• Light/Dark
  • Ever wanted an RSS feed of all your favorite gaming news sites? Go check out our new Gaming Headlines feed! Read more about it here.

Forza Horizon 5 is IGN's GOTY 2021, Halo Infinite is People's Choice GOTY

RoKKeR

RoKKeR

Member
Oct 25, 2017
15,375
First of all let me say I'm so glad to see a major outlet give this fantastic game the nod when this genre is so often ignored in GOTY lists.

That said, FH5 has had a disastrous post-launch period. Barely functional online, game-breaking bugs introduced by patches, playing with friends only working as of last week… it's been a mess to put it lightly. The core is fantastic but I've been really disappointed in the state it was in after launch.

I think the game absolutely deserves GOTY and it will be high in my list as well, but I hope that PG will improve in this respect next time around.
 
blue_phazon

blue_phazon

Prophet of Truth
Member
Oct 25, 2017
2,315
Phinor said:
A game with more issues than all previous Forza games combined and many of them still unfixed. This includes FH3 which was a technical nightmare.

For me personally Cyberpunk 2077 was in much, much better shape after release than FH5.
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...
????

I have no idea what this means cause I encountered nothing. Then again if any issues you were having are online related, I wouldn't know cause I just played Horizon Solo
 
Prine

Prine

Attempted to circumvent ban with alt account
Banned
Oct 25, 2017
15,724
Absolutely deserved, what's even more astonishing is that it is a racer, and yes, it won GOTY. More is asked from this type of game then others I'd say, what a game!!
 
digitalrelic

digitalrelic

Weight Loss Champion 2018: Biggest Change
Banned
Oct 25, 2017
13,124
What a wide variety of GOTY winners so far:
  • Forza Horizon 5 from IGN
  • Deathloop from Gamespot
  • Halo Infinite from Game Informer
  • Psychonauts 2 from CNET

All, quite interestingly, Xbox Games Studios games though!
 
Last edited:
OP
OP
FarSight XR-20

FarSight XR-20

Member
Jan 4, 2018
8,616

IGN's People's Choice Game of the Year 2021: Halo Infinite


There were plenty of reasons to be pessimistic about Halo Infinite heading into it: the departure of not one but two directors on the project before Halo co-creator Joseph Staten parachuted in to help steer Infinite to the finish line, the painful delay to the Xbox Series X's second holiday instead of its first one, and... Craig. But developer 343 Industries gets the last laugh and we get the last smiles, because Halo Infinite delivers. Its single-player campaign reinvigorates the series by organically blending Halo's classic combat sandbox with a massive Halo ring you're free to explore and cause trouble in, like a glorious mash-up of Halo 1 and Halo 3. Its multiplayer boldly goes free-to-play and gives players both old and new something it turned out the first-person shooter space desperately needed: a pure arena shooter that overdelivers on fun and cuts out any of the trendy nonsense (battle pass issues notwithstanding). In total, it is a package that restores Halo to its rightful place in the video game zeitgeist, and one that no FPS fan should miss. - Ryan McCaffrey
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...

 
RoKKeR

RoKKeR

Member
Oct 25, 2017
15,375
I think it will absolutely be looked back on as a neat-consensus GOTY from 2021 just due to the continued positive word of mouth and reception.
 
Ont

Ont

Prophet of Truth
Member
Oct 29, 2017
2,050
Well deserved. I have not played a video game this much for a very long time.
 
pswii60

pswii60

Member
Oct 27, 2017
26,662
The Milky Way
A month ago if you told me Halo Infinite was going to get so much recognition in GotY lists and awards I would have laughed in your face. Quite the turnaround, kudos to everyone who worked on it.
 
Eamon

Eamon

Prophet of Truth
Member
Apr 22, 2020
3,542
My GOTY at the moment - although Hitman 3 puts up a good fight
 
chrominance

chrominance

Sky Van Gogh
Member
Oct 25, 2017
13,576
blue_phazon said:
????

I have no idea what this means cause I encountered nothing. Then again if any issues you were having are online related, I wouldn't know cause I just played Horizon Solo
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...

Yeah, it's all the online/service game stuff, like the festival playlists, online racing, Horizon Life issues, etc. Though there was a patch recently that thoroughly broke the game for people on Series S/X, and I think that was true regardless of whether you were connected to Horizon Life or not.

As one of the "hardcore" players (not in terms of skill, just in terms of time spent probably), I think the reception of Horizon 5 is pretty split between people who mostly just played the solo races and activities, and the people who finished all that stuff in the first few weeks and looked forward to the seasonal playlists to earn new cars and whatnot. The latter group has had to suffer from straight-up broken playlist events, glitches in online modes (like not being able to see or challenge opponents in Eliminator, not having anyone join Arcade events, etc.), and having various accolades not work because the game isn't tracking something properly. But I think a lot of people probably hand a great time with the game, and I'm glad they did; my occasional pain shouldn't take away from their enjoyment.

For me personally, while I understand that a lot of people never ran into these issues because they weren't interested in online or didn't play long enough to reach some of that stuff, to me this IGN prize feels a bit like a lifetime achievement award: the Horizon series is some of the best gaming you'll find anywhere, so Playground deserves a GOTY award for SOMETHING, but 5 is maybe not the best example of it because even when you take away all the problems people have suffered, it's still just incremental improvements on Horizon 4, which introduced a lot of the concepts here like seasons and the festival playlists.
 
SunBroDave

SunBroDave

Member
Oct 25, 2017
13,141
Everyone on Infinite's sandbox team deserves a big fucking promotion. The combat mechanics in this game are so good that it makes everything else around them - which is largely middling, like the MP progression, the story, the open world, the netcode, the missing features, modes and maps - still incredibly fun to play. On Schreier's podcast the other day, he even said that it was his understanding that the grappleshot, which is the best part of the campaign, was originally an idea that the multiplayer sandbox team came up with.
 
Izzard

Izzard

Banned
Sep 21, 2018
4,606
blue_phazon said:
????

I have no idea what this means cause I encountered nothing. Then again if any issues you were having are online related, I wouldn't know cause I just played Horizon Solo
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...

Online has indeed been broken since launch. I'm surprised you haven't encountered any of the problems they themselves have listed as known issues. It's quite a long list, and involves more than just online. And then there's the AI..

Honestly, id be the first to congratulate them if I hadn't suffered so many issues, a lot of which I'm seeing weeks after launch, but that isn't the case.
 

horsemama1956

Member
Jun 22, 2020
351
I liked what I played of it, but decided to put it on the back burner until I can expand storage. Locked 60 just made it play way better than 4.
 
ghostcrew

ghostcrew

The Shrouded Ghost
Administrator
Oct 27, 2017
30,350
Such a triumphant turnaround. From laughing stock and development nightmare fuel to multiple GOTY award winning smash and most played game on Xbox.

Welcome back, Halo!
 
cabelhigh

cabelhigh

Member
Nov 2, 2017
1,722
So crazy to hear people talk about all the issues with the game, cuz I spent about 24hs solo in the open world just completing PR stunts and not doing any races and honestly having the time of my life. Easily the most fun ive had in a game this year.

Ive clocked over 40hs and still havent touched the end game races. Theres a lot of content in this game yeesh
 
Madrugador

Madrugador

Prophet of Truth
Member
Oct 27, 2017
1,327
I'm actually surprised to see Halo win so many People's Choice awards. Not that it doesn't deserve it, but I thought Metroid was going to win most of these.
 
ghibli99

ghibli99

Member
Oct 27, 2017
17,704
2021 was one blur of a year for me, but always cool seeing summary/award lists. They make me realize that every year is a good one for this hobby of ours.
 
ShapeGSX

ShapeGSX

Member
Nov 13, 2017
5,210
Absolutely well deserved.

Also happy to see that this will be the end of "when will MS have a GOTY contender" threads.
 

Phinor

Member
Oct 27, 2017
1,236
blue_phazon said:
????

I have no idea what this means cause I encountered nothing. Then again if any issues you were having are online related, I wouldn't know cause I just played Horizon Solo
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...

I would say that's actually part of the problem, they are indeed concentrating on fixing online issues instead of issues that block playing the game. I would be just fine playing it solo.
 
nextgeneration

nextgeneration

Member
Oct 27, 2017
3,571
Madrugador said:
I'm actually surprised to see Halo win so many People's Choice awards. Not that it doesn't deserve it, but I thought Metroid was going to win most of these.
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...

I think a large part of the reason why is Halo multiplayer being free to play, so you automatically have a crazy amount of people playing the game versus the far less amount of people playing Metroid. And of course, it helps that both multiplayer and campaign are very good.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.