In regione caecorum rex est luscus, or in English, 'in the land of the blind, the one-eyed man is king.'

It's like platform specific GOTY awards are silly and a relic of the 90's. But they get dem clickz!

Agreed.

In general, Gamespot's award structure was really weird this year. Only their "Games of the Month" were eligible for the "Game of the Year" award, and most of those monthly winners lost their respective platform Game of the Year awards. It seemed, just by process of elimination, pretty obvious fairly early that Mordor was walking away with the cup--but more importantly, it was a backward nonsense kind of logic they used to qualify games for the major award.

@historyinrust: Whaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaat? I didn't know that about the only games having a chance were Monthly winners. That can't be true. That just doesn't make sense.

This. I really enjoyed Shadow of Mordor, but I also feel like I've "seen" it and it isn't something I would come back to over and over again. Which really describes most of the games I've played this year - a lot of "good," no "great."

Really, I'd just leave the GOTY award blank this year. Nothing really deserves it.

It's a really competent game but I don't feel happy with something that is so shamelessly Assassin's Creed & Batman Arkham City.

The territory is a bit too familiar but I did like the Nemesis system.

edit: and I'm sick of every game ripping the combat straight out of Batman

While I haven't played it, the first one was my GOTY when it came out...and I don't doubt this would get me this year also.

Until then, it's Divinity.

My pick would be Divinity (just), but I think Mordor definitely deserves it over Inquisition.

@chilibean_3: If they didn't consider a game to be the best of the month, why would it not make sense that they wouldn't think it was best of the year?

Full disclosure: there's a fair chance I'm misreading this, but here's the line from their Game of the Year homepage:

"In 2014, we gave special awards to the best games released each month of the year, and these Game of the Month winners are eligible for our overall Game of the Year award."

I guess the caveat is that it doesn't read "only," but no where on the page does the editorial team specify otherwise. So in either case the Game of the Year was chosen through a hilariously obtuse process or by means that aren't entirely clear to Gamespot's readers.

Not that it matters. These awards are supposed to be fun above all. But still.

That's not the part that doesn't make sense.

Take the case of OlliOlli, which was their Game of the Month designate for January. OlliOlli did not go on to win the "Vita Game of the Year" award (Velocity 2X did), but yet it was--by their system--the only Vita game eligible for overall Game of the Year. So you have a scenario where a less-esteemed title (OlliOlli) is competing for the top award over a more-esteemed one (Velocity 2X). They've said A is better than B, yet B is in contention for top honors and A is not.

Thinking about it, the system kind of shakes out in the back end. From Gamespot's perspective, if something was truly the best game of the year, it would've been the best game of its respective month. Sure, you're going to get weird situations like the one described above, but the best game still, potentially, wins out.

It's still a poor system. At least, I think so. If there were two games of Game of the Year quality released in the same month, they should both have the right to get due process during deliberations. As readers, the assumption we have to make is that that due process happens more in the front end during their month of release, and not so much on the back end during this awards ceremony. But what if something changes? What if the game breaks or content is added that completely reestablishes a particular game's claim to prestige? You can't just rest on the laurels of saying "Game X was great then, it's great now," because this sort of stuff doesn't exist in a vacuum.

--

Again, though. I'm thinking about this way too much. These are fun awards meant to celebrate the good things that happened this year. Honestly, who cares.

@beachthunder: If you don't enjoy anything about, it really isn't.

This year really feels like a year without a true game of the year. I'd like to say it's Destiny, but it isn't. I'd like to say its GTA V, but it's disqualified.

If I'm honest with myself, inFamous: Second Son was insanely fun, definitely the most concentrated dose of fun I had this year. I beat it three times in a week and change. But saying that was my game of the year seems off.

I can't say it was Mordor, once I got OP and the Nemesis system lost its novelty the game wore off. I left it alone after mind-controlling my first Warchief. The story had a neat intro but lost me shortly after, the gameplay was super fun but wasn't anything original.

I liked the game a whole lot but that being GoTY is pretty telling as to how weak the year has been overall. Nothing that came out this year blew me away apart from the nemesis system in the Mordor game...which doesn't seem like much but I guess it's enough to stand out among the rest of the meh 2014 releases.

It's the first game in a long time I have gotten a Platinum on. Not my game of the year but it's definitely top 3.

@zirilius: Same for me but thats mainly just becouse its very easy to get platinum in this game.

It wasn't just the Nemesis system that pulled that game together. There were little events all over the open world that were great. While wondering around in the second area I came across some orcs that were chilling around a campfire. Then one pipes up "Hey! See them (insert name of dog thing here)? I'm going to go ride me one!" and then proceeds to start a fight with an entire pack of the things that him and his friends could not win. And I just watched the whole thing play out from my perch up high. Until the final orc, who upon realizing that his friends were all dead began to run for his life, until an arrow found its way into his leg pinning him to the spot and he got mauled like the rest.

Also, I got bored and tried fighting as many orcs as I could in a stronghold. While dodging backwards with one hit left on my HP gauge, I came up out of the roll and caught the end of a club with my face from the weakest looking orc I've ever seen. I mean, this guy made Ratbag look like a brute. And then he proceeded to taunt me as I died and get promoted to Captain. It was at this point that I very much cared for the Nemesis system.

Oh it definitely was but I don't do even attempt to do them unless the game is fun.

It's gunna be GB's GOTY too, so get used to seeing it around some more.

@winsord: Each rating is given by a single reviewer so they are pretty much irrelevant to awards voting. They show what one reviewer thought of one game and can't even be used to that single reviewer's opinion of those two games (nevermind the entire staff's opinion) unless the same person reviewed both games.

It's the most boring and safe choice imaginable. I really hope Patrick fought hard for Bayo 2.

Yes, that's effectively what I said. There are only a few people on the GameSpot staff who would've loved, and have even played Divinity, so that's why it beat Mordor in the PC category and not the overall; for Divinity to have won the overall, it would be applying the opinion of a few to their whole staff, which would be akin to forcing the highest reviewed game to win.

Ugh, that is a painful choice! Not a in a good way of "Man! So hard to choose between these two amazing games!" I was not a big fan of Inquisition at all. It may have been the game that made me stop buying Bioware games altogehter, but Id say it was the better game.

Really?? I thought it was more "Here are the Best Games Of The Year" (story, graphics, mechanics, fun) rather than "Games that will shape the future of the industry"

Its weird to me people saying how safe Mordor was, then turning around without irony and saying Divinity is their game of the year. Like, talk about playing it safe. Anything that could have scared away the PC RPG luddites was removed from the Divinity series for that game. Gimme a break guys. Just because less people played your safe game doesn't make it less safe. Its the least risky Divinity since the first game. I have to think people holding the banner for that game have no history with the series or they'd know how scaled back and vanilla it is compared to previous games.

@bargainben: I'm not a fan at all of Divinity: Original Sin and I was a huge fan of the original, Beyond Divinity and 2: Ego Draconis (though 2 was super jank). The complete lack of a story in an rpg is a dealbreaker for me.

The dragon stuff for me just became what I thought that series would keep pressing cus it was so different than what other games were doing. But then there's the other stuff that's just conceptually interesting, like tying the fates of mortal enemies together so they have to cooperate. Original Sin had the skeleton of that stuff, you sort of have your home base of operations that you can expand but only because so many other games do that now. Anything that set it apart just seems to be missing and the result is all this praise, its disconcerting to me.

@bargainben: You could turn into a fucking dragon and fly around and shoot fireballs and BE A MOTHERFUCKING DRAGON!

At least Divinity: Dragon Commander was awesome and let you be a dragon with a jetpack.

If I wanna turn into a fucking dragon I got zero recent games I can play right now. Even Dragon Age, dragon's right in the name the fuck kind of age of Dragons doesnt have dudes who can turn into them