@AssInAss said:
@Oldirtybearon said:
@AssInAss said:
@Oldirtybearon said:
if Journey is taking GOTY prizes, this was a worse year for games than I thought.
The trolling is strong in this one. Great year for the smaller games, while the risk-averse AAA games saw their downfall.
Talk of GOTY stuff brings out the worst competitive side of gamers.
Yes, I'm totally trolling because I think Journey was an overrated, mediocre platformer with a try-hard attitude and a butterfinger's grasp of subtle symbolism.
You're usually smarter than this.
When you give no context and leave a drive-by post like that, sounds like a tryhard post. At least you gave reasons this time around.
How was this a worse year for games? Plenty of great original games of all varieties, no clear standout AAA winner since demeaning returns on franchises so it was all down to personal preference. I find that a better year than most.
It wasn't a post without context. If a game like Journey, which is mediocre (not bad), can win a large site's GOTY award that means the rest of the industry was caught sleeping. Whether that's the AAA development houses or the people still in the downloadable space, nobody put a game out that was head and shoulders above the benchmark. There was no clear-cut game you could point to this year and say "That was ambitious. That did everything it set out to to do. That deserves a Game of the Year nod."
Let's run down even some of what I would've considered GOTY contenders but, ultimately, failed in their endeavours.
Hotline Miami - despite an alluring gameplay loop that keeps your higher brain functions sedated with thumping rhythms and a visual style that pops with blood and colour in equal measure, there's a laundry list of game-breaking bugs and technical hurdles that keeps it from taking a clear stand over any other game. Oh, and there's a well told, subtle narrative that is told mostly through gameplay. If this game wasn't so broken, I'd probably say it's GOTY hands down.
Spec Ops: The Line - this game is subversive and its narrative is a critical deconstruction of everything a military shooter is. That's cool as hell. They also accomplish most of what they set out to do, but the problem with Spec Ops is the act of actually playing it. While the mechanics are fine, there's nothing in the gameplay that propels you along, unless you just want to see the next step in the story. If that's the case, dying repeatedly and dealing with the subpar level design can leave you feeling frustrated and, ultimately, like the game wasn't worth your time or money.
Halo 4 - this game should've been so much more than just another Halo. Halo 3 left Master Chief and Cortana in unknown territory with a million different directions that the story (and gameplay) could've evolved to. Instead, 343 Industries spends a ten hour game working their way back to square one. Oh, and did I mention that the enemy AI was worse than it has been since the first Halo game? Playing on Heroic or Legendary isn't a brain-crippling battle of wits with the AI in 4, it's downright cheap.
Diablo 3 - It was the most frightening case of an abusive relationship between developer and player I've ever seen. In my decades of gaming, I have honestly never seen a developer so driven to completely destroy any semblance of player agency or freedom of choice in their game. It's gross and depressing when you consider that Blizzard looked at everything that made Diablo 2 special and said "Let's do the opposite of that."
Dust: An Elysian Tail - terrible voice work hampered by laughably bad art and gameplay that looks 60fps but feels sub-twenty. The whole "It was made by one guy!" argument doesn't give you any credibility when you consider the art is terrible, the gameplay feels like ass, and the production quality looks worse than a 5th grader's first attempt at Macromedia Flash.
The Walking Dead - While I personally loved this game and felt the emotional kick in the stones that was the season finale, I can't in good conscience say that The Walking Dead deserves a GOTY nod. Not because "it's not a gaem," but because this game was hindered by the overwhelming reach of its technical issues and game-breaking bugs. Lose your save lately? Or are you playing it on consoles? Hope you like 5fps frame rates in that case. The game struggled to even perform on an idle screen. And that's a damn shame.
Mass Effect 3 - Dude, if I even have to explain this...
There. That's seven games that were promising pre-release, and wound up being huge disappointments or outright failures. The list doesn't end with these games, though. I could go on to list games like Max Payne 3 and Syndicate. But that's not the point.
The point is, and this is what's so depressing about this situation, is that there was an incredible amount of potential for a wide variety of games to excel. Hell, Borderlands 2 should've been in the top 5 for GOTY (at least by my pre-release estimation), but it wound up being a good-but-not-great looter-shooter with no real replay value. It's been a disappointing year all things considered, and if Journey can clean up in the awards department, that only serves to underscore how badly everyone else dropped the ball.
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