The B&B "... of the Year" 2012 - The Bear and Badger

Moto70

Reg's GotY thread has thrown up a conundrum for almost all of us here, as is testament from the changes that people have been making.

What makes your GotY so special? Graphics? Sound? Story? Gameplay?

For all my choices in the GotY I don't think any one of them would stand out in more than one or two areas, in fact in the case of Far Cry 3 I could possibly put it forward for Best Graphics but that would be it. I don't think there are any other categories on what games are often judged on where this game would even feature in my Top 5 let alone at the top.

The Walking Dead only has one thing going for it, its story, the tale it tells me and yet I have made this my GotY whereas Borderlands 2 sunk loads of my time, gave me brilliant co-op play and kept me coming back for more with its weapons and chic graphics. Forza Horizon meanwhile took up most of my December and all of 2013 to date. The graphics are OK, sometimes they amaze sometimes they are shit, the sound at times is divine but all the game consists of is steering my viewpoint along some fictional roads and yet again this game was a massive highlight of 2012 so much so that had it not been for The Walking Dead's emotional hook would be wearing my GotY crown.

There has been ridicule of Journey, how can a game featuring a scarf and a lot of sand even be talked about let alone be in contention of being B&B's GotY 2012?

And then you have to look at what makes something gel with you, Far Cry 3 saw plenty of detractors within our walls but having played it for a few more hours it has gone to top of their list. Why is this? Nothing really changes between the first 30mins that you play and the 40th hour that put in so what is it that grabs you in this game?

Do our games need to scripted or free of restraint to make them good? Well we've seen games that stretch from the most extreme example of this all the way through to other end of the scale.

I have cried at The Walking Dead, I've spent hours chasing times I know I'll not beat, I helped friends grab their treasure, I've let out a Bruce Lee'esque cry as I've punched, kicked and flipped my way out of danger, I have felt my heart race at the thought of entering some virtual water and yet even though it's been a game at time that has me doing these things I am still expected to pick which was my 'best'.

With all this in mind I think that come next year we may need to look at adding new categories to try and see what our 'Ultimate' GotY would be!

beano

For me it's how long it takes before I acknowledge and enact on one of the following.

- I want a cup of tea

- I haven't eaten for N hours

- I must pee

- I have a socialÂ occasionÂ I should attend

Diluted Dante

What makes mine special is that I don't know what it is.

Moto70

beano wrote:

For me it's how long it takes before I acknowledge and enact on one of the following.

1 - I want a cup of tea
2 - I haven't eaten for N hours
3 - I must pee
4 - I have a socialÂ occasionÂ I should attend

1 - Covered by my missus.
2 - Covered by my missus.
3 - Working conditions have somehow given me a good bladder!
4 - These are the crunch ones. I didn't bother going to see my father-in-law with my missus over Xmas as I had arranged to play Forza with a mate!

Dark Soldier

Trial Evolution is probably my Game of Forever, so it wins this. I can jump on, spend three to four hours, and it feels like five minutes, upon which I wake up needing a piss/drink. The only 'rational' thing I do when hooked on it is smoke.

LazyGunn

Well, most of the games i played were slightly boring or coasted through in some sort of autopilot haze, the games that impressed simply were the once when i was actually thrilled for a moment, like got a little buzz and a whoosh of clear head and felt liberated from feeling the control system and felt part of the game. Why this happened could be pretty random - Blinking artfully around in dishonored for choking people, watching a variety of bizarre outcomes in far cry 3 by mixing animals and enemy bases or sequences with drugs, the weird bits in spec ops where you realise its telling you something and youre not sure what it is but its increasingly getting to you, or dark souls with the simple 'oh the dying is the point!' revelation.

These things didnt happen a lot, but i suppose in the end what impressed me were these excellent either fun or mature concepts popping up in what i played

Also i enjoyed the history lessing from ac3 even though the modern bits were irritating and the end sections were typically awful

fullspectrum

Street Fighter, because of the community of players.

hylian_elf

Journey, because it's great, looks and sounds lovely, is emo enough for my liking, has great use of online, and resonated on a personal level with me. The game was beautiful.

Nothing else really stood out in 2012 in more than one or two ways.

Shinji

For me, it usually comes down to two questions "what is the game trying to be?" and "how well is it doing it?"

This is the difference between FC2 and 3. 2 knew exactly what it was and hit that mark in spite of it's flaws. 3 was so confused and messy, despite being technically a better game, which is why it doesn't come anywhere close to FC2.

Journey knocks it out of the park in this manner too, as does The Walking Dead.

Elmlea

Fez got a place in my list because of its incredible sense of place and of carrying out a journey. Â It starts off as a simple platformer with a bit of a gimmicky twist, but it doesn't take long before you realise that the world is surprisingly deep and rich in detail. Â Figuring out the cipher and digging into all the text made it feel like one of those 8-bit games where you'd draw a map on graph paper as you went along to remember where things were, and it made me sad that more people didn't enjoy the appearance of a game that meant you needed to pull out a pad and pen every so often. Â I haven't done that since Uplink.

The world just seemed coherent, despite the dream-like design and weirdness in places, but in general the game just felt like one of those classic 8/16-bit games where you wouldn't have any idea what was around the corner or what was waiting to be discovered. Â The little mark on the map screen explaining that there was something there that you hadn't found was a nice touch, and showed just how deep the individual screens could be. Â I liked the feeling that if you discovered something and told people, it was like a playground chat about an early NES game. Â "Have you found X yet? Â Yeah, really! Â You need to find the 3rd door out of the bell room!"

I've never had another game that made me feel like I was self-discovering an old 8-bit adventure, without the temptation of the internet ruining everything.

Bollockoff

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