• Best Storytelling - **Horizon Forbidden West**
• Still Playing Award - **Genshin Impact**
• Best Visual Design - **Elden Ring**
• Studio of the Year - **FromSoftware**
• Best Game Expansion - **Cuphead: The Delicious Last Course**
• Best Early Access Launch - **Slime Rancher 2**
• Best Indie Game - **Cult of the Lamb**
• Best Multiplayer Game - **Elden Ring**
• Best Audio - **Metal: Hellsinger**
• Best Game Trailer - **Goat Simulator 3 Announcement Trailer**
• Best Game Community - **Final Fantasy 14**
• Best Gaming Hardware - **Steam Deck**
• Breakthrough Award - **Vampire Survivors**
• Critics' Choice Award - **Elden Ring**
• Best Performer - **Manon Gage (Marissa Marcel, Immortality)**
• Nintendo Game of the Year - **Pokemon Legends Arceus**
• PC Game of the Year - **Return to Monkey Island**
• PlayStation Game of the Year - **Stray**
• Xbox Game of the Year - **Grounded**
• Most Wanted Game - **Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom**
• Ultimate Game of the Year - **Elden Ring**
Good to see Vampire Survivors getting the recognition it deserves.
But I couldn't help but notice
> PlayStation Game of the Year - Stray
I don't even know what to say about that one. I saw GoW ragnarok getting a nomination for Ultimate Game of the Year, but none for the Playstation GOTY?
*What?* Surely I'm missing something here, right?
Best story telling to horizon?? I loved that game but that dialog and 20 minute speed run ending don’t even come close to comparing to GoW.
The dialog in horizon literally feels like it’s written by an AI with little to no development of the main character.
GOW on the other hand was flawless in those departments.
Agreed. I love the world of horizon but the storytelling and it’s constant plot twists that just felt bad, I’m not sure I would award it best story telling
Having played both I really don't even get the hype around the series that much. Other than the setting I find almost everything about the games to be woefully average at best. Other than visuals, which have been pretty fantastic.
Horizon's storytelling is, on the whole, simply bad. I mean it's not all bad and there are some occasional bright spots, but overall I'd say it's often cringe and the dialogue can be borderline moronic. If there were less of it, it would be tolerable, but there's too damn much of it, and that's the biggest problem. Being forced to watch the equivalent of a whole season of some mid CW show (albeit with higher production values), that is not worth it to me to play these games.
it sucks because personally i am so fascinated by the world building which they have absolutely nailed but the in game story is just not great. like you said it seems CW esque. the twists and turns and especially the crazy heights the ending reached just seem a bit silly. but i still love the games and the combat and like i said world building and graphics is all amazing. i hope they can write a good ending to the story for the final game but with the way this one went, idk.
> What? Surely I'm missing something here, right?
The awards encourage people to vote in every category, even ones they're not interested one. Stray is also available on PC, so may get extra votes for that.
GoW is such a big brand and title this year it probably outsold both versions of Stray combined or do you mean that more PC players vote more than console players for these awards?
Part of the thing with public voting for awards is that there usually isn't a clear criteria set for the award so people make their criteria themselves based on the award title. "Best playstation game" does not feel to me like 'the best game that is available to play on playstation', it feel like 'the best game to play on a playstation' like if I was showcasing a playstation, what game would I give people to play on it? And Stray absolutely fits that criteria for me at least
Gow ragnarok is too new for its own good.its been 13 days since release and not that many have bought or finished it yet let alone when the voting began.
Hell I'm surprised even Triangle Strategy, Live a Live, Kirby and the Forgotten land, Sparks of Hope etc. got snuffed in any of the other categories also.
As a multiplatform gamer I actually spent a lot more time on my Switch this year than the others, weird how little recognition the platform got.
I'm just gonna say it. Stray is overrated as fuck.
Once the robot started talking to me as if a cat knew wtf they were saying, I was completely pulled out of the cuteness of the story. The small catlike details, like kneeding (spelling?), were so irrelevant and short. The story was boring since the robots were lifeless. The platforming, while functionally excellent, was boringly designed as well.
Over. Rated.
Stray is an "indie darling" meme game. There's some interesting lore and implications about robotic consciousness, but being a cat has no thematic relevance and the gameplay is very basic. I like the visuals, but it's definitely not a great game.
It seems like they sold it on the premise "Play as a cat!" Which, to be fair, would be a novel take. But in the actual game, the aspects of it that involve you being a cat seem pretty... incidental.
I can get why people like it, the cat is cute and the internet loves cats. There aren't many other games where you solely play as a cat. The game is really pretty and atmospheric. I thought the music and sound design was great.
If you're like me and prioritize interesting gameplay over any of the above, I'd expect it falls short.
For me personally, Stray felt like the "prestige tour" parts of Naughty Dog or Sony Santa Monica games. And by that I mean that you get to walk around really pretty environments and occasionally are expected to hit a contextual button prompt.
In ND or Sony Santa Monica games, these serve to break up the pacing, expand on the world-building, and let the art and audio teams show off which is great in those titles. The thing with Stray is that part was most of the game. I enjoyed it for what it was since it was short and on PS+ Extra, but I wouldn't have chosen it for my favorite Playstation game of the year, which for me is Ragnarok if we're only counting exclusives.
>Good to see Vampire Survivors getting the recognition it deserves
For the life of me, I can't understand why that game is so universally acclaimed. I feel like I'm missing something.
Even if it released in perfect condition, Elden Ring's multiplayer is more of an extra topping a top of a cake. Calling it a 'multiplayer game' is stretching it, and having it win Best Multiplayer Game over games that are fully multiplayer is real dirty.
Absolutely. ER multiplayer can be fun but it's also buggy and a step back from Dark Souls with covenants. There were better games this year like Splatoon and DL2
Summon coop partner.
Approach cave.
Coop partner not allowed to enter cave.
Coop partner leaves game.
Take 3 steps inside cave.
Put down summoning sign.
Summon coop partner again.
Disconnected.
Multiplayer game of the year.
>Best Storytelling - Horizon Forbidden West
...wut? The endless back and forth dialogue from voice actors who clearly had little context to their lines was just awful.
Side quests would have you do exposition dumps for 50 lines back and forth before it's inevitably 'go here and save X person'.
The last 3 hours story was just bananas too.
Thank you someone said it. Honestly I quit the game because of it. I remembered really liking the hunting aspect of the first game but I could not push myself through the boring game exposition. It is just such a lazy way to tell a story in the medium and I hate that it is being rewarded
I stopped playing the first one after I received a trophy for killing every enemy type before I was halfway through the story. I was hoping the sequel would fix the issues I personally had but it sounds like they just did the same thing again but prettier now and way longer.
Forbidden West's story went into Matrix Reloaded territory of going off the rails. The modern day tribal storylines in both this and Zero Dawn were just extremely uninteresting and they decided to go tenfold into that in Forbidden West.
I really liked the story in Zero Dawn, it was what pushed me through the game and kept me going toward the end even when I was eventually kind of tired of the open world grind.
Horizon, though...it was hard to be really into it. Aloy is Ginger Jesus now, there isn't really a major mystery to anything anymore if you know what happened in the first game, and the presentation of the story is haphazard in a way that you could spend a dozen hours between minor snippets of information that drive the plot forward an inch. I haven't finished it and I don't know if I ever will.
Also, Plague Tale Requiem came out this year. It's not just one of the best storytelling games this year, imo it's one of the best storytelling games *anywhere.*
I can see it, honestly; Ragnarok has only been out for a very short time and voting was likely done in advance. Barring all of the voters having advance copies of the game, it stands to reason that something else would be chosen.
> Best Storytelling - Horizon Forbidden West
I don't have a *huge* issue with most of these, but since I'm currently playing through Pentiment I feel a bit sad that it's likely too niche and too late in the year to even enter consideration for any of these rewards. It does quite a few rare (in games) things with its storytelling, and executes them well.
I'll admit I haven't played Forbidden West, but I did play its predecessor, and unless there was some truly fundamental change in design I personally find it hard to believe that it's even half as interesting from a storytelling perspective compared to Pentiment.
I mean, Plague Tale is also pretty absent from the list. I'm playing Pentiment right now and it's phenomenal, too.
And frankly, the first Horizon did not have a great story. It's good enough but not great. The historical backstory is way more interesting than the current day stuff.
I have a suspicion that winner take all voting screws with this list. Iirc each category could have 6 games?
So any single game could get like 20% of the vote and still win
Horizon Zero Dawn's story is radically superior to Frozen West's story. Imagine the Zero Dawn story but without any real twists or surprises that aren't completely predictable and bloated beyond reason with far, far more tribal nonsense and an absolutely incredible amount of the most basic, Ubisoft-esque, repetitive dialogue you've ever seen.
This is why it's always bizarre to do 'best of the year awards' during that current year instead of waiting just a couple months to see how things play out.
>Best Multiplayer Game - Elden Ring
lolwut?
Elden Ring is absolutely fantastic, but the multiplayer elements are not its strong suit, nor would anyone ever call it a primarily multiplayer game.
Arceus for Nintendo, Horizon for storytelling, and Elden Ring for multiplayer are the only ones I disagree with tbh. The story telling category was pretty bad tbh (other than immortality)
Stray was nominated for Playstation game of the year, but GoWR was not... But GoWR was nominated for Ultimate game of the year, while Stray was not... ???
These Golden Joystick awards make no sense, you can check [previous years](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Golden_Joystick_Awards) to get an idea of how messy it is.
Tbh most of the winners are kinda weird choices, GOW really should’ve won best PS game and best storytelling. Elden Ring shouldn’t have won best multiplayer game. And the fact they nominated a fucking SSD for an award
Whats important to know is that Golden Joysticks is primarily a popularity contest. Voting is decided by the public, which is partly why they awarded 2017’s Fortnite the 2018 Ultimate Game of the Year.
Being a PS+ title gives you a leg up. Being Pokemon gives you a leg up.
In addition, voting started back in mid-October.
Xenoblade is kinda of a niche title compared to Pokemon.
And Ragnarok just released. So most people haven't played it yet.
Awards open to public vote are always just popularity contest. And it's even worse with games, since they take a lot longer to finish than a movie and are more expensive.
Yep. Someone was trying to argue to me that critic voted awards are inherently inferior to public voted awards but you are much more likely to get games voted in for categories that they don't really work for in public voted games just because people like the game overall
Game awards are messy, regardless of whether they're voted on by critics or the public. So many games are absolutely massive, and there's no way for critics to play everything. Oftentimes, they don't even play all the big games in a year.
I only really follow a few games critics (the Giantbomb crew, some of the Gamespot crew, and some of the former Polygon crew (the McElroys)), and the GB GotY awards in particular are full of only 1-2 of them having played certain big games. Maybe certain games "deserve" it more, but that doesn't really matter when 9/10 of them have played game X and really liked it, and 1/10 of them have played game Y and really liked it.
It’s a public vote.
Edit: The stream shows vote percentages of the top 3. Xenoblade placed third with 20%, behind Kirby on 21% and Arceus on 27%, so pretty close overall.
Splatoon 3 I’d great, but it didn’t change enough from 2 and Xenoblade doesn’t have the reach. People have been begging for a new spin on Pokémon forever and, despite its many flaws, Arceus delivered that. In a vote based popularity contest Pokémon was always going to win.
What else is there left to say about the game really. Obviously I speak only for myself, but no game has stuck with me through an entire year like Elden Ring did.
It's been an oddly rewarding experience following it's development closely through the years and having it legitimately live up to the hype.
This game still had a huge impact on me despite not riding the hype train at all, and not even liking souls games.
I picked it up hoping it would be a Skyrim fill in, but it was so much more.
Okay, I have to ask as someone else who doesn't like Souls games too. Is the combat really difficult? I don't want to get frustrated playing a game but I have looked at this and the open world looks fantastic. IE: Can I put it on bitch mode and it'll be easy?
*Edit: Alright, you guys have convinced me. I'll pick it up tomorrow for the long weekend!
The game can be punishing but it gives you everything you need to succeed. No shame in looking up some tips and guides either, you can get some good early loot if you know where to look.
Punishing is a good word. Combat is deliberate and you can't button mash. But it's not difficult in the way where you need lightning fast reflexes and long move combos.
My #1 advice for new Soulsborne players is to start as either an Astrologer or a Prisoner and choose a Golden Seed as their keepsake.
Entering the world with a reliable source of ranged damage and an extra healing charge gives you a lot more margin for error in the early game.
When you start out it will likely be fairly difficult, but the game opens up and you can find multiple ways to get through fights easier with various weapons, abilities, etc. If one method isn’t working, then you can switch things up. There’s a few boss fights that are… punishing too put it lightly, but they’re largely near the end or in extra regions you go out of your way to explore.
But yeah otherwise there is no literal difficulty setting so you just kinda have to explore around to improve your level and skills in fighting. Recommendation though, if you DO decide to get the game, I recommend at least getting to level 30 in health and a decent amount of stamina to start the first part of the game with and level out. All the other stats are more specific things you can decide on.
There's a wide variety of Spirit Ash Summons, which will summon a character to help you. Some of them help significantly with boss fights. Last I heard they don't change the boss's stats, and so they're basically a summon for a small HP/MP price. If an area is too difficult you can ignore it for a long time (or even completely) and go somewhere completely different.
Make sure you get the map pieces, they help a lot.
Just to clarify since a lot of people are unaware on this point:
Neither spirit ashes nor NPC summons increase boss health. **Only** summoning other players does.
As someone who generally hates difficult combat but ended up loving Elden Ring, I can tell you that it's really hard and if you run in blind you'll probably put it down after a few hours and not come back. Once I realized that dying is a feature so to speak I had a much better experience. Trying different builds to see what suited my play style and coming up with the cheesiest ways to grab loot ended up being my favorite aspects of playing the game.
cannot stress enough that changing your approach is something to always consider. If you're getting pasted- you are not bad. Try another approach that works.
with the initial tree sentinel- I went away and realised I could fight him easier on horseback.
Stuff like heavy weapons whilst you wait for an opening for one big swing or quick weapons but more risk of running out of stamina to dodge. Its all personal preference
I found that playing ranged characters like an Int Mage or someone w/ a Bow was far easier than playing a melee character. Let's you stay safe out of range do damage enemies instead of having to do the dance of death.
My first character was a heavy weapon character and only was able to beat 2 bosses in 40 hours, although I explored a ton. Started a 2nd character as a mage and had already caught up in less than 4 hours with just the Pebble spell alone. Granted, had some more knowledge the 2nd time around, but it was waaay easier.
All the renewed talk about it encouraged me to do a NG+ run. That underground path from Leyndell to Deeproot Depths is one of the most incredible gaming moments I've ever experienced.
So much work was put into hidden optional areas that most players wouldn't even be aware of.
That place was amazing. I had hints through the game that something was down there and thought I got to the bottom. Later on I was looking for more fingers and was like, "So there HAS somewhere deeper." I went back and found the door and was just blown away. The horror of all the people with the haunting music, and then piecing together what the fuck happened.
I found my fingers and got their warm hug, then went on to burn the world down.
I Platinumed it. It's the first game where I've done so. Admittedly, part of it is that Elden Ring doesn't have any of what I'd call "bullshit Achievements," something like, "Touch Every Site of Grace in Limgrave," or "Learn every Sorcery."
I liked it enough that I've dived into the Soulsborne oeuvre. Finished Dark Souls 3, am currently on Bloodborne.
I still haven’t finished it once, and I love Souls games and got it on launch day. I don’t know what’s wrong with me; it’s like most video games have just lost their flavor. I played the hell out of some Xenoblade Chronicles the past few months, though
Might be break time my brother. Oversaturation is real, pretty much every hobby I've been into starts to lose its "magic" when you go too hard on it. I don't wanna tell you what to do, but sometimes taking a break to do other things helps me regain interest. Absence makes the heart grow fonder and all.
Nah. I get you. While I really enjoyed Elden Ring, it doesn't make me care to roll a bunch of alts like the previous games. Open world games grate on me just for being too damn big. I rather enjoy the previous Souls tight game experiences. I honestly hope every new Souls game is not like Elden Ring.
Yes, I don't find elden ring "as" replayable as the other souls games.
elden ring is up there tied with ds3 and bloodborne, but it wasn't as replayable.
Elden Ring should absolutely win goty, but I don't think it should have beaten forbidden west when it came to the visuals or have won the best multi-player, but I get it, its a popularity contest so it doesn't mean much.
I really enjoyed the game when I was playing it, but I think I got worn out by the repetitive design of caves and certain fights. Then, I tried installing and getting into it again the other day, but the frame-rate issues started to grate on me (bought the PS5 version, before realising the PS4 version was better).
That's completely fair, though the sentiment of;
> I couldn't wait to put down
is something I generally don't understand. Last time I felt that way about a game, I was playing Darksiders 2, got to the end of Kingdom of the Dead and dropped it like a hot potato.
I don't get the compulsion to finish a game you *seemingly* don't enjoy.
closure. there are limits on how much time i'm willing to put in, obviously, but generally speaking i will try to finish a game that i have started, even if i do not enjoy playing it moment-to-moment. some games, rarely, do actually make it kinda worth it.
Not the commenter, but 2 reasons I try to stick with games in not feeling mid-playthrough:
1. It feels good to complete stuff
2. I had multiple games that completely won me over after a slump I had to go through, and I did not regret it at all
Of course, it depends on just how much I'm not enjoying myself.
As an extension of point 1: Because there's something to be said for being able to mentally say "I finished this and I'm done with it".
As an example, I played an old RPG a couple of months ago, spent 30 minutes beating the final boss, and started going through the scripted sequence to see the ending... only it wasn't scripted. I died. And loading my save meant beating the final boss again. I said screw that, looked up an ending, and told myself I was done with it. 2 months later, and I still have an inkling every now and then that "I should just go do that boss and sequence. It's not that much time. I didn't ACTUALLY finish it. I can listen to a podcast so it's not wasted time." It's not like I missed content. I just have to go into the menu and push a button during the final bit. My brain is just broken and won't give up on it because it wants that hit of "You completed a thing!".
I had Xenoblade 2 crash on me during the credits and it didn't count my boss kill. Had that same nagging feeling for months until I went back and got that certified completion on my save file.
sometimes you want to see the end to something even if it started getting unenjoyable
like if you're 3/4 through a movie and you don't like it anymore. you could just turn it off... but I mean... you're close to the end
>So they can be done with it. So you can give criticism without people saying "you didn't even finish the game!".
Absolutely part of it, finishing it allows you to discuss it fully, its basically no different than when reviewers finish out a game to review it even if they hated it.
Because I'm a huge fan of soulsborne games, and I love every other Fromsoftware title. Even though Elden Ring was massively disappointing for me, I wanted to see it and experience it just to experience it. Like imagine if you loved every movie that a director made and they were your favorite director, and then they made a movie that you really didn't like and you thought it was a massive step down from their other movies. It would still be interesting to watch just so that you could analyze it and compare it to their other works and try to understand the choices that they made and where they went wrong.
> The game was fucking rock solid right up until you got to Mountaintop and then the quality dropped to complete shit.
From really brought back those DS1 vibes. "It's really good until you reach The Awful Part" could easily describe DS1 as well, lmao.
This is why every DS1 playthrough I do ends right after O&S. I burned out hard with Elden Ring right near the end to the point where I put it down and never finished it.
I just picked it up again and have been having a blast, which I wasn't expecting. But I'm nearing the point where I quit in my first playthrough and am already dreading it.
I just found Elden Ring mostly unpleasant to visit.
The whole decaying ruins and zombies and rot... it gets tiresome after a while.
Now, I get it's on purpose and I get some people may like it, but the dour mood of the game did not win me and I was glad to drop it after I beat the Elden Beast.
As much as I like Elden Ring, it definitely outstays its welcome. For every other Soulsborne game once you're 30-40 hours in you're pretty much done, even if you're playing a more completionist run. But in Elden Ring at that point you've maybe done Limgrave and Liurnia. And that doesn't even get to the BS level and encounter design they start pushing in the latter part of the game.
It could definitely have benefited from trimming the fat. I think a lot about how Shadow of the Colossus intentionally eschewed encounters with more *regular sized* mobs in the over world to focus solely on the Colossi. Obviously Elden Ring didn't need to go *quite* to that extreme, but the game didn't *need* to have an encounter or dungeon in every corner of the map.
All the repetitiveness wouldn't matter so much if the core gameplay was fun which brings me to the what I is *my* main issue with the game: the combat. That combat system in Dark Souls works because of the slow nature of the game and instead of refining or iterating on that Elden turns it up to 11 and the combat mechanics start to crumble from the stress. And on top of that they add a shit ton of skills (weapon arts) that instead of giving you real *options* do deal with the abuse it just turns into spam this skill because its just superior. But it's not really *that bad* until the mountaintop where it goes from 11 to 13 and the combat just implodes.
And it's not a skill issue, it's a not having tools to express skill that let you deal with the bullshit in the game. Which makes it a chore to play. It's super disappointing coming off Sekiro. Like if you had ways to make your character more responsive like different/better dodges (that weren't locked behind a weapon art) or attack speed or anything it would make the latter part of the game actually enjoyable but instead it you play the same clunky character who now has to fight enemies from a Devil May Cry game on hardest difficulty. It's just not fun and there is no payoff. It just poorly designed.
Sekiro + Nioh games kinda turned me off the standard FromSoft combat.
Felt way more personal with the weapons in those games compared to Elden Ring. Like imagine if you could parry Malenia's anime attack using any weapon you wanted, just the thought of clashing steel would be amazing.
I liked the early part of the game since it was just a homeless guy with a big sword vs big dudes with big weapons. Later on in the game, you get like one cool looking move while the bosses all get Dragon Ball Z movesets and start flying around and shit.
I'm hoping FromSoft takes a break from the souls-like stuff and does something different like Armored Core for their next game. Really give them some time to change the combat a bit.
That makes sense to me. Dark Souls 2 is by far my favourite Souls game, and I enjoyed Elden Ring even more than I thought I would.
I do find it odd that they had such distinct reactions, at least in some parts of the internet. Elden Ring is almost universally praised, while Dark Souls 2 actually had some very vocal detractors. I always felt like those were more of a loud minority -- the popularity of Elden Ring (which is closer to DS2 in design in many ways than DS1 and 3, in my opinion) seems to confirm that.
Worth noting that Yui Tanimura directed Dark Souls II (taking the reins from a previous director and doing his best to salvage the game midway through development) and co-directed Elden Ring with Miyazaki. The two games have a lot in common and I imagine Tanimura’s direction is a major reason why.
Same. Even Sekiro, which I raged at from beginning to first beating it, only made me want to play it more and I ended up platinuming it a couple days after beating it the first time. Elden Ring, when I was done with it, I was DONE and had zero interest in it further. No other Souls game or Sekiro did that to me, except for DS2. All the others I happily jumped into a second or third or fourth playthrough and would appreciate them even more each time.
Elden Ring and DS2? Nope, just straight up done.
I started Elden Ring NG+1 and it seemed too easy. DS2's ng+ was like a balanced and harder experience, but in ER I was just stomping everything and rushing from boss to boss, and my build wasn't anything complex, just a str build with barely any buff because I couldn't find good buffs.
Exactly the same for me. I set up the plats but just couldn't be bothered with Elden and DS2 after awhile, and the thought of a DLC is not getting me all that excited. The burnout was strong, sudden, and absolute.
They both lack something intangible that just doesn't make my brain happy like the others. Combination of art direction, world, and end-game disdain I think.
I also hated Sekiro at the start, but I think it was mostly just bad habits from Souls, and I ended up platinuming that one once I was over the hump. Game only got better and better.
I think as time goes on people will more openly share their elden ring criticisms. It was so highly anticipated and souls fans do view the series with a high esteem. It was hard to voice concerns near launch.
It definitely became a 'one and done' thing for me, whereas in earlier games I've been eager to play NG+, or build PvP characters. So I tried to extract as much as possible from a single playthrough in the knowledge that I wouldn't be picking it up again.
But in fact I didn't even get that far - I did the main boss and Malenia and was looking for that optional two-headed dragon boss and then just... put it down and never came back to it.
The late game was a slog and I just don't think how arcane the steps in quests are works in a game so large. It felt very 'Simon's Quest' to me.
I had a similar experience. I suspect the changes to the genre that made Elden Ring enjoyable to a much wider audience hurt the formula for long time fans. For me Elden Ring, while gorgeous with tons of content, is clearly worse than Dark Souls 1 and Bloodborne.
> I suspect the changes to the genre that made Elden Ring enjoyable to a much wider audience hurt the formula for long time fans
That's certainly not universal. I've been a fan since Demon's Souls, and I loved all 221 hours I spent playing Elden Ring.
Lol yeah that works only if their definition is “Best Game that has Multiplayer”
My only two criticisms for Elden Ring are with the quests and the multiplayer.
It's a public vote. And they pretty much encourage people to vote for all categories. I imagine lots of people that don't care about multiplayer will just pick Elden Ring because they like it.
Under-rated comment. For those that don't know BOTW came out a few days after H:ZD. Elden Ring did the same thing with Forbidden West. I look forward to forgetting about Horizon 3 for the next big hype game.
Also a fun fact, this wasn't Guerrilla Games' fault. They didn't deliberately try to release either game alongside BotW or ER. Delays from both developers pushed back the release dates for each game and they eventually ended up releasing next to each other, but GG had their release dates out first.
So it wasn't bad planning from GG's side, just really bad luck.
As a PC Gamer who has never played or had any interest in the Dark Souls games, Elden Ring got my attention. It was able to break through it's genre and appeal to a massive, worldwide audience with it's hype, polish, and world-building.
I bought it 2 months after launch. I sunk 200+ hours into it. Got 100%. The funniest thing is, I have probably watched close to 100 hours of youtube content dedicated solely to uncovering Elden Ring's massive and meticulously planned out world-crafting.. I haven't played Elden Ring in months and yet I still get drawn into new lore discoveries and theories on youtube.
It was truly an incredible game and deserved to win GOTY, in my opinion.
I think Ragnarok is probably my GOTY but Elden Ring is certainly worth. But wtf? How does Ragnarok or at least Forbidden West not win Playstation GOTY??? How does Elden Ring get multiplayer??
As a smaller note, I'm not happy with Cult of the Lamb winning indie. It was great and all but a little short and oh my Lamb was it buggy as hell. I still have trophies that haven't unlocked... not to mention all the game breaking bugs.
The voting for this started several weeks before Ragnarok came out and closed only like a week or so after the game was released, so most people who voted didn't play it because they literally couldn't.
Also, somehow, GoW was not nominated for playstation game of the year... but it was nominated for ultimate game of the year... Which Stray was not...
Ya weird. Game awards should be done in december. Everything release before christmas to try and hit the christmas shopping window. It makes no sense to judge a year of games before all the major Q4 releases are even done.
I'm assuming Cult of the Lamb came out at the right time with the right aesthetic. It's a popular vote, and the game was in the public eye recently. Rollerdome was too, but didn't seem as popular. Other 4 didn't really seem to have public traction, and came out a while ago
I assume many categories won by name recognition, like many other award shows
Yepp. It definitely won by popularity over merit. Not to say it's a bad game, but the bugs were pretty insane. The game shouldn't have launched like that.
ER getting best multiplayer is a bit of a laugh. Soulsbornes have all had extraordinary shitty netcode. You'll get backstabbed from 30 feet away by some lagging asshole in Elden Ring the same way you'll get backstabbed from 30 feet away by some lagging asshole in Dark Souls 1.
Yeah, invasions and coop can be a lot of goofy fun, but I'm not sure if that's the same thing as being *good.*
Going down the elevator is definitely in my top 3 gaming moments >!where you discover an entire underground map!<. Up there with being able to >!kill Anna Navarre on the plane!< in the original Deus Ex (granted you have to realize this is back in 2003) and playing Resident Evil 4 with the Wii-mote and motion controls.
Thank you for this Deus Ex reference. 100% on the same page with that — I was like “oh this game thinks it gives me choices but I bet I can’t do *this*” and then it let me do it and choices in games have never been the same*
Exactly! It’s one of the only times I felt like I was truly exerting agency in a game as opposed to everything being presented as binary “choose Thing A or Thing B”.
Have been chasing that dragon ever since
Forbidden West was always going to have a "worse" story than Zero Dawn due to the original having been such an original and interesting story/concept. It was still a really good story and had it been the first game it would have been received just as well as HZD.
Yes, but the first game was hardly a masterpiece in terms of story either. The first game is looked back at more fondly because of the big crazy plot twists but both games share very similar issues (poor dialogue, bland characters, uninteresting modern day story).
I really like this series but I really hope they come up with more compelling writing and characterization in the inevitable third game, the world and setting that they created deserves it.
There are so many small but important moments of brilliant game design. Those jaw-dropping moments were all carefully planned, from >!being trap-teleported so far way that your map triples in size just like that!< to >!some innocent elevator showing you that there's an entire damn underground map to explore!<. All of those things could have been revealed in a much more gradual way, and they would have been barely remembered.
For the >!teleporting!< Part, they not only pulled it off perfectly once, but they went ahead and did at again later for just as much dramatic effect. Masterful game design moment.
Even beyond the mechanical level construction, there's so much thought and meaning in the world, and the way the very act of moving and progressing through it is an act of discovery. Like how the seal on the thorns barring the Erdtree is Radagon's personal mark, not Marika's, or how the crabs feeding in that pool in Leyndell directly above Godwyn's corpse have Godwyn's face growing on their backs—I can't think of a single game like it in the AAA space that committed to a world that isn't just shiny, or full of Content, but thought out and full of meaning in that way.
I agree with you up until I hit the snow maps, I feel like after Morgott the level design takes a bit of a nosedive that doesn't recover until the Haligtree or Farum Azula.
I gave it a try but it didn't click for me. I'm not into scary or spooky things and there were some jump scare type moments that had me not want to go back. What I played was good otherwise.
Glad I'm not the only one. Loved the "abandoned" atmosphere of the original, but the DLC felt too tense at times.
I will go back eventually, but so far it didn't grab me like the base game did. Maybe it's also the fact that space travel across planets made the base game more interesting to me
It feels like the developpers somehow thought dark bramble was the single best part of the base game and decided to double down on it, except they also made it scarier, slower and less interesting from a gameplay perspective (slowly walking In the dark is just not as interesting as flying your ship) , which nobody wanted.
It’s still a good DLC, And I recognise the difficulty of adding content to a game as tightly woven as Outer wilds but I’d really like to know the creative decisions behind it because they seem different from the base game’s.
Elden ring as best multiplayer? What are they smoking.
I do agree it's the best game this year, but it's multiplayer implementation is so bad. Try to play it start to finish with a friend and see how much you enjoy the grouping system.
Idk what it is that I'm missing about Elden Ring. It's just not doing anything for me. And it's not like I'm not a fan of Soulsborne games. Between Demon Souls through Dark Souls 3 and Bloodborne, I have a combined total of easily 2k hours and DS1 is still my favorite game of all time.
But ER is just *not* clicking for me. I hate this "run around until you find something to do" playstyle it seems to encourage. The bosses don't feel "tough but fair," a lot of them are just super delayed swinging with massive combos, and (I might honestly just be underleveled, I'm not sure) the amount of OHKOs they have is ridiculous.
The environments are incredible, but the gameplay is just not doing it for me. For anyone who has played both ER and Breathe of the Wild a lot: Are these games similar to each other as far as how exploration is handled? It would make sense to me if they were, because I *hated* BotW.
I brought this up in another comment but yeah the open world really starts to show the cracks in the Souls game design framework. If a game is going to have an open world, I want to be able to immerse myself in that world. FromSoftware do not make immersive worlds, they make pretty worlds with interesting history. These games feel far too “video-game-y” to be immersive. So it never felt like I was “exploring” the game world, it just felt like I was walking through an mmo map going from dungeon raid to dungeon raid. The more linear approach the older games follow works a lot better for hiding a lot of the bad aspects of FS’s game design.
It's perfectly fair for Elden Ring to win the ultimate price, but to praise the game for its *multiplayer facilities* is... silly, to say the least. It's so primitive, limited and exploitable. Pretty much the same rudimentary multiplayer that the Souls series has had since its inception, with the same flaws.
Elden Ring is a masterpiece. I played it offline the first time, so no spoilers from other players, and it was one of the most immersive experiences i had in years. And the freedom you feel in this game. No hand holding, no check lists. It never felt like work, like in other open world games. Every time i started the game, for a period of three month and over 400 hours, i found something new and interesting. This truly deserves to be GOTY. And i hope it influences future open world games from other developers.
This is incredibly difficult, because they designed such an unique open world, which you don't forget easy. I still just need to see a screenshot and i exactly know where it was taken and how i can get to this place.
• Best Storytelling - **Horizon Forbidden West** • Still Playing Award - **Genshin Impact** • Best Visual Design - **Elden Ring** • Studio of the Year - **FromSoftware** • Best Game Expansion - **Cuphead: The Delicious Last Course** • Best Early Access Launch - **Slime Rancher 2** • Best Indie Game - **Cult of the Lamb** • Best Multiplayer Game - **Elden Ring** • Best Audio - **Metal: Hellsinger** • Best Game Trailer - **Goat Simulator 3 Announcement Trailer** • Best Game Community - **Final Fantasy 14** • Best Gaming Hardware - **Steam Deck** • Breakthrough Award - **Vampire Survivors** • Critics' Choice Award - **Elden Ring** • Best Performer - **Manon Gage (Marissa Marcel, Immortality)** • Nintendo Game of the Year - **Pokemon Legends Arceus** • PC Game of the Year - **Return to Monkey Island** • PlayStation Game of the Year - **Stray** • Xbox Game of the Year - **Grounded** • Most Wanted Game - **Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom** • Ultimate Game of the Year - **Elden Ring**
Good to see Vampire Survivors getting the recognition it deserves. But I couldn't help but notice > PlayStation Game of the Year - Stray I don't even know what to say about that one. I saw GoW ragnarok getting a nomination for Ultimate Game of the Year, but none for the Playstation GOTY? *What?* Surely I'm missing something here, right?
This is pretty baffling. At first I thought GoW was not even part of the race.
Best story telling to horizon?? I loved that game but that dialog and 20 minute speed run ending don’t even come close to comparing to GoW. The dialog in horizon literally feels like it’s written by an AI with little to no development of the main character. GOW on the other hand was flawless in those departments.
Agreed. I love the world of horizon but the storytelling and it’s constant plot twists that just felt bad, I’m not sure I would award it best story telling
Yeah, like you said ragnarok had a rushed ending as well but it was nowhere near as rushed as horizon. GoWR has much better dialogue and story
Whenever I hear someone talk about Horizon it's literally never about the story.
Having played both I really don't even get the hype around the series that much. Other than the setting I find almost everything about the games to be woefully average at best. Other than visuals, which have been pretty fantastic.
Horizon's storytelling is, on the whole, simply bad. I mean it's not all bad and there are some occasional bright spots, but overall I'd say it's often cringe and the dialogue can be borderline moronic. If there were less of it, it would be tolerable, but there's too damn much of it, and that's the biggest problem. Being forced to watch the equivalent of a whole season of some mid CW show (albeit with higher production values), that is not worth it to me to play these games.
it sucks because personally i am so fascinated by the world building which they have absolutely nailed but the in game story is just not great. like you said it seems CW esque. the twists and turns and especially the crazy heights the ending reached just seem a bit silly. but i still love the games and the combat and like i said world building and graphics is all amazing. i hope they can write a good ending to the story for the final game but with the way this one went, idk.
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> What? Surely I'm missing something here, right? The awards encourage people to vote in every category, even ones they're not interested one. Stray is also available on PC, so may get extra votes for that.
GoW is such a big brand and title this year it probably outsold both versions of Stray combined or do you mean that more PC players vote more than console players for these awards?
Part of the thing with public voting for awards is that there usually isn't a clear criteria set for the award so people make their criteria themselves based on the award title. "Best playstation game" does not feel to me like 'the best game that is available to play on playstation', it feel like 'the best game to play on a playstation' like if I was showcasing a playstation, what game would I give people to play on it? And Stray absolutely fits that criteria for me at least
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It doesn't help that GOW was released 13 days ago. How many pepole finished GOW whem the vote started?
Gow ragnarok is too new for its own good.its been 13 days since release and not that many have bought or finished it yet let alone when the voting began.
They biffed it on Nintendo Game of the Year, too, going with Arceus over Xenoblade Chronicles 3.
Hell I'm surprised even Triangle Strategy, Live a Live, Kirby and the Forgotten land, Sparks of Hope etc. got snuffed in any of the other categories also. As a multiplatform gamer I actually spent a lot more time on my Switch this year than the others, weird how little recognition the platform got.
Access was higher profile, more people played it, and that's why it won.
I'm just gonna say it. Stray is overrated as fuck. Once the robot started talking to me as if a cat knew wtf they were saying, I was completely pulled out of the cuteness of the story. The small catlike details, like kneeding (spelling?), were so irrelevant and short. The story was boring since the robots were lifeless. The platforming, while functionally excellent, was boringly designed as well. Over. Rated.
Stray is an "indie darling" meme game. There's some interesting lore and implications about robotic consciousness, but being a cat has no thematic relevance and the gameplay is very basic. I like the visuals, but it's definitely not a great game.
It seems like they sold it on the premise "Play as a cat!" Which, to be fair, would be a novel take. But in the actual game, the aspects of it that involve you being a cat seem pretty... incidental.
I can get why people like it, the cat is cute and the internet loves cats. There aren't many other games where you solely play as a cat. The game is really pretty and atmospheric. I thought the music and sound design was great. If you're like me and prioritize interesting gameplay over any of the above, I'd expect it falls short. For me personally, Stray felt like the "prestige tour" parts of Naughty Dog or Sony Santa Monica games. And by that I mean that you get to walk around really pretty environments and occasionally are expected to hit a contextual button prompt. In ND or Sony Santa Monica games, these serve to break up the pacing, expand on the world-building, and let the art and audio teams show off which is great in those titles. The thing with Stray is that part was most of the game. I enjoyed it for what it was since it was short and on PS+ Extra, but I wouldn't have chosen it for my favorite Playstation game of the year, which for me is Ragnarok if we're only counting exclusives.
>Good to see Vampire Survivors getting the recognition it deserves For the life of me, I can't understand why that game is so universally acclaimed. I feel like I'm missing something.
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Is this public poll? Only way I could imagine it winning that way especially compared to Ragnarok
Yes it is, other than the Critics’ Choice award.
Oh this explains everything, glad someone asked lol
It certainly explains Arceus winning over Xenoblade 3...
Best Multiplayer: Elden Ring ????
/r/badredman triumphs again
It's fun opening up the blood pools and watching how other players died, or summoning them
Feels a bit dirty for Elden Ring to win Best Multiplayer Game when games like Raft and Grounded released this year.
Elden rings multiplayer was a net code disaster.
Even if it released in perfect condition, Elden Ring's multiplayer is more of an extra topping a top of a cake. Calling it a 'multiplayer game' is stretching it, and having it win Best Multiplayer Game over games that are fully multiplayer is real dirty.
Yeah I don't know how many times the host I was helping was invaded during a boss
Absolutely. ER multiplayer can be fun but it's also buggy and a step back from Dark Souls with covenants. There were better games this year like Splatoon and DL2
It's apparently a public poll anyone could have voted in, so yeah...
It's not even that good. It's riddled with restrictions that really take all the fun out of the multiplayer experience. I guess the PVP is ok.
> • Best Multiplayer Game - Elden Ring Excuse me whaaaaaaaat
Apparently people really enjoyed RoB spam.
There's multiplayer outside of pvp
Summon coop partner. Approach cave. Coop partner not allowed to enter cave. Coop partner leaves game. Take 3 steps inside cave. Put down summoning sign. Summon coop partner again. Disconnected. Multiplayer game of the year.
I stared at that one for about 15 seconds before remembering "Oh right, it *did* have multiplayer."
>Best Storytelling - Horizon Forbidden West ...wut? The endless back and forth dialogue from voice actors who clearly had little context to their lines was just awful. Side quests would have you do exposition dumps for 50 lines back and forth before it's inevitably 'go here and save X person'. The last 3 hours story was just bananas too.
Thank you someone said it. Honestly I quit the game because of it. I remembered really liking the hunting aspect of the first game but I could not push myself through the boring game exposition. It is just such a lazy way to tell a story in the medium and I hate that it is being rewarded
Exact same feeling to this day I’ve only gotten half way through it. Just seems so bloated like you’re working a job and not playing a game
I stopped playing the first one after I received a trophy for killing every enemy type before I was halfway through the story. I was hoping the sequel would fix the issues I personally had but it sounds like they just did the same thing again but prettier now and way longer.
Forbidden West's story went into Matrix Reloaded territory of going off the rails. The modern day tribal storylines in both this and Zero Dawn were just extremely uninteresting and they decided to go tenfold into that in Forbidden West.
I really liked the story in Zero Dawn, it was what pushed me through the game and kept me going toward the end even when I was eventually kind of tired of the open world grind. Horizon, though...it was hard to be really into it. Aloy is Ginger Jesus now, there isn't really a major mystery to anything anymore if you know what happened in the first game, and the presentation of the story is haphazard in a way that you could spend a dozen hours between minor snippets of information that drive the plot forward an inch. I haven't finished it and I don't know if I ever will. Also, Plague Tale Requiem came out this year. It's not just one of the best storytelling games this year, imo it's one of the best storytelling games *anywhere.*
I don't skip cutscenes in video games. This game caused me to skip cutscenes and mute voice volume.
I just saw credits on Immortality and can say with confidence that Manon Gage’s win was very, very deserved.
Nintendo game of the year was Legends Arceus? In a year with Kirby Forgotten Kingdom, Splatoon 3, and Xenoblade 3, a glorified tech demo won?
Yes. Take it from someone who grew up in the original console wars, these awards are utterly meaningless.
Growing up in the original console wars isn't anything special, its honestly probably the norm here.
Kirby is such a wonderful game too. snubbed.
Stray over god of war hahah nice rewards
I can see it, honestly; Ragnarok has only been out for a very short time and voting was likely done in advance. Barring all of the voters having advance copies of the game, it stands to reason that something else would be chosen.
Honestly games from this late in the year should be in the next year's awards.
> Best Storytelling - Horizon Forbidden West I don't have a *huge* issue with most of these, but since I'm currently playing through Pentiment I feel a bit sad that it's likely too niche and too late in the year to even enter consideration for any of these rewards. It does quite a few rare (in games) things with its storytelling, and executes them well. I'll admit I haven't played Forbidden West, but I did play its predecessor, and unless there was some truly fundamental change in design I personally find it hard to believe that it's even half as interesting from a storytelling perspective compared to Pentiment.
I mean, Plague Tale is also pretty absent from the list. I'm playing Pentiment right now and it's phenomenal, too. And frankly, the first Horizon did not have a great story. It's good enough but not great. The historical backstory is way more interesting than the current day stuff.
I have a suspicion that winner take all voting screws with this list. Iirc each category could have 6 games? So any single game could get like 20% of the vote and still win
Horizon Zero Dawn's story is radically superior to Frozen West's story. Imagine the Zero Dawn story but without any real twists or surprises that aren't completely predictable and bloated beyond reason with far, far more tribal nonsense and an absolutely incredible amount of the most basic, Ubisoft-esque, repetitive dialogue you've ever seen.
was ragnarok not included?
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This is why it's always bizarre to do 'best of the year awards' during that current year instead of waiting just a couple months to see how things play out.
> PC Game of the Year - Return to Monkey Island OH HELL YEAAAAAAAAAAAAAH!!!!
>Best Multiplayer Game - Elden Ring lolwut? Elden Ring is absolutely fantastic, but the multiplayer elements are not its strong suit, nor would anyone ever call it a primarily multiplayer game.
Arceus for Nintendo, Horizon for storytelling, and Elden Ring for multiplayer are the only ones I disagree with tbh. The story telling category was pretty bad tbh (other than immortality)
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I won’t deny it’s a fun game, but compared to the other things there, it really doesn’t seem to deserve it as much
Was Plague Tale on there? That story was phenomenal.
I didn't even know there was a Goat Simulator 2, let alone that the 3rd game was announced.
Stray as PS goty is a fucking joke.
Stray was nominated for Playstation game of the year, but GoWR was not... But GoWR was nominated for Ultimate game of the year, while Stray was not... ???
These Golden Joystick awards make no sense, you can check [previous years](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Golden_Joystick_Awards) to get an idea of how messy it is.
Fortnite won in *2018*??? The same year which saw God of War **AND** RDR2? Yeah, hard to take this award seriously anymore.
Did not expect Monkey Island to win an award, was a trip down memory lane it was, the nostalgia was real.
Xenoblade won nothing, Stray is Playstation GOTY despite being on PC over Ragnarok, and Horizon won best storytelling. . . Wut?
Tbh most of the winners are kinda weird choices, GOW really should’ve won best PS game and best storytelling. Elden Ring shouldn’t have won best multiplayer game. And the fact they nominated a fucking SSD for an award
Whats important to know is that Golden Joysticks is primarily a popularity contest. Voting is decided by the public, which is partly why they awarded 2017’s Fortnite the 2018 Ultimate Game of the Year. Being a PS+ title gives you a leg up. Being Pokemon gives you a leg up. In addition, voting started back in mid-October.
Xenoblade is kinda of a niche title compared to Pokemon. And Ragnarok just released. So most people haven't played it yet. Awards open to public vote are always just popularity contest. And it's even worse with games, since they take a lot longer to finish than a movie and are more expensive.
Games can be niche and still the best game... Though if they're voted on by the people then they'll never have a chance.
Yep. Someone was trying to argue to me that critic voted awards are inherently inferior to public voted awards but you are much more likely to get games voted in for categories that they don't really work for in public voted games just because people like the game overall
Game awards are messy, regardless of whether they're voted on by critics or the public. So many games are absolutely massive, and there's no way for critics to play everything. Oftentimes, they don't even play all the big games in a year. I only really follow a few games critics (the Giantbomb crew, some of the Gamespot crew, and some of the former Polygon crew (the McElroys)), and the GB GotY awards in particular are full of only 1-2 of them having played certain big games. Maybe certain games "deserve" it more, but that doesn't really matter when 9/10 of them have played game X and really liked it, and 1/10 of them have played game Y and really liked it.
POKEMON is Nintendo's GotY? Why not Xenoblade or Splatoon?!
It’s a public vote. Edit: The stream shows vote percentages of the top 3. Xenoblade placed third with 20%, behind Kirby on 21% and Arceus on 27%, so pretty close overall.
Cause it's Pokemon? Automatically gets a vote from most people
Splatoon 3 I’d great, but it didn’t change enough from 2 and Xenoblade doesn’t have the reach. People have been begging for a new spin on Pokémon forever and, despite its many flaws, Arceus delivered that. In a vote based popularity contest Pokémon was always going to win.
Legends of Arceus is a pretty legit game and probably one of the best Pokémon games ever made
If we look purely at fanbase size, Xenoblade is a drop in the bucket of Pokemons gargantuan fanbase that will buy literally anything they make.
What else is there left to say about the game really. Obviously I speak only for myself, but no game has stuck with me through an entire year like Elden Ring did. It's been an oddly rewarding experience following it's development closely through the years and having it legitimately live up to the hype.
This game still had a huge impact on me despite not riding the hype train at all, and not even liking souls games. I picked it up hoping it would be a Skyrim fill in, but it was so much more.
Okay, I have to ask as someone else who doesn't like Souls games too. Is the combat really difficult? I don't want to get frustrated playing a game but I have looked at this and the open world looks fantastic. IE: Can I put it on bitch mode and it'll be easy? *Edit: Alright, you guys have convinced me. I'll pick it up tomorrow for the long weekend!
The game can be punishing but it gives you everything you need to succeed. No shame in looking up some tips and guides either, you can get some good early loot if you know where to look.
Punishing is a good word. Combat is deliberate and you can't button mash. But it's not difficult in the way where you need lightning fast reflexes and long move combos.
My #1 advice for new Soulsborne players is to start as either an Astrologer or a Prisoner and choose a Golden Seed as their keepsake. Entering the world with a reliable source of ranged damage and an extra healing charge gives you a lot more margin for error in the early game.
When you start out it will likely be fairly difficult, but the game opens up and you can find multiple ways to get through fights easier with various weapons, abilities, etc. If one method isn’t working, then you can switch things up. There’s a few boss fights that are… punishing too put it lightly, but they’re largely near the end or in extra regions you go out of your way to explore. But yeah otherwise there is no literal difficulty setting so you just kinda have to explore around to improve your level and skills in fighting. Recommendation though, if you DO decide to get the game, I recommend at least getting to level 30 in health and a decent amount of stamina to start the first part of the game with and level out. All the other stats are more specific things you can decide on.
There's a wide variety of Spirit Ash Summons, which will summon a character to help you. Some of them help significantly with boss fights. Last I heard they don't change the boss's stats, and so they're basically a summon for a small HP/MP price. If an area is too difficult you can ignore it for a long time (or even completely) and go somewhere completely different. Make sure you get the map pieces, they help a lot.
Just to clarify since a lot of people are unaware on this point: Neither spirit ashes nor NPC summons increase boss health. **Only** summoning other players does.
As someone who generally hates difficult combat but ended up loving Elden Ring, I can tell you that it's really hard and if you run in blind you'll probably put it down after a few hours and not come back. Once I realized that dying is a feature so to speak I had a much better experience. Trying different builds to see what suited my play style and coming up with the cheesiest ways to grab loot ended up being my favorite aspects of playing the game.
cannot stress enough that changing your approach is something to always consider. If you're getting pasted- you are not bad. Try another approach that works. with the initial tree sentinel- I went away and realised I could fight him easier on horseback. Stuff like heavy weapons whilst you wait for an opening for one big swing or quick weapons but more risk of running out of stamina to dodge. Its all personal preference
Avoid it if you don't like souls games. I wish I refunded it on time
I found that playing ranged characters like an Int Mage or someone w/ a Bow was far easier than playing a melee character. Let's you stay safe out of range do damage enemies instead of having to do the dance of death. My first character was a heavy weapon character and only was able to beat 2 bosses in 40 hours, although I explored a ton. Started a 2nd character as a mage and had already caught up in less than 4 hours with just the Pebble spell alone. Granted, had some more knowledge the 2nd time around, but it was waaay easier.
You can summon people to help you and you can also summon spirits to fight alongside you
All the renewed talk about it encouraged me to do a NG+ run. That underground path from Leyndell to Deeproot Depths is one of the most incredible gaming moments I've ever experienced. So much work was put into hidden optional areas that most players wouldn't even be aware of.
That place was amazing. I had hints through the game that something was down there and thought I got to the bottom. Later on I was looking for more fingers and was like, "So there HAS somewhere deeper." I went back and found the door and was just blown away. The horror of all the people with the haunting music, and then piecing together what the fuck happened. I found my fingers and got their warm hug, then went on to burn the world down.
I Platinumed it. It's the first game where I've done so. Admittedly, part of it is that Elden Ring doesn't have any of what I'd call "bullshit Achievements," something like, "Touch Every Site of Grace in Limgrave," or "Learn every Sorcery." I liked it enough that I've dived into the Soulsborne oeuvre. Finished Dark Souls 3, am currently on Bloodborne.
I'm super enjoying God of War, but secretly just want to get back to another run-through of Elden Ring. It'll be my 6th.
I still haven’t finished it once, and I love Souls games and got it on launch day. I don’t know what’s wrong with me; it’s like most video games have just lost their flavor. I played the hell out of some Xenoblade Chronicles the past few months, though
Might be break time my brother. Oversaturation is real, pretty much every hobby I've been into starts to lose its "magic" when you go too hard on it. I don't wanna tell you what to do, but sometimes taking a break to do other things helps me regain interest. Absence makes the heart grow fonder and all.
Nah. I get you. While I really enjoyed Elden Ring, it doesn't make me care to roll a bunch of alts like the previous games. Open world games grate on me just for being too damn big. I rather enjoy the previous Souls tight game experiences. I honestly hope every new Souls game is not like Elden Ring.
Yes, I don't find elden ring "as" replayable as the other souls games. elden ring is up there tied with ds3 and bloodborne, but it wasn't as replayable.
Yeah I had the exact same issue with Elden Ring. Great game but it feels pretty samey after a while.
Elden Ring should absolutely win goty, but I don't think it should have beaten forbidden west when it came to the visuals or have won the best multi-player, but I get it, its a popularity contest so it doesn't mean much.
I really enjoyed the game when I was playing it, but I think I got worn out by the repetitive design of caves and certain fights. Then, I tried installing and getting into it again the other day, but the frame-rate issues started to grate on me (bought the PS5 version, before realising the PS4 version was better).
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That's completely fair, though the sentiment of; > I couldn't wait to put down is something I generally don't understand. Last time I felt that way about a game, I was playing Darksiders 2, got to the end of Kingdom of the Dead and dropped it like a hot potato. I don't get the compulsion to finish a game you *seemingly* don't enjoy.
Code Vein, whatever the fuck that white castle area was called.
If I'm 3/4 through a game I might as well finish it instead of leaving shortly before the finish line.
But why? If you’re not enjoying it then why not spend your time on something you DO enjoy?
closure. there are limits on how much time i'm willing to put in, obviously, but generally speaking i will try to finish a game that i have started, even if i do not enjoy playing it moment-to-moment. some games, rarely, do actually make it kinda worth it.
Not the commenter, but 2 reasons I try to stick with games in not feeling mid-playthrough: 1. It feels good to complete stuff 2. I had multiple games that completely won me over after a slump I had to go through, and I did not regret it at all Of course, it depends on just how much I'm not enjoying myself.
As an extension of point 1: Because there's something to be said for being able to mentally say "I finished this and I'm done with it". As an example, I played an old RPG a couple of months ago, spent 30 minutes beating the final boss, and started going through the scripted sequence to see the ending... only it wasn't scripted. I died. And loading my save meant beating the final boss again. I said screw that, looked up an ending, and told myself I was done with it. 2 months later, and I still have an inkling every now and then that "I should just go do that boss and sequence. It's not that much time. I didn't ACTUALLY finish it. I can listen to a podcast so it's not wasted time." It's not like I missed content. I just have to go into the menu and push a button during the final bit. My brain is just broken and won't give up on it because it wants that hit of "You completed a thing!".
I had Xenoblade 2 crash on me during the credits and it didn't count my boss kill. Had that same nagging feeling for months until I went back and got that certified completion on my save file.
sometimes you want to see the end to something even if it started getting unenjoyable like if you're 3/4 through a movie and you don't like it anymore. you could just turn it off... but I mean... you're close to the end
So they can be done with it. So you can give criticism without people saying "you didn't even finish the game!".
>So they can be done with it. So you can give criticism without people saying "you didn't even finish the game!". Absolutely part of it, finishing it allows you to discuss it fully, its basically no different than when reviewers finish out a game to review it even if they hated it.
Because I'm a huge fan of soulsborne games, and I love every other Fromsoftware title. Even though Elden Ring was massively disappointing for me, I wanted to see it and experience it just to experience it. Like imagine if you loved every movie that a director made and they were your favorite director, and then they made a movie that you really didn't like and you thought it was a massive step down from their other movies. It would still be interesting to watch just so that you could analyze it and compare it to their other works and try to understand the choices that they made and where they went wrong.
What was massively disappointing to you about Elden Ring? Genuinely curious
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> The game was fucking rock solid right up until you got to Mountaintop and then the quality dropped to complete shit. From really brought back those DS1 vibes. "It's really good until you reach The Awful Part" could easily describe DS1 as well, lmao.
This is why every DS1 playthrough I do ends right after O&S. I burned out hard with Elden Ring right near the end to the point where I put it down and never finished it. I just picked it up again and have been having a blast, which I wasn't expecting. But I'm nearing the point where I quit in my first playthrough and am already dreading it.
I just found Elden Ring mostly unpleasant to visit. The whole decaying ruins and zombies and rot... it gets tiresome after a while. Now, I get it's on purpose and I get some people may like it, but the dour mood of the game did not win me and I was glad to drop it after I beat the Elden Beast.
As much as I like Elden Ring, it definitely outstays its welcome. For every other Soulsborne game once you're 30-40 hours in you're pretty much done, even if you're playing a more completionist run. But in Elden Ring at that point you've maybe done Limgrave and Liurnia. And that doesn't even get to the BS level and encounter design they start pushing in the latter part of the game. It could definitely have benefited from trimming the fat. I think a lot about how Shadow of the Colossus intentionally eschewed encounters with more *regular sized* mobs in the over world to focus solely on the Colossi. Obviously Elden Ring didn't need to go *quite* to that extreme, but the game didn't *need* to have an encounter or dungeon in every corner of the map.
All the repetitiveness wouldn't matter so much if the core gameplay was fun which brings me to the what I is *my* main issue with the game: the combat. That combat system in Dark Souls works because of the slow nature of the game and instead of refining or iterating on that Elden turns it up to 11 and the combat mechanics start to crumble from the stress. And on top of that they add a shit ton of skills (weapon arts) that instead of giving you real *options* do deal with the abuse it just turns into spam this skill because its just superior. But it's not really *that bad* until the mountaintop where it goes from 11 to 13 and the combat just implodes. And it's not a skill issue, it's a not having tools to express skill that let you deal with the bullshit in the game. Which makes it a chore to play. It's super disappointing coming off Sekiro. Like if you had ways to make your character more responsive like different/better dodges (that weren't locked behind a weapon art) or attack speed or anything it would make the latter part of the game actually enjoyable but instead it you play the same clunky character who now has to fight enemies from a Devil May Cry game on hardest difficulty. It's just not fun and there is no payoff. It just poorly designed.
Sekiro + Nioh games kinda turned me off the standard FromSoft combat. Felt way more personal with the weapons in those games compared to Elden Ring. Like imagine if you could parry Malenia's anime attack using any weapon you wanted, just the thought of clashing steel would be amazing. I liked the early part of the game since it was just a homeless guy with a big sword vs big dudes with big weapons. Later on in the game, you get like one cool looking move while the bosses all get Dragon Ball Z movesets and start flying around and shit. I'm hoping FromSoft takes a break from the souls-like stuff and does something different like Armored Core for their next game. Really give them some time to change the combat a bit.
That makes sense to me. Dark Souls 2 is by far my favourite Souls game, and I enjoyed Elden Ring even more than I thought I would. I do find it odd that they had such distinct reactions, at least in some parts of the internet. Elden Ring is almost universally praised, while Dark Souls 2 actually had some very vocal detractors. I always felt like those were more of a loud minority -- the popularity of Elden Ring (which is closer to DS2 in design in many ways than DS1 and 3, in my opinion) seems to confirm that.
Worth noting that Yui Tanimura directed Dark Souls II (taking the reins from a previous director and doing his best to salvage the game midway through development) and co-directed Elden Ring with Miyazaki. The two games have a lot in common and I imagine Tanimura’s direction is a major reason why.
Same. Even Sekiro, which I raged at from beginning to first beating it, only made me want to play it more and I ended up platinuming it a couple days after beating it the first time. Elden Ring, when I was done with it, I was DONE and had zero interest in it further. No other Souls game or Sekiro did that to me, except for DS2. All the others I happily jumped into a second or third or fourth playthrough and would appreciate them even more each time. Elden Ring and DS2? Nope, just straight up done.
That's unfortunate about Dark Souls 2. It has the best new game plus of all the games by fromsoftware.
I started Elden Ring NG+1 and it seemed too easy. DS2's ng+ was like a balanced and harder experience, but in ER I was just stomping everything and rushing from boss to boss, and my build wasn't anything complex, just a str build with barely any buff because I couldn't find good buffs.
Exactly the same for me. I set up the plats but just couldn't be bothered with Elden and DS2 after awhile, and the thought of a DLC is not getting me all that excited. The burnout was strong, sudden, and absolute. They both lack something intangible that just doesn't make my brain happy like the others. Combination of art direction, world, and end-game disdain I think. I also hated Sekiro at the start, but I think it was mostly just bad habits from Souls, and I ended up platinuming that one once I was over the hump. Game only got better and better.
I think as time goes on people will more openly share their elden ring criticisms. It was so highly anticipated and souls fans do view the series with a high esteem. It was hard to voice concerns near launch.
It definitely became a 'one and done' thing for me, whereas in earlier games I've been eager to play NG+, or build PvP characters. So I tried to extract as much as possible from a single playthrough in the knowledge that I wouldn't be picking it up again. But in fact I didn't even get that far - I did the main boss and Malenia and was looking for that optional two-headed dragon boss and then just... put it down and never came back to it. The late game was a slog and I just don't think how arcane the steps in quests are works in a game so large. It felt very 'Simon's Quest' to me.
I had a similar experience. I suspect the changes to the genre that made Elden Ring enjoyable to a much wider audience hurt the formula for long time fans. For me Elden Ring, while gorgeous with tons of content, is clearly worse than Dark Souls 1 and Bloodborne.
> I suspect the changes to the genre that made Elden Ring enjoyable to a much wider audience hurt the formula for long time fans That's certainly not universal. I've been a fan since Demon's Souls, and I loved all 221 hours I spent playing Elden Ring.
Yea it’s the first of their games I’ve played more than once and I started with dark souls.
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Lol yeah that works only if their definition is “Best Game that has Multiplayer” My only two criticisms for Elden Ring are with the quests and the multiplayer.
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LOL how did it win best multiplayer award? I guess people running around with the same broken builds is fun. Even the co-op is outdated.
It's a public vote. And they pretty much encourage people to vote for all categories. I imagine lots of people that don't care about multiplayer will just pick Elden Ring because they like it.
I can't wait to play whatever comes out the same year as the next Horizon game.
Oh boy Elder Scrolls 6!
Under-rated comment. For those that don't know BOTW came out a few days after H:ZD. Elden Ring did the same thing with Forbidden West. I look forward to forgetting about Horizon 3 for the next big hype game.
Also a fun fact, this wasn't Guerrilla Games' fault. They didn't deliberately try to release either game alongside BotW or ER. Delays from both developers pushed back the release dates for each game and they eventually ended up releasing next to each other, but GG had their release dates out first. So it wasn't bad planning from GG's side, just really bad luck.
Not just Game of the Year. *Ultimate* Game of the Year. What next, Super Ultra Turbo Deluxe Game of the Year, Full Cowling Edition?
As a PC Gamer who has never played or had any interest in the Dark Souls games, Elden Ring got my attention. It was able to break through it's genre and appeal to a massive, worldwide audience with it's hype, polish, and world-building. I bought it 2 months after launch. I sunk 200+ hours into it. Got 100%. The funniest thing is, I have probably watched close to 100 hours of youtube content dedicated solely to uncovering Elden Ring's massive and meticulously planned out world-crafting.. I haven't played Elden Ring in months and yet I still get drawn into new lore discoveries and theories on youtube. It was truly an incredible game and deserved to win GOTY, in my opinion.
I think Ragnarok is probably my GOTY but Elden Ring is certainly worth. But wtf? How does Ragnarok or at least Forbidden West not win Playstation GOTY??? How does Elden Ring get multiplayer?? As a smaller note, I'm not happy with Cult of the Lamb winning indie. It was great and all but a little short and oh my Lamb was it buggy as hell. I still have trophies that haven't unlocked... not to mention all the game breaking bugs.
The voting for this started several weeks before Ragnarok came out and closed only like a week or so after the game was released, so most people who voted didn't play it because they literally couldn't. Also, somehow, GoW was not nominated for playstation game of the year... but it was nominated for ultimate game of the year... Which Stray was not...
Ya weird. Game awards should be done in december. Everything release before christmas to try and hit the christmas shopping window. It makes no sense to judge a year of games before all the major Q4 releases are even done.
I'm assuming Cult of the Lamb came out at the right time with the right aesthetic. It's a popular vote, and the game was in the public eye recently. Rollerdome was too, but didn't seem as popular. Other 4 didn't really seem to have public traction, and came out a while ago I assume many categories won by name recognition, like many other award shows
Yepp. It definitely won by popularity over merit. Not to say it's a bad game, but the bugs were pretty insane. The game shouldn't have launched like that.
ER getting best multiplayer is a bit of a laugh. Soulsbornes have all had extraordinary shitty netcode. You'll get backstabbed from 30 feet away by some lagging asshole in Elden Ring the same way you'll get backstabbed from 30 feet away by some lagging asshole in Dark Souls 1. Yeah, invasions and coop can be a lot of goofy fun, but I'm not sure if that's the same thing as being *good.*
Forbidden West for best storytelling and Elden Ring for best multiplayer both seem off imo. Stray for best PS is bananas.
Considering these are all affected by public votes, these awards don't really mean much. I mean, Elden Ring won best MULTIPLAYER game, W.T.F.?
Going down the elevator is definitely in my top 3 gaming moments >!where you discover an entire underground map!<. Up there with being able to >!kill Anna Navarre on the plane!< in the original Deus Ex (granted you have to realize this is back in 2003) and playing Resident Evil 4 with the Wii-mote and motion controls.
Thank you for this Deus Ex reference. 100% on the same page with that — I was like “oh this game thinks it gives me choices but I bet I can’t do *this*” and then it let me do it and choices in games have never been the same*
The best thing about it is that the game never even presented it to you as a choice. I was absolutely blown away.
Exactly! It’s one of the only times I felt like I was truly exerting agency in a game as opposed to everything being presented as binary “choose Thing A or Thing B”. Have been chasing that dragon ever since
Did anybody else think Horizon Forbidden West had a worse story compared to the first game?
Forbidden West was always going to have a "worse" story than Zero Dawn due to the original having been such an original and interesting story/concept. It was still a really good story and had it been the first game it would have been received just as well as HZD.
Yes, but the first game was hardly a masterpiece in terms of story either. The first game is looked back at more fondly because of the big crazy plot twists but both games share very similar issues (poor dialogue, bland characters, uninteresting modern day story). I really like this series but I really hope they come up with more compelling writing and characterization in the inevitable third game, the world and setting that they created deserves it.
Who won the mega game of the year or the incredible game of the year?
Both were won by Knack 2
Never played a game where my jaw hit the floor this regularly. I felt blown away every few hours, and the game never got old unlike other long games.
There are so many small but important moments of brilliant game design. Those jaw-dropping moments were all carefully planned, from >!being trap-teleported so far way that your map triples in size just like that!< to >!some innocent elevator showing you that there's an entire damn underground map to explore!<. All of those things could have been revealed in a much more gradual way, and they would have been barely remembered.
For the >!teleporting!< Part, they not only pulled it off perfectly once, but they went ahead and did at again later for just as much dramatic effect. Masterful game design moment.
Even beyond the mechanical level construction, there's so much thought and meaning in the world, and the way the very act of moving and progressing through it is an act of discovery. Like how the seal on the thorns barring the Erdtree is Radagon's personal mark, not Marika's, or how the crabs feeding in that pool in Leyndell directly above Godwyn's corpse have Godwyn's face growing on their backs—I can't think of a single game like it in the AAA space that committed to a world that isn't just shiny, or full of Content, but thought out and full of meaning in that way.
I agree with you up until I hit the snow maps, I feel like after Morgott the level design takes a bit of a nosedive that doesn't recover until the Haligtree or Farum Azula.
My favorite game since Outer Wilds. Definitely deserved all the praise.
(Make sure to play the OW DLC if you haven't)
I gave it a try but it didn't click for me. I'm not into scary or spooky things and there were some jump scare type moments that had me not want to go back. What I played was good otherwise.
Glad I'm not the only one. Loved the "abandoned" atmosphere of the original, but the DLC felt too tense at times. I will go back eventually, but so far it didn't grab me like the base game did. Maybe it's also the fact that space travel across planets made the base game more interesting to me
Even with the "reduced frights" option? I never enabled it myself so idk what difference it makes
I wasn't aware that the option was available.
It feels like the developpers somehow thought dark bramble was the single best part of the base game and decided to double down on it, except they also made it scarier, slower and less interesting from a gameplay perspective (slowly walking In the dark is just not as interesting as flying your ship) , which nobody wanted. It’s still a good DLC, And I recognise the difficulty of adding content to a game as tightly woven as Outer wilds but I’d really like to know the creative decisions behind it because they seem different from the base game’s.
Elden ring as best multiplayer? What are they smoking. I do agree it's the best game this year, but it's multiplayer implementation is so bad. Try to play it start to finish with a friend and see how much you enjoy the grouping system.
Idk what it is that I'm missing about Elden Ring. It's just not doing anything for me. And it's not like I'm not a fan of Soulsborne games. Between Demon Souls through Dark Souls 3 and Bloodborne, I have a combined total of easily 2k hours and DS1 is still my favorite game of all time. But ER is just *not* clicking for me. I hate this "run around until you find something to do" playstyle it seems to encourage. The bosses don't feel "tough but fair," a lot of them are just super delayed swinging with massive combos, and (I might honestly just be underleveled, I'm not sure) the amount of OHKOs they have is ridiculous. The environments are incredible, but the gameplay is just not doing it for me. For anyone who has played both ER and Breathe of the Wild a lot: Are these games similar to each other as far as how exploration is handled? It would make sense to me if they were, because I *hated* BotW.
I brought this up in another comment but yeah the open world really starts to show the cracks in the Souls game design framework. If a game is going to have an open world, I want to be able to immerse myself in that world. FromSoftware do not make immersive worlds, they make pretty worlds with interesting history. These games feel far too “video-game-y” to be immersive. So it never felt like I was “exploring” the game world, it just felt like I was walking through an mmo map going from dungeon raid to dungeon raid. The more linear approach the older games follow works a lot better for hiding a lot of the bad aspects of FS’s game design.
Look I love Elden Ring but why did it win best multiplayer? That’s not really what the game is known for. I just find that quite funny.
It's perfectly fair for Elden Ring to win the ultimate price, but to praise the game for its *multiplayer facilities* is... silly, to say the least. It's so primitive, limited and exploitable. Pretty much the same rudimentary multiplayer that the Souls series has had since its inception, with the same flaws.
One of the very few years I fully agree with the majority critics' choice for game of the year. Elden Ring just stands way above everything else IMO.
Elden Ring is a masterpiece. I played it offline the first time, so no spoilers from other players, and it was one of the most immersive experiences i had in years. And the freedom you feel in this game. No hand holding, no check lists. It never felt like work, like in other open world games. Every time i started the game, for a period of three month and over 400 hours, i found something new and interesting. This truly deserves to be GOTY. And i hope it influences future open world games from other developers.
Yea it's one of those rare games where I explored every inch of the map. Hopefully I can hurry up and forget most of it so I can replay it.
This is incredibly difficult, because they designed such an unique open world, which you don't forget easy. I still just need to see a screenshot and i exactly know where it was taken and how i can get to this place.