Friday, February 05, 2010
GameBanshee Game Of The Year Awards
RPG site GameBanshee.com has posted its game-of-the-year awards for 2009. They tapped a few folks to help out this year, as this was a REALLY good year for RPG fans.
GameBanshee's 2009 Game of the Year Awards
If you have any bones to pick with the write-up on the indie RPG of the year, then take it out on me. They let me participate, as I don't have any skin in the game this year. But I think a lot of folks here will agree with the choice of the winner. It was the runner-up that was a real challenge. There were a TON of indie RPGs released last year, and many were very high quality. There were at least a half-dozen indie RPGs last year that might have won first or second place in previous years.
And it's only getting better! Or worse, if you are a developer eying the competition, as I am... Since 2007 or so, the "indie RPG" niche has really blossomed in terms of quantity AND quality of games. I wouldn't have believed it in 2004. But then, in 2004 "indie RPGs" largely meant "Roguelikes and Spiderweb Software." And now.... wow. Explosion.
I am thrilled to be involved with it in my tiny way.
Labels: Roleplaying Games
- posted by The Rampant Coyote @ 7:18 AM (Permalink)
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Yip, I agree. One of the reasons we had to ask you was because our regular indie writer (me) hadn't even played a fraction of available indies. That problem didn't even remotely exist a few years ago.
Good job, Jay, thanks for the writeup!
Good job, Jay, thanks for the writeup!
Hey there, mister A Nonymous!
Tastes *vary*. How about you write up a nice blog post telling us what you think the great games are? Then we will all see a different perspective and learn from it.
Tastes *vary*. How about you write up a nice blog post telling us what you think the great games are? Then we will all see a different perspective and learn from it.
Very interesting, though I must admit that I'm a sucker for all these "best of" or "game of the year" kinds of articles. I can't seem to get enough of them.
Your description of the final entry, the runner-up for RPG of the year, struck me. Drakensang didn't do "something spectacularly right, but one that didn't really do much of anything wrong."
It's odd. Drakensang should have been perfect for me. As you say, I can't pick out anything it really did wrong. But I just couldn't get interested in it. I never even finished the demo, not completely, though I started it a number of times. I don't know why, but the game couldn't even hold my attention that long.
I have personal preferences - or irrational biases - against some elements in games. For example, cutesy or cartoony graphics almost always turn me off (I know, that's just me). But I can't identify any particular problem in Drakensang. It still puzzles me. I SHOULD have liked that game.
Your description of the final entry, the runner-up for RPG of the year, struck me. Drakensang didn't do "something spectacularly right, but one that didn't really do much of anything wrong."
It's odd. Drakensang should have been perfect for me. As you say, I can't pick out anything it really did wrong. But I just couldn't get interested in it. I never even finished the demo, not completely, though I started it a number of times. I don't know why, but the game couldn't even hold my attention that long.
I have personal preferences - or irrational biases - against some elements in games. For example, cutesy or cartoony graphics almost always turn me off (I know, that's just me). But I can't identify any particular problem in Drakensang. It still puzzles me. I SHOULD have liked that game.
Well, credit (and blame) should go where it's due - my involvement was restricted to the indie game section. This was a group project.
But I'm a sucker for these game of the year things too. I just love seeing what other people have to say about what they considered the best or favorite.
I tried to sneak in a nice little list of also-excellent indie RPGs in my description of the runner-up, and John Birnbaum & co. were kind enough not to remove those in editing.
But I'm a sucker for these game of the year things too. I just love seeing what other people have to say about what they considered the best or favorite.
I tried to sneak in a nice little list of also-excellent indie RPGs in my description of the runner-up, and John Birnbaum & co. were kind enough not to remove those in editing.
I hate to say this, because I love Bioware (or rather, I love Baldur's Gate I and II), but Dragon Age was a mediocre game in the place where it really mattered: the story. And what makes this so terrible is that, if it were another year, DA:O would not win a GOTY award.
What it comes down to is how ambitious the project was. Eight different "origins," each of which affect the plotline differently, along with numerous quests, subquests and a plethora of other decisions that factor into the eventual outcome of the game. When you have that much choice and consequence involved, unless you have assembled an amazing team of writers (and tons of them), the product will lack focus. That's what I found to be wrong with DA:O. The world, the plot, the execution (except for the combat, which was disappointingly simplified, yet well-polished), all lacked focus. I did not expect DA:O to be Baldur's Gate III, but I did expect it to have the same degree of focus that really defined BGI&II, and made them such amazing games. In DA:O, I felt like I was playing four (or five or six, including the Landsmeet and final battle sections) separate games, which had been strung together. There was no sense of continuity, or purpose. I never felt like there was a real threat, a real "blight on the land," so to speak, that compelled the action. Instead, I felt like I was on four different "fetch" quests. In BGI&II the central plot was more...well...central. And in BGI&II I rarely felt like I was being made to engage in combat just for the heck of it. There were usually other options. In DA:O, combat was so prevalent that it bored me (especially the Orzammar portion).
This is a really long way of expressing my disappointment with this year (2009) as far as commercial games go. Actually, my favorite would have to be Torchlight (which I haven't even had the time to beat, thanks to DA:O). Polish, an interesting story, a fun combat system...Torchlight has it. It may not be a triple-A title (which is apparently what you have to be in order to win GOTY), but it plays good, looks good, and sounds good. And it's a heckuva lot more fun than DA:O. But that's just me. I'm sure many people disagree with me, seeing as the popular reception to DA:O has been high.
As for Indie games, I didn't play many this year. There are many I'm looking forward to (Broken Hourglass mainly, although I haven't seen much, if anything, in the way of updates so I don't know how that project is progressing), but from 2009 I can't make an informed opinion. I will be looking at Knights of the Chalice, though. Hopefully that will satiate my RPG appetite, since DA:O was such a disappointment.
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What it comes down to is how ambitious the project was. Eight different "origins," each of which affect the plotline differently, along with numerous quests, subquests and a plethora of other decisions that factor into the eventual outcome of the game. When you have that much choice and consequence involved, unless you have assembled an amazing team of writers (and tons of them), the product will lack focus. That's what I found to be wrong with DA:O. The world, the plot, the execution (except for the combat, which was disappointingly simplified, yet well-polished), all lacked focus. I did not expect DA:O to be Baldur's Gate III, but I did expect it to have the same degree of focus that really defined BGI&II, and made them such amazing games. In DA:O, I felt like I was playing four (or five or six, including the Landsmeet and final battle sections) separate games, which had been strung together. There was no sense of continuity, or purpose. I never felt like there was a real threat, a real "blight on the land," so to speak, that compelled the action. Instead, I felt like I was on four different "fetch" quests. In BGI&II the central plot was more...well...central. And in BGI&II I rarely felt like I was being made to engage in combat just for the heck of it. There were usually other options. In DA:O, combat was so prevalent that it bored me (especially the Orzammar portion).
This is a really long way of expressing my disappointment with this year (2009) as far as commercial games go. Actually, my favorite would have to be Torchlight (which I haven't even had the time to beat, thanks to DA:O). Polish, an interesting story, a fun combat system...Torchlight has it. It may not be a triple-A title (which is apparently what you have to be in order to win GOTY), but it plays good, looks good, and sounds good. And it's a heckuva lot more fun than DA:O. But that's just me. I'm sure many people disagree with me, seeing as the popular reception to DA:O has been high.
As for Indie games, I didn't play many this year. There are many I'm looking forward to (Broken Hourglass mainly, although I haven't seen much, if anything, in the way of updates so I don't know how that project is progressing), but from 2009 I can't make an informed opinion. I will be looking at Knights of the Chalice, though. Hopefully that will satiate my RPG appetite, since DA:O was such a disappointment.
# posted by 
: February 07, 2010 10:13 PM
: February 07, 2010 10:13 PMLinks to this post:
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