Games overlooked in GOTY 2013

Even though I was pretty happy about how the deliberations went down this year. I couldn't help but think a couple games got overlooked in the Category I thought they would shine in.

Best Looking Game- The Last of Us was a good choice, it really did look great all things considering. I was also excited that Proteus got its props here, but if I were to chose the best looking game this year, I would hands down put Ni No Kuni in that spot.

Best New Character- Another Great Choice in Lamar but what about Bill in the Last of Us. BILL WAS AWESOME, He was really the only thing (besides the story) in that game that I liked.

EDIT: Also really Excited to see Mr. Drippy here. (Ni No Kuni my GOTY, just so people can see the bias up front :D)

Thats a couple I thought about, and this is not really a complaint only a discussion. Are there others you can think about?

Blood Dragon not even getting mentioned in best music drove me nuts.

I never played the amount of games as the crew but Tomb Raider was the most enjoyment I got outta a 2013 game. At least it almost managed to stealth it's way to the end game of GOTY talk.

I agree Tomb Raider was My Number three, and Ive played through it twice this year, I admit its not perfect but God damn it was fun.

There's always going to be weird niche stuff that just doesn't resonate with enough people to stand out on a site as big as Giant Bomb. And I'm OK with that. So yeah, Europa Universalis IV is my second favourite game of the year, and I think it's better than The Last of Us, but c'mon, I wasn't actually expecting them to talk about it. Sad that it didn't get any recognition on the site this year - at least Crusader Kings II got a quick look (thanks Dave) - but whatever.

Also Patrick was right; Fire Emblem: Awakening deserved more recognition. Giant Bomb proved last year that they could really love a strategy game, but still there was only one person there to champion FE:A. I didn't even beat that game and I still put it in my top 5.

Looking at the categories again.

Best Looking Game should have belonged to BioShock Infinite, because oh my god the art direction in that game is astounding. Just unbelievable.

Best New Character not eventually including Sam from Gone Home or Isabelle from Animal Crossing: New Leaf was a huge misstep, they're great. (I also think I'm done with the Best New Character category, but so it goes.)

Best Music should've included BioShock, as most of its music is proper rearrangements or original music. It'd be like not nominating O Brother, Where Art Thou? or Inside Llewyn Davis.

Best Debut is their dumbest category and needs to fade away, as they've been perfectly comfortable including "debuts" as Game of the Year contenders.

Best Moment or Sequence could've included loads of stuff from Saints Row IV, BioShock Infinite, their favorite GTAV heist, or the Kuribo's Ice Skate moment from Super Mario 3D World. It helps that I think Brothers is hella dumb and The Stanley Parable is, well, fine.

Best Use of Licensed Song could've made room for the Aerosmith moment in SR4, that was so good. Obviously, BioShock was the proper winner.

And how Assassin's Creed made it past Super Mario 3D World in the final Game of the Year debate is unbeknownst to me.

I can't believe Battlefield made it onto Best Looking over Bioshock Infinite. Even watching 20 minutes of Bioshock during the recap this week you can see how damn pretty it is. I can't even remember what Battlefield looks like other than having guns. Well, Jeff insisted it belonged and made it between Bioshock and all the little games. Robbery. Oh well, atleast Bioshock won other stuff and also was on the top 3. I'm okay with Bioshock's performance. That's about the best you can say after GOTY week.

I think Starcraft 2 Heart of the Swarm, for a release Brad gave a 5/5 to, was forgotten. I really loved that expansion, it had a lot of really fucking cool things to it. The mission design was fantastic, evolving the swarm was done really well with side missions where you try out possible strains of zerg and choose one after... It was all really damn well hewn. I guess because Brad didn't stick to the multiplayer he forgot all the other great things about that package as he is wont to do. Oh well.

I think Pikmin 3 is really really fucknig good? Both in terms of looks and in terms of how it plays. I found it really satisfying and definitely the best Pikmin game that's ever been made. Really enjoyed being very methodical, scouting out where stuff was, taking care of business, and getting shit done day in day out. It was my #7 GOTY which is better than it sounds because I thought the first 6 games of my GOTY List all deserve to be in the top 3.

Let's see... I was thinking early in the year Ridiculous Fishing would make my list but too many other rad things pushed it off over time. It's totally fine going by without a single mention given that, there were a lot of other games to think about. Far Cry 3 Blood Dragon should've been mentioned for best looking, I think it's fine to not appear in any other category. It could've made my list but again, too many other games. Pokemon X/Y was around... 17 for me I think? Probably worth mentioning for something, I really dug that game, but I'd cut it first when trimming a GOTY list so I guess it's fine to go without a mention. I think that's all I got.

I really wanted to see Ni No Kuni get some more love. It seemed like a classic case of a game coming out in January and being largely forgotten at GOTY time. I suppose it fell somewhere between the big budget titles and the indie ones, which might have caused it to stand out less. The game just stuck with me the whole year and has had me singing its praises every chance I can get.

How Papers Please made it over Mario is astounding to me.

I don't have Mario in my top 10. I actually don't think it's in my top 20. I think that game is pretty great but I was kind of underwhelmed by it. Unless there's 5 more hard worlds I'm missing because I haven't collected everything I think it's not enough to say it gets good in the back half because it doesn't get that good and its over pretty soon after you get Rosalina.

Talking Killer Instinct and not even gesturing toward Injustice is the silliest of follies.

Tomb raider got robbed

Oh, come on! There hasn't been a good Mario game since Sunshine. In all seriousness, however, Nintendo continues to milk a the same formula in all of their franchises and their inability to innovate in game design is why I think the "Indies" have taken over this year.

For me, DMC not making it somewhere on the top 10 was pretty preposterous. I have no idea how Jeff continues to ensure that at least 1 mediocre title stays on the list every year (see Syndicate, and Dive Kick).

Splinter Cell Blacklist in general. I feel like it wasn't even mentioned at all.

Final Fantasy XIV for music. That game has greaaaaaat music.

It was no where near my favorite game but not even talk about Injustice?

The fact that you say that there hasn't been a good Mario title since Sunshine, completely ignoring the widespread praise for the Galaxy games, the earlier NSMB titles, and both Super Mario 3D Land and World, indicates that you haven't been paying attention to the series in any way since Sunshine.

But on topic, Fire Emblem: Awakening needs more love just in general.

@spykereightsix: Trust me: I completely agree with you. I hate what Nintendo is doing and refuse to buy most of their games, but if Zelda made that list, Mario made that list too. I enjoyed Papers Please, but it is objectively not a better game than Mario.

I saw Ni No Kuni in a lot of goty lists

Actually was surprised Steamworld Dig didn't make it onto a lot of best of lists. And Blood Dragon's Music just out weighted it's nostalgia of that era then the actual game itself. The tutorial section was really current, and the dice was of the time but not that current.

Battlefield was "most graphics."

Bioshock Infinite is an odd creature, it seems to resonate and repell more then any other game.

There should have be a best/worst kickstarter thing.

@hailinel: Completely agree. I was so mad when Patrick let Fire Emblem go so early in that discussion. That game was amazing.

Still listening to day two but Lamar personally wasn't the best character of the year. I actually hated the guy but it is there choice. Personally the best characters of the year are the Lucetes(?) and I love Booker DeWitt. Its one of the few FPS games where the person you are playing is an actual character with emotions, drive, conflict and a personality instead of a blank slate. Only complaint I have with Booker is when he is yelling I just hear Kanji Tatsumi (same voice actor). I had the same problem with TLoU main character (again...same voice actor).

I play, possibly, just as many games as the staff - if that validates my opinion any more (it doesn't) - and I'd say the way Tomb Raider was overlooked and otherwise tossed aside was criminal. That game could very well be my personal game of the year. It is one of those rare releases that is equally important and well made.

Also, Saints Row IV is fantastic because it does fan service right. That is, that it doesn't hinge entirely on obscure references, but rather character developments in an incredibly over the top situation. Also, it made strides toward something that the entire genre desperately needs to, and that is giving purpose to everything in the game. Most of, if not all, the side activities actually meant something in the grand scheme (not just unlockables or percentage completed). There were character motivations in place, narrative explanations, or poignant jokes to be made (it's unfortunate that several of them weren't that fun to play). It was easily one of the best comedies (notice I'm not saying video game comedies) this year, and like in any other medium, the comedy genre is never taken as a serious contender for awards.

Call of Juarez Gunslinger was probably the best original shooter I've played all year. I never expected that I would get anything from that franchise. Shit, I never expected I'd get anything from that developer. But Gunslinger told a tight action romp, framed with a supremely charming narration. I think I still need to wrap up the back end of it, but unless it completely falls apart my opinion stands.

Blood Dragon was also pretty good, but it loses some points for essentially being a re-skin of Far Cry 3 and over stepping the line of 80's action homage to blatant rehashes of their favorite moments. They took the MacFarlane approach to comedy of "I like this thing, so I'm just going to do that exactly." Kind of poetically ironic how they just say "fuck it" at the end and use that song from the ultra-campy Miami Connection. It's not homage when you just rip off the material directly. Still, a fun game, and I'd rather go back and spend time in that than Far Cry 3, but maybe I'm just a sucker for neon lights and dragons.

DmC: Devil May Cry was absolutely brilliant. I kind of thought I wouldn't need to play that game. I didn't think I'd hate, or that I'd love it, I just kind of thought it'd get released and float by and it wouldn't matter. Boy, that game did about just as much for Dante as a character as Tomb Raider did for Lara (almost). It's best observed as tragic. Dante isn't a good guy, he isn't supposed to be. He's misogynistic, he's immature, he's arrogant, he's an all around dick. He develops though, and by the end of it you see this man-child thrown into a universe where he has to own up to his literal inherited responsibilities and be the hero. They gave real purpose to the two dimensional prick that existed in the previous games. They did the impossible and made me like the guy. I really, really hope that Ninja Theory gets to hold on to the series from now on. Also it played, and looked, like a dream. Shit, you know, this might be my favorite game of the year.

Man, I stupidly deleted a bunch of half complete writings I had going earlier this year when I got fed up with some of the shitty practices in this industry and decided I wanted to learn to love video games again. Among the casualties were a list of games that I had been fond of early on, with notes. That'd have been useful right about now.

Metal Gear Rising: Revengeance for Best Music.

The lack of a strong Tomb Raider presence here was interesting.

And absolutely no mention of Heart of the Swarm from Brad.