Game of the Year 2021

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Alan
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Re: Game of the Year 2021

Post by Alan » Wed Jan 05, 2022 2:09 pm

Animalmother wrote:
Wed Jan 05, 2022 1:43 pm
Can we add our most disappointing game of the year?
Battlefield 2042
Just a clusterfuck of terrible ideas, broken gameplay and tone deaf mismanagement. They took simple, time proven game mechanics and pissed it all away to try and make another generic shooter. The much maligned BF5 now has a higher player count than 2042. I fear it's time for my old beloved game to retire.
Metroid Dread. So many glowing reviews for a repetitive slog. Nice graphics, ok final boss, good Alien Isolation idea but bad map, repetitive bosses, annoying abilities and just pretty dang tedious. If it wasnt called Metroid nobody would care about it.
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Re: Game of the Year 2021

Post by DjchunKfunK » Wed Jan 05, 2022 5:42 pm

Animalmother wrote:
Wed Jan 05, 2022 1:43 pm
Can we add our most disappointing game of the year?
Battlefield 2042
Just a clusterfuck of terrible ideas, broken gameplay and tone deaf mismanagement. They took simple, time proven game mechanics and pissed it all away to try and make another generic shooter. The much maligned BF5 now has a higher player count than 2042. I fear it's time for my old beloved game to retire.
Considering the recent history of the Battlefield franchise I'm surprised people are surprised when the latest games isn't very good. The series has had a spotty recent history at best.

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Re: Game of the Year 2021

Post by Sly Boots » Wed Jan 05, 2022 5:45 pm

Also, an honourable mention that I don't think anyone has picked yet: Psychonauts 2. I've been gradually working through it on Gamepass (playing it through with youngest daughter, so having to find times when we're both free), and it really is an excellent platformer. I didn't pick it mainly as I'm still only halfway through, whereas I played the others on my list to completion. It's still on GP and well worth checking out.

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Re: Game of the Year 2021

Post by Snowy » Thu Jan 06, 2022 5:26 pm

Animalmother wrote:
Wed Jan 05, 2022 1:43 pm
Can we add our most disappointing game of the year?
I have several of those, almost all of which have been via Gamepass, so thankfully the patented Sly Boots "Fuck this shit" uninstall has been painless.

Evil Genius 2 - unnecessarily complex and grindy, fuck this shit, uninstall

Tetris Effect - I don't want epilepsy thanks, fuck this shit, uninstall

However, I think if I am honest, my biggest disappointment of the year was...

Back 4 Blood

Yeah OK, I gave it an honourable mention above, but mainly because I was looking for games I picked up this year and we did have some fun co-op with it.

However.
Arbitrarily killing everyone on a whim is not an endearing trait in a game.
Sending them back to the start of up to 4-5 maps when they die is idiotic.
Blood should look like blood, not pink spooge.
Zombies should be called zombies, not fucking ridden
Most of all though, you had to make a better game than L4D2, which is 10 years old, and you failed. I was so excited when I heard that the team that made L4D were making another co-op zombie game but after a few tries it was clear that it wasn't even a pale shadow of its 10 year old ancestor. Fuck this shit, uninstall
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Sly Boots
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Re: Game of the Year 2021

Post by Sly Boots » Thu Jan 06, 2022 5:31 pm

Snowy wrote:
Thu Jan 06, 2022 5:26 pm
Animalmother wrote:
Wed Jan 05, 2022 1:43 pm
Can we add our most disappointing game of the year?
I have several of those, almost all of which have been via Gamepass, so thankfully the patented Sly Boots "Fuck this shit" uninstall has been painless.

Evil Genius 2 - unnecessarily complex and grindy, fuck this shit, uninstall

Tetris Effect - I don't want epilepsy thanks, fuck this shit, uninstall

However, I think if I am honest, my biggest disappointment of the year was...

Back 4 Blood

Fuck this shit, uninstall
:lol:

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Re: Game of the Year 2021

Post by Raid » Thu Jan 06, 2022 5:52 pm

I don't think I was disappointed by Back 4 Blood because it was my first experience with this sub-genre, but it didn't take long for me to get the impression we weren't terribly enthusiastic about it as a group. I think I was most surprised by how pedestrian the levels were, there just wasn't anything in their design to get excited about and so it all got a bit repetitive. I reckon we'd have enjoyed it more if Left 4 Dead weren't available, because there wasn't much that Left 4 Dead didn't do a little better.

I'm not sure I really have a most disappointing game of last year. I barely actually bought anything, and it's difficult to feel that much disappointment when you've downloaded a game from Gamepass. Halo 4 was clearly the most disappointing thing I played last year, but given that it's two console generations old now, it hardly seems worth bringing up here.

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Re: Game of the Year 2021

Post by DjchunKfunK » Thu Jan 06, 2022 6:01 pm

Back 4 Blood is an interesting one because the developers kind of shot themselves in the foot by referencing L4D so much in the build-up. A lot of players went in expecting L4D3 when the team behind B4B comprises very few of the people behind L4D2, someone took a look through the credits for both games and found I think it was 1 lead who worked on both. Plus as a different team they probably wanted to not just make the exact same game again. What ended up happening is that instead of people looking at what B4B was, most the time it was a case of people looking at what it wasn't.

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Re: Game of the Year 2021

Post by Mantis » Thu Jan 06, 2022 8:16 pm

It's kind of difficult to give it a pass for that reason though because it is almost exactly the same in so many fundamental ways as the L4D series. Even had they not referenced it themselves in the run up to release, anybody who played it could very easily see the parallels between the two franchises. The problem is that B4B wasn't anything new or unique apart from L4D with a rather lackluster deck builder tacked on, for the most part it was inferior in every way. The only thing I think it does better is in how satisfying the gunplay is.

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Re: Game of the Year 2021

Post by Raid » Thu Jan 06, 2022 9:44 pm

I liked the upgradeable weapons more than the bog standard pickup weapons in L4D, and I agree that the gun-feel was better.

When the game's very name was a direct reference to their previous work, frankly I think it was a bad idea releasing a game that wasn't superior to its predecessor. It needed more development time, or more fundamental changes.

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Re: Game of the Year 2021

Post by DjchunKfunK » Fri Jan 07, 2022 9:27 am

Mantis wrote:
Thu Jan 06, 2022 8:16 pm
It's kind of difficult to give it a pass for that reason though because it is almost exactly the same in so many fundamental ways as the L4D series. Even had they not referenced it themselves in the run up to release, anybody who played it could very easily see the parallels between the two franchises. The problem is that B4B wasn't anything new or unique apart from L4D with a rather lackluster deck builder tacked on, for the most part it was inferior in every way. The only thing I think it does better is in how satisfying the gunplay is.
I disagree about it not having any differences, the deck building stuff is not tacked on and can massively change the way you are able to play and has room to grow. I don't think it is a prefect system and could do with some tweaking and whether they will support this is another matter but it is the one meaningful difference between B4B and L4D. Plus as Raid mentioned there are upgradable weapons now and the characters have more meaningful abilities.

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Re: Game of the Year 2021

Post by Snowy » Fri Jan 07, 2022 10:42 am

DjchunKfunK wrote:
Fri Jan 07, 2022 9:27 am
Mantis wrote:
Thu Jan 06, 2022 8:16 pm
It's kind of difficult to give it a pass for that reason though because it is almost exactly the same in so many fundamental ways as the L4D series. Even had they not referenced it themselves in the run up to release, anybody who played it could very easily see the parallels between the two franchises. The problem is that B4B wasn't anything new or unique apart from L4D with a rather lackluster deck builder tacked on, for the most part it was inferior in every way. The only thing I think it does better is in how satisfying the gunplay is.
I disagree about it not having any differences, the deck building stuff is not tacked on and can massively change the way you are able to play and has room to grow. I don't think it is a prefect system and could do with some tweaking and whether they will support this is another matter but it is the one meaningful difference between B4B and L4D. Plus as Raid mentioned there are upgradable weapons now and the characters have more meaningful abilities.
It had some interesting ideas and I do agree that the feel of the weapons was better, but taken as a whole L4D 1 & 2 are better games. When you come to the party 10 years later, the same studio (in name at least) as the one which made two of the best co-op games ever (imo), then the main requirement is to make a better game than the originals.

Back 4 Blood has better feel to the weaponry than L4D and it has the deck mechanism, although I did not play it sufficiently to see whether that was a gimmick or a worthwhile feature. L4D had better characters, better maps, better special zoms, a better AI director, amazing set-pieces and finales and fantastic mod support. If you all died in L4D you restarted the level, not the campaign, and if you did die it was rare that you felt hard done by.

For my money L4D remains the better game taken as a whole. It is a series that I have put over 200 hours into, hence B4B being uninstalled with less than 10 hours played made it my big disappointment for '21.
RCHD wrote:Snowy is my favourite. He's a metal God.
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