What’s the take on something episodic like Life is Strange 2, where release dates fall across more than one year?
YOU CAN NEVER VOTE ON IT BECAUSE IT ISN’T A “FINISHED GAME”
Or, I would say, vote on particular episodes if they came out and were purchasable in this year, or wait until the entire season is done and vote in the year it finished? It is completely up to you. You have also reminded me that I need to complete season 1 of life is strange.
I think this is a very salient point.
Let me spill my thoughts, as someone with no dog in this race. I literally played zero games even considerable for this year, and haven’t played any video games since May aside from Ascension on my phone, and Sentinels of the Multiverse on my tablet.
But I think that year end awards should always allow games from November/ December of the previous year. That’s because it is unrealistic to expect that they get played in numbers for the year end awards. A game released in the Thanksgiving-Christmas corridor may well be great, but given the nature of things is unlikely to be played by most.
Hey, with Christmas, maybe I should wait to see if I get it as a present.
Gotta wait til January for the budget due to gifts
So much family stuff going on I won’t have time to play anything this month
I got like 5 hours into this RPG. I loved it, but can’t quite judge it yet.
I got three games for Christmas and this one won’t get put into rotation until February
The Steam sale happened
So many reasons that a late 2017 game wouldn’t get played until 2018. Yet, by rule, it won’t be eligible. It always struck me as silly. We all know it’s silly, see the debate here. ‘Technically it released November/ December 2017 but nobody played it until 2018’. Well, so what?
I propose this, all games released in the last two months of the year shall always be eligible in the next years awards votes!
Has anyone had time to play Darksiders 3 really? What about Parkitect or Just Cause 4? What about Ashen or Smash Brothers Ultimate? Gris, Below, Warhammer Vermintide 2?
I have no idea if any of these are good, and aside from Smash or Parcitect none are things I’d play, but all are late year releases that could conceivably be on many people’s lists, but likely would be played by a majority of people in the next year.
Especially Smash. That’s a huge ‘I bought this for the kids/ got a Switch’ Christmas gift item.
A possibility is doing the voting of not in January but at the start of March.
Hey, that is fine with me too.
I just think that if you are going to do the vote at the beginning of the year that excluding things from the holiday corridor of the previous year more or less permanently excludes any game released the last two months from consideration.
I’ll have forgotten what I played in 2018 by then.
A far better solution would be to get developers to release all their games in the first 10 months of the year. :)
- BattleTech
BattleTech has that “just one more mission” aspect to it, and salvaging, upgrading, and the white-knuckling my way through a salvo of SRMs hitting my exposed weapon mounts make this my #1 game of the year. I love the mech tinkering, the slot-machine salvage, the starmap full of places I can’t go (yet), it’s just… it’s everything I want in a BattleTech game. If the first expansion is any indication, it’s going to hit XCOM-levels of classic status.
- Return of the Obra Dinn
Obra Dinn is just transporting and delicious and different, with a massive logic puzzle hidden behind striking art and sound, and a story worth telling. By the time I’d grokked what I was actually supposed to do to win the game, I was so invested in learning the fates of specific characters I had no choice but to shotgun the whole game in a day. It’s also probably the best ******* game made yet (can’t spoil it for ya)!
- Arkham Horror 3E
A reworking of the granddaddy of the dice-n-tentacles genre of boardgaming, the design here incorporates so many good ideas from other boardgames like Fallout, Pandemic, and, yes, Eldritch Horror that it captures the claustrophobia and melancholy of AH2 while increasing the amount of player agency and (more importantly to me) narrative coherence. Its scenario-based design offers the promise of some truly crazy avenues the game could take with the inevitable expansions, but for now it’s exactly what a new edition should be.
- Into The Breach
I bounced off it, went back and thought about it, played it some more, bounced even harder off it, but for some reason couldn’t get it out of my head. Some 80 hours later, it’s become my go-to game jam when I have 30 minutes to kill. It’s fun, goal-oriented, endlessly replayable, and a perfect little pocket of deep turn based strategy that’s just as good as everyone says it is.
- Spider-Man
It’s been a looooooooong time since I actually finished one of these open-world hoo-has, but Spider-Man did the trick by making getting around such a joy. Amazing production values in every area (they didn’t HAVE to give Peter two sets of line readings, one for when he’s talking while swinging around and one when he’s just standing there, but they DID), soaring music, and a plot with fun twists on classic Spidey stuff, I was prepared for it to be terrible; it was outstanding.
My only issue with Slay the Spire is it will be up for voting AGAIN at the end of 2019 when it eventually leaves Early Access.
In the scheme of things it doesn’t matter where we land on this, but it is interesting how it begins to feel like we’re just making this up as we go.
Adulthood defined.
True enough, so why bother having any parameters around this whatsoever.
It’s to help keep Dark Souls 1 from winning every single year.
I would like to see QT3 Awards for the board itself.
Like sillest or most fun thread in 2018,
Longest game thread.
Favorite thread brought back from the dead.
To name a few.
This sounds great, it would be especially cool if we could enable likes for that one particular thread too.
Poster most likely to be hurt if they don’t get some kind of award who will try to act all hurt about receiving this one like it’s just a consolation prize or even an insult towards them but who will secretly treasure it for years to come
I normally don’t vote in these things as I tend to play games that have already been out for a while. But after skimming the thread, it was depressing that Subnautica didn’t show up more often on people’s lists. So I’ll add in my votes…
- Subnautica
- Overload
- Monster Hunter: World
and that’s it. I also played Assetto Corsa Competizione, but it’s still too early in development.
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Madden 19
First time in a long time on PC. More nostalgic than anything as it allows me and a buddy to play the game like we did in college. On year 2027. He has won 2 Superbowls and I have won 2. Great times and really an impressive game / franchise simulator. Also a small plug for Origin Premier. I have got my money’s worth. -
XCOM 2 War of the Chosen Tactical Legacy Pack
They did a nice job here and it’s free for those who own WotC. Having the running score as you play along really adds to the game intensity. -
Into the Breach
Love how quick a game can be. A great mixture of feeling smart - then dumb. -
Overload
The handling and shooting just feel good. They nailed it. -
Hitman 2
Cheating a bit. Playing Hitman 1 through for the first time in the Hitman 2 engine. A next gesture on their part, and it does improve the game enabling Hitman 2 features in Hitman 1.
Neat, I didn’t know you could do this. Do you have to have purchased and installed Hitman 1 at the same time or what?
I believe this is how it works. Purchase the Hitman 1 GOTY edition (You can upgrade for reasonably cheap on a sale if you got the base version via Humble Bundle or whatever). I think you have to fire up Hitman 1 at least one time. Fire up Hitman 2 and play the game there. Uninstall Hitman 1.
In consoles I think you need both installed,in Steam it should automatically notice you own it.