this intro, Dan has inexplicably won a juggling contest, invented a new type of eating utensil and written several books on all the subjects previously referenced. For signed copies, please reach out to Dan directly on Twitter.

Dan's Honorable Mentions: Loop Hero, Forza Horizon 5, Death’s Door, WarioWare: Get it Together!

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Giant Bomb Staff

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Alex Zandra’s Top 10 Games of 2021

2 years 2 months ago
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Alex Zandra is a Canadian game designer, streamer and light novelist. She makes all kinds of stuff on her Patreon. You can find her on Twitter @zandravandra and watch her stream on Twitch.

Hey hi folks! I’m so glad to be here. I’m so glad you’re here, too. <3

Last year was a lot. I think I grew more as a person than I have in a very long time, in no small part thanks to a metric tonne of heavy-duty therapy. But it’s been a lot of grueling, exhausting work! And also, like… the pandemic’s been rough. We were not meant to be apart for so long. Fingers crossed this year will be kinder to all of us.

Author
Matt Rorie

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Will Smith's Favorite Games of 2021

2 years 2 months ago
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This is the year that I went from playing games and talking about games to actually making games. I’ve been helping Stray Bombay (the makers of The Anacrusis) with comms, which means I finally understand how the sausage is made. At least for our game. Of course, I also co-host Brad & Will Made a Tech Pod with someone you probably know, and have been streaming PUBG, Returnal, Inscryption, The Anacrusis, and the occasional LEGO build on Twitch. (By the way, The Anacrusis came out in early access on Steam, Xbox Series X|S, Xbox One, the Epic Games Store, and Xbox/PC Game Pass on January 13. You should check it out!)

Author
Matt Rorie

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Drew Scanlon's Top 10 Games of 2021

2 years 2 months ago
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HELLO YES THIS IS DREW. Cranking out retro games and F1 podcasts doesn’t always leave a lot of time to play stuff these days, but I still managed to put together a list of things I played that came out this year! So stay awhile, and read.

10. Pokémon Unite

I’m really just putting this on here because it’s the closest substitute I’ve found for Fates Forever–the one (mobile) MOBA I ever got into–which was BRUTALLY ERASED FROM EXISTENCE so its developers could focus on some other project called “Discord.”

9. The Forgotten City

Author
Matt Rorie

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