The Giant Bomb site player specifically was way better than the contemporary Youtube player for a good long while. They were also better at prioritizing bitrate over resolution, since they weren't obsessed with pretending they had a pixel count advantage over competitors while compressing contents down to mush. If anything it's ironic that Youtube will now try to sell you bitrate as part of their subscription without cranking up the resolution, presumably because their creators no longer even try to upload 4K anymore.
Sorry, now I'm bringing up legacy gripes from a different decade. Carry on.