OK, let's choose our GOTY and our biggest disappointment of 2015

[ecoho]

GOTY- starcraft 2: legacy of the void- great single player story and the multiplayer is the best its ever been.

biggest disappointment- halo 5; don't get me wrong still loved the game but I guess I could say I expected more.

as to why fallout 4 and witcher 3 are not even in the running;

1. fallout 4 hasn't released yet as far as im concerned as Bethesda will take 6 months to fix all their bugs.

2. witcher 3 has the unfortunate fate of coming out after DA:I which kinda burnt me out on fantasy RPGs so could bring myself to really play more then 5 hours before it got sidelined.

 

[sonicneedslovetoo]

I think it should be mentioned for anybody considering their biggest disappointment: Payday 2, it's gotten so bad over there that the steam moderators for that forum are on strike and they just implemented MORE stat increasing skins.

 

[omega 616]

I don't want to jump on any band wagons but damn witcher 3 is good, I'm struggling with the combat (I am trying to play it like shadows of mordor) and the "I have to finish this animation before dodging" is really fucking me up. I need to take a much more considered style to play this game but so far I am just save scumming.

I am surprised I like this so much after I couldn't even begin to play witcher 2.

Disappointment would be MGSV. I'm an MGS fanboy and I want my story damnit!

 

[Thyunda]

GOTY:
Witcher 3. A game that made me see how far gaming has gone, and how inferior it still is to literature. A cold but beautiful shower.

Dissapointed:
Fallout 4- Bethesda can not code for shit and their fans still defend the incompetence. Insulting really.

isnt that a bit harsh? far as i can tell fallout 4 has no more bugs than witcher 3 had at launch. hell witcher 3 still has quests i cant complete.

Nope. It is me being nice to Fallout 4.
The game is released in an alpha stage.

This is Bethesda?s fourth time. And the SAME damned mistakes. Not new ones. Not old ones. The same. Ohh and one more (or at least more sever than before) ? terrible performance on all hardware, but worst on AMD and consoles. GG.

Lets see:
-No FOV slider. One of the rare times this affected me? why cant it be in an options menu?
-Mouse acceleration and smoothing. Why can I not turn them on and off in a menu? Why is it on by default?
-Vsyncs to either 30 or 60. Why is this not an option? Why can it not be like in the Witcher 3? Why can I not set it on/off and also choose a cap to my frame rate? Why is this not in the options menu?
-Game logic is tied to frame rate. This? is amateurish. FFS, this is a rookie mistake, why did it happen to a AAA game in 2015?

Add in:
- Bad selection of gameworks features. That AND bad implementation. This is crippling to AMD users? and the saddest thing is, games like Metro Last Light STILL have better god rays and illumination. Except they dont cripple neither AMD nor Nvidia hardware with it.
Speaking of which, even Nvidia cards with the latest drivers are having issues with these features. Not as severe as AMD, true, but ? it is not well either.

- Bad CPU utilization.

- Despite all of these optimization issues, the game does not look good. In many areas, STALKER from 2007 and 2008 actually is objectively superior (graphical fidelity, not art style, that is subjective and dont confuse the two). FO4′s AI is absolutely abysmal. This is not an issue ? the fact that it runs this badly though, whilst having nothing to show for it? that is a problem.

This is acceptable once. Or from a smaller studio with little money. Or a young studio at least. Bethesda is neither of those.

To top it all of:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OPZXkdD1RwQ
And
http://wccftech.com/bethesdas-pete-hines-reacts-fallout-4-ps4xo-performance-reports/
And
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=15wOp7_dD8E
And this:
http://imgur.com/a/rdvK4

Jesus Christ Bethesda are morons. Witcher 3 is simply MUCH better of a release. Even if it had faults, those are small compared to this level of stupidity.

Oh hey it's this post again. Tell me - do you have it saved in a Word document or do you have to go hunting through your posts every time someone says "don't you think you're being a bit of a diva?"

 

[verdant monkai]

GOTY: Tales of Zestiria

Biggest Disappointment: I haven't played Tales of Zestiria yet...

Well, shit... This is [still] a conundrum... Uh... I guess you say 2015 was pretty uneventful for me in the realm of new video games...

I'm the same as this. I just ordered the PS4 version of Zestiria and would like to withhold judgement until I finish it.

So my goty so far is Metal Gear Solid the Phantom pain: It's unfinished, a bit samey, lacking in metal gear humor and Snake is basically mute. But it was still a cracking piece of gameplay and had a gigantic amount of stuff to see and do. It had some seriously emotional bits and it was ultimately a very interesting game to play. It just doesn't seem very much like a metal gear game.

Runners up:
Resident evil revelations 2: A great survival horror. The revalations side series is now officially better than the main series. The only disappointing thing was the main villain.

Toukiden kiwami: Sony may have lost monster hunter to the 3DS. But Koei have gifted them with a technically superior series in Toukiden. It has a story, an interesting supporting class, reasonable difficulty level, Japanese hero ghosts and a hot spring. The only thing monster hunter has over toukiden is that it has cool armor. Toukiden's armor is awful and the creatures you kill don't look as cool either.

Splatoon: I usually hate team based shooters. But covering the floor in ink is fun, my squid girl is cute, sliding around in ink feels great and you don't actually have to kill other players to win. You can focus entirely on making a mess. It's a clever take on the genre and once again nintendo have got it right on their first try. Thank god it wasn't yet another damn mario game.

 

[babinro]

StarCraft 2 is the only game released in 2015 I'll have personally played by years end (I own it but haven't started it yet). So by default it wins GOTY and Biggest Disappointment.

I have watched entire lets plays of a few story focused games like Undertale, Life is Strange and Until Dawn though. Among them the biggest disappointment was Life is Strange. Life is Strange had me HOOKED for the first 3 episodes but just lost me and ultimately annoyed me by the end. It reminds me of watching LOST actually. I only stuck with Life is Strange's 5th episode because I was committed at that point. Any joy or intrigue was gone. It's a real shame because of how fantastic the game was from the start.

If persistent games counted than I'd give GOTY to Marvel Puzzle Quest for being the main game I played all year.

The best AAA game I've played this year is definitely Dishonored. Had this sitting in my steam backlog for a long time now and the game is incredible. It far exceeded my expectations simply by living up to the original hype of it's release. Very few games live up to the hype in my experience. Loved it.

 

[Thyunda]

GOTY:
Witcher 3. A game that made me see how far gaming has gone, and how inferior it still is to literature. A cold but beautiful shower.

Dissapointed:
Fallout 4- Bethesda can not code for shit and their fans still defend the incompetence. Insulting really.

isnt that a bit harsh? far as i can tell fallout 4 has no more bugs than witcher 3 had at launch. hell witcher 3 still has quests i cant complete.

Nope. It is me being nice to Fallout 4.
The game is released in an alpha stage.

This is Bethesda?s fourth time. And the SAME damned mistakes. Not new ones. Not old ones. The same. Ohh and one more (or at least more sever than before) ? terrible performance on all hardware, but worst on AMD and consoles. GG.

Lets see:
-No FOV slider. One of the rare times this affected me? why cant it be in an options menu?
-Mouse acceleration and smoothing. Why can I not turn them on and off in a menu? Why is it on by default?
-Vsyncs to either 30 or 60. Why is this not an option? Why can it not be like in the Witcher 3? Why can I not set it on/off and also choose a cap to my frame rate? Why is this not in the options menu?
-Game logic is tied to frame rate. This? is amateurish. FFS, this is a rookie mistake, why did it happen to a AAA game in 2015?

Add in:
- Bad selection of gameworks features. That AND bad implementation. This is crippling to AMD users? and the saddest thing is, games like Metro Last Light STILL have better god rays and illumination. Except they dont cripple neither AMD nor Nvidia hardware with it.
Speaking of which, even Nvidia cards with the latest drivers are having issues with these features. Not as severe as AMD, true, but ? it is not well either.

- Bad CPU utilization.

- Despite all of these optimization issues, the game does not look good. In many areas, STALKER from 2007 and 2008 actually is objectively superior (graphical fidelity, not art style, that is subjective and dont confuse the two). FO4′s AI is absolutely abysmal. This is not an issue ? the fact that it runs this badly though, whilst having nothing to show for it? that is a problem.

This is acceptable once. Or from a smaller studio with little money. Or a young studio at least. Bethesda is neither of those.

To top it all of:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OPZXkdD1RwQ
And
http://wccftech.com/bethesdas-pete-hines-reacts-fallout-4-ps4xo-performance-reports/
And
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=15wOp7_dD8E
And this:
http://imgur.com/a/rdvK4

Jesus Christ Bethesda are morons. Witcher 3 is simply MUCH better of a release. Even if it had faults, those are small compared to this level of stupidity.

Oh hey it's this post again. Tell me - do you have it saved in a Word document or do you have to go hunting through your posts every time someone says "don't you think you're being a bit of a diva?"

Sometimes, a point has to be hammered. Hard.

And since this is... pretty much a good post (maybe with a bit too much hate, that much I admit), it seems to recap some of the games objective problems.

I'd also add the UI and menus now. After 30 hours in the game, this shit still annoys me greatly. Bethesda will never. Ever. Learn less they are confronted with their shit

It's not a great post, mate, most of your gripes can be countered with "play it on console and you won't even notice" or "stop being such a fussybollocks."
And you're not gonna do a great job of confronting Bethesda "with their shit" if you open your angry rant with "After thirty hours of your videogame I'm here to tell you it's badly made and I hate it and you're all incompetent." See, now, I am an incompetent coder. As in I literally haven't got a clue how to do it. If you can spend thirty hours in a game, it wasn't incompetently coded. I don't know what standards you've got yourself stuck into, but lots of games have campaigns that run from eight to twelve hours and sometimes I even don't make it to the end of those because they're linear and boring - so you've essentially played through the 'runtime' of three AAA shooters and still believe you've been given a faulty product made by incompetent developers.

Do you see the total detachment from logic here? If you can bring yourself to play thirty hours of an incompetently coded game, how bad does it have to be before you will simply not make it past the first two hours? Do you really have so much spare time you consider thirty hours an acceptable trial period?

Seriously dude, hyperbole isn't cool.

Though, speaking of hyperbole, my GOTY is The Witcher 3 because it's literally the greatest game I've ever played. I've almost finished my degree in history and creative writing and I was shocked, shocked I tell you, that The Hunger Games is on the reading list for one of the modules I didn't take and yet the Fantasy module hasn't got a single sniff of Sapkowski. Now I love Sapkowski's books, and I love The Witcher 3. I think the facial animations are detailed and yet subtle enough to make up for Geralt's deliberately robotic voice, and the costume design is...well...like I said, my other focus is history and I cannot tell you how bored I am with the standard fantasy tropes of plate armour/leather armour/mage robes. Most of the NPCs in this game could've wandered out of 13th century Europe no bother.
The plot itself is pretty average, but then plots can only be average, since they're the meat base for your broth and really how can you tell the difference between pork and beef when you've got the rest of the ingredients in? Though Ciri's actress sounds like she's constantly shouting across the room to deliver her lines, Ciri is distinctly not shit, and that means a lot to me. Especially in a series like The Witcher whose first introduction to the fairer sex was trading cards.
I really didn't like the first two games. I played the second when it was free on Xbox Gold and found it mind-numbingly dull. The combat felt awkward, the inventory didn't even try to be functional and Geralt's face was apparently carved from stone and covered in beige wallpaper. The first game I got on a Steam sale and I think I've made it to the swamp region outside Vizima and it's just...so...dull.
Plus Geralt looks so damn weird. Soooo bloody strange. How this ever became the cult hit that led ultimately to the work of art that was The Wild Hunt I will never know.

And as a final note - the Ladies of the Wood are some of my favourite villains of all time. Eredin was cliché as fuck, and I almost wince every time I hear "you humans are so impractical." But the Ladies, with their Welsh accent and beautiful theme music, those are villains that last. Hell, that whole arc with the Brummie Baron was more than enough to place this story above most of the ones I have to study for my course.

 

[BloatedGuppy]

And as a final note - the Ladies of the Wood are some of my favourite villains of all time. Eredin was cliché as fuck, and I almost wince every time I hear "you humans are so impractical." But the Ladies, with their Welsh accent and beautiful theme music, those are villains that last.

My favorite moment with them:

"How do you know they're not already here?"
"Because we're still alive."

 

[Thyunda]

Yes that arc was good, but truth is, most of the books in your course should be flat out superior to anything gaming has ever done or will do in the next 50 years at least. The difference... is that huge. And it is only natural, hell Cinema has a 80 year head start to gaming and it still can not measure up to the elder art form.

Okay, now you're sounding like kind of an elitist. And there are things that can be done with film that books simply can't do - have you seen Ingmar Bergman's Through A Glass Darkly? It's utterly fascinating. And impossible with any other medium.

 

[1981]

GOTY: The Witcher 3.

Biggest disappointment: Mushroom 11. [Insert awkward masturbation joke here]. I didn't really expect anything, I just can't see why it got such high ratings.

 

[Captain Marvelous_v1legacy]

GOTY: Arkham Knight
Runner Up: One Piece: Pirate Warriors 3

This game was extremely fun for me. Played it on hard and had a great time. Sure, the lack of proper boss fights is disappointing and the tank sessions and racing got annoying fast, but everything else about the game was absolutely fun. The combat was challenging and beating the game after dying a mere 4 times felt satisfying after reading so many complaints about the normal difficulty online. After the Most Wanted DLC is released I'll be starting my NG+. Wish they'd release a free roam DLC for the rest of the characters. Nightwing, Red Hood, and Harley are way too popular for this not to be a thing.

Biggest Dissapointment: The Witcher 3
Runner Up: The Order: 1886
Runner Runner Up: No Sly Cooper. Screw you Sony/Sanzaru/Sucker Punch!

So much hype, all of which lead to disappointment. I don't think I've ever been so bored with a game. I've enjoyed my time with Inquisition, even Amalur, much more than I have with this game. I'm probably doing something wrong, but holy hell I just cannot get into it. I even did the popular Baron quest and laughed by the end of it because I just did not give a damn about any of the characters. The combat, leveling, the MC, None of it does anything for me.

 

[mizushinzui]

My steam Game of the Year:

1. Shadowrun: Hong Kong

Another Shadowrun game from Harebrained schemes, the system still provides a satisfying foundation upon which to lay yet another excellent story. Combat has been slightly improved, with more options given to character building like Intelligent Weapons and Cyberware Compatibility. I don't like the direction they took the matrix in this version, but I can't say it was intolerable...except for the hacking minigame within which I still have no idea what you're supposed to do.

Would you say it's worth getting then? I've been wondering if I should get it for a while now because I enjoyed the crap out of shadowrun returns and have had endless fun playing peoples campaigns on steam workshop.

 

[Thyunda]

Yes that arc was good, but truth is, most of the books in your course should be flat out superior to anything gaming has ever done or will do in the next 50 years at least. The difference... is that huge. And it is only natural, hell Cinema has a 80 year head start to gaming and it still can not measure up to the elder art form.

Okay, now you're sounding like kind of an elitist. And there are things that can be done with film that books simply can't do - have you seen Ingmar Bergman's Through A Glass Darkly? It's utterly fascinating. And impossible with any other medium.

Yes there are such examples. But cinema has yet to really... reach it to such a level AS often as books
For all incredible achievements of the medium, they are still not enough. That is natural, realist... not elitist. How can you compare a 10 000 year old medium to a 100 year one? That is not ... logical at all. And is kind of demeaning to both of these arts.

Still... why not address anything else from my post?

I must say the UI really needs to be changed. And badly.

And as a final note - the Ladies of the Wood are some of my favourite villains of all time. Eredin was cliché as fuck, and I almost wince every time I hear "you humans are so impractical." But the Ladies, with their Welsh accent and beautiful theme music, those are villains that last.

My favorite moment with them:

"How do you know they're not already here?"
"Because we're still alive."

Too bad they turned out to be push overs that serve a simple elf.

I didn't get the impression they served him because they were pushovers - especially since they only do it on a specific date.

And as for the rest of your post - I don't know anything about it, because I haven't actually played it yet. Your complaints may be totally valid. My point was that your complaints were silly, not that they were untrue. Well, your complaints about the technical things anyway - your statements about literature and film are way off - sure, literature may reach greatness more often than film (I mean, people consider Margaret Atwood great but have you read the Penelopiad? It is an insult to everything, everywhere) but literature also produces more utter dross than film by sheer virtue of numbers. There are more dinosaur-themed erotic novels than dinosaur-themed erotic films. Twilight was a book before it was a film. Same for Fifty Shades and the films of each were arguably superior to the books by sheer virtue of brevity.

Also - you made a reference to novel-Eredin earlier. Are you reading unofficial translations? I don't recall meeting Eredin in either of the short-story collections or the novels up to Baptism of Fire. In fact, I think the Wild Hunt has only been referenced as a natural phenomenon so far.

 

[Bombiz]

So much hype, all of which lead to disappointment. I don't think I've ever been so bored with a game. I've enjoyed my time with Inquisition, even Amalur, much more than I have with this game. I'm probably doing something wrong, but holy hell I just cannot get into it. I even did the popular Baron quest and laughed by the end of it because I just did not give a damn about any of the characters. The combat, leveling, the MC, None of it does anything for me.

Funny thing is the reasons you dont like wither 3 are the same reasons that I didn't like Amalur and DA:I for.

 

[Benpasko]

Hey, look at this, another vote for Witcher 3. It's just one of the best games I've ever played. It's kind of like the bizarro version of Two Worlds Two, (people saying it ripped off DA:I or whatever obviously never played that game. The GDDs of the two games are practically identical.) where everything is super well-made and the story is good.

Most disappointing is MGSV, for reasons that have been listed many times in this very thread.

EDIT: Forgot about Bloodborne! That's my #1 disappointment. Didn't have a scrap of fun with it, aside from 40 minute trolly invasions in the Nightmare of Mensis.