korolev

Hey there - fun read. It's good to see someone learn to like new things and appreciate all a game has to offer. Sadly though, for me, pretty much the exact opposite happened. I used to love playing games to their absolute completion.... now I simply can't. I don't know why - I get bored very quickly. It takes an exceptional game to get me to play it to the end these days. I have a huge stack of games I haven't finished and probably never will. 
 
Best of luck in 2011!

I like the style and the flow of the videos. Don't..... like the electronic voice too much - then again, I don't like synthesized voices much anyway. Compare these new videos with the 08 awards, and you can see just how far GB has come. Wish them all the best and looking forward to even further improvements in the future!

Yes, I smile a lot in pictures, but I never grin. If you smile casually, then it's alright. If you smile heaps and show your teeth, you come off looking deranged or waaaaaayy too happy for your own good.

They're busy dudes with busy lives. They're a small team. I honestly, HONESTLY think that most other publications and sites do EXACTLY the same thing, it's just that the GB team make their deliberations public. They give their reasons. They let us see why they  decide to award what games what, and for that I thank them. If you want them to play every single game on every list to completion, they'd have to shut down the site for about a month or more. I don't want that, do you?  
 
ANY GOTY debate is going to involve concessions, personal preferences and whatnot. There really is no "professional" way to do it, unless you want to organize a committee and make everyone speak in turn and have "house rules" and then subject the proceedings to a vote - which would be stupid, given that they're a team of 4 friends who like to just have fun. 
 
GOTY awards are fun things that come at the end of the year - they aren't actually that important. The GB team are being open, funny and are doing the best job they can. I have no complaints. Sure, I might disagree with some of their choices, and they could turn that argument right back at me.  
 
It's not important, they're being open and honest, it's funny and I'm pretty sure everyone does the same thing. Other sites might make it "look" more professional, but either they have the same raucous informal debate, or it's an imposed, editor-makes-the-final-say "discussion" and that's never good. 
 
Cut them some slack jack.

I give it an A for Armadillo. Wait, what were we talking about?

Only looking forward to Mass Effect 3, Uncharted 3, Portal 2, Dragon Age 2 and Infamous 2. Hm. Lots of 2's and 3's there. Huh. Well, whatever - the reason for the excitement is that those series have proven themselves to be excellent, backed by excellent developers.  
 
I'm sure I'll find other games in 2010 that are also awesome.

Bizarre/Murderous

Yes, the story of Heavy Rain has some serious problems. I won't spoil things, but many of the elements of the plot  that were put in there were just there to be deceptive and are VERY poorly explained away, or not explained away at all. Ethan's Black-outs with the Origami figurines appearing in his hands is NEVER adequately explained by the game or by the apologists who rush to the game's defence. Simply put, the game, despite having stellar presentation, has a shoehorned ending that tried (but failed) to be too clever by half. The game would have been a lot better if it didn't spend 99% of the time trying to mislead you, then to pull an implausible trick at the very end.  
 
I suppose it looked a bit better on paper, but it didn't work out so well in the game itself.

Mirror's edge has an option to turn off the "highlighting" of the objects you have to careen off - but that makes the game virtually unplayable unless you already know where to go. Seriously, that game has problems.  
 
I don't mind the highlighting effect. Sometimes it's necessary. I'd rather be patronized than frustrated.

I'm pretty sure Jeff didn't hate it or think it "lame" - he just said it wasn't "game of the year" stuff, and I agree - look, the first, oh say, third of Limbo was GREAT. FANTASTIC. MARVELLOUS. Giant creepy spiders, brain bugs and weird murderous kids? AWESOME. 
 
The sad thing is, it doesn't hold. The creepy, scary atmosphere, which haunted the first quarter or third of the game, dies away to be replaced with just.... physics puzzles. Nothing in the last two thirds of the game top what you see in the first third of the game - it's like they ran out of ideas. The highlight of Limbo was the unsettling atmosphere, not the puzzles, which were well made, but come on - a puzzle's a puzzle. Yes, they were GORY puzzles, but still just puzzles.  
 
A GOTY must MAINTAIN it's quality all the way through. Limbo doesn't - it starts off extremely strong, but then fades away to be a decent game, but no longer a special one. Where as bayonetta, super meat boy and the others nominated for "Best Debut" never really dip in quality. 
 
Don't get me wrong - Limbo is a good game. It is worth the money. It is a type of game I wish to see more of and I wish the designers all the best. But definitely towards the end of the game, I started treating it as a physics puzzle platform game. The sense of dread had evaporated from me entirely. As nasty as spinning saw blades are, and as tricky as gravity changing switches can be, and as much fun as I had solving the challenging puzzles, none of that is SCARY. And without the dread, the sense of oppression, Limbo ceases to be a GOTY candidate. 
 
......... but even I thought Limbo was better than VVVVVV