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The Insomnia 1962-2024 Game of the Year Awards

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Unread postby icycalm » 14 Sep 2014 17:35

If all this is true, I'll make a provisional substitution:

http://www.learntocounter.com/uncharted ... g-thieves/

The Ghetto Moron wrote:Uncharted 2: Among Thieves is such a leap ahead of Drake’s Fortune that it’s hard to believe both games came from the same studio. Every important mechanic and system has been improved and quick-time events are done away with in favor of unbelievable action sequences, where dialogue normally played out through cutscenes are immaculately integrated into the carnage. Many sequences move beyond the “setpiece” distinction and deserve no less praise than “technical marvel”. The combat is perfectly paced and scripted alongside puzzle and platforming segments, but subtly critical to Among Thieves‘ success is a narrative that goes to fantastic (and possibly unintended) lengths in justifying the series’ absurd body counts. It’s the rare “movie game” narrative that makes the game more interesting to play, and when people were creating “interactive entertainment” for systems like the 3DO and Sega CD, I’m sure this is the game they were dreaming about.


It's very well written, at least, which makes it more likely that it will be true, but I've never seen the Ghetto moron write anything that's not stupid, so I am dubious.
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Unread postby icycalm » 15 Sep 2014 20:34

Amor fati posted his reply on Uncharted (which I spun off into a new thread), so I provisionally replaced Arkham Asylum with it: http://culture.vg/forum/topic?t=5039
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Unread postby icycalm » 15 Sep 2014 21:24

Switched back Ground Zeroes in place of the new Wolfenstein. Haven't played either, so I am just going by trailers and word of mouth for now.
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Unread postby icycalm » 16 Sep 2014 23:38

lolling at how abysmal Edge's choices are: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Ga ... ear_awards

But Famitsu's are even worse (which is to say their readers'... but I am sure the editors' would be almost as bad).

They are all basically abysmal. I can't find another word that reflects more accurately the value of all these lists.

These people are all essentially casuals.
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Unread postby icycalm » 26 Sep 2014 17:51

Replaced Ketsui with PlanetSide, which meant I had to replace OutRun 2 with Ketsui.

I need to find out about the genealogy of this game. I also need to play it a little at some point, to see what the differences are with the sequel, but the Wikipedia article on the sequel says that it's a remake, so mechanically the games do not seem to differ that much. It mainly seems that they updated the FPS mechanics with regenerating health, sprinting, etc., and improved the graphics, etc. But the main thing is the genealogy. This must be a descendant of Battlefield, no? I gotta to play that game at some point and write the appropriate reviews. PlanetSide is Videogame Art for sure, but the question is if its predecessors were too.
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Unread postby icycalm » 27 Sep 2014 09:12

Will probably have to start thinking about making space for Battlefield in 2002.
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Unread postby icycalm » 28 Sep 2014 15:58

Found my GotY for 2012, so I replaced Biohazard 6 with PlanetSide 2, which meant I had to replace XCOM with Biohazard 6. The jump from PS1 to PS2 is so huge that both games merit GotY status simultaneously.
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Unread postby icycalm » 24 Nov 2014 05:45

Replaced Ground Zeroes with Wolfenstein: The New Order. Ground Zeroes is still in the running, but I'll have to play both games to make the call in the long run. For now, since I have the TNO review, and since the game sounds like a GOTY contender anyway, I'll go with it. Let's now see if I can manage to knock out the PA review in the next couple of weeks or so, because I'd like to post the GOTY feature well before the end of the year, and it'd be nice to have full reviews of at least all the 2014 games when it goes live.
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Unread postby icycalm » 01 Apr 2017 06:33

For 2017 it looks like a close call between Zelda and D:OS2, so far.

For 2016, I don't know. Shadow Tactics is a contender, from what I've seen. Perhaps Until Dawn also, if that review is not too far off the mark. But I am hoping the Wildlands one is off, and that game turns out to be VGART.
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Unread postby icycalm » 01 Apr 2017 06:41

For Honor could be a fourth contender for 2017, but with Zelda, DOS:2 and Wildlands, it would be tough beating one of them to take their spot. This is an amazing year for games, and it's only just begun. If the Universim and Star Citizen come out and are awesome, it will be like 2001 all over again.
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Unread postby icycalm » 01 Apr 2017 15:15

Other contenders for 2015 are PA: Titans, Xenoblade Chronicles X, and if Renegade and Shepton are wrong The Witcher 3, MGS5, and/or Batman: Arkham Knight.

Hitman is also a contender for 2016.
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Unread postby icycalm » 01 Apr 2017 16:33

Updated the list with 2015-2017 choices (with the 2017 ones being obviously tentative). Also, replaced some games, most notably the 2012 runner-ups; Far Cry 3 and Biohazard 6 were replaced by Spec Ops: The Line and Dragon's Dogma, which seem more plausible choices to me, not having played any of them of course and just going by trailers and reviewer arguments.

Also, bolded all the games that have been reviewed on the site. My goal is to have everything from about 2010 onwards reviewed before I put the list on the frontpage (though I will re-review many of the games myself eventually, especially the VGART-worthy ones). Pre-2010 it's hard to find good reviews of these games online, mainly due to Steam coverage lacking in that period, and since most of them are VGART anyway, I will cover it all in good time.

The goal, of course, is to ultimately have every game in the list reviewed, and reviewed by me. The reviews of other people are merely used temporarily (though for the games that get VGART reviews, the other people's reviews will remain on the main site after the VGART ones go online, since that is a different section. The rest will be archived in the forum, once I've replaced them on the main site with mine.)
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Unread postby Amor fati » 01 Apr 2017 17:10

Until Dawn was released in 2015.
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Unread postby icycalm » 01 Apr 2017 17:17

Okay, replaced Until Dawn's 2016 entry with Trico, while the former took the place of Xenoblade X in 2015. Thanks for the heads-up.
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Unread postby icycalm » 01 Apr 2017 18:07

Replaced The Temple of Elemental Evil with EVE Online in 2003. It was a hard choice, but if half of what the dude says in his review is correct, it was a no-brainer. Interesting also to note that PlanetSide and EVE Online came out in the same year.
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Unread postby icycalm » 01 Apr 2017 18:12

Replaced Espgaluda II with Wanda to Kyozou in 2005 (also have to remember to bump the latter's rating by a star). Tough choice, but again a no-brainer going by the review we have on the site.
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Unread postby icycalm » 03 Apr 2017 21:22

List is up: http://culture.vg/reviews/awards/game-of-the-year.html

Really tired, so there might be non-working links or typos in there. Let me know if you find anything. Going to sleep and will look it over again when I wake.
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Unread postby icycalm » 03 Apr 2017 22:50

New note:

I wrote:-Japanese games are no more numerous in past decades than in this one, and pretty much none of them are at the genre-creating level of creativity that the best Western designers operate on. The Japanese have never been innovators, but they are the best damn students and copiers and refiners around, and this hasn't changed since the beginning of the artform (the very latest example being the GTA Zelda, which is basically a GTA ripoff for kids — and a great ripoff, at that, which is why there's no reason for us to use such nasty words like ripoff, and which I am only using here to drive home the fact that innovation, by and large, happens in the West and refinement in Japan). So that's that with the interminable doomsaying of the Japan-bashers — you know who y'all are.
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Unread postby icycalm » 05 Apr 2017 06:45

New note:

I wrote:-It's fascinating to me that, as I scroll up and down the list, memories bubble up into my consciousness from both my general life and my gaming life from every year almost all the way back to the beginning. Because I was born in '78, a few months before Space Invaders' release, pretty much right at the beginning of the artform. Moreover, releases were so few back then, and hardware upgrades so rare, that games took half a decade or more to fall out of fashion and become outdated. So you could be playing Space Invaders well into the '80s and still feel like it was cutting edge technology and game design. That's how I got to experience all those games years later, but still pretty much the same way that older people, who were adults in the '70s, experienced them at the time of their release. And when I play now an old game that I skipped back then, all I have to do is flick a switch in my brain and I am back in the '80s, perfectly capable of appreciating and evaluating it according to the standards of the time, neither trashing it because it's not 4K, nor cutting it more slack than it deserves because it "has pixels" and, as we all know, all pixels are adorable and beautiful and equal. What other critic do you know who can say the same? I don't read professional reviewers anymore, but the last time I checked they all sounded as if they had begun gaming with the Xbox 360. Setting aside intelligence and aesthetic sensibility for a moment, even in terms of birthdate I was born to be the ultimate game critic.
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Unread postby icycalm » 05 Apr 2017 07:00

How many Insomnia GOTYs did you play at or very near the time of their release? (With "very near" meaning about a year maximum.) Copy-paste the list below and put them in bold.

2017 - TOM CLANCY'S GHOST RECON WILDLANDS
2016 - TIGER KNIGHT: EMPIRE WAR

2015 - DYING LIGHT
2014 - PLANETARY ANNIHILATION
2013 - METAL GEAR RISING: REVENGEANCE

2012 - PLANETSIDE 2
2011 - HARD CORPS: UPRISING
2010 - LOST PLANET 2
2009 - DEMON'S SOULS
2008 - FAR CRY 2
2007 - SUPREME COMMANDER
2006 - GEARS OF WAR
2005 - WANDA TO KYOZOU
2004 - FAR CRY
2003 - PLANETSIDE
2002 - GUNVALKYRIE
2001 - GRAND THEFT AUTO III

2000 - DEUS EX
1999 - SHENMUE ISSHOU: YOKOSUKA
1998 - METAL GEAR SOLID
1997 - AGE OF EMPIRES
1996 - BIOHAZARD
1995 - PHANTASMAGORIA
1994 - MASTER OF MAGIC
1993 - SAMURAI SPIRITS
1992 - DUNE II: THE BUILDING OF A DYNASTY
1991 - SID MEIER'S CIVILIZATION
1990 - WING COMMANDER
1989 - THE SUPER SHINOBI
1988 - POOL OF RADIANCE

1987 - SID MEIER'S PIRATES!
1986 - DEFENDER OF THE CROWN
1985 - THE BARD'S TALE
1984 - THE LORDS OF MIDNIGHT
1983 - ULTIMA III: EXODUS
1982 - FOOTBALL MANAGER
1981 - ULTIMA
1980 - MYSTERY HOUSE
1979 - AKALABETH
1978 - SPACE INVADERS
1977 - ZORK
1976 - ADVENTURE
1975 - PEDIT5
1974 - DND
1973 - MAZE WAR
1972 - STAR TREK
1971 - CIVILIZATION
1970 - COMPUTER SPACE
1969 - SPACE TRAVEL
1968 - HAMURABI
1962 - SPACEWAR!

I am including Wildlands because I will definitely play it in the next few months.
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Unread postby icycalm » 05 Apr 2017 07:04

The reason I played all of them in the period '88 to '95 is because in '95 I left home for college, and I've been living a very turbulent life ever since with lots of moving and travelling. So around '88 I became a full-on gamer (at around 10 years old, basically), and for the entire time that I was living at home and my life was stable I played everything interesting that came out.
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Unread postby icycalm » 06 Apr 2017 13:52

From Discord:

I wrote:If you guys go into Steam and click on your username at the top, and then "Activity" and scroll down a bit, you will see me shilling my GOTY article in several game "reviews"
If you don't mind upvoting all of those you will give them more visibility, for more effective shilling
It's Shill to Win day here at Insomnia, S2W
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