It's a single player game. Concurrent player numbers are not something you generally care about when it comes to SP games. :)
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The Last of Us 2 wins Game of the year at Golden Joystick Awards and Hades wins Critics Choice Awards (Other Winners Inside)
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It's a single player game. Concurrent player numbers are not something you generally care about when it comes to SP games. :)
What would be a game that pushes player agency forward in your opinion? Botw? Zelda is a sandbox game that clearly chooses agency over story.
There's simply different dimensions and categories that can make a good game. One game does not have to have it all.
Animal crossing will be continuously shafted this year because it doesn't have a primary audience of white males age 15-30. I expect to see a lot of it, especially where critics are involved simply as a consequence of the general employment make up of the sector.
The accessibility options alone would make both of those statements true
So Animal Crossing is a girls' game?
You are wrong btw https://nintendowire.com/news/2020/...split-with-most-players-in-their-20s-and-30s/
Dunno. Game Awards are always weird to me (because everyone likes different things).
But she did such a great job and having a female MC like her is super rare.
Sure, a girl's game I've spent more time this year on than anything else.
What I was getting at is that it's a game for everyone, and there's nothing the core VG industry as a whole hates than not being solely targeted at the expense of everyone else.
Really surprised Ashley Johnson didn't win for Last of Us 2 (assuming she was nominated). Was Kamala really that good?
That's not what the poster was saying I don't think. The article you link also kind of confirms that the primary audience isn't the white male gamer aged 15-30 - AC targets a huge variety of age groups and audiences, not just one. However due to the make up of game journalists (and people invested enough to vote in these awards) being heavily white and male, you're probably going to see games and genres more targeted towards that audience being recognised instead. Doesn't mean the games that win in its place aren't as good or that AC is inherently better, just that it has a harder path to walk down than some other games this awards season.
ND winning best studio is fucking gross. Guess CDPR with their culture of crunch and transphobia is revved up to win next year.
Animal Crossing is a flawed, highly popular game, that has received plenty of attention from the gaming press. What are you talking about? There are far better games this year that are being overlooked to a far greater extent.
You're not going to see that many critics falling over themselves to award games like Animal Crossing and Among Us, games with phenomenal popularity, that many awards because it is their job to assess games critically and neither game does well under scrutiny.
Just looking back at previous awards from the golden joysticks I don't think it correlates that well with the TGAs or VGAs. Critics choice awarded Titanfall 2, Breath of the Wild, Red Dead and Control in the last four years.
Hades clearly has a shot, but I don't think the golden joysticks are really that good of a bell weather.
Well there's different kinds of agency I suppose. BotW has plenty of it in its mechanics on how you deal with the puzzles or combat situations and being free to complete your goals in whatever order you feel like but its not like you can really do much to affect how the story plays out, there's no choices to make that affect narrative and its not like it has multiple endings.. Ok two slightly different endings depending on If you completed everything.
Im not saying games need to prioritise mechanics or especially really do something new with any of it to be good. Most good and even great games dont push anything forward, just do already existing things really well and put them into a compelling package. I just think its massive hyperbole about how The last of us is pushing the industry forward.
Also nothing wrong with being story first either, I love text adventures and Interactive fiction personally. Sometimes those games do really interesting things with puzzle solving tho..
I guess it all comes down to me not really enjoying modern ND and not seeing their games as these 10/10 masterpieces that a lot of people clearly do and are free to continue doing so.
The same people you just said should look at the games "critically" and under "scrutiny" say New horizons got a 90 metacritic, and so universal acclaim, one of only 14 games to do so this year.
yup. well said, if the voting was more diverse it and games like it would win more.
Animal Crossing has a metascore of 90%.
Surely a contender for most hilarious post of Nov 2020
I totally agree.
It would be interesting to see a game that does both really well. I think RDR2 tried it and failed. The open world as a sandbox environment felt pretty decouple from the linear story driven missions that negated any agency.
Zelda told its story mostly through flashbacks. I'm sure there are studios out working on that and I'm excited for what's to come.
It's not exactly unheard of for a game to review very well only for it to be overlooked come awards seasons because opinions evolve. Red Dead is the most recent example, it was way ahead of the pack when it came to the critics' scores but not long later it lost out on all manner of awards. Metal Gear Solid V is another, as the reviewing process was clearly not sufficient for a lot of reviewers to have fully seen how much of a mess Chapter II (and Chapter 3...) were. All of these games are still great but they lost momentum.
With Animal Crossing, I think it has to be recognised there were obvious things reviews broadly missed. The multiplayer features are a total mess. The lack of QoL improvements become increasingly painful over time. And the game is designed around real time progression over a long period and that would have been hard to analyse when reviewing the game before launch. None of which is to say that if AC was reviewed now it would review in the 70s or something but if people are wondering why it gets overlooked despite reviewing well, it's because the game has a lot of objective problems that no critic is going to miss.
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It'a clear that you do not care for ND games which is totally within your right, but your assertion that a game that wins GotY has to be this paradigm shifting experience that does something new every time is misguided.
To go back to your BotW example, I found the game to be an absolute rote collectathon that was put on a pedestal because it managed to be a Zelda game that finally caught up to Ubisoft style of open world gaming. It did nothing to push video games forward in my opinion. I can still respect that it won GotY for those that believed in it.
Overall, your original comment just came across as salty that TLOU2 won.
Regarding the TLOU gifs from ND, I guess there's an argument to be made about them seeming like viral marketing. The cynical bit is that they're just copying/replacing the most popular reaction gifs already out there instead of trying to invent new ones, though that might be the appeal to some. I think it's quite fair for some people to feel the gifs leave a bad taste in their mouth.
Well I disagree there, those Ubisoft open world games dont do nearly as much with underlying gameplay systems and physics engine as BotW does. Theres way more valid ways of getting around any given challenge in Breath of the Wild than your average Assassins Creed game.
It also had some tedious and repetitive content but it definitely pushed gameplay and Interactivity a lot more than TLOU Part two let alone Uncharted 4.
And no, a game does not have to do anything new in either gameplay or storytelling to be the best game of the year. As long as it does what it sets out to do well..
I didn't claim a game has to be some paradigm shifting experience to be considered a GOTY but would like to know what The last of us Part 2 pushing the industry forward is based on exactly? There's other studios who push tech and presentation forward too like Rockstar, Guerrilla, CD Project Red etc.. If anything the last of us is a pretty minor step.
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Indeed, there's so much potential there to put all these parts together into something really special.
Im sure someone will eventually and thats an exciting thought.
And yet it is in terms of accessibility and representation of minorities, evidenced by that leaked Capcom document that specifically refers to TLOU2 and it's LGBT characters in starring roles. Though I'm sure representation means fuck all to straight people who are represented in everything, everywhere, all the time.
No, its been a fantastic year for Pc gaming. Crusader Kings 3, Hades, MS Flight Simulator, Football Manager 21, Half Life Alyx, Doom Eternal etc.
Its a very odd vote
Sure, that is valuable.. and like i said before that maybe the story possibly does push the industry for being daring and inclusive for a AAA production.
It is a very positive thing to have minorities represented in a respectful way in something so big budget and mainstream. Even as a straight white male its refreshing to play as someone who is not the most typical hero wether its sexual preference or race or whatever. It seems like the success of it will open gates for more of this too as evidenced by what Capcom is saying too so ok perhaps it IS pushing the industry to a positive direction.
I do also respect them for sticking to their guns with the storyline knowing it would upset a big chunk of their fanbase.
Its ballsy and i respect it but it doesnt make me enjoy the game really..
I dont do PC nowadays but yeah, I thought it was an odd choice. I've seen people rave about other games while Death Stranding on PC barely seemed to come up on any radar when it released.
Do you not see the irony in this? You say, "I didn't clam a game has to be a paradigm shifting experience" and then you turn around and ask what is TLOU2 doing to push the industry forward....which would be a paradigm shifting experience. You mention other studios, yet ND is the only studio to win 3 (more than likely 4 with TLOU2) GotY awards in the last 11 years doing the same style of cinematic gameplay that they refine and adapt with each new release.
While the gameplay itself isn't some new experience, the story, characters, and overall presentation continue to push the industry forward because ND is one of the only studios who manages to push this medium to the absolute boundary of how stories can be told and representing marginalized groups that don't normally get shine. There are levels to this and ND is sitting pretty high up.
Well i didn't claim it has to be a paradigm shift. Or even that a game that is a paradigm shift is necessarily better than a game that doesnt do anything new but does everything extremely well..
Others have claimed Part 2 really pushes the industry forward and this still just reeks of massive hyperbole to me.
I find the gameplay in especially Uncharted series extremely shallow and handholdy.. especially as someone who enjoys puzzles the stuff in uncharted that starts screaming the solution to you the minute the obstacle is presented is kind of insulting. The last of us part 2 is certainly an improvement because the gunplay and combat are actually good and polished but it doesnt really have any interesting gameplay/interaction beyond solid combat.
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The Golden Joystick Awards 2020 - LiveStream
The Golden Joystick Awards 2020 will be an all-digital show that awards the best games of the last 12 months, celebrating the next generation of consoles and...
youtu.be
"All the way down to QA".
FFS.
It may be poor wording, but the idea you're putting across is that phenomenally popular games can't also be critically well received games and that's just not true. Yes AC and Among Us have flaws, but so does every other game in contention both this year and every other year.
I don't think AC or Among Us are inherently more deserving of an award but I do think that games with a wider audience spectrum are definitely more overlooked, mainly because the idea of what is a 'good game' is heavily skewed towards titles that are targeted towards white men the most. There's also an idea of what kind of genre a GotY has to be in order to be in contention as well as the budget behind it. If you put out a good third person action adventure title you're more likely to be nominated for the big awards than a good simulation, platform, rhythm or puzzle game and that's evident just by looking at the kinds of games that receive the big nominations - doesn't mean one in necessarily better than the other in any objective means, just that one has a distinctly better chance than the other for reason other than genre.
Congratulations. Part II was imo the clear winner of game of the year.
Best Performer - Sandra Saad (Kamala Khan). I was sure that Ashley was going to win for the performance in Part II. I saw some post about a great performance but i never played the game myself. Was it deserved?
Best Performer - Sandra Saad (Kamala Khan). I was sure that Ashley was going to win for the performance in Part II. I saw some post about a great performance but i never played the game myself. Was it deserved?
Indeed... but i don't see much other game that would take the crown this year, so i guess that was expected.
I haven't played it either, but I've heard she is the one really good part of it.
I don't think what I said remotely implies that games can't be both popular and acclaimed.
The thing is I don't think AC is going to be overlooked for any reason other than it isn't good enough. I do think there is an issue with awards overlooking games, just not hyper popular ones like Animal Crossing. If Animal Crossing was a better game, for example if they'd nailed the social/multiplayer aspects as opposed to making a complete mess of them, it would stand a much greater chance of winning awards.
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Congrats ND....incredible game top to bottom!
...and Death Stranding still winning GOTY awards a year later....because it really was that good,what a wonderful time I had with that game...all 164hrs!
...and Death Stranding still winning GOTY awards a year later....because it really was that good,what a wonderful time I had with that game...all 164hrs!
Reminder that Overwatch beat Uncharted 4 in 2016. The "wider reach game" beating the big sony, aaa tps.
