Game of the Year Discussion Thread: Winner to be announced soon!

It's that time again!

This week we'll be kicking off the Gaming forum's annual tradition of crowning our game of the year! Over the next six weeks the year's best titles will duke it out over six gruelling rounds to try and make it to the top. As usual we'll be starting with four polls divided by calendar quarter, with the top three making it straight through to the grand final and places #4 through #7 all entering a second chance round to get another stab at the final too :woo:

Win a free game!

Also, in an exciting bit of news, the good folks at TSR HQ have decided they're going to give away a game to one lucky user, who will get a choice of any game they like from the 16 finalists :teeth:

all posts made in any Game of the Year thread (with a few basic restrictions, no dupe accounts, spamming etc) will count towards entry, and the winner will be chosen at random then contacted to pick their game (age ratings permitting).

The results so far

Q1 Results

Q2 Results

Q3 Results

Q4 Results

(edited 9 years ago)

Reply 1

Entertainment Forum Helper

What decent games have actually been released this year in the first place? (I have a bit of a bad record of tracking when things came out)
And is it just a straight GOTY, or are there also some subcategories too?

Reply 2

Kallisto

22

That sounds nice! but I have a question: Which platforms will be represent? As an old school gamer I can just vote for old school games (NES, SNES, N64, Gameboy...)

Reply 3

OP

Original post by Jammy Duel

What decent games have actually been released this year in the first place? (I have a bit of a bad record of tracking when things came out)

There have been a fairly good number of well received games this year, particularly on the indie front as it becomes a more established corner of the market :yep:

It doesn't feel like there were as many high quality AAA titles when I was putting the slates together, probably because it's a between year between high profile launch titles for next-gen and the year when all the stuff teased last year finally makes it onto the market, but still a lot of good stuff!

And is it just a straight GOTY, or are there also some subcategories too?

Just a simple GOTY :yes:

Original post by Kallisto

That sounds nice! but I have a question: Which platforms will be represent? As an old school gamer I can just vote for old school games (NES, SNES, N64, Gameboy...)

It's only games released in 2014 (hence Game of the Year :ahee:

), so no retro offerings I'm afraid!

Although for anybody interested, almost every currently active platform is represented in this year's polls, including the current gen, last gen and handheld consoles from Sony Microsoft and Nintendo (except maybe the original Wii, I don't have my lists to hand at the moment :holmes:

), the three major PC operating systems and even iOS and Android.

Reply 4

Entertainment Forum Helper

Actually, thinking of it, there can only be one possible winner for me, the game that made 2014 the year of the novelty sims.

Reply 5

Kallisto

22

Oh, well I have not read the thread carefully. What a pity. I am afraid that I can't take part. :frown:

Reply 6

OP

The poll for Q1 is now up!

http://www.thestudentroom.co.uk/showthread.php?t=2984411

Reply 7

Captain Jack

20

Ooh, count me in! Do you quote people who are signed up to this thread when you start each round? :biggrin:

This year feels a bit slim on the ground for me... Was GTAV and Last of Us last year?!

Reply 8

_Dreamville_

16

FAR CRY 4!!!

Posted from TSR Mobile

Reply 9

Arkasia

19

It will be between Dark Souls II, the LEGO games (Hobbit, Marvel), FIFA 15, Shadow of Mordor, Alien Isolation, DA: Inquisition, Pokemon ORAS, Far Cry 4, Destiny, Advanced Warfare, AC Unity, and Borderlands: TPS.

The dark horses are Wolf Among Us and TWD, BoI: Rebirth, Outlast, Super Smash Bros, Hyrule Warrior, AC Rogue, The Evil Within, and Wolfenstein.

I can see Far Cry 4, Alien Isolation, DS2 or ORAS taking the crown.

Reply 10

Original post by Arkasia

It will be between Dark Souls II, the LEGO games (Hobbit, Marvel), FIFA 15, Shadow of Mordor, Alien Isolation, DA: Inquisition, Pokemon ORAS, Far Cry 4, Destiny, Advanced Warfare, AC Unity, and Borderlands: TPS.

The dark horses are Wolf Among Us and TWD, BoI: Rebirth, Outlast, Super Smash Bros, Hyrule Warrior, AC Rogue, The Evil Within, and Wolfenstein.

I can see Far Cry 4, Alien Isolation, DS2 or ORAS taking the crown.

I can easily see DSII making it to the final given how weak Q1 was (as per usual)
Lego games, to me, aren't what they used to be so while they may perform admirably, I doubt well enough to get too far
FIFA, Pokemon, and CoD are ones that I expect will do well through fanboyism, although AW was particularly good as far as CoD goes, but for me still not GOTY material
I have heard good things about Shadow of Mordor, and intend to get it when it's on sale and reckon could do well
Same goes for alien and DA, heard good, expect to do well
FC4 is definitely one of my favorites for the year, as was 3. While I haven't played much due to it arriving a day late, having a 6 hours AGM on Wednesday and Goat MMO Simulator yesterday (along with a couple of technical hitches, but nothing serious), I have thoroughly enjoyed it, the franchise is currently going from strength to strength, building on good foundations.
Destiny, I haven't played nor do I particularly intend to, I've heard good things but not enough good things and I largely put its success down to the hype train, much like Watch_Dogs, although could do well from the console crowd
Personally, I would say Unity has too sketchy a launch to be in contention, needing top end hardware to be playable on PC and not even able to run at a nerfed frame rate and resolution on consoles, game was rushed too badly.
Borderlands TPS, not heard much about it, looking at review scores on Wikipedia it may do ok

The dark horses, I agree may do well, but I feel they're too niche to really have much contention. Rogue was largely overshadowed by Unity, even if for the wrong reasons, Wolfenstein for me was half decent, but not enough for me to have actually finished it yet (got distracted and never go back to it).

I also feel Goat Simulator would do well, although I doubt enough people have played it, it is definitely high on my list for GO(a)TY.

I would probably put my money on FC4, especially since by the time it comes to voting on Q4 and the final it will have had much wider circulation. I also hope that given this is a slightly more mature forum there will be some limits on the amount of fanboying.

Although things are largely dependent on what actually gets listed.

As an aside, I think it would be nice to have a secondary category for some of the smaller indie titles since they have little hope of winning this but some of them are much better than ones that will inevitably to well in the main polls.

Reply 11

OP

Original post by Arkasia

It will be between Dark Souls II, the LEGO games (Hobbit, Marvel), FIFA 15, Shadow of Mordor, Alien Isolation, DA: Inquisition, Pokemon ORAS, Far Cry 4, Destiny, Advanced Warfare, AC Unity, and Borderlands: TPS.

The dark horses are Wolf Among Us and TWD, BoI: Rebirth, Outlast, Super Smash Bros, Hyrule Warrior, AC Rogue, The Evil Within, and Wolfenstein.

I can see Far Cry 4, Alien Isolation, DS2 or ORAS taking the crown.

I won't spoil the full slates (although that's mainly because they're not set in stone), but Outlast and BoI will not be appearing in this year's polls :no:

Outlast was actually released in Sept 2013, despite only gaining popularity this year, while BoI isn't eligible as we decided not to allow remakes, rereleases or expansion packs given the limited space in each poll. This was especially relevant this year, with all the remastered versions of lastbyear's games being brought to Xbox One/PS4.

However this has reminded me of an idea I had last year- would people like a round dedicated to remakes, releases and expansion packs? It would mean less space for second chance winners in the final as I'd split the final four slots between these two categories, but it opens up the field to games that wouldn't ordinarilly have made it into the polls in previous years of the competition.

I'm going to add a poll to this thread, if there's more yes votes than no by the time Q4 voting concludes I'll run the second chance and RREP polls simultaneously and the top to of each will make it into the final :smile:

Reply 12

Arkasia

19

Fair enough, but I would say Rebirth is different enough to count as a standalone game.

What's the point of that? It would just be everyone voting for TLOU or GTA V, even with the Master Chief Collection out, there would be virtually no competition, and these games might even beat the new ones this year, which would be unfair. I agree with the above poster, we should have a round dedicated to indie games.

(edited 9 years ago)

Reply 13

Original post by Arkasia

Fair enough, but I would say Rebirth is different enough to count as a standalone game.

What's the point of that? It would just be everyone voting for TLOU or GTA V, even with the Master Chief Collection out, there would be virtually no competition, and these games might even beat the new ones this year, which would be unfair. I agree with the above poster, we should have a round dedicated to indie games.

Not so much a round that contributes to the whole, more a smaller vote, say just two rounds. The first one has the full 16 options and then a second round that takes, say, the top 4. I doubt they will really stand up against the AAA titles so it would mostly be a waste of space in the main set of polls which a much larger/cross platform game could take.

Reply 14

Arkasia

19

Original post by Jammy Duel

Not so much a round that contributes to the whole, more a smaller vote, say just two rounds. The first one has the full 16 options and then a second round that takes, say, the top 4. I doubt they will really stand up against the AAA titles so it would mostly be a waste of space in the main set of polls which a much larger/cross platform game could take.

I agree for the most part, but I would say some indie games are incredibly popular - more so than some AAA titles.

Reply 15

Original post by Arkasia

I agree for the most part, but I would say some indie games are incredibly popular - more so than some AAA titles.

I'm not arguing they aren't, but I don't think there are many indies that one can honestly say are likely to be able to go toe to toe with the big hitting AAAs, especially since the AAAs are probably more widely played. I imagine we might see indies make it to the runners up round.

(edited 9 years ago)

Reply 16

Of course, for the indies, would it be strictly 2014, I assume it would. For example, Minecraft came out on next gen and PS vita this year. I assume they would be excluded.

Reply 17

OP