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2014 Game of the Year Media Picks Thread

Timeaisis

Member
Where Smash and Bayo 2? I'm glad MK8 got at least one shoutout.

The media only ever favoring western story driven games is getting a little old for me.


Edit: Damn, no DSII, either.
 

jschreier

Member
Come on Kotaku, do the right thing and give it to Danganronpa!
The concept of "GOTY" has become increasingly stupid and useless, given the breadth of games released every year -- how do you compare Threes to Hearthstone to Dragon Age etc. -- so I think Kotaku's approach will look a bit different this year, but I'll definitely be fighting for Danganronpa in whatever we do.
 

LX_Theo

Banned
The concept of "GOTY" has become increasingly stupid and useless, given the breadth of games released every year -- how do you compare Threes to Hearthstone to Dragon Age etc. -- so I think Kotaku's approach will look a bit different this year, but I'll definitely be fighting for Danganronpa in whatever we do.

I like you. You're a good person. Keep it up. Being a good person, that is.
 
maybe because i am getting older, but i prefer games like 80 days nowadays.

games like deponia, broken sword, longest journey, grim fandango, etc.

probably because for me, shooting and whatnot are getting a little too repetitive.
 
Dragon Age is going to be this year's media pick it seems. I can't argue with that. It's a great game and kinda took me by surprise after Dragon Age 2. It's neck and neck with Sunset for my personal GOTY.

Bomb of the Year

Oh please. There are more deserving games for that award than Sunset even though it didn't do especially well saleswise
 
Can I second this?

The nominations matter more than the winners imo. I feel like GOTY is about recognizing the best games and experiences for new releases that year. There is always going to be differing opinions about the "best" but seeing the nominations gives an instant look into quality titles most of the time.
 
The concept of "GOTY" has become increasingly stupid and useless, given the breadth of games released every year -- how do you compare Threes to Hearthstone to Dragon Age etc. -- so I think Kotaku's approach will look a bit different this year, but I'll definitely be fighting for Danganronpa in whatever we do.

I know Destructoid has changed their GotY process this year

The days when games were tailor made to suit the tastes of a small subset of society are over. You can no longer look at a game and know on sight who it was made for and what hardware it's running on. There are more reasons to play games than ever before, and as such, there are more people playing them than ever as well.

That's part of why we're changing the format of our Game of the Year awards. We'll still have the traditional "Game we loved the most" award to cap things off, but before that, we're planning to roll out four categories that look more closely at the distinctly different reasons we might play a videogame in 2014. Those categories are: Excellence in Mechanics, Excellence in World Design, Excellence in Narrative, and Excellence in Multiplayer.

I think that's kinda cool, especially the multiplayer one because they tend to just get thrown to the side in favor of more story-focused Western AAA single player games. Its easy to get people to vote for a controlled experience, but when you have to interact with other people and actually get good at the game and MAYBE have a good time? Not a consensus winner, that.
 

UrbanRats

Member
So are all of these outlets latching onto Dragon Age: Inquisition because it won GOTY at the Game Awards, or is Bayonetta 2 getting snubbed?

It won't be Gaf's either.
Too few people simply played the game, or were the audience to really appreciate it.

Dragon Age is a much easier game to love, even if you have a more passing interest in videogames, since it's a narrative heavy game with personal expression possibilities.

Bayonetta is an intricate and deep action game.
 

GamerJM

Banned
Not making any judgements on those games or anything, but there's clearly a bias towards that specific brand of single player AAA western story-heavy games, compared to Japanese games, "gamey" games, or multiplayer games, or mid-tier productions or indie games, or practically anything else, lol. The one exception being 2012 where they lacked that big safe choice to latch on to with Mass Effect 3 backlash in full-effect, and UbiSoft games being too "UbiSoft Game" to ever win much consensus admiration.

So they went with...the smaller single player western story-heavy game The Walking Dead, lol. Or Journey, which is a similar kind of experience.

To be fair, I don't really think that bias comes from anything more than just the fact that the those kinds of games just happen to appeal to a lot of people working in games media. They care a lot about games as an interactive entertainment medium and aren't always the type to fall head-over-heels for more obscure titles (and if any of them do they're a minority simply because those obscure titles will always only ever appeal to a niche of people).

The concept of "GOTY" has become increasingly stupid and useless, given the breadth of games released every year -- how do you compare Threes to Hearthstone to Dragon Age etc. -- so I think Kotaku's approach will look a bit different this year, but I'll definitely be fighting for Danganronpa in whatever we do.

To be fair, you could say the same thing about any other medium and they still do the same things. It's hard to compare blockbusters to small budget indie films but we still have the Oscars. It's hard to compare an independently produced experimental folk rock album with extremely polished record label pop rap album, but we still have Pitchfork's top 50 albums of the year. "______ of the Year," awards are inevitable no matter how silly they might be, and to be honest I still enjoy listing my arbitrarily favorite things from any given year.
 

Jachaos

Member
Smash should top but I don't think it will because too similar to past iterations.

It's a shame. And while it's not the end-all be-all, I thought going by the Metacritic scores for this year

http://www.metacritic.com/browse/games/score/metascore/year/all?sort=desc

And ignoring all those with a user score not in the green, that we'd see a push for Smash, Bayonetta 2 and Dark Souls II by the press who reviewed these games so well.

Edit : Shovel Knight too. The rest are mostly ports - TLoU, GTA V, Diablo III, Metro, Rayman Legends...
 

Surface of Me

I'm not an NPC. And neither are we.
I know Destructoid has changed their GotY process this year



I think that's kinda cool, especially the multiplayer one because they tend to just get thrown to the side in favor of more story-focused Western AAA single player games. Its easy to get people to vote for a controlled experience, but when you have to interact with other people and actually get good at the game and MAYBE have a good time? Not a consensus winner, that.

I like those categories.
 
Not making any judgements on those games or anything, but there's clearly a bias towards that specific brand of single player AAA western story-heavy games, compared to Japanese games, "gamey" games, or multiplayer games, or mid-tier productions or indie games, or practically anything else, lol. The one exception being 2012 where they lacked that big safe choice to latch on to with Mass Effect 3 backlash in full-effect, and UbiSoft games being too "UbiSoft Game" to ever win much consensus admiration.

So they went with...the smaller single player western story-heavy game The Walking Dead, lol. Or Journey, which is a similar kind of experience.

I was looking at the AIAS GotY winners over the years and noticed that even though they've been around since 98, they've only given one Japanese game their GotY (OoT). But after reading some articles on that show, it comes across as a big scam anyway.

The Game Critics Award's have also been around since 98 and they've never given a Japanese game their Game of E3. And that's a group made up of prominent journalists in the industry.
 

Jachaos

Member
I was looking at the AIAS GotY winners over the years and noticed that even though they've been around since 98, they've only given one Japanese game their GotY (OoT). But after reading some articles on that show, it comes across as a big scam anyway.

The Game Critics Award's have also been around since 98 and they've never given a Japanese game their Game of E3. And that's a group made up of prominent journalists in the industry.

Considering the many potential choices over that time (Mario Galaxy 1 and 2, Zelda Majora's Mask, Windwaker, Twilight Princess and Skyward's Sword, Smash Melee, Okami, Wii Sports, Resident Evil 4, the many FF games, Shadow of the Colossus, etc.) it's laughable really. Again, these same critics are also the ones that gave an average of 97 to both Mario Galaxy games and 98 to Soul Calibur.
 
I've only played 2 out of the winners announced so far: MK8 and Transistor and I've barely touched the second. While they are both great, the most fun I've had so this year with any one game is Far Cry 4, which probably won't win too many awards as I expect it is a little too similar to FC3 (which I never played).
 

Miletius

Member
Hopeful to see more Hearthstone on the list. I think it's always a tough sell for a F2P game on PC/iPad, Android to win GoTY, but it's certainly deserving.
 
the nature of "media picks" (the votes of multiple people from a site being combined into a single first place vote, almost like the Electoral College in a sense) means that unless there's a split right down the middle between two games, there will always be a runaway winner

of course, some years are more blatant than others
 

Arion

Member
I wonder if Bayo 2 will even win gaf goty. A lot of people seems to love it but given the sales number I wonder if many people have even played it here.
 
DA:I definitely deserves the praise it is getting. Such a fantastic, well-made and deep game.

Kinda agree, and disagreee at the same time.

It is good, high production values, good characters, story and so on. The MMO feeling is just a bit too strong in it. There are way too many "10 of these, 15 of those!" assignments. You don't have to do them, but the game just won't shut up about them.
 

SmokyDave

Member
I'd like to see FRAMED and Monument Valley given some love ideally.

Dragon Age has a firm seat in my 'games to play in the break after xmas' list.
 

antitrop

Member
I can't possibly understand choosing Shadow of Mordor over Bayonetta 2.

One is a shallow, popcorn-affair that's fun for a few hours, and the other is one of the best action games ever made.

Shadow of Mordor must be the most overrated game in years. It's a neat rental to watch a few Orc heads fly off, but there's no depth.
 

Guevara

Member
Not that it matters, but Dark Souls 2 was actually better reviewed than DS1. I'd love to see that game win a few.
 
I can't possibly understand choosing Shadow of Mordor over Bayonetta 2.

One is a shallow, popcorn-affair that's fun for a few hours, and the other is one of the best action games ever made.

Shadow of Mordor must be the most overrated game in years. It's a neat rental to watch a few Orc heads fly off, but there's no depth.

That immediately reminds me of that video review of B2 that's gone around where they criticize its combat as being repetitive while also saying that it doesn't have the "calculated, methodical combat that we applauded in the likes of Shadow of Mordor".
 

Lunar15

Member
I can't possibly understand choosing Shadow of Mordor over Bayonetta 2.

One is a shallow, popcorn-affair that's fun for a few hours, and the other is one of the best action games ever made.

Shadow of Mordor must be the most overrated game in years. It's a neat rental to watch a few Orc heads fly off, but there's no depth.

But it's got that nice big world. Can't have a linear game be in our GOTY, eh?

I figured Dragon Age would clean up, given that it's really the only western game of it's size in terms of scope and story. I haven't played it myself, and from what I've heard it's very deserving, however it is somewhat uncomfortable to realize that I could guess it would win a lot of GOTY's just due to the fact that we haven't really had many WRPG's this generation.

Although, I'd be hard pressed to say that I don't have that bias myself. I tend to favor the big sprawling epics over linear games myself in hindsight, even if I really loved the linear games. It's a weird, weird thing.

DKC:TF absolutely getting robbed though, but it's to be expected given the reviews.
 
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