Games

[icycalm]

I moved my lengthy preamble from the top of the page, to the bottom, with the notes. I did this because this page is now the second-most popular one on the site, with 23,000+ views since about a year ago, when I launched it. For comparison, the Genealogy has 25,000+ views, but that number only includes the three-four years it's been on the new site, so it could well be double that if we include the several years it spent on the old site, for which I don't have statistics. In any case, at the rate at which the GOTY page is being viewed, it will be Insomnia's most visited within six months to a year, so I think that moving the wall of text to the bottom and presenting the new visitor with the game list right away should help focus more people's attention more efficiently.

In other news, the GOTY curator will pass 1,000 followers within the next few days.

I am looking forward to covering the remaining games on the list with at least preliminary in-depth reviews well before summer's end. And then I'll methodically start personally reviewing everything on Patreon.

[icycalm]

Phoenix Point was pushed back to June 2019, so I replaced it with Ymir as provisional 2018 GOTY runner-up. Universim just came out, but it seems quite barebones, as most of its content will be added via updates (you can only tech up to some primitive age currently), so it's probably out of the running for this year. There aren't that many GOTY candidates left before the year runs out, so it seems that Kingdom Come and Spider-Man will retain their slots, although I might switch them around when I get around to playing them. It is the third slot that might prove tough to fill. No idea if I'll end up keeping Ymir, but currently it's a decent bet.

[icycalm]

I switched places between Until Dawn and Dying Light, so that the latter is now 2015 GOTY and the former is second runner-up.

I did this because I caught a bit of stakkir's stream of Dying Light today and I was blown away by it. Then Diamond said it's one of his favorite games this decade, which confirmed my two-minute impression.

I moved it up my playlist, though I might have to try Dead Island first to compare.

[icycalm]

[icycalm]

On the occasion of linking my Wing Commander essay off the list, I updated the 2018 candidates, replacing Ymir with Astro Bot as second runner-up. I have not considered Post Scriptum, because my understanding is that it's merely an update of Squad, so if anything it is Squad that should be considered for whichever year it released in.

Kingdom Come and Spider-Man seem pretty secure in their positions, especially now that Phoenix Point's been pushed to 2019. We may well end up with the three choices I have there now, when all is said and done. Or at most with one change.

[icycalm]

I replaced Astro Bot with Kingmaker, and with the Spider-Man review now up, and Kingdom Come retaining its position as GOTY, that completes 2018 for now. If you've played a 2018 game that you think should replace one of my selections, I am all ears. In the meantime, I am turning my attention to 2019, to figure out what's the best that has been published so far.

[icycalm]

Some big changes to the list today.

First off, LiF replaces For Honor as second runner-up for 2017. I have played both games extensively now and there's no question that the LiF experience is on a whole other level than For Honor's. For Honor should basically be copy-pasted into LiF to replace its atrocious combat system, and then you'd have the best game ever. But the combat system is only a tiny part of the LiF experience, and the rest is worth way more. Still, For Honor is right behind it as experience of the year.

Moving on, we finally have three solid candidates for 2019, all of them reviewed. Sekiro keeps the top spot, but DMC5 and RE:2 are replaced by Outer Wilds and Ymir, respectively. Either of them might get displaced by Satisfactory, but we don't have any... satisfactory reports on that yet, so we'll bide our time. Keep in mind also that RE:2 is a remake and I've heard reports of underwhelming level design and story in DMC5. Kind of reminds me of DMC3 if true... Read my review of the latter if you need a reminder on why that'd be a deal-breaker.

chevvy is the only one of us who has finished both Sekiro and Outer Wilds, so if he thinks they should switch places, he should let me know and I'll do it.

And that's it for today. The list looks much more complete now and there's no game on it that's not been reviewed all the way back to 2007.

[icycalm]

As the year draws to a close the hunt for GOTYs intensifies. Of course the process never ends, as I've repeatedly made clear, and the 2019 choices will be reviewed and revised indefinitely, but it's nice to do all we can to make sure that, by the end of the current year, we have some pretty solid choices up.

So in that spirit I have replaced Ymir with Disco Elysium as runner-up. Ymir and Satisfactory were early favorites of mine, but I've played both now, and they are nowhere near the expected and hoped-for level of quality (reviews on Patreon soon).

Moreover, since Disco Elysium, if the current Insomnia review is correct, seems considerably more innovative than Sekiro, I've moved it up to GOTY and demoted Sekiro to first runner-up, with Outer Wilds therefore moving down to second runner-up (yes, the runner-ups are ranked too). And I am now quite happy with these three choices as multiple CULT players confirm or partly confirm all of them.

Meanwhile, I have still not played any of the three, so that's definitely on my to-do list asap. I did play and rule out Ymir, after all, which had been GOTY runner-up for months, so I am doing my job, even if belatedly. And I'll keep doing it, and the list will keep improving.

Any other games to investigate for 2019?

Manifold Garden is one I will be checking asap. Stars End is another. Then there's Astral Chain, the new Fire Emblem, and finally DMC5.

Planetfall is good but doesn't belong in the list. I've played it quite a bit and I'll play it a lot more. And finally Phoenix Point is the only future 2019 release (coming December 3) that seems to me to have a shot at unseating the incumbents. So I'll definitely be playing that and I am sure many CULT players will too.

And that's all I've got up to now. Any suggestions, keep them coming, in the forum and on Discord, as several people have been doing.

This is the first year where the hunt for GOTYs began at the start of the year, so I haven't been playing catch-up all year as I did in 2018 and earlier. And next year I'll be even more proactive about it, intensifying my attempt to play anything that remotely smells of GOTY as soon as possible after release.

[icycalm]

Added 2020 to the list.

Nothing great has been released up to now (March 4), as far as I am aware, so I went with my top three most anticipated choices, but with a caveat. I put Cyberpunk as GOTY, but not so much because I am excited for it, but mostly because I feel I should be excited for it, because on paper it sounds awesome. However, the trailers haven't convinced me (both the setting and the story look generic with no coherent vision and direction), and I don't have much faith in the developer (have only played Thronebreaker and it was ass).

The other two choices are games I'am gagging for though: first up Ghost of Tsushima, which looks BETTER than a movie (check the latest trailer currently in the Most Wanted playlist), and then Squadron 42, which again looks out of this world, and which should be out this summer last I heard.

So yeah, it's too early to call it, but if you're only gonna pre-order three games this year, and buy them sight unseen, these are the three to go for as far as I am concerned.

[icycalm]

A major change in 2017 today, that may lead to even bigger changes: Life is Feudal: MMO, which was second runner-up, is moved to first runner-up, and Breath of the Wild slides to third place. I've been playing LiF a lot more recently since the wipe, and though I've never played the Zelda, there's no doubt in my mind that LiF is far superior. The Zelda is just a dumbed-down Japanese open-world design, I am sure; LiF takes first-person 4X to a whole new level. There's simply no comparison.

Moreover, I am thinking of moving LiF to the top spot and downgrading Wildlands. I've already played both games, with almost 100 hours in LiF now, but I still need to play Wildlands some more to make sure. Basically, LiF added a proper fully fleshed-out strategy layer to first-person 4X. Rust was the first in the genre, but it has no specialized strategy mechanics: strategy is possible, but the game does nothing to facilitate it. That's in fact its only fault, and that's what LiF fixed four years later. Wildlands on the other hand, created the most beautiful and well-designed open-world yet. Granted, it was a "wildland" setting, not an urban one which is a thousand times harder, but it's still a stunning achievement, plus it was the first game to do four-player open-world well. So both games are tremendous achievements, and it's my job to determine which one was more tremendous than the other, even if only by a little. That's how rankings work, and it's a tough job, and someone has to do it. Complicating matters is the fact that LiF makes tremendous progress in world design too, with the most realistic and awe-inspiring map I have ever seen—bar Wildlands'. These two games have the best maps ever, and that's another aspect of theirs I have to compare, and for which comparison I'll need to put a lot more time in Wildlands than I already have.

So look forward to that, and I'll keep you posted as always.

[icycalm]

So as you may have noticed I recently declared Life is Feudal: MMO "Best Game Ever" over on Patreon [ > ], so of course I bumped it up to GOTY for 2017, with Wildlands and that Zelda thing bringing up the rear now. I am also happy to announce that we replaced the player we lost from my Wildlands team, so I'll be playing more of this soonish, plus I am finally ordering a Switch so I can check out that Zelda thing personally. So we should have a very concrete 2017 ranking before the end of the year. It's already pretty damn concrete from where I am standing, and utterly different from everyone else's too, no? Not that it matters, but I am just sayin'. Because it matters [ > ].

In other news, I've just installed Deadly Premonition/Red Seeds Profile on Shadow after zinger cast some doubts on it on Discord via DM, but without elaborating:

CULT|zinger
Btw, before I forget: even though I haven't been active for a long time I've been lurking constantly...
And there's one question I've been wanting to ask:
Are you comfortable with having Red Seeds Profile as a runner-up for GOTY 2010?
Have you played it?

CULT|icycalm
I haven’t played many of the games on the list
If you have objections or suggestions post them in the thread

CULT|zinger
OK, sure will do that

CULT|icycalm
Looking forward to it

He hasn't got back to me on that, but I've been meaning to try the game for ages anyway, and now I have an extra reason. So I'll be trying it shortly and we'll finally see what's up with this game. The sequel is due out in July too, so I'd like to know whether I should be excited for it.

And finally, look forward to a "Best Game Ever" thread from me that will serve as the update thread for that lofty award (which btw now has its own section on the left sidebar on the frontpage, pretty high up the page too), and in which I'll talk a bit about previous award holders, from Defender of the Crown in the mid-'80s which was the game that made me fall in love with videogames, all the way to LiF, and on to whichever game will knock it off that perch, hopefully as soon as possible because I can't wait to play it, whatever it is!

[zinger]

The "regular" action segments in Red Seeds Profile are really bad, and you have to endure countless hours of them if you want to play through the entire game. Also, I'm a huge fan of Twin Peaks, but mostly, RSP just feels like a cheap imitator of the series; the overall story is OK I guess but the game is ugly, and I really didn't fall in love with any of the characters or environments in it. The one thing I absolutely loved about it though, strangely, was the QTE segments. I normally dislike QTE stuff, but in RSP they are absolutely incredible, and have to be experienced in order to be believed. Some of the most nerve-wrecking, exciting experiences I've had in a game for a while! So bottom line: drab game overall, with a couple of amazing segments that account for maybe 1% of the total play-time.

[icycalm]

I will be updating the GOTY page soon. There will be a major drive over the next few weeks for me to complete at least its first draft (which means all games reviewed, but not by me: ultimately though the goal is for reviews by me for everything).

For 2021, I plan to add Starbase as provisional GOTY, and Humankind and Dying Light 2 as provisional runner-ups. Other games I am looking at as candidates are Biohazard Village and King’s Bounty II. If you have any suggestions, don’t be shy.

Remember that being a great game isn’t enough to qualify for these awards: it must also bring something new to the table. So although I am sure the new Pathfinder game, Wrath of the Righteous, will be great, it won’t be much different from the previous one, so it’s not even considered. Well, they ARE adding a Heroes of Might & Magic turn-based tactics aspect to it, but I think it will be minor. So I would only consider this game if most of my other candidates bombed and I was hurting to fill all the spots in the podium.

Expect a LOT of GOTY reviews soon. That will be my main focus until the list is complete, or at least its first draft.

[icycalm]

lol I forgot TaleSpire. That’s already 2021 GOTY and I haven’t even tried it. Starbase and the rest will have to work hard to dethrone it.

Also must remember to replace Mushi with Fantasy Grounds for 2004.

Fantasy Grounds and TaleSpire should not be italicized because they aren’t games per se. They are like Word and Photoshop. You need to slot a rule system and an adventure in them, and then they become games. And it is with the assumption that they come packaged with ALL the rule systems and ALL the adventures ever that I treat them as games on this list. But they still shouldn’t be italicized.

[icycalm]

State of GOTYs June 2021
https://www.patreon.com/posts/52123149

To almost everyone, all this sounds like Greek to them. And, in a way, it is!

[icycalm]

Another potential 2021 GOTY, if it releases this year.

Knights of Honor II: Sovereign
https://store.steampowered.com/app/7368 ... Sovereign/

It's Paradox done right, if it works. I've had my eye on it for a long time. The trailer has been on the frontpage reel for a year or more.

[icycalm]

Humankind knocked off the 2021 GOTYs. TaleSpire demoted to first runner-up, and Starbase demoted to second, all to make room for my D&D Ultimate Edition as provisional 2021 GOTY. Full details here:

Birth of a Genre: The Era of TaleSpire and Dramatic Strategy
https://www.patreon.com/posts/53320420

Today is a beautiful day, a glorious day, a tremendous day: it is the day that icycalm becomes officially a game designer, and indeed joins the ranks of the greatest game designers of all time.

[icycalm]

It occurred to me that my game was released in 2020, not 2021, so I moved it there. This means that Cyberpunk is no longer GOTY for 2020 but first runner-up, and Ghost of Tsushima second. I can tell you with 100% certainty that given a choice between playing my Ultimate Edition for the next couple of decades, or Cyberpunk 2077, I would choose my game no question. However, I haven't yet played Cyberpunk, so who knows. Maybe it's that good. We'll see when the time comes, but for the time being this is how things stand.

Moreover, looking at both Ghost of Tsushima and The Last of Us Part II, I couldn't in good conscience kick the latter off the list, because it actually seems more innovative than Ghost. Consider that Ghost is just another open-world game at the end of the day. As far as I know, it brings nothing new to the table, while TLoU2 seems to inaugurate a new level of interactive action setpieces. So Ghost is off and TLoU2 stays. At least for now.

As for 2021, TaleSpire is now back to GOTY, while Starbase is back to first runner-up and Humankind is back on the list as second runner-up. I've already put a dozen hours in TaleSpire, and will be playing both of the others well before the summer's over, so we'll have a very good grasp of what's going on with 2021 very soon.

[icycalm]

Starbase is now presumptive GOTY for 2021, and TaleSpire first runner-up. The justification is the same as for making Fantasy Grounds runner-up in 2004 (scroll up to read it).

[icycalm]

With Dying Light 2 delayed to 2022, it looks like Starbase and TaleSpire have almost no competition. And P.S. I am thinking of replacing Humankind with Kaettekita Makaimura. I need to play more Humankind to make sure, and now that we have an Earth map that should be a lot more enjoyable, so stay tuned.

Meanwhile another contender, King’s Bounty II, has released to mixed reaction, so it’s probably no longer in the running. And Eastward and Age of Darkness are coming out this week and I’ll be checking both so we’ll see if they can compete. I will probably also be playing Far Cry 6 before the end of the year, we just need to wrap up 5 with recoil, we’re almost at the end.

Not sure if there’s anything else worth checking. It’ll be easier to determine this once I’ve fully updated the 2021 release schedule, which will be happening soon.

So I’ve already played at least a bit of ALL GOTY candidates this year WELL in advance of the end of the year, so that’s a new thing for this award feature that I am aiming to keep going. I am no more speculating as I was largely doing for previous years, now I know pretty much exactly what I am talking about in real-time as opposed to checking all the candidates years after release to confirm my choices. I am super-happy about this.

[icycalm]

The Insomnia 2021 Game of the Year Awards
https://www.patreon.com/posts/59635398

Back among humans meanwhile, truly astonishing developments are transpiring in the world of videogames, and there's only one publication, and really only one person, who can relate these to you and analyze them.

[icycalm]

State of GOTYs March '22
https://www.patreon.com/posts/64147040

So we have GMRPGs both for GOTY and first runner-up for 2022. The genre is taking over, as I explained to you, in exactly the same way that 3D games started taking over in the late-'90s. The last three years of GOTYs have all been GMRPGs: my Battlegrounds for 2020, TaleSpire for 2021, and now Beneos's Curse of Strahd for 2022.

[icycalm]

After several months of being offline (thanks to my hosting company replacing its workers with Indians, who nuked half my site on day 1—don't get me started, it's not that kind of post), the Insomnia GOTY Awards are back and with the biggest update ever.

First off, the full feature has been moved back to this thread's OP; here's the quick link for you if you want to take in all the changes before I talk you through them: https://culture.vg/forum/topic?t=5032 [Edit: Feature moved back to its own custom page on the main site: https://culture.vg/reviews/awards/game-of-the-year.html]

That's where the GOTY Awards will reside from now on (linked also from the frontpage's left sidebar). The links to the reviews however are temporarily gone because the reviews also must be moved to the forum. This will be happening over the next few months, and I aim to have every game reviewed a year from now at the latest.

And now for the changes:

• Above all, I've added two more years, 2023 and 2024.
  
• For 2024, my TaleSpire-powered campaign takes the top spot, renamed to Alex Kierkegaard's Kingslayer for multiple reasons to be explained at a later time. I used to have it as 2022 GOTY, but that obviously didn't pan out, then I was aiming to launch it in late 2023, but then decided to push the launch to January 1, 2024 so that... it wouldn't have to compete with Menyr, and make my life difficult in having to pick a winner between them. This way they can both win, and I get an extra couple of months to polish the introduction. As for why I place my game above Chris Roberts'... I don't want to badmouth Star Citizen, as it's the best real-time game ever, and it's really faultless at what it does. What it doesn't do, however... is roleplaying, while my game does it better than any other game ever. So there's no contest between them, no way for CR's games to win, with Squadron 42 being even worse than SC in this regard, as it's just a singleplayer campaign game at the end of the day, lacking the freedom and immensity of SC to at least make your own way in it and so feel, to a small extent, that you're playing some role of your own devising as opposed to running through someone else's script. In my game, meanwhile, as you build cities they get populated by NPCs who offer missions TO PLAYERS OTHER THAN YOU whose adventures then end up affecting the course of your kingdom and you, so... nothing like this has even been IMAGINED in a game before, let alone achieved. And it all looks like THIS:
  
  First Teaser | Alex Kierkegaard's Kingslayer (2024)
  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2K7wG1K ... D0DUK0u9_2
  
  
  
  Second Teaser | Alex Kierkegaard's Kingslayer (2024)
  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p_9rZIz ... D0DUK0u9_2
  
  
  
  So I am sorry, but aint no game gonna compete with this anytime this decade when no one else is smart enough to even imagine such things, let alone implement them as I am doing. And if CR has five studios working on his games, I have THIRTY, and that's how my game can be 30x bigger than his. True story. Sorry not sorry.
  
• Chris Roberts' Star Citizen Alpha 4.0 and Squadron 42 take the runner-up spots for 2024. If you want to learn more about these choices, you should read The Year of Chris Roberts chapter from my work-in-progress "Videogame Art: Star Citizen" essay/small book. But let me explain something about Star Citizen specifically, in the context of GOTY awards, because these aren't the only two slots it gets in this update. It gets a third one further down (for Alpha 3.0), and it might possibly snag a fourth down the line (I am considering giving a slot also to Alpha 2.0). SC is the biggest traditional videogame ever developed, with no fewer than FIVE studios working on it currently. 1,100 individuals are hammering on the game RIGHT NOW, and THOUSANDS have worked on it over the past 12 years. SC's alpha point releases, therefore, are so different from each other that, as far as we are concerned, they may as well be SEQUELS, and THAT'S how they'll be treated for the purposes of all Insomnia awards. Take a look at the Alpha 2.0 and 3.0 trailers below, and you'll see what I mean: 2.0 is basically Shattered Horizon/Boundary but with 25 players, persistence, and entire fully-modelled stations grafted ON TOP of a space combat sim, and 3.0 is all the above grafted onto a survival looter-shooter on a solar-system scale, and with the playercount raised first to 50, and then to 100 and beyond. There's no way we can count both these things as ONE game just because the latter is an update to the former when they have less in common than Wolfenstein: The New Order does with Wolfenstein 3D.
  
  Star Citizen: Alpha 3.0 Feature Trailer
  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q5rXhAJcSeQ
  
  
  
  Star Citizen Alpha 2.0 Gameplay Trailer
  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xf4zCCjBwOA
  
  
  
  So expect to see SC alpha point releases gain multiple slots from now on, and given how far behind it the rest of the industry has been falling, I wouldn't be surprised if later in the decade every award goes to SC lmao.
  
• Menyr wins for 2023, and it's not even close. It's already in backers' hands, and I have a key too and would be trying it if I wasn't swamped with other things. The media coming out of it is out of this world, and I've already shared a lot in its thread, and will be sharing more throughout the rest of the year. It's got the interactivity of a TTRPG and the graphics of Cyberpunk 2077: it is a revolution and no one knows about it, but you know, and future generations will know because of my GOTY feature. We won't let the midwits win, don't you worry about that.
  
• As first runner-up for 2023 I moved up Beneos' 2.5D reimagining of Ravenloft: Curse of Strahd. I used to have it as 2022's first runner-up, but I moved other stuff there, so this was the only available slot. Now am I allowed to move stuff around at will, you might ask? Am I not constrained by pesky release dates? In general, indeed I am, but with this particular project it's kind of hard to ascertain precisely when it was "released" because Beneos has been churning out sets one by one for some years now. So I VAGUELY decided that somewhere AROUND 2023 is when he released the SORT OF LAST set; though he's still redoing older sets he's done to bring them up to his latest standards, plus—and which is just as interesting—he's been releasing quite a lot of new sets to EXPAND the locations available in Barovia based on the earlier work of Ravenloft's most famous DMs. He's basically turning their handcrafted maps into stunning 2.5D locations, and adding them to his overworld. But I am not counting all this extra work for the purposes of determining the "release date"; I am just sayin'. This is an ongoing work, but the BULK of it, and the main portion, seems to have been finished sometime around 2023, AND THAT IS GOOD ENOUGH FOR ME FOR NOW. I may or may not revise this estimate in the future. The main point here is that Curse of Strahd shits all over Baldur's Gate 3, even before it was built in glorious 2.5D, let alone now. So I already have 2 titles above everyone else's GOTY, is what I am saying.
  
• And for second 2023 runner-up I indeed put in Baldur's Gate 3, first off because I am sure it's a good game, there's no doubt about that. And second off, because... I can't think of a superior choice for that slot currently, and I had to put something there. Interesting-ish factoid: All 3 Baldur's Gate games are in the list now, which is quite an achievement for the series. And they do deserve their spots: the original brought back isometric CRPGs from the grave in the late-'90s, the sequel took the scope of isometric CRPGs to a whole new level, and the third iteration seems to have done the exact same thing, to a whole other level, a quarter of a century later. Only problem is... its scope has long been dwarfed by the combination of Pathfinder + Fantasy Grounds, and with far superior interactivity and campaigns, so its achievement is no longer as impressive as BG2's was back when we couldn't play TTRPGs on our computers. I would rather play any random Pathfinder campaign on Fantasy Grounds out of dozens than BG3, and that's why I will probably never play BG3. And that's also why BG3 might be replaced by a more interesting choice when I find it. If any of the titles in my Most Wanted forum release before the end of the year, for example, it's almost certainly kicking BG3 off the list. And besides, just so you realize how inappropriate BG3 is for a GOTY list, Owlcat's Pathfinder CRPGs are without a doubt far superior in everything (superior scenarios, superior setting, superior rules, and even 6-character tactics as opposed to 4-), and yet neither of them are on the list, so there's no way BG3 should be unless there just doesn't happen to be a better game released in 2023. Which might end up being the case, but likely won't be. Stay tuned.
  
• For 2022, my Ultimate Edition replaces my erstwhile "West Marches" as GOTY. The full justification for that is here: https://culture.vg/forum/topic?p=36338#p36338
  
• At this point, you'd be excused for saying "wtf icy" when seeing no fewer than THREE of my games on the list. For first off, are these even different games or just different aspects of the same game? Well, as it happens, when it comes to GMRPGs we count the rulesets as separate games because they can be used to run essentially infinite games, so it's not proper to tie down our evaluations of them with any given adventure/scenario or campaign. Dungeons & Dragons is therefore A GAME, but so is Baldur's Gate 3 which runs on the Dungeons & Dragons ruleset, and the ruleset is more important than that particular adventure, because without it, the adventure wouldn't exist. Similarly, my Kingslayer is a campaign taking place within my Battlegrounds universe just as Squadron 42 is a campaign taking place within the Star Citizen universe and all these things are great enough and, though related, greatly different from each other, that they deserve their own spots on the list, and to even dominate entire years, if they're good enough, as many of them are. See also the Blade Runner RPG ruleset and its first campaign below that dominate the 2022 runner-up slots.
  
• As to whether it's a good look to give 3 whole GOTY slots to my own games, have a video of Ridley Scott giving 2 out of 5 top sci-fi movie slots to his own movies: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CWFef_YAG0c
  
• Runner-ups for 2022 are the Blade Runner GMRPG (replacing Beneos's Curse of Strahd, which has been moved to 2023), and its first campaign, The Immortal Game (replacing Pathfinder: Blood Lords, which is a fine campaign from what I've heard, but nowhere near as innovative as Blade Runner's first campaign). You can read the review of the BR RPG in my GMRPG Reviews forum, and the first part of my review of its first campaign is coming as soon as I run the first scenario, which shouldn't be long. It might even happen before year's end. Suffice to say, this stuff is way more interesting than rolling on the floor for 100 hours in Elden Ring. It's not even close.
  
• And now a change that's been a long time coming: Star Citizen Alpha 3.0 HAD to go in the list somewhere, since that's when the game first got walkable planets and moons, and as it happens it released on December 23, 2017, which means that one of the 2017 games has to drop off, and I am afraid it must be the Zelda. I can't very well kick Life is Feudal out (which remains the GOTY btw), and though the Zelda is the very first attempt at an "open-world" by yellow people, Wildlands is one of the coolest open worlds ever ON TOP of being FOUR-PLAYER, and far more mechanically and aesthetically complex, so there's no way Nintendo can compete with any of the top games in that year, it just can't. So congrats on taking 16 years to copy, and dumb-down, our open-world design (because yours is a barren wasteland while ours are entire living cities), and though I am sure the Zelda is a fine game, it just can't compete at the level of the other top titles for that year. If you want to compete, dear yellow people, you have to work harder, above all dream bigger, and let us know when you finally manage to put a city into any of your games. P.S. Wildlands used to be first runner-up, but that spot went to SC Alpha 3.0, so Wildlands slid to second runner-up.
  
• And as a final change for this update I've moved Uncharted 4 from 2016 second runner-up to GOTY, with everything else moving one place down as a result. Why make this change? Because I wasn't happy with Tiger Knight at the top spot, and to be frank I am not too happy with Shadow Tactics being in there either. They're both too low-concept to be the best games of 2016. But if not them... then what? There seems to have been a dearth of ambitious games in 2016, or I am perhaps missing something. I did spend the whole year in prison, after all, under a complete media ban, only coming out on December 18, so who knows. I probably missed some stuff there that should be looked into. That said, I've run several searches since, and come up with precious little. So we'll see. Let me know if you have any recommendations.

In addition, the following three notes have been added to the notes at the bottom of the feature as a commentary on some of the greatest trends in videogames that have formed in the last few years, and which can be discerned by carefully analyzing the latest version of the list.

• For nearly a quarter of a century, 2001 has been the best year in videogames, with GTA3 launching the open-world genre while Max Payne, Halo, Metal Gear Solid 2 and Devil May Cry took the cinematic singleplayer campaign in various directions, all of which would be explored in detail and complexified over the next two decades until being fused—and injected with some roleplaying—in the open-world CRPG Cyberpunk 2077. But 2024 looks set to take 2001's crown as the best year in gaming, with two of its top 3 games—Kingslayer and Star Citizen Alpha 4.0—blowing open entire metaverses of imagination, while the third game, Squadron 42, looks set to be the most cinematic game ever (it looks almost more cinematic than actual cinema lol, all the while the whole thing's interactive! Heat aside, it probably also features the most ACTING talent of any artwork ever!) If you throw in Pax Dei, Dune: Awakening and possibly also Life is Feudal II, which are quasi-metaverses in their own right, we have before us no fewer than FIVE metaverses of stunning aesthetic and mechanical depth coming out in 2024, each of which is more complex and involved than ALL of 2001's best games PUT TOGETHER. So. Please. If you want to peddle nonsense doomtalk about the future of interactive art, do it somewhere else, preferably where I won't see it. It's not my fault if people are too stupid to find the good stuff, and too low-energy to play them.
  
• From 2020 onwards every GOTY has been snagged by a GMRPG and/or metaverse game, and even many of the runner-up slots. Traditional invisible wall games can no longer compete with the cutting-edge that GMRPG/metaverse games represent, and it's a giant paradigm shift the likes of which has only been seen once before in videogame history... with the jump from 2D to 3D.
  
• Up till now, only Sid Meier had his name three times on the list. In fact he was about the only person with his actual name on the list at all. Well, with today's update I have my name three times too. Moreover, all three of my entries are GOTYs whereas only two of Meier's are, the third one is a runner-up. So. Just sayin'. I am now mathematically proven to be the greatest game designer/developer/director of all time. P.S. Chris Roberts has three games too, but two of them are runner-ups. That said, his games are, overall, clear superiors to Meier's (the later ones, at any rate, because Civ>>>Wing Commander), it's just the particularities of the GOTY format that make it seem as if Meier is superior. So if we wanted to rank the top 3 game designers/developers/directors of all time it'd have to be 1) icycalm, 2) Chris Roberts, and 3) Sid Meier. I might expand this to a top 10 at some point in the future. That should be interesting, I don't think it's even been done before (since journalists don't want to ruffle the feathers of the people who give them all their news and review code).

[icycalm]

I once more moved the GOTY feature out of the forum and onto the main site, where let's face it, it belongs (also with all links restored, and even some new ones added, both in the list and also the intro and notes sections): https://culture.vg/reviews/awards/game-of-the-year.html

There's just more space on the main site pages, and they're more customizable, to allow me to achieve the look and functionality that I want. So the GOTY feature is back there (and linked on the frontpage sidebar and also top menu), and staying there.

I only made one edit of substance with this update. I added links for my three games.

Now let's make something clear: I only add links to reviews, for games that have reviews on Insomnia. I never link to any other type of content or page off the list. In the case of my games, however, I decided to make an exception, because no one knows wtf my games are, and they will stump random people coming off some search engine. And since my games UTTERLY DOMINATE the last half decade of the list, I think these random new visitors deserve at least an ATTEMPT at some kind of explanation. And it is my hope that the three links I just added will help do that until the day comes when I have full reviews to link for my games. In fact all three games will eventually link to my "Roleplaying Culture" essay, once it's done. I've already published a couple dozen pages of this essay, but I am not even halfway through, and it will be a giant, almost book-length, essay included in both Videogame Culture: Volume III and the "Ultimate Edition: Core Rulebook". And this essay will also be the review of my three games, because they're so complex that I am sure no one will ever be able to write an analysis that does them justice. So I will do it myself, and it'll be glorious.

Until then, here are the three links I chose for my three games, from older to newer:

2020 - ALEX KIERKEGAARD'S BATTLEGROUNDS
https://akbattlegrounds.net

The first link is simply the official Battlegrounds site, which unlike other games' official sites, is also where a lot of playing happens. It's not just an advertisement site, it's an integral part of the game. The overworld is there, for one, but also the entire encyclopedia that the players themselves write as they explore the world. And even though there's not much content there right now, you can tell right away (especially if viewing it at 4K) that this game is something special. Show me any other game which has BOTH fantasy AND sci-fi in its cover art for example. And then if you click on the Alien cover you open an entire world in itself. Plus, in a few months there'll be way more content up there, and it'll be even easier for a random visitor to be btfo by it.

2022 - ALEX KIERKEGAARD'S ULTIMATE EDITION
https://culture.vg/forum/forum?f=36

The second link is the Ultimate Edition forum, which is full of threads with chapters from the book. Half of that content is currently off-site and the links to it are broken, but the other half is here, and a random visitor can spend some hours going through it and getting an idea of the crazy scope of the ruleset. And, once more, all the content will eventually be hosted here, before it's moved to the official site in a dedicated rules section.

2024 - ALEX KIERKEGAARD'S KINGSLAYER
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p_9rZIzZs28



And finally, actual 3D play footage of the biggest roleplaying-strategy campaign of all time showing the crazy level of visual and aural fidelity of my game and the ability to say anything you want without having to mess with childish multiple-selection dialogue trees like CRPGs use. Every aesthetic aspect is off the wall too, so nothing more needs to be said.

I believe anyone going through these three links will at the very least get an idea of why I rate these games so highly. And that's all I am trying to achieve by making this exception and including these three non-review links in the list.

Stay tuned, as I have way more updates coming, including reviews for ALL the games on the list that don't have them. One day you'll wake up and all the games will have been reviewed, and that day isn't too far off either.

[icycalm]

Tiny update for today but very important: I switched the Kingslayer link from one of the teasers to the game's just-launched official thread: https://culture.vg/forum/topic?t=9477

So now everyone coming across the GOTY feature and wondering wtf is "Kingslayer" and why it's supposed to be 2024 GOTY should have some answers. And more answers are coming soon as I continue to add chapters to the thread and the full glorious design is revealed.