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 site-related news and best community creations from the previous week!
Obviously, the biggest nugget of news is the looming site migration date. In case you missed the announcements on the Bombcasts the past two weeks, there's now a handy article on the site that reviews the major changes and impacts of the transition. On December 1st, this current site will be frozen and you'll likely not be able to even log into your own account. The site will remain frozen until December 6th. On that date, Giant Bomb is hoping to fully migrate the data and content to the new site. If you need to get your Giant Bomb post fix, use the new site, but be warned, anything you post on the forums is likely to get wiped as the forums will need to be reset to make their implementation officially official.
User reviews and list creation tools are planned for the new site, but they won't be available at launch. Also not ready on December 6th are forum email notifications, the ability to download video and audio directly from the site, and APIs. The new Giant Bomb wiki, which is still looking for more programming help, will have viewable pages, but the editing and creation tools still need more time to bake in the oven. However, while the Wiki may not be fully functioning on December 6th, rest assured that all of the data will be there.
As scary as this transition might seem, rest assured that most of the features we enjoy and love on Giant Bomb right now will be coming back; the only difference is that writing blogs, soon to be renamed “articles,” user reviews, and user lists will now be premium-only features. Also, all of the lists, blogs, and reviews you have published on the site in the past will be rejoining you on the new site.
The only complication is that you and the people you know NEED TO LOG INTO GIANT BOMB. We have been harping about this for months, but now the due date is here. If you don't opt into the site transition by logging in and agreeing to be a part of the transition, you'll need to re-create your username and account from scratch. If you're worried if you have done this already or not, OR go to https://giantbomb.com/account/tos-confirmation/. If after clicking this link, you get immediately re-directed to the homepage, that means there's nothing you need to do. You'll only see a disclaimer with a button to click if you haven't already opted into the account transfer process. A mass email was sent to notify everyone about the transition, but it seems like it didn't reach everyone. If you logged in and didn't get an email, don't worry, you are in the clear.
For the Community Spotlight, it will go on a hiatus and there will not a new Spotlight on the 6th. I'll be looking to restart on December 13th, which would give you all a week to test the new site and great freaky with it. Seriously, let's get weird and esoteric if the new site is actually going to give us all props and have its own portal for user-created articles! Also, let's flood the new forums with fun and wacky discussions to show how grateful we are there even is a video game forum to use in the year of our Lord, 2025.
Now, moving on to other news, Giant Bomb is hosting a Black Friday merchandise sale that will continue into December 1st. New merch has a 15% discount and some older merch has a 50% discount!
GOTY is fast approaching. As mentioned last week, rest assured that Marino will have Guest Lists in late December and there will be voting for a Community GOTY 2025; it'll just have to take a different format than how we have done things in the past.
Friend of the site, Lexi, has been going through a rough patch, and if you can spare sending them some support, that would be greatly appreciated.
So, as we look towards the future, here's to one last edition of the Giant Bomb Community Spotlight on the old site we all know and love! Man, has it been such an incredible ride, and I look forward to seeing and talking to you all very soon!
Bluesky
https://bsky.app/profile/chucktowski.com/post/3m6fttnsn2k2v
https://bsky.app/profile/janochoa.bsky.social/post/3m6qdlk7j2s2k
https://bsky.app/profile/alexnavarro.bsky.social/post/3m6fkc27z2s2p
https://bsky.app/profile/hunt270.bsky.social/post/3m66eaz7mv22w
https://bsky.app/profile/firehair12000.bsky.social/post/3m6gbxguq7k26
Art
Quan Chi Family Reunion (By: Pickle Giraffe)
How can something be comical and also nightmare inducing? That's what I continue to ask as I look at this image from Pickle Giraffe taking the moment when the Giant Bomb staff and guests during the Extra Life 2025 stream started donning Quan Chi makeup. I respect the craft, but I also don't think I like it? Help. I'm confused
Smile Grubb! + Grubb Snatch (By: NickToilet)
Here are a couple of posters from the always great NickToilet that I somehow missed. The first was inspired from when Grubb got Quan Chi'd during the Bombathon and the second depicts Dan as the lovable scamp we all know him to be.
Activities
Keeper Is The 11th Game Of UGPGC Year 4. Mark All Spoilers. Finish By December 1st, 2025! (By: @bigsocrates)
It won by a landslide, but the next game pick for the Game of the Month Club is Keeper by Double Fine Productions, Inc.! Was the game worth the years of radio silence from Double Fine all of these years? Join the fun and join the conversation about the game over here!
Also, if you're reading this shortly after the Spotlight goes live, it might even be time to share your thoughts about the game's story!
The GB Album Club 104 – Tunnel Vision by Beach Bunny (Finale!) (By: @unclejam23)
It's time for the FINAL album for this season of the Giant Bomb Album of the Week Club! The group is rounding things off with a BANGER by listening to Tunnel Vision by Beach Bunny! However, if any of you are in the mood to be a part of a music listening club, now's the time to drop a comment to be part of the fun!
Blogs
The Case For Keeping This Torch Alive & Other Thoughts About Giant Bomb's Next Steps (By: @zombiepie)
First, I finally got around to wrapping up my exhausting but highly rewarding blog Let's Play of The 11th Hour. What started out as a look at Trilobyte, Inc.‘s follow-up to The 7th Guest following Mitch's efforts, turned out to be a way bigger nightmare than I could have ever imagined.
Second, I took the time to share why, despite some reasonable nervousness, all of you should join the effort to “make it” to the new site when December comes rolling in. We've been through a lot together, and it would be a shame if that ended this weekend.
Indie Game of the Week 447: Mullet MadJack (By: @mento)
With this edition of their “Indie Game of the Week” feature, moderator Mento takes on the run-based and neon-drenched Mullet Mad Jack! Read their blog on why they were impressed by its neon-tinged hyper-masculine anime parody styling but could only ever manage one or two sessions of it per day.
Robocop: Rogue City – Unfinished Business Shows That Some Tasks Can Safely Be Left Undone (By: @bigsocrates)
bigsocrates makes a return to blogging with a review of RoboCop: Rogue City – Unfinished Business! You can read all about how, while they think the game is still fun, it doesn't perfectly emulate the heart of the first game.
Clowns As Algebra: Arithmetic In Balatro (By: @gamer_152)
Have you been looking for an essay on how Balatro does the impossible and make mathematics and basic multiplication fun? Good news! A clown forced moderator Gamer_152 to write this very topic at gunpoint this week.
2 Switch 2 Games. + MmC: Moosey May Cry. (By: @mooseymcman)
Longstanding essayist MooseyMcMan recently bought a Nintendo Switch 2 and talks about the first two games they played on it and what their early impressions of the console and its potential are as they look to 2026 and what's coming out for it.
Likewise, it's finally time for MooseyMcMan to tackle the always divisive and controversial DmC Devil May Cry with their retrospective on the Devil May Cry series! As someone that enjoyed the “traditional” entries in the franchise, did they love or hate Ninja Theory‘s take on Devil May Cry?
Discussion Threads
What Is On Your GOTY 2025 List? Link Them And Discuss Them HERE! (By: @zombiepie)
You don't have a ton of time, but you can still whip up a GOTY 2025 list on the current site to make sure it survives the transition to the new site. Also, feel free to share away why the games on your list made the cut!
What Are You Playing/Finishing/Abandoning This Week? (By: @laughingman)
As we near GOTY season, what are the games with GOTY hype that you are playing and trying to finish before the onslaught starts? Have you dropped any GOTY games being considered candidates because they just aren't your jam? Share away in the thread!
What Happened To Project Motor Racing? (By: @gtxforza)
What in the world happened to Project Motor Racing? The much-hyped next game from the supervisor behind Project Cars came out and is getting annihilated in the reviews. Were their warning signs or red flags that the game would release hot is this a complete surprise to you?
Does Donkey Kong Bananza… Go Anywhere, Or Is The Punching Stuff It? (By: @heraldfighter64)
GOTY scrutiny hits every game and for this week it seems like the Giant Bomb forums have applied a special spotlight to Donkey Kong Bananza. Is it fair to give GOTY nominations to Donkey Kong when its gimmick is so simple? Is there more to the game than just punching stuff?
Well, What Games Are On Your “Best Games Of The Last Ten Years” List? Thoughts About Giant Bomb's Staff List? (By: @zombiepie)
You've heard and listened to Giant Bomb's staff list what they think are the ten best video games of the last decade, but which games are on YOUR list? Can you think of games that deserve to be on the list that didn't even chart the staff's list? Share and discuss everything in the thread linked above!
Why Did Concord Fail? (By: @topcyclist)
Why do games like Concord fail so quickly or spectacularly? Also, do you think we are seeing an uptick in online-only games that getting their severs pulled within one to two years? Do you think this is going to get better or worse in the next few years?
Lists
Best Games of 2025 (By: @av_gamer)
Top 10 Games Of 2025 (By: @rendr)
GotY 2025 (By: @killerfly)
If you find yourself making a GOTY 2025 during the final countdown and after the site gets frozen, keep me in the loop when we come back online on the 6th! I'm more than happy to give everyone their flowers when the time comes!
Games That Mean a Lot to Me: One Last(?) List (By: @thefakepsychic)
As the site migration looms, TheFakePsychic pens one more list before the site migration and this one looks introspectively at the sixteen games that personally mean the most to them. Which games have stories that still hit them and which games do they still have a blast to play? Read to find out!
My Most Influential Games (By: @digitalfirefly)
DigitalFirefly ran with the theme on the site wherein everyone is trying to list what they think are the best games of the year or decade, but with this list they instead made what they think is a definitive list of the “most influential” games of all-time.
User Reviews
@djcube‘s Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets review sees if a childhood GameCube staple has really stood the test of time. How rough is the platforming in this game by today's standards, for example.
@djcube‘s Rugrats: Royal Ransom review shares why, while this game isn't the best, that there was a Rugrats-based game that WASN'T the worst shit imaginable.
Wikis
For this rendition of the Wiki of the Week I decided to showcase a bevy of wiki pages that are simply “too cool for Wikipedia!” While the new wiki will use MediaWiki, everything that presently makes the Giant Bomb wiki “special” is still coming with us and here are all the best concept pages that prove the Giant Bomb wiki really is something worth protecting!
Editor's Note: @marino here. Just adding some more concept pages that are my personal favorites. See y'all on the other side!
