Gamecritics.com Podcast Episode 83: The Walking Dead

Hey Guys

Good to see you squeezing in another episode before the end of the year, even if it is more Walking Dead, and it's great that we get to nominate listeners' games of the year.

Just a note to say well done on 2012 and express my appreciation - the site has really gone from strength to strength this year, with lots of talented new writers, Richard's resurrection of the After Dark Podcasts and his interesting experiment with the TF2 podcast, Brandon Bales' developer interviews, the inclusion of Extra Credits, along with the usual high quality writing from Sparky, Brad, Mike etc. Not to mention the transition from podcast legend Tim Spaeth to Dylan, who has done a great job.

Great site, hope you continue in the same vein in 2013.

I'll be sure to send in a wall of text concerning my choices for the year, but I need to point out one flaw with the whole GOTY thing that irks me each time. It's that games that come out late in the year, like Nov-Dec, rarely have a chance to make it into the list, simply because there's just too much games and one NEVER gets around to play them all before the year is over. Now, this wouldn't be that much of a problem if we were to award GOTY in March, but it always has to be late December.

I know what you mean, Flo.

The past month and a half has been a mad dash for me trying to play everything that was left for GOTY consideration. I'm still going to miss a few things (Journey is probably the most notable). This was a big issue for me last year, because I didn't get to Bastion until like January -- and it would have certainly been in the GOTY discussion for me.

It's an imperfect system, but unfortunately no one wants to talk about GOTY in March.

It's also one of the reasons why we have the "best game not-from-2012" category as well.

I'm well aware of that, and frankly, I probably wouldn't want to either =/

"best game not-from-2012" sounds good though.

Funny, I often see the opposite problem - too many GOTY lists totally forget about stuff that came out from January-October. In fact, I actually keep a running list of all the games that I like during the year, specifically to avoid my GOTY list being made up solely of things from Oct-Dec.

But yeah, the 4th Qtr rush-to-play-it-all is the worst. ^_^

Also, thanks for the love, Pedro! = )

Great discussion. I arrived late to the walking dead scene and I completed the entire game in one sitting just to catch up for the discussion. I wondered about the pacing of the game if I had played each episode individually, and found it interesting hearing that episode 5 was the shortest episode whereas I didn't think about it because it all felt like a single game.

I'm anti-closure when it comes to ambiguous endings, so I would have preferred it if they had left the ending open with an appropriate farewell between Lee and Clem. That last zombie encounter felt rushed. Overall, it was still devastating and heartbreaking and made my eyes water a bit. Anyway, great podcast as always. Can't wait for your next special.