GOTY Discussion thread
 

So as to avoid junking up the nominations thread, I figured we needed somewhere to discuss the nominations people made...

First up, I see a couple of nominations for Metal Gear Revengance and thanks to it being free with PSPlus, I own this but I've held off playing it up to now as I never played beyond MGS2 in the series despite owning most of them and I was planning to catch up before starting this. Do I actually need to play 3 and 4 to get this game or can I just go ahead and play it?

Secondly, people keep saying GTAV was too short. I guess I must play it differently to other people then as it took me a good 50 hours to get through it so I got about 65p per hour out of it which to my mind is incredibly good value. With all the GTA games, I've always taken time to explore the world properly and do all the side missions and stuff with the story taking something of a back seat. In fact I sunk over 100 hours into San Andreas and never even finished the last mission. For me GTA has always been more of a game you piss about with doing whatever rather than a game where you rush through the story. I'm curious with people who said it was too short as to how long it actually took them and whether they did anything outside of the story missions. I still think Vice City was the best of the series but with such a huge world in GTAV, I find it hard to imagine anyone finding it too short.

I put about sixty hours into Grand Theft Auto V. Well over half of that time was spent fucking around. The breadth of the story didn't seem to extend as far as I would have hoped for a title with a budget as expansive as it had. The world was the best in the series, so maybe a lot more of the time went into the world itself. I just found myself enjoying the missions I was playing more than the exploring aspect of things. The robbery of the jewelry store was the best mission I've played in an open-world game. Maybe it all just went quickly because I was enjoying myself as much as I was. On the other hand, there were a few indie titles I spent as much time on so - proportionally speaking - GTA did offer a lot less bang for my buck. Rogue Legacy, for example, cost me :tenbux: but offered the same amount of entertainment as I found in GTA.

e: May I add: Metal Gear Bad Title is also discounted (like, right now) on the Steam.

Actually I agree there could have been more heist missions. It seemed ridiculous to have a mechanic whereby taking people on heists makes them better at them but then only having four in the game anyway and they were the best bit of the game.

In other news: Hopefully you lot were speaking out of more than just nostalgia when you gave DuckTales all those points because I just bought it with money.

You've played 2, so you're already familiar with Raiden. I'd say that's all you'd need, if anything. There's no connection to 3, and 4 just introduces you to the fact that Raiden is a cyborg now. Beyond that, there's no meaningful tie-ins to prior games.

I will say that there are a couple of references in there that you might not get if you haven't played 4 but nothing that should ruin the story if you play this first and then go back to Solid 3 and 4.

If you're talking about just enjoying Revengeance as a game then I'm not sure it's necessary to know anything about Metal Gear really. Certainly if you've played MGS at all then you're familiar enough to have some fun with it. The game is many kinds of kick-ass so well worth your time, particularly if you nabbed it on PS+.

Also, who's saying GTA V is too short? That is some horse shit. I'd have liked some more heists, but not sure I'd say the game was too short by any stretch.

I bought MGS4 anyway and I've owned 3 for about five years now so should probably get round to playing it...

The connections storywise in Revengeance are from 2 and 4. You don't need to know things inside out, it's really just enough to know the game takes place after 4. It was only to its benefit it wasn't weighed down with all the usual retarded MGS continuity.

You really, really shouldn't.

In fact, consider lighting it on fire.

Too bad I can't vote since the only 2013 games I played were GTA V and Metal Gear Rising: Revengeance, I have yet to catch on The Last of Us, Tomb Raider and AC: Black Flag among others.

GTA V it was everything I expected to be. It was nice to be back in San Andreas after all these years, for me it was a gap between GTA San Andreas and V because I never truly enjoyed IV and its expansions, to the point that I never finished them and never cared about their protagonist.

But V, oh boy. I played the shit out of that game and enjoyed it just as much. I postponed the final missions because I grinded online for a month or so and when I finished it I was blown away by the overall experience. I agree, it could have had more heists but I'm sure they are going to properly milk it with a proper expansion (Beach Bum Pack, lol) so it would be great to revisit it sometime in the future.

MGS: The Life and Times of Raiden I really wanted to like this game and I did for a while. It was innovative and it was fun to slice things and stuff. I can't form a full opinion since I stopped playing it to favor some other games, however it doesn't meet my expectations. Jumping is sloppy and didn't ring any bells on me.

As for other games in 2013. Well, I discovered Assassins Creed, talk about being late to the bandwagon. I just got Platinum for AC: 2 and I enjoyed it a lot. It was a pleasant surprise for me since I never really cared for the franchise all these years. If I only knew that it is considered a spiritual succesor of the modern Prince of Persia I would have started sooner for sure. I plan to jump straight to Black Flag, unless someone convice me another one in between.

And that's about it.

Erm, this means you absolutely can vote. If you think those games are worth some points, then give them some points. Even without the context of playing many other games from 2013 you will know if those are good games or not, and if you think they're just OK then don't throw them the full 40, throw them a smaller amount (e.g. 10 or 20).

The rules say you can't allocate more than 100 points, but I explicitly allow votes that add up to less than 100 for situations like this.

Go vote man!

I'd say you need to at least play through the other two chapters in Ezio's story, if only because he's total badass grandpa, and running around Rome in brotherhood is pretty awesome. The games do decrease in quality control as they move forward, though (stupid timer resetting because advancing in revelations means you never have the money you should have). They did a good job of keeping his character compelling.

Oddly enough, Shin, Raiden in MGS4 feels strange and way over the top, he works really well in his own game and side-universe where everything is ludicrous and sped up and fun, not so much in the psuedo-serious world of Solid Snake.

Also MGS4 is nauseating at worst and just really, really awesome in it's use of call backs from the entire series up until that point. I don't want this to be an MGS4 conversation, but it's just not worth it if you're not into the series at all. That, and the really awesome online is gone now, so there's little reason to return to it. MGS3 is very good if you like genre movies like James Bond, it's all kinds of corny.

Revengeance was unexpectedly fun and I only really got into it after hearing about it from Q and Skills, who are obsessed, so I gave it another go and it's really challenging in all the right ways. Not that I'm some awesome gamer or anything, but I don't like games where mashing X is all that is necessary to win. The parrying mechanic has a good learning curve and the game escalates in it's difficulty well, so far from what I've seen being halfway through on Hard mode. I'd give it a go immediately.

Well once I get bored of Far Cry 3 (Which won't be long now I imagine, it's basically Just Cause 2 without the fun bits of the zip wire thing and I never bothered finishing that) I might play MGS3 on my projector as I do indeed love corny Bond films then blaze through 4 and play Revengance after. I need to get some serious gaming in before I get busy for summer again otherwise my backlog will never, ever end.

MGS3 is the best in the series, you're missing out not having played that. MGS4 was the most painful experience I've ever had playing a video game, and made me swear off playing anything to follow in the series.

I've edited in the remainder of my points! I don't really have the motivation right now to add in a bunch of images, but... after seeing Acer's post it's kind of hard to follow that act, so I'll just leave it as is. Heh.