Let's pick-apart people's GOTYs :)

[trjp]

I'm overwhelmed by people telling me their GOTYs - and a certain titles keep cropping-up which, whilst I can see why people like them, I think require a bit of night-blindness to really love.

My starters for 10 - you can argue them down, add your own or just blow your lips whilst rubbing your finger against them if you like :)

Hotline Miami
A weak start this one, perhaps, because my only real criticism of it is that it's technically shoddy in a way few PC games are these days. Since launch I've yet to manage to play it for more than 15 mins before it crashes - I've even uninstalled it and added it to the 'might work on the next machine I buy' pile!! It appears to be lovely, outside of that slight issue tho :)

FTL
Oh how I love the concept - love the surface simplicity but hidden complexity too - but it's a mean-spiritted sonofabitch and after a while you start to think the developers were more interested in seeing how much frustration they could pour onto their players, instead of how much entertainment...

Legend of Grimrock
See FTL but without the hidden complexity ;)

GO!

[kstress71]

Well, I'm not personally a fan of seeing Spec Ops: The Line on so many top games of the year lists. Yes, I know that it was trying to do some very dramatic things in the context of the game, and with speaking directly to the gamer about his need for artificial heroism, and blah-di-blah-di-blah. I can appreciate those things for what they are, but as a GAME, it sucks. IMHO, a game should be enjoyable to experience, on some level, first and foremost. That's not to say that all games are fun. Something nerve-wracking like Amnesia: The Dark Descent is not necessarily fun, but it is enjoyable in the focused experience it provides. It's mechanics are solid, whereas with Spec Ops: The Line, the underlying mechanics of gameplay were not enjoyable. It was just a chore to trudge through.

Maybe it's great as an "interactive experience", I don't know. But as a "game", I found it lacking.

[internetonsetadd]

Sleeping Dogs. It only made the runners-up list, but a lot of people seem to love it. I didn't. Hong Kong was nicely realized, the melee combat was pretty good, and what I played of the story was fairly competent, but I didn't find it all that great as an open-world experience.

All too often it felt like a poorly strung-together series of discreet minigames with uninspired QTE mechanics. The default controls for hijacking cars were abysmal, and even rebound it was still dull as mud. It was an open-world game without much freedom or incentive, with clunky character movement and game flow (I missed you, JC2), and no real reason to do anything except to advance the story or get on with the next minigame/QTE.

JC2 was a never-ending playground. Whether you successfully wiped out an enemy installation or completely failed and had to hightail it out of there, you always landed, literally, right on something else to do. So many times in Sleeping Dogs I'd complete a mission and get shunted back to my apartment, or worse, I'd wind up at some warehouse out in the middle of nowhere with no vehicles around and nothing happening anywhere near me. It was too much picking crap off a map and not enough organic discovery. And being penalized for scraping guard rails does not make car chases more fun.

Overall, it just wasn't the game I thought it would be. With the JC2 tie-in stuff, I assumed it would be a faster-paced game with a fluid mix of combat and car feats. Instead it was arcade combat, and then some driving, and then, and then, and then, with QTEs in place of mechanics that could have integrated everything into a more singular--and fun--experience.

[elfbarf]

I enjoyed Gravity Bone, though I found Thirty Flights of Loving to be extremely underwhelming. I'll admit that it was somewhat entertaining, though I don't understand what the big deal is about it. Yes, it's thought provoking, but it'd be hard to not be in a "game" with so many jump cuts. Without the jump cuts, the "game's" story probably wouldn't have been considered as being anything special. It seems as if the only reason people like it is because it makes them feel smart when they think they've figured it out. I can think of countless games that do that just as well as TFOL while actually being a game. It was no more of a "game" than Dear Esther, even though it had a few minor interactions. Your control (of movement at least) was taken away several times during the "game", and the path was extremely linear with little to look at in most places.

edit: I also don't understand why nearly everyone who wrote about it acted as if wanting to replay it was a big deal. Of course you'd want to replay it; some of the most important parts of the "game's" story are only shown for a second or two. It's impossible to fully understand everything in a single playthrough, but that's not because it's complex.

[Mohorovicic]

Let's drop it down according to RPS's own Calendar and the recent follow-up.

FTL: Probably the most fun you can have watching virtual dice rolls. But it's still just virtual goddamn dice rolls and not much else.
Borlderlands 2: Like BL with worse everything.
The Walking Dead: It's a TV show where you have to click some to get to the next scene.
Guild Wars 2: Because the one thing MMOs really needed was a lot of streamlining, right?
Legend of Grimrock: Dungeon Master that traded all the intellect for looks.
Dark Souls: Great game completely ruined by FROM's ineptitude and laziness at porting it.
Dear Esther: Even less of a videogame than TWD. Seriously, what the fuck people, why not put Dora Explores The Amazon Forest on the list as well at this point? It would make as much sense. Either way, Dear Esther is "gaming" equivalent of Catcher in the Rye.
Mark of the Ninja: A stealth game that will actively withhold stealth options from players until they finish the level. Hahahaha, no.
Torchlight 2: I want to find every person who complained about Diablo 3 being "too cartoony" and then played TL2 and punch them in the face, punch them all in the face. Seriously this shit will give you diabetes. Get yourself tested if you played it.
Mass Effect 3: The final episode in Talking Heads: We Have All This 3D Space But All We Can Do Is Shot And Opposite Shot: The Game: The Movie. lolending.
Tribes: Ascend: Let's take a classic game and completely fuck up everything about it in the name of "bringing it to the wider audience" while at the same time shouting ESPORT ESPORT ESPORT.
Planetside 2: And you thought Tribes: Ascend was bad! At least I can close T:A without it crashing. Jesus fuck, look at the level we're at when I have to bring "Does not crash on exit" as a positive example.
Day Z: You know who likes fast zombies? Yeah. You know who likes fast zombies that glitch and lag like a motherfucker? Yeah.
Dishonored: Shallow.
Far Cry 3: Far Cry 2.3. So just play Far Cry 2 instead.
Spec Ops: The Line: A mediocre TPS that apparently is some kind of commentary on shooters except themes in it are completely inapplicable to almost all other shooters.
Syndicate: Everyone said it's going to be modern dumbed down shit. And then it was.
Diablo 3: I once saw an image on the Internet that compared the three Diablo games to first three Alien movies. I marvelled at the brilliance of it.
Chivalry: if it will ever actually start looking like a commercial product let me know.
Sleeping Dogs: Can we mod guns out of this game?
Dora The Explorer: A Hate Story: Another year, another shitty visual novel from whatsherface. The worst one yet since almost nothing in it down to basic premise makes any goddamn sense. Also, fuck feminists.
Black Mesa: Visually impressive, technically broken, lacks 1/4 of itself.

[Rauten]

Hotline Miami
A weak start this one, perhaps, because my only real criticism of it is that it's technically shoddy in a way few PC games are these days. Since launch I've yet to manage to play it for more than 15 mins before it crashes - I've even uninstalled it and added it to the 'might work on the next machine I buy' pile!! It appears to be lovely, outside of that slight issue tho :)

When was the last time you tried to run it? They've released 2 updates in the past few weeks, last one in December 20 I believe, that have solved all my issues (for now at least). Just saying, it might be worth reinstalling and giving it a go.

[internetonsetadd]

Mohorovicic and this thread:

[Malawi Frontier Guard]

Videogames suck, guys.

[fiddlesticks]

Videogames suck, guys.

It all went downhill after Pacman.

[trjp]

Been sorting through the games I got this year and I can add...

Sine Mora
Looks fantastic and largely plays fantastic but who the FUCK put the time limit stuff in there? Seriously, there's barely 8 pixels of my monitor NOT covering in bullets and you're adding a time limit to make it harder - fuck off....

[Drake Sigar]

PHEAR ME, FOR I AM WIZARDRY 2.0!

No you're not.

[Ravelle]

Videogames suck, guys.

*microphone drop*

Also opinions! I see no reason to pick apart things that other people like, let them like what they like and I'll do the same.

[Heliocentric]

Mohorovicic, but which was YOUR favourite?

[Nalano]

Jeez, Mohorovic. Take a fucking Ambien.

[jnx]

Far Cry 3: Far Cry 2.3. So just play Far Cry 2 instead.

I realize that your post was probably ment to be humorously exaggarated, but still: what?

[Mohorovicic]

I kind of expanded on it... somewhere. Far Cry 3 is basically Far Cry 2 plus the mechanics tweaks minus the cool stuff like uncommon and gritty setting, no-nonsense story, and malaria. Oh and with whole lot more handholding.

Jeez, Mohorovic. Take a fucking Ambien.

I am but following the spirit of the thread.

[arathain]

I'm just amazed at the amount of money spent on games he hated. Might be time for a new hobby- that's a lot of hours and a lot of currency.

[Spider Jerusalem]

i had quite a few problems with far cry 3, the biggest being that the game just wasn't very, um, fun. i didn't stick it out until the hud patches/mods came along that disabled all the hand holding, but the really shitty writing (perhaps made even shittier by all the /purpose/ behind it) became unbearable after a few hours with the GO HERE NOW popups that the hud liked to spit at me every minute or so.

i did like sniping birds, though.

[Nalano]

I'm just amazed at the amount of money spent on games he hated. Might be time for a new hobby- that's a lot of hours and a lot of currency.

He's like the Jesus of gaming. He suffers for all of us.

[karthink]

Dishonored and XCOM are the best games I've played this year. I love them both.

So let me pick them apart.

Dishonored: Flawed mechanics because the game incentivizes low-chaos, non-lethal play after giving you weird and wonderful tools of destruction. Flawed narrative because the game only resolves what became a sub-plot at the end, rendering the Outsider a pointless plot device and a Deus Ex Machina. Opaque and inconsistent stealth mechanics. You can never tell if a given combination of shadow + distance to an enemy is enough to obscure you (No one ever looks up?). Lastly, while fascinating, melancholy and affecting, the worldbuilding was too much telling, not enough showing.

XCOM: (As a remake of X-COM:) Every game plays the same now. Strategy, base layer gutted. Became a boardgame in all but visuals. Weird and frustrating limitations on skyrangers. (As its own game:) Irritating, gamey abduction mechanic. Awful MMO style 'pull' based encounters. Tech tree is a tech chain, no meaningful choices. End game is a joke (on classic, at least). The cover mechanic is non-intuitive, and the visuals mislead you into making poor choices based on line-of-sight.