Quick, name your current game of the year. If sales numbers and review scores are anything to go on, then you either said Bioshock Infinite or The Last of Us, and for an understandable reason. Both titles are pushing storytelling in video games in important and different directions. The Last of Us showed up and decided to teach gamers a lesson about subtlety (something that has been sadly absent from mainstream gaming since the dawn of the medium) and Bioshock Infinite came out swinging with a heady sci-fi tale that actually worked.
While I'm impressed by the narrative works of both games, and am a fan of their respective tales, I wouldn't call either game, "Game of the Year". Sorry, not by a long shot.
Something that is becoming a recurring theme within the gaming community is this sudden push to put storytelling on a pedestal above the gameplay itself. And while I'm totally cool with an excellent story focused interactive"experience", I'm not a fan of these games being dubbed GOTY.
Since when do we grace games with that honor when their gameplay is just plain "okay" at best? Last years Spike TV game of the year, The Walking Dead, was an experience with borderline crappy gameplay at it's heart (cursor based gameplay during action sequences using a joystick is a downright nightmare at times), and was completely bogged down by glitches and technical hiccups. Yet we handed it a trophy because it told a great story.
Now, everyone is entitled to their own opinion. At the end of the day, a game of the year award is just that. I'm not saying that you aren't allowed to call a game your favorite just because certain elements weren't commendable. That's not what this is.
I am, however, a bit disappointed by how our standards are being placed. The Last of Us and Bioshock Infinite as opposed to The Walking Dead, both had some decent gameplay. Chalk that up to being my opinion, but when you get right down to it, neither game really did anything new. Bioshock Infinite was extremely repetitive in many of the ways that gamers claim Call of Duty and Battlefield to be. Run around and hold down the right or left trigger in an open, arena-type area, and follow the leader. It's hard to claim that the tears in the environment that provide an advantage in battle are game-changers because they're essentially floating on/off switches that are pre-loaded into the area. Had it been something that you could pull out of some item wheel that you could maybe drop into the environment, we could talk.
The same sort of goes for The Last of Us. The game didn't push the boundaries of third person shooters at all, and while different it's inventory system wasn't deep or inventive enough to really be commendable on any front. It was smart, sure, but at the end of the day it didn't really introduce anything notable.
What about the games that are successfully introducing new and inventive gameplay systems? Where was Dishonored and it's playstyle sensitive gameplay at at the awards shows last year? What about Guacamelee and it's co-op, metroidvania/brawler goodness? These games are nowhere near being weak on a narrative level, and they manage to change up the common gameplay tropes that have existed in their respective genre's quite a bit.
I'm going to cut myself off here before I start repeating myself and jump to my point. There are games out there that are killing it on every level that are being overlooked in favor of games that are memorable solely because of their excellent stories. While I'm totally excited that video games are discovering Cormac McCarthy level prose, and messing with topics that float around the H. P. Lovecraft area, I'm a bit saddened by the fact that gameplay is becoming less and less of an X-factor in gaming. Shouldn't the "Game of the Year" be innovative or excellent on every level?
Much like a Game of the Year choice, this blog is 100% opinion, and is meant to fuel constructive discussion.