Game Awards

It's not that surprising that Fallout 4 and Witcher 3 took home a lot of awards. Rocket League did pretty well too.

yourbeliefs said:

I was a little taken aback when Battlefront won Action Game of the Year. I mean really? Maybe in 9 months from now with all the actual CONTENT being released it may reach that, but I don't think anyone can say that BF was a better action game than Black Ops 3 was, if nothing else in terms of actual package.

Speaking of BO3, I think I may pick up a copy of that today, but I'm going to get it for the One just because I like using that more than my PS4 and more people I know use it.

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My guess is that the reason Black Ops 3 didn't win is because COD has been a yearly release for a very long time and the people who vote on these awards just aren't that impressed by it anymore. This isn't to say that it isn't a very solid game almost every year and it obviously has huge sales numbers.

I think it's just a situation where people saw Battlefront as new and exciting and they saw Black Ops as yet another COD game. Yes there is a $50 season pass for Battlefront that many people were upset about but there has been a $50 season pass every year for COD for a while now. The maps that were included in Battlefront from day one and the ones that have been added as free DLC have been enough to keep me coming back to play a few games every week or two. It's definitely a cool product for Star Wars fans who also like multiplayer shooters.

Are you planning to play the Black Ops 3 campaign again or just picking it up to check out the multiplayer. If it's for the multiplayer you might be a good case for the $15 option on PC.

yourbeliefs said:

I think the difference between CoD charging $50 and BF charging $50 for Season Pass is that even if you get NO DLC for CoD, from Day 1 you still have a full product with a decent campaign and a slew of multiplayer modes. For Black Ops in particular throughout the series one of the common praises from people has been that they can't believe how much content is available within the game. Battlefront was insultingly limited and stripped down at launch. For games like that and Street Fighter V you're basically getting, as Jim Sterling puts it, "AAA Early Access." Yes they're adding content over time, but it's insulting for them to go and charge us $60 at launch for games that are clearly not finished and don't even have the decency to tell us what we're getting for that Season Pass. At least with Splatoon! there were weekly updates and long term announcements so players knew what was being updated and when long in advance. And at least they didn't do like SF V did and grey out stuff that wasn't available, thus showing you exactly what you were NOT getting from the start. Finally, the BF Season Pass was whored out worse than Grumpy Cat. It's in multiple places all over the game in different menus. At least with BO 3 I think they just have it on the title screen.

And with Activision you know you're getting 4 map packs priced at $15 individually, so to save money the SP makes sense. And as I said, Vanilla CoD is still a full and bountiful package from Day 1. I'm not here to contest that CoD is necessarily a better game than BF, but given how bare BF is right now and how much more CoD offered and how it's still a great experience, I just think BLops 3 didn't win because its a CoD game and it's "cool" to hate on CoD.

As far as the Multiplayer Starter Pack goes, I'm not really for that because A: I'd rather play CoD on a console where I can actually play with other people I know, and B: the MP SP has a number of restrictions like no Zombie and no custom matches. I should also note that I'm getting the game for like $35 after discounts, so it's not like I'm paying full price. One last big seller is that I found out I can play offline with Bots. I LOVE that feature about BO 1. It makes the game timeless.

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I don't disagree with this. There is obviously way more stuff included in the Black Ops package. I personally have completed the campaign, had some good times playing Zombies with a full party of my friends, and played quite a bit of the online multiplayer.

In Battlefront I have only played the online multiplayer and I still only play two modes when I do that. I have never once played the horde mode, fighter squadron mode, or hero fight mode. I always go straight into supremacy or walker assault.

If you asked me which one stands out in my mind as a more memorable experience in 2016 it's easily Battlefront. All of those things I mentioned that I did in Black Ops 3 are things I have also done in several previous COD games. Again, I don't want to knock COD because I do buy it every year for a reason.

It's just that a yearly release loses some of it's impact, especially when it comes to award time. I think it's very telling that neither of us included it in our personal GOTY lists even though we had a pretty good time playing the campaign together.

I think a lot of the things said about Battlefront line up very closely with the things people said about Titanfall a couple years ago. Neither game came with a real campaign and neither was really packed with content. I haven't actually counted but just from spending a lot of time in the menus of both games I think Battlefront shipped with more modes at launch than Titanfall has even today.

Even before Frontier Defense was added to Titanfall and they gave the season pass to everyone I played a ton of it at launch. The lack of a campaign didn't bother me because the multiplayer was good. At the time I was already used to completely ignoring campaigns in most COD and Battlefield games and getting directly to the multiplayer portion.

PSN Trophy data tells me that the vast majority of people who buy these games do the same thing. I just checked and only 10.3% of people who have played Black Ops 3 have completed the campaign on any difficulty. In most games I'm a single player focused guy but that hasn't been the case in COD for a while for me.

If Black Ops 3 hadn't introduced co-op to the campaign I never would have played it. Advanced Warfare was the first COD campaign I had checked out in years because I was interested in seeing what they did with Kevin Spacey and Troy Baker. I didn't even finish that one. The point is that game awards don't really take value into account. You are getting more for your money with Black Ops 3 but if most people are only playing the multiplayer that won't be a big factor for them.

yourbeliefs said:

Last night the game industry had their public masturbation festival Game Awards.

List of winners here: http://www.polygon.com/2016/12/1/13784410/the-game-awards-winners

You're better off though just watching all the trailers that premiered at the event, which can be found here:

http://www.polygon.com/2016/12/1/13814090/the-game-awards-2016-trailers-news-reveals

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I think it's kind of funny that an expansion from The Witcher 3 won best RPG of 2016. Like it didn't win enough awards last year.... Looking at how many people raved about The Witcher's DLC and the other nominees in the category it probably deserved it. I really need to get back into that game.

I had to skip through this because I didn't have 45 minutes to watch it all but I did see all your choices and at least a few minutes of your reasoning for each one. There were a couple games in there that I was sure would be but there were some surprises too.

I'm going to wait until next weekend to put my list up but I think it's going to be quite a bit different than yours. I want to get some more time in with Rise of the Tomb Raider and maybe play Tell Tale's Batman before I finalize the list because I could see both of them being contenders.

Yes, I am aware that Rise of the Tomb Raider actually came out in 2015 on Xbox One but I am playing the PC version and it came out in January of 2016 so I'm counting it. Also the PS4 version came out this Fall.

yourbeliefs said:

Out of curiosity, what were you sure was going to be there that wasn't?

Sent from my Nexus 6P using the SatelliteGuys app!

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There weren't any I was sure about that didn't make it. The ones I was sure about were Doom, Overwatch, and Titanfall 2. I knew those 3 would make it for quite a while now. The surprises I was talking about were Psycho Pass and Odin Sphere.

Okay, I've finally accepted that I'm not going to be able to play all the games I wanted to in time for them to make this list. I did get most of them in but there is a very good chance that Rise of the Tomb Raider, Dishonored 2, and XCOM 2 would have competed for spots on this list if I had time to play more of them since I liked the previous games in each of those series so much.

Anyways, here is my list. I'll try to keep my descriptions short so this isn't a nightmare to read through but I'm happy to go into more detail about any of these games if anyone is interested in hearing more about them.

1. Overwatch - This one was easy for me. I had more fun with this game than anything else I played this year. I was starting to think multiplayer games weren't my thing anymore since I have played less and less of them over the last few years but Rocket League from last year and Overwatch this year have taken more of my time than every other game combined in the last 2 years. It turns out I'm not growing out of multiplayer games. I just want unique, fun experiences that center around teamwork instead of my poor kill/death ratio.

2. Titanfall 2 - This game almost didn't make my list at all since I had only played about the first hour of the campaign until yesterday. Luckily the game is only about 6 hours long and I had the day off. This game had some amazing moments and I hope it sold well enough to get a sequel. I know EA said they were going to stand behind this franchise but it sounds like the sales were pretty terrible.

3. Superhot/Superhot VR - I already liked Superhot a lot but then I got a Oculus Rift and played Superhot VR. Superhot is a FPS where time only moves when you do and both you and every enemy will die from one hit. It is an amazing gameplay mechanic that I'm surprised I haven't seen before. To be clear, Superhot VR is not the original game with VR support. Superhot VR is a completely separate campaign. As far as I'm concerned this game is the best reason to own a VR headset.

4. Hitman - I've never played a Hitman game before this one except for the first couple hours of Absolution. I have beaten a few of the missions several times and I'm always able to find a way to do it that I haven't seen before. The elusive targets and escalation missions are also great. I will continue to play this game and I look forward to season 2.

5. Doom - I really like this game. The opening 5 minutes or so was probably my favorite gaming moment of the year. I had a big dumb grin on my face the entire time. The only problem is that I haven't finished it. If I had I could see it possibly moving up to number 3 on my list but I don't see it overtaking the top 2 games. This will be the next game I finish.

6. Stardew Valley - This is a cutesy farming game with some dungeon crawling and NPC relationship building thrown on top. This game is not for everyone. For example, I can't imagine that yourbeliefs would like it very much for the same reasons he doesn't really care for Civilization and XCOM but loves Doom. Stardew isn't a strategy game but like those games the moment to moment gameplay just isn't much to write home about. It does have the same ability as those games to keep me sitting at my computer way too late into the night when I meant to just get a quick 30 minutes in before bed.

7. Inside - This is a beautiful puzzle game that almost feels like a horror game at times. It doesn't have jump scares or ghosts but it is incredibly creepy. The reason I like this game so much is because every screen feels hand crafted and every item and part of the environment is there for a reason. The puzzles feel smart without being too hard. It's a good balance of keeping the game from getting boring without making me frustrated that I'm stuck in one room for too long. There was one moment that actually gave me goosebumps and that isn't something that typically happens to me in games. The story was just a little too ambiguous for it to be higher on my list.

8. Gears of War 4 - I had versions of this list where this game was higher but I think this is the right spot. I really did have fun playing it and Horde mode is still great. It is another Gears game and we already know that formula pretty well by now. I think the games above it are just more interesting in 2016.

9. Call of Duty: Infinite Warfare - If this was a best robot companion list it would have been above Titanfall 2 for me. I've heard that the sales numbers for this year's game are down and that's too bad because this is my favorite COD campaign ever. They made more significant changes to the COD formula than they ever have before and it resulted in a really cool "space marine" type game. It's unfortunate that the reaction the this year's multiplayer is keeping people from this game but I think it's worth playing for the campaign alone.

10. Civilization VI - Even without any expansions this game is already a significant improvement on Civ V with all it's expansions. Since Civ V is one of my favorite games that is saying a lot. It is lower on my list for the same reason Gears 4 is but I have no doubt that I will still be playing this game much longer than anything else on this list with the exception of Overwatch.

Good List and I have heard good things about Overwatch don't know if I would get it for the PS4 or PC and Titanfall was not to bad on the PC but I have not tried the newest one yet.

yourbeliefs said:

Get Overwatch on PC. Better performance, bigger playerbase, and more expandibility options.

Also 2 of us here already play it..*hint hint nudge nudge*

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Yeah I was leaning more towards the PC version anyway most of our Guild has it on PC..