GOTY

[BinoAl]

What would you guys vote Game Of The Year? I'd obviously vote skyrim. It has it's flaws, but a game should be measured on fun, rather than bugginess. I've spent over 200 hours playing, and intend on playing more :)

[Zhil]

Hard to vote, because I'm not really a gamer. Out of the ones I played, either New Vegas or LA Noire.

New Vegas was a lot better than Skyrim for me, so definitely not Skyrim.

List of games I played this year:
- Minecraft
- New Vegas
- LA Noire

Started playing for 2012:
- SpaceChem
- Skyrim

[BinoAl]

I wasn't too big of a fan of New Vegas, actually. I feel like they perfected fallout for the most part in Fallout 3. New Vegas just felt too... Linear. Then again, I'm the type to completely ignore the main questline and go do whatever I want, so I suppose my tastes are sort of odd :p

[Zhil]

I've never played Fallout 3, so I can't comment on that.

[Husbag3]

I love skyrim, but 200 hours, thats alot of time. I don't think I have that much playtime on any game apart from MC.
Games tend to have a short life span when I play them. Theres very limited things you can do.

[Zhil]

I love skyrim, but 200 hours, thats alot of time. I don't think I have that much playtime on any game apart from MC.
Games tend to have a short life span when I play them. Theres very limited things you can do.

I think I had more than 200 hours on my main save in Oblivion, with my paladin save being over 80 hours and a Shivering Isles save of another 30.

So yeah, I don't even want to know how much total play time I had in the end.

[Katalliaan]

I'd probably vote Magicka. It's a great game, as long as you don't look directly at the bugs.

[FurkeyRefills]

Saints Row 3 - for a long list of reasons, i'll give some pro and cons.

Spoiler

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+Shit-ton of content
+Decent sized and very open world
+Multiple Choice story
+Very immature and violent
+Lots of upgrades and stat stuff
+Lots of very diverse and ridiculous weapons
+Lots of futuristic/cool vehicles
+Vehicles that are so impractical they are actually fun to use
+Leveling doesn't feel like a grind

-Can fall through world occasionally
-Activities complete themselves sometimes
-Activities being based in areas where you don't have the opportunity to complete them.
-Has crashed on me quite a lot

I've played 22 hours so far and I have no where near finished everything yet, so I think its definitely worth buying !

[FlowerChild]

Saints Row 3 - for a long list of reasons, i'll give some pro and cons.

How are the vehicle physics BTW? I loved the first Saints Row, but after sinking a ton of time into GTA IV, then playing Saints Row II, I found I just couldn't deal with the bubble-gum vehicle physics in it anymore. It just felt "off" all of a sudden.

[BigShinyToys]

Call of duty Modern warfare 3

cos I can :)

And because I have sunk DAYS into the game.

[FurkeyRefills]

How are the vehicle physics BTW?

Improved, the power-slide button no longer throws you off-course, its actually helpful now.
The physics still feel very unrealistic naturally, but after you drive for two minutes its quite easy to do precision-ish driving.

But I've heard the PC driving controls are very hard to get used to :/


@BigShinyToys: Curse you !

[BinoAl]

Call of duty Modern warfare 3

Really? I'm not a big fan of CoD anyway, for a plethora of reasons, but I had actually heard from all my friends that do like CoD that MW3 was pretty bad.

I'd probably vote Magicka. It's a great game, as long as you don't look directly at the bugs.

Haha, I had a lot of fun with magicka, but never had any friends who could play multiplayer, and single player gets pretty insane, so I never got the full experience

Saints Row 3 - for a long list of reasons, i'll give some pro and cons.

As soon as I start getting more hours at work again (still getting jack shit because we haven't gotten rid of the holiday help), I'm probably buying that game. I've heard great things about it

[Thieme]

I loved Magicka as well but once you know all the overpowered spell combo's it get's to easy and boring. Never tried the multiplayer tho.
as for the vote i dunno i haven't played that much good games

[BinoAl]

I loved Magicka as well but once you know all the overpowered spell combo's it get's to easy and boring.

You just can't let yourself fall into a rut like that. Try not to memorize all those powerful combos, and just fuck around :)

[xbitx]

Game's I've played in 2011?

• Skyrim
• Minecraft
• Terraria
• Spacechem
• Tribes Ascend
• Batman Arkham City
• CoD MW3
• Legions Overdrive

All great games. MW3 is definitely lacking compared to previous games, but then again it's just a cookie cutter game now, so you can't really expect much. BF3 I've played, but I don't own so I don't put it on the list, and I have to say, it's pretty fun, but not worth it if you just want to get in quick and have some fun, especially for a drinking game.

Skyrim? Epic. But not GoTY worthy in my eyes. Minecraft, Spacechem and Terraria are addictingly good overall so I wouldn't give a GoTY award to them. Tribes Ascend is the newest REAL installment of the Tribes series, and is phenomenol. Legions is a third-party, player made version, which is just as phenomenol even though it has a close knit community that's kinda asshats if you're new.

Batman? No words to describe it. My vote for a GoTY awarded game is DEFINITELY this one. Open ended, the actual storyline digs deep and makes you want more, and countless hours of fun.

Honorable mentions:

• Alice: Madness Returns (I love American McGee's take on Alice, the dark quality is amazing)
• SW:ToR (Enjoyed the story, but I can't see it as a game I go out and pay to play when it's like a SP game)
• APB Reloaded and DC Universe Online (Clumped together because they get boring but are fun when you have friends, and are free to play)

Those are my opinions. And I love reading threads like this, because they open me up to different games. I got addicted to Spacechem from here, hahaha.

[ilovekintoki]

I enjoyed Terraria immensely, so my vote goes to that.

[Zhil]

I enjoyed Terraria immensely, so my vote goes to that.

Oh, right, I bought that too. I think I played for about 8 hours before I decided that it's boring as hell :D

[Haidaes]

I can't really decide which one was the best to me. In the end it comes down to invested playtime, fun, replayabilty and so on. My games of the year would be (in alphabetical order)

The big ones:
Deus Ex: Human Revolution (great game, even though it suffered alot from beeing designed with shitty consoles in mind)
Dragon Age 2 (Yeah I know, bad blah, I enjoyed it for what it was: A story about me , beeing a mage , and my companions).
TES V: Skyrim (Had its flaws gameplay and story wise, but the open world and countless hours of stuff to do made up for that)
Witcher 2 (Great game, awsome story and descision making, interesting universe, were it not for the last chapter it would have been perfect)

The little ones:
Magicka (alot of fun, especially with friends, but too bad that its just a dungeon crawler w/o any story, quests or any kind of character progression)
Minecraft (simply by playtime this one blows everything else out of the water, especially thanks to BTW)
Portal 2 (great game born from a simple idea but nothing to bind me more than the time it takes to solve the puzzles once)
Terraria (It's not a minecraft clone !)

Games I didn't have the time to play until now:
Assassins Creed : Revelations
Start Wars: The old Republic
Some DLC to the my GsOTY 2012


Its really hard to decide between the big ones (Minecraft was a filler most of the time I played to relax). I guess it would come down to Witcher 2 in the end, because it sparked the desire to learn more about its story which led me to buy all the novels which I enjoyed alot. So much in fact that I would rate them higher than your average fantasy must read title.

[Zhil]

Its really hard to decide between the big ones (Minecraft was a filler most of the time I played to relax). I guess it would come down to Witcher 2 in the end, because it sparked the desire to learn more about its story which led me to buy all the novels which I enjoyed alot. So much in fact that I would rate them higher than your average fantasy must read title.

I searched for the novels, but I could only find Spanish and Polish versions. I've got a few of Sapkowski's short stories and I love them.

[BinoAl]

Oh, right, I bought that too. I think I played for about 8 hours before I decided that it's boring as hell :D

In it's defense, I DO play it after every update to check the new shit out :3

[Haidaes]

I searched for the novels, but I could only find Spanish and Polish versions. I've got a few of Sapkowski's short stories and I love them.

I read the german translations, the english onces can be found on amazon.co.uk though (at least thats where I've seen them). Just look for "witcher" or "the last wish" or "blood of elves", not sure about the others.

I just wish they were available as hardcover versions... can't stand paperback.

[Zhil]

I don't think my German is good enough. Balls.

[ArmyAirborne]

Been lurking a few months, mostly just read but I saw this and had to chime in.

Game's I've played in 2011?

[*]Tribes Ascend

Tribes Ascend is the newest REAL installment of the Tribes series, and is phenomenol.

Tribes Ascend is crap.

I'll give it game play, it's pretty close to capturing the unique feel of the original and is fun.

That's where the good ends. It's only in beta (supposedly a closed beta but all you need to get an instant key is a like on Facebook) and they are already allowing purchase of in-game features.

Those in-game features allow you to boost your character and unlock parts of the game (better character classes) that should, IMHO, be earned. I suppose in fairness there isn't any exclusive content that can only be acquired through in-game purchase, AFAIK, but I bet that's not far behind.

I have no problem with paying for a game, or paying a monthly fee for online play (if the game is good enough), but I refuse to play a game that allows or requires you to pay more money to unlock features. It's FPS Farmville and they shit all over one of my favorite games to do it.

[Hisco]

For me it would be either Deus ex: Human Revolution, or Skyrim

Your characters voice on Deus ex was kind of distracting though. I can just imagine him ordering a cheeseburger.

[xbitx]

Been lurking a few months, mostly just read but I saw this and had to chime in.

Tribes Ascend is crap.

I'll give it game play, it's pretty close to capturing the unique feel of the original and is fun.

That's where the good ends. It's only in beta (supposedly a closed beta but all you need to get an instant key is a like on Facebook) and they are already allowing purchase of in-game features.

Those in-game features allow you to boost your character and unlock parts of the game (better character classes) that should, IMHO, be earned. I suppose in fairness there isn't any exclusive content that can only be acquired through in-game purchase, AFAIK, but I bet that's not far behind.

I have no problem with paying for a game, or paying a monthly fee for online play (if the game is good enough), but I refuse to play a game that allows or requires you to pay more money to unlock features. It's FPS Farmville and they shit all over one of my favorite games to do it.

Basing the entire game around a payment model isn't actually saying anything about the game. You said yourself, it has the gameplay. It's free none-the-less. You don't have to use any of the payment options. You can acquire everything in a legit way, however to make money on a free game, you need some form of payment option in order to get anything out of it.

See, here's the conundrum. Tribes Ascend is going free-to-play right from the start. As in, you neither have to BUY the game, nor do you have to pay a monthly subscription (which if they did do that, everybody would tell them off, you don't do monthly payments on an FPS). Therefore, to make any kind of ROI off of it, micro-transactions are necessary. More importantly, they don't really give you that much of an edge. Again, you can pretty much unlock everything legit, without ever spending a penny.

As well the "already allowing purchases" ... well how exactly would you test a system made for purchasing if you didn't actually allow people to purchase things? Not to mention again, this is a great way for them to make money on a free game during development.

The game is fast paced even though everything feels heavy. But that's the balance, and that's what makes it great. You feel heavier, you can't just use your jets and instantly climb to an extremely high altitude. More so, every class actually feels like it brings something to the table, so I applaud them for being able to create that sense of "this class is great for such and such". As well, the map designs, while not absolutely different to others, are made with great care to allow for fast speeds to be reached. They're really taking their time on this game, and I feel like even in a beta, it's fairly balanced. More importantly, even though you feel heavier and more weighted, the insane speeds of previous titles has actually been captured fairly well. Would I like to go a little faster? Oh yes, but to be balanced and relatively fun so that it has replay value, they had to curb it a bit.

Regardless of their scheme, for a Free-To-Play game, which requires neither payment of actual game itself and doesn't even require you to pay for any of the in-game upgrades, it's phenomenal. By the way, I myself am not too happy about micro-transactions, however since they did it in a way that doesn't really say "hey look I got an awesome weapon that you can't match, the only way to get it is to buy it" I honestly don't mind, since they do need to make some money.

Just friendly conversation too, for the record. Hopefully I don't come off as an ass or too harsh or anything, really don't mean it if I do, it's hard to type with any form of inflection on the internet.