The Community Spotlight 2025.01.11

Hello, everyone 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 creations from the last week. While I can't promise you this edition of the Community Spotlight will be as jam-packed with stuff as last week's, I can promise that everything on here is just as memorable and worthy of your time.

In case you missed it, both of the community-related GOTY voting events are done and the results have been made public! The 2024 Community GOTY results are in and @marino has the stats all the way down to the 50th game. Speaking of Marino and GOTY stats, Tam and Lucy haven't presented their GOTY lists, so he will likely publish his GOTY stats soon with partial info.

@allthedinos posted the results of the "Hottest Mess 2024" community poll winners and shockingly, Concord only placed second and Microsoft's poor management of their gaming and console division only managed to snag an "honorable mention." What could have possibly gotten the top spot? Read to find out!

For those of you that might still be worrying about missing any of Giant Bomb's GOTY 2024 content, Marino has you covered on the Giant Bomb Game of the Year 2024 wiki and the overall GOTY hub at Giant Bomb Game of the Year Awards is also worth reviewing if you are struggling to find something you want re-review or watch.

There is, however, site-related housekeeping worth reviewing. Yes, the site and engineers are aware that Giant Bomb Infinite is currently offline. People are working to bring it back and you can read about why things are still down and when the engineers and product manager expect to get it up and running.

Also there's no dancing around the issue, but the site is currently facing a wave of spambots. Trust me when I say that the entire Giant Bomb Moderation team are not happy with the current situation and that we have shared our concerns and frustrations to all of the appropriate staff. They are also unhappy with the new influx of bots and are brainstorming possible solutions.

GOTY 2024

Lists

• Game of the Year (By: @eliotlucas)
• GOTY 2024 (By: @thechadster789)
• Electrocutie's Games of 2024 Thing (By: @electrocutie)
• TFP's Top 10 Games of 2024 (By: @thefakepsychic)
• CHUCKLENUGGETS' 2024 GOTY Top 10 (By: @chucklenuggets)
• My Top Ten Games of 2024 (By: @madbootsy)
• GOTY 2024 (By: @amlabella)
• Yours Truly's 2024 Games Of The Year Awards (By: @genessee)
• Game Of The Year 2024 (By: @mrbubbles)
• Game of the Year 2024 (By: @superharman)

Blogs

Hottest Mess 2024: Community Poll WINNERS (By: @allthedinos)

The votes are in and the Giant Bomb Community's Choice winner for "Hottest Mess 2024" is official! Would you be surprised to know that Concord was only a runner-up? What other video game-based mess was bigger or messier than Concord? Click the link to find out!

2024 Had Too Many Goddamned Video Games (By: @ford_dent)

Ford_Dent published their GOTY 2024 blog and while they think there were too many good games last year, they discussed what they ended up enjoying and recommend others check out in case they missed them!

The 2024 Moosies Video Game Awards Part II! (By: @mooseymcman)

Part two of MooseyMcMan's Moosies Video Game Awards is up and you can give it a read now. Learn about Helldivers II being their "Co-op Game of the Year" or why Destiny 2: The Final Shape won their "Expansion of the Year."

Tweets

Art

Full Gimmick, Brother! (By: Pickle_Giraffe)

I don't know about the continually moving end date, but Alex's Blight Club torture game picks are already delivering some great moments. Pickle_Giraffe's Blight Club animated series is obviously going to have a field day! Also, don't forget to click the link to see this banner animate with audio.

Video

DOUBLE KONG CHOCOLATE CHIMP - (Season 5 FINALE) - An Animated Giant Bomb Blight Club Series (By: Pickle_Giraffe)

In case you missed it, Pickle_Giraffe published the FINALE for their animated episodes of Lucy's edition of Blight Club featuring Skull Island: Rise of Kong! Give it a watch and be ready for their upcoming amazing work for Dan's year of torture.

Activities

The GB Album Club 074 - Uta's Songs: One Piece Film Red by Ado (By: @unclejam23)

Things are a bit "DIFFERENT" for this edition of the Giant Bomb Album Club! The club is giving Uta's Songs: One Piece Film Red by Ado a shot and most members didn't know about Ado until this album pick. Do any of you listen to anime-based music?

Blogs

I Finally Finished Agent Intercept And I Just Don't Know If I Care About Finishing Games Anymore (By: @bigsocrates)

bigsocrates made some promises of wanting to strike more games form their backlog in 2025 but playing and attempting to finish Agent Intercept quickly made them realize that they need to respect their time more.

Go! Go! GOTY! 2024: Magical Delicacy +

Indie Game of the Week 402: Chants of Sennaar (By: @mento)

Moderator Mento isn't letting the end of Giant Bomb's GOTY 2024 coverage stop theirs! Today they assessed Magical Delicacy by Skaule to see if it has any place on their final GOTY 2024 list!

And like clockwork, Mento is back with a new edition of their "Indie Game of the Week" feature! This week they played and reviewed Chants Of Sennaar, a game that was in GOTY talk a few years back!

Sigil is a Love Letter to DOOM (By: @ford_dent)

Ford_Dent is up to their usual tricks and is talking about Doom! This time, however, they penned an essay on why Sigil is the ultimate love letter to classic Doom and everything it represents.

Mouthwashing, A Triumph In Storytelling Held Back By A Subpar Game (By: @sexnoise)

SexNoise wrote a quick essay on why they absolutely loved Mouthwashing's story and characters but sometimes struggled to play it. Give their thoughts a read and share if you agree or disagree over here.

Discussion Threads

Ubisoft Starts 2025 By Delaying Assassin's Creed Shadows & CEO Yves Sends Mixed Messages About A Ubisoft Sale (By: @zombiepie)

Assassin's Creed Shadows has been delayed again and it sounds like Ubisoft's financial issues are still a real problem. Do you predict the rumored buyout of Ubisoft led by Tencent or a hedge fund manager happens? Will Shadows be any good?

Appropriate For Almost-barely Teens? (By: @cubbielover)

Maybe best suited for those of you that put the game on their GOTY 2024 lists, but cubbielover asking on the forums if it is okay to play Thank Goodness You're Here!! with their 11-year-old. Considering some of the scenes and implications in the game, what do you think?

Help Teaching My Partner Twinstick Controls (By: @spectralcat)

Speaking of asking for help from the Giant Bomb community, spectralcat posted a thread asking about how to teach their partner the concept of needing to use both analog sticks on a controller at the same time. Do you have any advice on how to ease someone into twin stick controls?

What Video Game Genres Do You Wish To See On The Next Xbox Console And PlayStation 6? (By: @gtxforza)

Which game genres are you hoping make a comeback in the next year or so? Can you think of any game types that deserve their own "Roguelike Renaissance?" It seems like it has been a while since people were talking about RTS games.

Lists

CHUCKLENUGGETS' 2023 GOTY Top 10 +

CHUCKLENUGGETS' Most Anticipated Games For 2025 (By: @chucklenuggets)

CHUCKLENUGGETS was going to publish their GOTY 2024 list, and they eventually did, but then they realized something... THEY FORGOT TO PUBLISH THEIR 2023 GOTY LIST! Today, they fixed that oversight!

CHUCKLENUGGETS continues their list-making streak on with a list annotating and ranking their most anticipated game releases in 2025! Which games are you excited for? Is it a smaller indie title or one of the hotly anticipated AAA game?

Best of 1994 (By: @lelcar)

With the passing of 2024, Lelcar realized that 1994 was 31 years ago! As such, they decided to re-assess their favorite games from 1994 with a new GOTY list! I don't know how you feel but I feel like I'm turning into dust.

GOTY 2022 (Adjusted) (By: @mento)

Moderator Mento did something fun this week and looked back at their GOTY 2022 and reranked it to include games they have played recently! Find out what knocked Elden Ring down from its #1 position!

All Keighley’s Lookers (By: @infantpipoc)

Think the "Best Art Direction" Award at The Game Awards is a mess? Well, you must not remember when it was called "Best Animation" or "Best Graphics" when Keighley was on Spike TV!

Reviews

@infantpipoc's Portal and Portal 2 review looks at both game's playability on the Steam Deck and all of the cool special features Valve have added to the game since its original release in 2011!

Wiki Of The Week

Giant Bomb Game of the Year Awards

Last week I shared the wiki concept page for Giant Bomb Game of the Year 2024, and this week it seems more than appropriate to share the hub page for EVERYTHING related to Giant Bomb's GOTY coverage since its inception. If you ever wanted to know about which games won awards as far back as 2008, this is the page for you!