Game Awards

king3pj said:

http://www.ign.com/lists/best-of-games-platform

IGN published their GOTY awards. I gotta say, I don't understand their logic. They gave their overall GOTY award to Dragon Age: Inquisition. They then went on to give their best PS4 game award to Shadow of Mordor and their best Xbox One game award to Sunset Overdrive. Dragon Age also lost IGN's Game of the Month award to Smash Bros. in the month they were released. In addition to all that, this year IGN gave 20 games higher review scores than the 8.8 they gave Dragon Age.

Basically Dragon Age isn't the best game on either console and it wasn't even the best game to come out in November yet it's still the overall game of the year.

Don't get me wrong, by all accounts every game I just mentioned is pretty great. I'm about 45 hours into Dragon Age now and if I was at this point when I did my game awards it would have been my personal GOTY. I just can't help but laugh at the paradox IGN is trying to create with their awards this year.

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The link didn't work for me at all, in Chrome or Firefox. The images on that page simply wouldn't load for some reason so I can't see the results.
As far as the discrepancies between review scores and GOTY designations, I believe reviews are normally the opinion of one reviewer/editor; whereas, GOTYs are based on a consensus of multiple reviewers/editors/writers at the major gaming pubs. But yeah, the platform specific awards given to multiplatform titles make no sense at all. They need to scrap that and have an award for best multiplatform title and then platform-specific awards would be for exclusives--unless a multiplatform game was substantially enhanced for a specific platform. In the end, I think it's about giving the major developer$ more opportunitie$ to be given award$ for their multiplatform title$.

Regarding, platform-specific awards for Vita games, I think that category should be changed to Best Game Ported to Vita. Outside of some (mostly obscure) JRPGs, I'm not aware of too many games released in the past year that were made exclusively for Vita. Most are PC/mobile ports or cross-platform with PS3/PS4. Oh wait, nevermind, I just remembered Playstation Pets came out last year.

yourbeliefs said:

Well, since video game awards are becoming more prevalent I figured we could post news about regular game awards here as well.

The BAFTA awards were last night (British Academy of Film and Television Arts.) In a VERY surprising move, Destiny was named Game of the Year. For reference, it beat out Monument Valley, Mario Kart 8, Shadow of Mordor, Dragon Age: Inquisition, and Alien: Isolation. Apparently a coherent story is not a requirement for GOTY. Full list of nominees and winners below

http://awards.bafta.org/award/2015/games

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I don't think a good story is necessarily a requirement for GOTY. If it was Mario Kart and Monument Valley wouldn't have been nominated either. I liked Destiny quite a bit. It had a lot of problems but it also did a lot of things right.

That being said, it didn't make my personal top 5 that I posted here. It would have been even farther out on my list now that I have played Dragon Age: Inquisition and a good chunk of Far Cry 4.

yourbeliefs said:

It's odd since the only lists I've seen Destiny on is "Most Disappointing Games" lists. Seriously, it made it to #1 here, here, and here (and #2 here behind my winner of WWE2K15.) that said, the game isn't BAD, but I fail to see what makes a game like Destiny better than Shadow of Mordor. I mean they're both 0s when it comes to character and story but at least if nothing else you can play SoM alone. And really, better than Inquisition? It just seems so confusing to me. I don't want to get into Fanboyism with this discussion, but it's just a real head scratcher.

Here's an okay compilation of GOTY winners if anyone is curious.

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I totally agree. Even as someone who enjoyed my time with Destiny it probably would have been no higher than 7 or 8 on my list for last year. I never even leveled up high enough to play the raids even though I played every mission in the game (some a few times) and quite a bit of PvP. The raids were supposedly the best part of the game but they didn't do a good job of giving people a taste of that before they put 40+ hours in.

I understand that they wanted some good end game content to keep high level players coming back but there should have been some level 20 raids to keep people on board too.

yourbeliefs said:

Well, since video game awards are becoming more prevalent I figured we could post news about regular game awards here as well.

The BAFTA awards were last night (British Academy of Film and Television Arts.) In a VERY surprising move, Destiny was named Game of the Year. For reference, it beat out Monument Valley, Mario Kart 8, Shadow of Mordor, Dragon Age: Inquisition, and Alien: Isolation. Apparently a coherent story is not a requirement for GOTY. Full list of nominees and winners below

http://awards.bafta.org/award/2015/games

Click to expand...

That's surprising. I've always respected BAFTA's taste in video games in their GOTY selections, which include many of my all-time favorites (Mass Effect 2, Bioshock, Batman Arkham Asylum, and Dishonored). Destiny truly is a headscratcher, from what I know about it. In a PS-centric forum I visit, there was a thread for the most disappointing PS4 games to date and Destiny elicited the most heated rants -- even more than Thief. lol

yourbeliefs said:

Now with 2015 over, it's time to reflect.

Best Games I Played


Tales from the Borderlands: When this game was announced I actually thought, “Well, I may be skipping the next TT game.” I didn’t really like Borderlands and never got into the game, and given that it’s open world looting FPS, I didn’t think it would have any sort of story that you could base a TT game on. At least Wolf was based off a comic along with The Walking Dead, so it’s easy to plug characters into its rich lore. Well Tell Tale blew me away with what is their best work since TWD Season 1, and I hope they continue to do more comedy games as opposed to focusing only on Dramas. It may be a while until this happens since their future is already crowded with sequels and 2 new series (at least) scheduled for 2016. If you haven’t played this, make it a point to.

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To me, Tales from the Borderlands was no different story-wise from any of the other Borderlands installments once you take away the FPS, looting, and co-op elements. Borderlands (even the first one) is as rich of a universe as many RPGs, filled with interesting characters, side missions, environments, backstories, and dark humor. But if you primarily play co-op and don't pay attention to the story elements being related over intercoms, recording devices, objects and text in the environment, you can totally miss it. Even playing solo it's easy to miss because communications are often being related in the heat of battle and drowned out by gunfire and other sound effects. Yes, the ending to the first game's main story arc was forgettable and unsatisfiying and not completed until the DLC (similar to Fallout 3). And yes, like most RPGs, there's a repetitiveness factor in the missions. But if just the story elements of any of the Borderlands games and DLCs were condensed into an interactive quick-time cinematic, you'd have a game several hours long that's just as developed, interesting, witty, and fun.

I was trying to wait until I finished Life is Strange to put my list together but I have seen enough to know it belongs even though I'm only part way through the 4th episode. Since yourbeliefs got the ball rolling I will put my list out even if the order would have slightly changed after finishing the game.

1. Batman: Arkham Knight - I'm a big fan of the Arkham series and this is the best game in that series. Great voice acting, great combat, great open world, interesting story, and I even enjoyed the controversial Batmobile for the most part. Yes, the PC port was a major bummer that made me play the game about 3 months after release even though I had it pre-ordered and was super hyped to play the game on day one. That doesn't change the fact that it's a great game though. This is just one of those rare cases where you are better off playing on a console if you have the option.

2. Rocket League - This is a game I shouldn't like. I haven't been into sports games outside of MLB The Show since I was playing local multiplayer with my roommates in college. I've never liked soccer and I'm not a big fan of driving games. Somehow the combination of competitive multiplayer and playing soccer with rocket powered cars is perfect though. Even though it is a ridiculous concept it's actually more pure of a sport simulation in some ways than traditional sports games like Madden. This is a game where each player on the field is controlled by a real person and real teamwork is how you win. It's my second most played game on Steam behind only Civ V and that isn't counting the 30+ hours I put into the PS4 version.

3. Fallout 4 - Yes, this is a Bethesda open world game. Anyone who has played any other Bethesda open world game knows the jank that is inherent to those games. It's also another Fallout game. It's an iteration on the old formula not a revolutionary new game. The graphics are better, we finally have a voiced protagonist, and the shooting is greatly improved but it's still a Fallout game. You either like those or you don't. I happen to be someone who loves that formula so this is easily one of my favorite games of the year.

4. Tales From the Borderlands - This is my favorite Tell Tale game, period. Yes, The Walking Dead had a bigger impact on the gaming world and I loved that game but this one is the most fun to play. I think it's hilarious at times and like yourbeliefs said I hope Tell Tale explores comedy more often instead of the dark story lines they have been leaning towards since TWD. Genuine comedy in video games is rare and they have proven that they can do it well.

5. Destiny: The Taken King - I'm well aware that Destiny came out in 2014 but I put 165 hours into it this year. I played the main story in 2014 on PS4 but it wasn't until the Taken King Legendary Edition came out this Summer that I really got wrapped up in Destiny's world. This is the package that came with the main game and all expansions released up to Taken King. I found myself in a raid group and playing things like the weekly nightfall missions and checking in with Xur every Friday to continue my quest for exotic loot drops. I also put a ton of hours into the competitive multiplayer, especially during Iron Banner events.

No game stole as much of my time in 2015 as Destiny. I'm disappointed to see that they are canceling all future expansions to focus on social events and Destiny 2. At the same time, maybe it's a blessing because I seem to have finally gotten over my need to keep coming back to it.

6. Life is Strange - This one is tough. I really like this game and in one version of this list I had it at #4. I dropped it down to 6 mostly because I am still not done with it and I want to see if the story wraps up in a meaningful way before I give it too much praise. I do really like it though and I plan to finish it over the next couple nights.

7. Rebel Galaxy - This is another game that could have moved up my list if I had more time into it. Rebel Galaxy may as well be called Firefly. You are a space smuggler/mercenary. You are free to take whatever contracts you want. You can choose to be a good guy and only take them from the militia or you can go with the best offers regardless of whether they come from the militia or one of several space gangs. There is also a main story line to follow.

The space combat is kind of like Assassin's Creed Black Flag because your most efficient weapon against big ships are your broadside cannons. You can spec your ship out however you want and you can use the money you earn to buy different types of ships. My current build is a small ship built for speed and long range combat but there are options for huge, close combat ships as well. It feels awesome when you warp into hyperspace and their weird space trucking music comes on while you explore the galaxy. I'll be putting a lot more time into this one.

8. Saint's Row: Gat Out of Hell - This one is on here to recognize Saint's Row IV as much as anything else. I didn't play Saint's Row IV in it's year of release so it missed my GOTY honors even though it definitely would have made the list. Gat Out of Hell came out in January 2015 and it continues the awesome gameplay and humor of the last couple Saint's Row Games. If you haven't played them yet I highly recomend picking up the Saint's Row IV/Gat Out of Hell bundle for your Xbox One/PS4. It won't look as good as your other next gen games but it is a blast to play.

9. Her Story - This is a FMV game where you are examining the video log of testimony of a single suspect in an old murder case. You are not trying to solve the case and it's unclear why you are even looking into it. The testimony has been transcribed so you can search hundreds of video clips by keyword. That is the entire game. You just watch videos and then come up with new words to search based on clues you see in these videos. There is no official ending. You just watch clips in any order you come across them until you think you have seen enough to know what happened. This is not a great game but it is an interesting experience.

10. Grow Home - Not to be confused with Gone Home, Grow Home is more like a N64 style 3D platformer. It's basically Jack and the Beanstalk if Jack was a Robot and the the giant's house was your spaceship. The whole point of the game is to grow your giant beanstalk from the ground all the way into space so you can get back in your ship and go home. Along the way you will find Avatar style floating mountains to explore and the sense of scale is pretty awesome. You really feel like you are miles into the air and the draw distance extends all the way down to where you started. You have the freedom to shape your plant any way you want and you can see the weird choices you made a long time ago even when you are very high up. You could beat the game in about 2 hours if you go straight for the ship but I spent about 6 exploring the world and looking for collectibles as I climbed.

For a variety of reasons, my gaming habits have been changing over the past couple of years. As much as I'd love (and prefer) to play a 100-hour-plus RPG like Dragon Age: Inquisition or Fallout 4, or an 15-20-hour action game like Arkham Knight, I simply don't have the time or finger/thumb joint cartilage for it anymore. As a result, I've been favoring simpler digital-only/indie games, puzzle games, touchscreen mobile games, and point-and-click adventure games (though every so often the urge to "blow sh*t up" gets the better of me, so I indulge in a free PS Plus or flash sale shooter-type game).

Now that I've bored everyone to death with my prologue, here is my list of most memorable games I played in 2015:

1. Valiant Hearts - This one just really stayed with me. In spite of some clunky gameplay mechanics, I was completely engrossed in both the stories of the characters and the "codex" entries for each of the collectibles I found. I'd love to see more documentary-style games like this and "Never Alone," which I also enjoyed playing this past year, but can't fully recommend due to some rather frustrating controls.

2. Tales from the Borderlands - It may be surprising that given my love of all things Borderlands, this isn't at the top of my list. But truth be told, I found this game rather frustrating and depressing, as the entire time, all it made me want to do was play a regular Borderlands game, including the Pre-Sequel, which I haven't played yet. Sadly, I really shouldn't ever play a highly addictive 40+ hour shooter again if I want to brush my own teeth and tie my own shoes 20 years from now. I am however extremely grateful that Telltale and 2K have seen fit to put the world of Pandora in this old man-friendly style of game.

3. Broken Age - I didn't play Act 1 until this year, and that part alone is worth overlooking the shoddy Act 2 (both were part of the free PS Plus version I played on PS4). If Act 2 had lived up to Act 1, then this would be #1 for me this year.

4. Fallout Shelter - What do you know? I actually got to play a game the week it was released! (for my system) Okay so it was free. But this game easily tops my mobile experiences for 2015 in spite of the fact I probably put more time into Run Sackboy Run! However, I very well could be on my 20th vault with over 300 dwellers and 50 levels had it not been for the fact that my entry-level tablet crashed at around 80 dwellers and 6-7 levels. I sadly had to give up after my second vault started crashing.

5. [Pending] Game of Thrones (Telltale) - I'm only toward the end of episode 2, but so far this game may easily top my list of favorite Telltale games. I finally finished reading the first five books of the Song of Fire and Ice series in early December and I still can't get enough of GoT!

Most Disappointing Game: The Last of Us
Unfortunately what may be my final full-length AAA solo campaign was also my biggest gaming disappointment - EVER, but mostly because my expectations were so high from 18+ months of hype and awards.

Zookster said:

For a variety of reasons, my gaming habits have been changing over the past couple of years. As much as I'd love (and prefer) to play a 100-hour-plus RPG like Dragon Age: Inquisition or Fallout 4, or an 15-20-hour action game like Arkham Knight, I simply don't have the time or finger/thumb joint cartilage for it anymore. As a result, I've been favoring simpler digital-only/indie games, puzzle games, touchscreen mobile games, and point-and-click adventure games (though every so often the urge to "blow sh*t up" gets the better of me, so I indulge in a free PS Plus or flash sale shooter-type game).

Now that I've bored everyone to death with my prologue, here is my list of most memorable games I played in 2015:

1. Valiant Hearts - This one just really stayed with me. In spite of some clunky gameplay mechanics, I was completely engrossed in both the stories of the characters and the "codex" entries for each of the collectibles I found. I'd love to see more documentary-style games like this and "Never Alone," which I also enjoyed playing this past year, but can't fully recommend due to some rather frustrating controls.

2. Tales from the Borderlands - It may be surprising that given my love of all things Borderlands, this isn't at the top of my list. But truth be told, I found this game rather frustrating and depressing, as the entire time, all it made me want to do was play a regular Borderlands game, including the Pre-Sequel, which I haven't played yet. Sadly, I really shouldn't ever play a highly addictive 40+ hour shooter again if I want to brush my own teeth and tie my own shoes 20 years from now. I am however extremely grateful that Telltale and 2K have seen fit to put the world of Pandora in this old man-friendly style of game.

3. Broken Age - I didn't play Act 1 until this year, and that part alone is worth overlooking the shoddy Act 2 (both were part of the free PS Plus version I played on PS4). If Act 2 had lived up to Act 1, then this would be #1 for me this year.

4. Fallout Shelter - What do you know? I actually got to play a game the week it was released! (for my system) Okay so it was free. But this game easily tops my mobile experiences for 2015 in spite of the fact I probably put more time into Run Sackboy Run! However, I very well could be on my 20th vault with over 300 dwellers and 50 levels had it not been for the fact that my entry-level tablet crashed at around 80 dwellers and 6-7 levels. I sadly had to give up after my second vault started crashing.

5. [Pending] Game of Thrones (Telltale) - I'm only toward the end of episode 2, but so far this game may easily top my list of favorite Telltale games. I finally finished reading the first five books of the Song of Fire and Ice series in early December and I still can't get enough of GoT!

Most Disappointing Game: The Last of Us
Unfortunately what may be my final full-length AAA solo campaign was also my biggest gaming disappointment - EVER, but mostly because my expectations were so high from 18+ months of hype and awards.

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Maybe you should think about getting more into PC gaming. There are a ton of slower paced, mouse and keyboard games that are a huge step up from most of what is available on mobile. There are also many more great point and click adventure games than what is available on consoles. You seem to be really into the Tell Tale and Broken Age style games and there are 100s of them available on PC.

king3pj said:

Maybe you should think about getting more into PC gaming. There are a ton of slower paced, mouse and keyboard games that are a huge step up from most of what is available on mobile. There are also many more great point and click adventure games than what is available on consoles. You seem to be really into the Tell Tale and Broken Age style games and there are 100s of them available on PC.

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Thanks for the suggestion and info. Since I don't follow PC gaming, I'm pretty oblivious to all that's out there.

I do have some challenges to sort out, as I discovered with that Going Home game you gave me the code for. For one, I couldn't get it to run on the default graphics setting on my new laptop that does have a 940M (2 GB) NVIDIA card, but I might not have it configured properly. I just haven't played around with it yet. (I had to drop the graphics to a lower setting to prevent serious slideshow-esque framerate drops in Going Home.) And though I do have a decent 20 inch Samsung LED TV as my home office computer desk monitor, I'd rather sit in my La-z-boy to relax and play games when I'm not working. So I'll have to figure out a good set up to quickly connect my laptop to the living room TV. (I at least have wireless keyboard and mouse). Of course I could just start saving for a proper gaming PC, which wouldn't necessarily need future-proof specs to play the kinds of games I would be playing.

In the meantime, there seems to be no shortage of simple adventure games on Playstation systems. I still have Life Is Strange, two Sam and Max series, and a Tales of Monkey Island series I haven't touched. I actually went ahead and renewed my PS Plus membership because of a number of free games in my download list on all three systems I could probably play. One of the advantages of Sony favoring indie games for its freebies. lol

I don't even own a Wii U and I still had fun with Mario Maker last year. The war between Dan Ryckert from Giant Bomb and Patrick Klepek from Kotaku (formerly Giant Bomb) was a lot of fun to watch. I suppose it didn't hurt that I am very familiar with both of these guys from listening to them on podcasts and watching them in videos for years. They also raised a decent chunk of money for charity with their bets.

Here is Ryckert's side on Giant Bomb

http://www.giantbomb.com/articles/war-diary-the-history-of-ryckert-vs-klepek/1100-5370/

And here is Klepek's on Kotaku
http://kotaku.com/my-mario-maker-rivalry-is-over-and-evil-won-for-now-1751156795

Zookster said:

For a variety of reasons, my gaming habits have been changing over the past couple of years. As much as I'd love (and prefer) to play a 100-hour-plus RPG like Dragon Age: Inquisition or Fallout 4, or an 15-20-hour action game like Arkham Knight, I simply don't have the time or finger/thumb joint cartilage for it anymore. As a result, I've been favoring simpler digital-only/indie games, puzzle games, touchscreen mobile games, and point-and-click adventure games (though every so often the urge to "blow sh*t up" gets the better of me, so I indulge in a free PS Plus or flash sale shooter-type game).

Now that I've bored everyone to death with my prologue, here is my list of most memorable games I played in 2015:

1. Valiant Hearts - This one just really stayed with me. In spite of some clunky gameplay mechanics, I was completely engrossed in both the stories of the characters and the "codex" entries for each of the collectibles I found. I'd love to see more documentary-style games like this and "Never Alone," which I also enjoyed playing this past year, but can't fully recommend due to some rather frustrating controls.

2. Tales from the Borderlands - It may be surprising that given my love of all things Borderlands, this isn't at the top of my list. But truth be told, I found this game rather frustrating and depressing, as the entire time, all it made me want to do was play a regular Borderlands game, including the Pre-Sequel, which I haven't played yet. Sadly, I really shouldn't ever play a highly addictive 40+ hour shooter again if I want to brush my own teeth and tie my own shoes 20 years from now. I am however extremely grateful that Telltale and 2K have seen fit to put the world of Pandora in this old man-friendly style of game.

3. Broken Age - I didn't play Act 1 until this year, and that part alone is worth overlooking the shoddy Act 2 (both were part of the free PS Plus version I played on PS4). If Act 2 had lived up to Act 1, then this would be #1 for me this year.

4. Fallout Shelter - What do you know? I actually got to play a game the week it was released! (for my system) Okay so it was free. But this game easily tops my mobile experiences for 2015 in spite of the fact I probably put more time into Run Sackboy Run! However, I very well could be on my 20th vault with over 300 dwellers and 50 levels had it not been for the fact that my entry-level tablet crashed at around 80 dwellers and 6-7 levels. I sadly had to give up after my second vault started crashing.

5. [Pending] Game of Thrones (Telltale) - I'm only toward the end of episode 2, but so far this game may easily top my list of favorite Telltale games. I finally finished reading the first five books of the Song of Fire and Ice series in early December and I still can't get enough of GoT!

Most Disappointing Game: The Last of Us
Unfortunately what may be my final full-length AAA solo campaign was also my biggest gaming disappointment - EVER, but mostly because my expectations were so high from 18+ months of hype and awards.

Click to expand...

What about The Last of Us didn't you like? That is one of my all time favorite games. I felt exhausted every time after I played because I was so emotionally involved in it. I felt like it was real or I was in a movie.

Scherrman said:

What about The Last of Us didn't you like? That is one of my all time favorite games. I felt exhausted every time after I played because I was so emotionally involved in it. I felt like it was real or I was in a movie.

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I do understand why a lot of people like this game. It definitely has a lot going for it. I actually wrote up many of my reasons for not connecting with this game a while back in another thread:
http://www.satelliteguys.us/xen/threads/ps4-owners-thread.323958/page-30#post-3737744