While I do believe this was the best year for games that we've had in a very long while, sadly I didn't get to play many of the big ones. I do have Witcher 3, but I just haven't gotten around to playing it yet as I've been working through my backlog. I have played through the intro bit and I'm certain I will retroactively declare it as my GotY for this year as what little I've experienced combined with everything I've seen and heard leads me to believe that it truly is an amazing game.
Buuuuuuut for the sake of this thread, I'll stick with games I've actually played.
And on that note, my GotY would be MGS5.
I think my handicap of having never played any MGS prior to this other than MGS2 actually benefited my perception of this game. I've a number of friends who are huge MGS nuts and they said they didn't like MGS5's story specifically for its
lack of actually having a story. This was useful to me as someone who wasn't all that invested in the series to begin with, as such it allowed me to focus on the gameplay more which is - I'd argue - MGS5's strongest point. So to me it was pretty much just a fantastic and fun stealth game, and I like those.
Biggest disappointment would be Arkham Knight.
That's to say I didn't thoroughly enjoy the game, but I can't deny being disappointed by it. Quite simply: it wasn't as good as I was hoping it to be...but such is the price of admission for riding the hype train, is it not?
I still say that the story is great, Scarecrow makes for a really fun villain, I love the way the way Batman's "imaginary friend" (vague for spoiler purposes) is used, and the fighting as as fun as ever. There was, however, the giant elephant fucking an overweight gorilla in the room: the Batmobile. Look, I understand. They wanted something new and spiffy to really set Arkham Knight apart from the other games. Something they could hang their hat on as a real game-changer. And truth be told, the city is big enough to warrant having the Batmobile as a means for travel. But good god, you want to talk about contrivances, look no further than all the BS ways they just shoehorn the Batmobile into that game. They should have had one or maybe two big set-pieces to play around in the Batmobile, the rest of the game it's used for travel...they
SHOULD NOT have had an incredibly tedious and long side-quest that requires you to do tank battles with drones, they
SHOULD NOT have made The Riddler's challenges frickin' obstacle-course races, and they most specifically
SHOULD NOT have made two boss-fights based around stealthing as a tank...it's a frickin' TANK! It's not meant to be stealthy!
So yeah, Arkham Knight would have easily been my GotY by a long shot if Rocksteady hadn't masturbated all over themselves with the Batmobile.