The Escapist's Game of the Year
- Thread starter Russ Pitts
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Nailed it.
The story, the setting, the characters...every single part of RDR was as near as you get to perfect. What really sells it though is, as the article so rightfully pointed out, the understanding you have of being part of a changing world. Marston is living in a world to which he no longer really belongs and the way Rockstar managed to make you really feel that is downright amazing. And the ending. Sweet jesus the ending. I could not imagine a more absolutely perfect ending.
Everyone goes on about how they finally brought the western genre to games successfully, but what few stop to consider is that they didn't just bring the western to games, they brought games to the western. Would RDR have made as good a film or as good a television series as it did a game? Absolutely not.
The zombie thing was really well-done too, maintaining a strong western feel while adding horror elements and a compelling storyline. And the sidequests...that bigfoot thing fucked me up in ways that few games have managed.
Multiplayer? What multiplayer? RDR didn't have multiplayer. I have no idea what you're talking about.
Now my grinchy moment: Brotherhood made the list? Really? It's just a browner Assassin's Creed 2 with more random, meaningless side quests. AC2 remains one of my favourite games and I was really excited to play Brotherhood, but it just feels cobbled together. The multiplayer is by far the strongest part of the game, but everyone keeps acting as though the single player is some great revelation. The game (ESPECIALLY the animation) is buggier than AC2 and considerably less polished in terms of general production values. The combat is a little better (not HARDER, BETTER), but the story is awkward and samey. First there's the issue of an established assassin doing random chores as a tutorial (this made sense in AC2 where you were a teenage. It makes much less sense in Brotherhood), then there's the generic feeling of the game (go to this brown area of the town, climb this grey building, kill this random guy you heard about five minutes ago), and finally there's the general lack of any feeling of momentum in the story. AC2 gave us several amazing (AND COLORFUL) locales, interesting things happening in them, and it just felt like each mission was considerably more special even when they were mechanically pretty samey. In Brotherhood, they don't seem to do much to mask the sameness and even the awesome things seem pretty humdrum since they try to cram SO MANY OF THEM IN EVERYWHERE what with the new items, new skills, new mechanics, and new vehicles. The vehicles are a great example. In AC2 you drive a wagon and then there's a big epic moment where you use a flying machine. In AC2 there are FOUR vehicles, they're treated like collectible side quests, and the very first one involves a MACHINE GUN. And I don't even know who came up with that Romulus idea. It gets introduced as a complete non sequitur -- a bunch of random crazy people jump you, so you kill them and decide to go underground into their ancient lair? And the armor of Romulus? Really? That's your replacement for the armor of Altair, which had an actual continuity in the series in addition to just being the best armor.
Brotherhood felt more like a parody of the series than a part of it.
The story, the setting, the characters...every single part of RDR was as near as you get to perfect. What really sells it though is, as the article so rightfully pointed out, the understanding you have of being part of a changing world. Marston is living in a world to which he no longer really belongs and the way Rockstar managed to make you really feel that is downright amazing. And the ending. Sweet jesus the ending. I could not imagine a more absolutely perfect ending.
Everyone goes on about how they finally brought the western genre to games successfully, but what few stop to consider is that they didn't just bring the western to games, they brought games to the western. Would RDR have made as good a film or as good a television series as it did a game? Absolutely not.
The zombie thing was really well-done too, maintaining a strong western feel while adding horror elements and a compelling storyline. And the sidequests...that bigfoot thing fucked me up in ways that few games have managed.
Multiplayer? What multiplayer? RDR didn't have multiplayer. I have no idea what you're talking about.
Now my grinchy moment: Brotherhood made the list? Really? It's just a browner Assassin's Creed 2 with more random, meaningless side quests. AC2 remains one of my favourite games and I was really excited to play Brotherhood, but it just feels cobbled together. The multiplayer is by far the strongest part of the game, but everyone keeps acting as though the single player is some great revelation. The game (ESPECIALLY the animation) is buggier than AC2 and considerably less polished in terms of general production values. The combat is a little better (not HARDER, BETTER), but the story is awkward and samey. First there's the issue of an established assassin doing random chores as a tutorial (this made sense in AC2 where you were a teenage. It makes much less sense in Brotherhood), then there's the generic feeling of the game (go to this brown area of the town, climb this grey building, kill this random guy you heard about five minutes ago), and finally there's the general lack of any feeling of momentum in the story. AC2 gave us several amazing (AND COLORFUL) locales, interesting things happening in them, and it just felt like each mission was considerably more special even when they were mechanically pretty samey. In Brotherhood, they don't seem to do much to mask the sameness and even the awesome things seem pretty humdrum since they try to cram SO MANY OF THEM IN EVERYWHERE what with the new items, new skills, new mechanics, and new vehicles. The vehicles are a great example. In AC2 you drive a wagon and then there's a big epic moment where you use a flying machine. In AC2 there are FOUR vehicles, they're treated like collectible side quests, and the very first one involves a MACHINE GUN. And I don't even know who came up with that Romulus idea. It gets introduced as a complete non sequitur -- a bunch of random crazy people jump you, so you kill them and decide to go underground into their ancient lair? And the armor of Romulus? Really? That's your replacement for the armor of Altair, which had an actual continuity in the series in addition to just being the best armor.
Brotherhood felt more like a parody of the series than a part of it.
Whilst I loved RDR, Mass Effect 2 is possibly my favourite game ever. Mainly because it's just so incredibly deep and hitting. That ending, the Thane missions - every character and every decision is important. Such a superbly made game.
If I were to rank the original choices:
1: Mass Effect 2
2: Red Dead Redemption
3: Halo: Reach
4: Starcraft II
5: WoW: Cataclysm
6: Assassin's Creed: Brotherhood
7: Rock Band 3
8: Super Mario Galaxy 2
9: Civ 5
10: Kirby's Epic Yarn
11: Fallout: New Vegas
12: Heavy Rain
should mention I haven't played a few of them, but from a standpoint of what looks the nost appealing i've ranked them.
If I were to rank the original choices:
1: Mass Effect 2
2: Red Dead Redemption
3: Halo: Reach
4: Starcraft II
5: WoW: Cataclysm
6: Assassin's Creed: Brotherhood
7: Rock Band 3
8: Super Mario Galaxy 2
9: Civ 5
10: Kirby's Epic Yarn
11: Fallout: New Vegas
12: Heavy Rain
should mention I haven't played a few of them, but from a standpoint of what looks the nost appealing i've ranked them.
Remember, there is a difference between the subjective and the objective. You're treating your opinion like it's fact; it isn't. The staff evidently disagreed with you, as do many of the people here. What would your top 5 list be anyway?Darth Trethon said:
Loved RDR, for me it was true immersion, I got lost for hours in the wilderness, tracking animals and hunting them to the point where I didn't know where I was. However saddened that Metro 2033 wasn't selected.
Meh, it was good, but the pacing destroyed any impact it could have had for me, as did the contradictory writing of Marston's character.
I did like Dutch though, in spite of his relatively short screen time.
I did like Dutch though, in spite of his relatively short screen time.
Grow up. People have different opinions to you.Darth Trethon said:
This made me very sad. I was so close to beating so many of the side challenges and quests, but having to do it... that way made it just not even worth it. And it would've been too much work to just start over.Grey_Focks said:
Otherwise, the single best game I played last year. The ending just made it for me.
Can't say this was my GOTY of last year. But it was certainly better than COD, God of War 3, Fable 3, Reach and Mass Effect 2.
The problems the game has is it offers no replay value once getting 100% on the main game and the Multiplayer is just tedious after an hour. It's rather glitchy and made me hate horses.
It's not bad. But calling it a Game of the Year is being far too generous.
I still don't understand why they didn't let you Hijack the train. (can you rob a bank either? The game offered no incentive to do stuff like that so :/)
The problems the game has is it offers no replay value once getting 100% on the main game and the Multiplayer is just tedious after an hour. It's rather glitchy and made me hate horses.
It's not bad. But calling it a Game of the Year is being far too generous.
I still don't understand why they didn't let you Hijack the train. (can you rob a bank either? The game offered no incentive to do stuff like that so :/)
I enjoyed ME2, but the only way that made it an RPG that wasn't "super nerdy" was they dumbed it down and made it a third person shooter. Not very innovative. In fact, one can say it actually is moving backwards. Also, how is space soldier working for an evil corporation not cliche? The story borderline sucked, and I would much prefer a coherent and well done story about the west over a story in which a second grader took the helm about halfway in.Mimsofthedawg said:
I feel your biggest problem is with Rockstar, not the actual game itself. I pretty much hate Rockstar and their games except for this one. I had 0 desire to play it due to it being made by Rockstar. Not only do I find their games to be typically shallow, I tend to find them boring as well. However, I got the game cheap and with a gift card, and I'm extremely happy I actually gave it a go.
While I agree the game was linear to an extent, I never mentioned choice (although you could, gameplay-wise, play it however you wanted). Almost every game is linear, including ME2, but what separates RDR is that besides the story, it doesn't feel linear.
As for the music, you were disappointed the game gave you different musical clues to what the situation was in the game? How the shit-ton-of-music seamlessly blended with each different scenario? Sure, the tracks were finite (it would be impossible otherwise) but they constantly evolved and adapted to your specific game.
Honestly, I'm tired of games that just recycle Grand Theft Auto (as the article even points out) and then get sold as "trail-blazing games that blow the doors off of genres." Whenever a game touts its sandbox immersion, I feel it's anything but immersive. Immersion is feeling like you're in the character's shoes, thinking how they're thinking. Instead, you're really only immersed in a sandbox world because there's more crap to explore or shit to discover, which is fine if the main character is Christopher Columbus or Magellan. Personally, in every single sandbox I've played, I found the trade-off for this "do whatever you feel like" mode is that the main character is split between the person he is when you've got free reign, and the person he is when he's in the cinematics, like some paranoid schizo with multiple personalities, and the main story becomes disjointed and broken.
In every single sandbox game there's a mission where your support character goes "Hurry to Point A because this guy really needs to talk to you about a plot advancement that's going to be passing through Point B in about 5 minutes", and then you spend the next in-game week shelacking around doing stupid side quests or whatever the hell you felt like. All sense of urgency is gone because the campaign thread comes to a grinding halt whenever you don't feel like doing shit regardless of whether or not the story is trying to impress some sense of time management.
Red Dead Revolver was a far superior game because it didn't follow with the sandbox style and instead went with interesting characters with unique powers and mission styles that supported their personalities quite well, as well as a well-written story, albeit cliched but what the hell western story isn't. By contrast, Red Dead Redemption characters would tell John Marston he's the quiet type, and then John Marston would agree with them and then spend the next ten minutes giving a speech on individual rights and how the government is bad. I believe I rented a Western game, not an episode of Sean Hannity. Don't get me wrong Redemption is fun, but it's not a remarkable landmark in video game history, and nowhere near the best game of 2010.
tl,dr: It's time we made a "Like GTA But" stamp and regard it with the same stigma as the "Like GoW But" stamp. Sandbox games can kiss my hairy ass.
In every single sandbox game there's a mission where your support character goes "Hurry to Point A because this guy really needs to talk to you about a plot advancement that's going to be passing through Point B in about 5 minutes", and then you spend the next in-game week shelacking around doing stupid side quests or whatever the hell you felt like. All sense of urgency is gone because the campaign thread comes to a grinding halt whenever you don't feel like doing shit regardless of whether or not the story is trying to impress some sense of time management.
Red Dead Revolver was a far superior game because it didn't follow with the sandbox style and instead went with interesting characters with unique powers and mission styles that supported their personalities quite well, as well as a well-written story, albeit cliched but what the hell western story isn't. By contrast, Red Dead Redemption characters would tell John Marston he's the quiet type, and then John Marston would agree with them and then spend the next ten minutes giving a speech on individual rights and how the government is bad. I believe I rented a Western game, not an episode of Sean Hannity. Don't get me wrong Redemption is fun, but it's not a remarkable landmark in video game history, and nowhere near the best game of 2010.
tl,dr: It's time we made a "Like GTA But" stamp and regard it with the same stigma as the "Like GoW But" stamp. Sandbox games can kiss my hairy ass.
I am so disappointed in The Escapist for naming Red Dead Redemption as Game of the year. While I do think it has the best visuals of any game this year (that environment team should be applauded and given credit for most of the game's accolades) the story and gameplay themselves are really sub-par.
The shooting was clunky and unrefined. The missions were irritatingly buggy. The constant meaningless sidequests just became an annoyance. Random NPCs run screaming for help every five minutes, and whether you kill them, rob them, save them, or totally ignore them, none of it makes any difference to the story or the character in any way.
The plot meanders in nonsensical ways without any real explanation, leaving subplots hanging unresolved forever. I never felt any interest or connection to the character of John Marston aside from noticing that the voice actor did an excellent job of reading the otherwise mediocre dialog.
Mass Effect 2 would have been my personal choice for game of the year, but WoW:Cataclysm, Halo:Reach, or even Limbo would have been better choices than Red Dead Redemption.
The shooting was clunky and unrefined. The missions were irritatingly buggy. The constant meaningless sidequests just became an annoyance. Random NPCs run screaming for help every five minutes, and whether you kill them, rob them, save them, or totally ignore them, none of it makes any difference to the story or the character in any way.
The plot meanders in nonsensical ways without any real explanation, leaving subplots hanging unresolved forever. I never felt any interest or connection to the character of John Marston aside from noticing that the voice actor did an excellent job of reading the otherwise mediocre dialog.
Mass Effect 2 would have been my personal choice for game of the year, but WoW:Cataclysm, Halo:Reach, or even Limbo would have been better choices than Red Dead Redemption.
I might have like Red Dead Redemption. I might have, but I never had the chance to find out. Why not? Because the game is only available for consoles. Now, I know there are lots of you who think that one console is better than another, or that PCs aren't a good game platform, but that's not what I'm talking about. My point is that if it's a tough choice between two games for GotY, and one game fully supports two platforms and is days away from releasing for the third, you might consider giving that game the nod over the one that gives a gaming platform the big middle finger. I suppose platform exclusives and exclusions will be with us for years to come, but I don't see any reason to reward that shit.
Mmmmmm...I'm undecided. I think RDR is a worthy winner. But I also think it gets extra attention because its simply so unique. The setting is so underused that it seems better than it really is (but that said, it is REALLY good).Flying Dagger said:
Mass Effect 2 though...I've played it start to finish at least 5 times now, probably closer to 6 or seven. And the first 3 times was in rapid succession. I dont know if I can say that about a game since the 8-bit era or something like that...if thats not GOTY material...I dont know what it. It was on their list thought so...Good pick, partly agree
I have no problem with this choice for GOTY i played RDR all the way through and enjoyed it throughly. It was a very well put together game with a lot of fun aspects.
I have noticed a lot of people touting ME2 as the game that should have won and for me i played through it a couple times and i also played through fallout: new vegas twice. ME2 was a great game i dont discount that in any way but personally i felt the amount of loading screens and the fact that the game had been reduced to just selecting your mission to be impersonal. the game was written well and the conversations and evolution of the world was nice. The fact that there was no exploration, no matter how buggy it was in the first game, kind of took me out of the game. i like exploration in game it allows me to get a greater feel for the world around me and the world in RDR was beautiful. However i did like new vegas more than both RDR and ME2 but i just couldnt put it up to GOTY level with it being so glitchy and the fact they didnt improve graphically from fallout 3 was a disappointment.
so to sum up my block of text, i just felt more immersed in the western world of RDR than the others. ME2 just felt like a bunch of narrow corridors with combat and no actual world to it anymore though i still loved it and felt the combat was excuted with great precision. And new vegas was just too glitchy.
those are the only games i can really comment on.
I have noticed a lot of people touting ME2 as the game that should have won and for me i played through it a couple times and i also played through fallout: new vegas twice. ME2 was a great game i dont discount that in any way but personally i felt the amount of loading screens and the fact that the game had been reduced to just selecting your mission to be impersonal. the game was written well and the conversations and evolution of the world was nice. The fact that there was no exploration, no matter how buggy it was in the first game, kind of took me out of the game. i like exploration in game it allows me to get a greater feel for the world around me and the world in RDR was beautiful. However i did like new vegas more than both RDR and ME2 but i just couldnt put it up to GOTY level with it being so glitchy and the fact they didnt improve graphically from fallout 3 was a disappointment.
so to sum up my block of text, i just felt more immersed in the western world of RDR than the others. ME2 just felt like a bunch of narrow corridors with combat and no actual world to it anymore though i still loved it and felt the combat was excuted with great precision. And new vegas was just too glitchy.
those are the only games i can really comment on.