Editorial Gamebanshee Game of the Year 2012 Awards: Scraping the Bottom of the Barrel Edition

[Infinitron]

Tags: Almost Human Games; Big Huge Games; Kingdoms of Amalur: Reckoning; Legend of Grimrock

Another year has gone by, and Gamebanshee have published their Game of the Year Awards for 2012. As you may have expected, in a lean year for the genre, the RPG of the Year award went to the surprise hit indie dungeon crawler, Legend of Grimrock.

It's perhaps telling that of all this year's titles, it was an indie developer who managed to put out an RPG that stayed with us the longest. Legend of Grimrock recalls that hardcore, minimalist gameplay that many older titles excelled at, and reminds us that modern computer RPGs still owe a lot to tabletop gaming.​

What's more, with mod tools available and an active community, the game is bound to live on for years to come, offering a style of gameplay that we had thought died out long ago. We can't wait to see what Almost Human have planned next, particularly since the teaser screenshots we’ve seen look just as old-school as Grimrock is.​

The runner-up in this prestigious category is none other than Big Huge Games' swan song, the action-RPG Kingdoms of Amalur: Reckoning.

While not the most traditional RPG experience, Kingdoms of Amalur managed to blend a great character system, fast-paced action-oriented combat, and a massive world together into one entertaining title. Interesting quests with multiple resolutions, lore and story penned by fantasy author R.A. Salvatore, tons of gigantic locations to explore, randomly-generated loot, a deep crafting system, well-designed character progression, and more all added up to make it a stand-out experience.​

While 38 Studios and Big Huge Games have since closed their doors, Kingdoms of Amalur: Reckoning showed more promise than just about any other project by a large studio and publisher this year. For that, and more, we think the game deserves recognition as one of 2012's best RPGs.​

And here are the rest of the winners:

Best Character System: Kingdoms of Amalur: Reckoning, Dragon's Dogma
Best Story/Writing: Inquisitor, Guild Wars 2
Best Graphics: Darksiders II, Mass Effect 3
Best Sound/Music: Mass Effect 3, Darksiders II
Best Expansion/DLC: Dungeons & Dragons Online: Menace of the Underdark
Most Anticipated of 2013: Wasteland 2
Independent RPG of the Year: Legend of Grimrock, Drox Operative
RPG Hybrid of the Year: XCOM Enemy Unknown, Dishonored​

Happy now, Brother None?

 

[Mrowak]

Best Story/Writing: Inquisitor​

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[Delterius]

Darksiders II versus Mass Effect 3, DISCUSS.

 

[dnf]

Best Story/Writing: Inquisitor​

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Well, the story motivated me to go thru half of chapter 2 alone before giving up so i don't think its that bad

 

[Ogg]

Wow! The shittiest list I've ever seen! GB really outdid themselves this time. They're really stretching the definition of RPG as far as they can. Even the proverbial Far cry 3 would make better sense than most of the choices here.

(another possible reaction: best trolling of the year!)

 

[EG]

Has it been another year, already?

Another year of travesty and regret . . .

 

[evdk]

Best Story/Writing: Inquisitor​

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Gamebanshee staff will be swimming in beer for the whole next year. For the Motherland!

 

[General Maxson]

Oh, how far we have fallen.

But have any of you frequented GB forums recently?

 

[WhiskeyWolf]

Best Graphics: Mass Effect 3

 

[Stokowski]

Best Story/Writing: Guild Wars 2​

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[thesoup]

I demand RPG Codex distances itself from gamebanshee asap.

 

[LundB]

Far Cry 3 is more of an RPG hybrid than Dishonored. Hell, even Saints Row 3 is.

Of course, none are RPGs at all.

Oh, and almost every other category for these awards was retarded too. Not even 'difference of taste' derp, I mean genuinely nonsensical.

 

[Angelo85]

You've successfully removed Gamebanshee from your BROlist

 

[DeepOcean]

I know it was a shitty year but , I didn't knew IGN bought gamebanshee.

 

[Jaesun]

What rpg that came out in 2012 had good writing?

 

[SearchEngine]

I'm interested in Drox Operative, but FTL not winning RPG HotY over those bland, uninspired games & Game of Thrones not winning "Best Story/Writing" over Inquisitor is just to me.

 

[Humanity has risen!]

Remove these story games and put Game of Thrones in their place now.

Just the intro of Game of Thrones and first dialogue choices are better than all the dialogues from the whole Mass Effect trilogy put together.

It can't be real, sea decries mainstream gaming bloggers all the time, and then he and his crew come up with such horrible choices?

Inquisitor and Kingdoms of Amalur are both horrible game that do not deserve to be anywhere close any award.

This has to be a parody...

Sea, stop watching more horrible episodes of Stargate on SG-1 and get this instead:

http://store.steampowered.com/app/208730/?snr=1_7_7_151_150_1

 

[Kem0sabe]

Gamebanshee is only good for the walkthroughs and this list more than proves it.

 

[IronicNeurotic]

While 38 Studios and Big Huge Games have since closed their doors, Kingdoms of Amalur: Reckoning showed more promise than just about any other project by a large studio and publisher this year.

lore and story penned by fantasy author R.A. Salvatore,

What the hell is wrong with you Gamebanshee?

 

[evdk]

While 38 Studios and Big Huge Games have since closed their doors, Kingdoms of Amalur: Reckoning showed more promise than just about any other project by a large studio and publisher this year.

lore and story penned by fantasy author R.A. Salvatore,

What the hell is wrong with you Gamebanshee?

 

[Roguey]

While 38 Studios and Big Huge Games have since closed their doors, Kingdoms of Amalur: Reckoning showed more promise than just about any other project by a large studio and publisher this year.

lore and story penned by fantasy author R.A. Salvatore,

What the hell is wrong with you Gamebanshee?

GameBanshee clearly needs Lesifoere on staff.
http://www.journalfen.net/community/unfunny_fandom/21226.html?thread=1911530#t1911530

Candlekeep was (I think officially) the main Forgotten Realms D&D fansite, and one of its main claims to fame was a bunch of the designers and official writers would pop in there. Salvatore was a regular, and had a massive fan cult of personality thing going on. This didn't help Salvatore's ego, which was already the size of the Abyss (seriously, we *get* that you're a New York Times Bestselling Author (TM), and you doing us a huge favor gracing us with your august presence, we get it, you can shut up now Bob.) Add to that the fact Salvatore doesn't take criticism well, or at all, really. I once watched him almost start a fistfight at DragonCon with a fan who said something negative about one of the mercenaries books.

Then add Winterfox and her cronies and stir. And get the hell away from ground zero.


Someone (it wasn't me and it wasn't Winterfox, that's all the years, Lyrica, and migraine meds will let me recall,) posted a bit about how Drizzt had started off as an interesting character, a basically good drow forced to the surface and made to deal with the surfacers' reactions and prejudices, and then turned into a preachy Mary Sue in later books. Ok, fair enough, I don't even read the books and I've heard all that before. Salvatore shows up in the thread in full on attack mode, with fanboy supporters. And that was waving a red flag at a bull as far as Winterfox was concerned. She posted several lengthy reviews of his books and discussion of Drizzt as a character. If you've seen her reviews, you have an idea of what they were like. (As I recall, they were a bit more scathing than her usual.) Salvatore utterly loses his shit, sics the fanboy horde on her and her buddies, which got unfunny fast( I heard that several of them stalked and harassed her online for years,) accused her of being a bitter, failed poet who was jealous of his success, which was hilarious because it came out of nowhere, and then epically flounced. And then one of the site maintainers ( who'd been getting a lot of mileage out of "Dude, I hang with BOB SALVATORE a lot!!!!11!!!") posted a pissy screed about how they'd chased Salvatore away and ruined it for everyone! OMG! And banned Winterfox and a ton of others.

I wish that was still around to see.

 

[Humanity has risen!]

Gamebanshee is only good for the walkthroughs and this list more than proves it.

Yeah, it looks like it's no better than Kotaku, just as myopic, shallow and sensationalist-leaning, except that they try to look cool in front of a niche grognard audience.

 

[Metro]

 

[Kem0sabe]

GameBanshee clearly needs Lesifoere on staff.
http://www.journalfen.net/community/unfunny_fandom/21226.html?thread=1911530#t1911530

I wish that was still around to see.

I got gauntlgrym as a christmas present, it´s the first book of Salvatore´s promotion tour for the new neverwinter game... it reads like the author want´s to sodomize the new and improved bad boy Drizzt, it´s fucking disgusting how authors like him manage to sell.

 

[Infinitron]

If you think this is bad, you don't want to see RPGWatch's GOTY