Neogaf, Your Excellency has been vindicated.
When people in this thread were voting dogshit and catshit games above Portal 2, I was the one who called them out on it. What did I get in return? Banned.
Well understand this: Neogaf stands with me. Neogaf was behind me all the way. Sure, there were some people who voted Skyrim out of duty, ignoring the fact that it was a fucking mess on the PS3 (and I am now unable to play it any longer as it's essentially in an unplayable state and I'm not going to restart my campaign on the PC now and re-do everything).
Sure, there were some people who voted for Dark Souls, because of their belief that it constituted 'hardcore gaming', yet ignoring the fact that it was, at best, equal to its predecessor and at worst, worse, and certainly not deserving of a GOTY award.
Sure, there were some people who voted Zelda, because the idea of voting a non-Nintendo game was outrageous to them, or they simply hadn't played Portal 2 because they'd rather play Mario Kart 72 (which - hey - is exactly the same as every other Mario Kart!).
Ultimately, the cream rose to the top. Portal 2 is
so monumentally towering in it's gameplay that it shows up the vast limitations and issues with old classics like Ico.. Portal 2 is now
widely recognised as one of the great works of mankind, standing up alongside Botta's Santa Maria degli Angeli on Monte Tamaro, Andrei Rublev, and Chopin's Nocturnes. So EXCUSE ME for calling people out when they state that LA Noire is a better game than Portal 2.
LA fucking Noire.
In an age where offline multiplayer experiences are too 'difficult to make', Portal 2 took it on and mastered it. In an age where gaming storylines are incomprehensible dogshit (Uncharted 3 had a brilliant Nate-Sully character storyline but the adventure plot was rubbish, the less said about Skyrim the better, and only Deus Ex showed professionalism and skill), Portal 2 knocked it out of the park.
I'd like to thank Neogaf for redeeming themselves by voting Portal 2. I consider us the premier gaming tastemakers and so I love the fact that people here recognise that Portal 2 is the direction that gaming is headed in the future: gameplay as king, a story which adds to immersion and enjoyment - rather than merely filling in the set-pieces - with great offline multiplayer, playable with girlfriends+kids+parents, funny, not too easy, not stupidly hard, easy to learn, something that real life can't compete against, polished so hard I can see my face in it, made with love, with immense skill, and with great dynamic music and tested to really ensure everyone who played it had a uniformly fantastic experience.
And understand this: I will
never apologise for calling people out for voting LA Noire above Portal 2. I was banned for it once before and I'm not ashamed of standing up for what I believe in.