Dubious Honors

[Erkki]

I see that World of Goo got the dubious award of Best Game No One Played at Gamespot. Isn't this a bit self-defeating? If they have such an award, shouldn't it be more prominent instead of listed as one of the dubious honors, between "Flat-Out Worst Game" and "Worst Use of a Great License"?

I mean, if they think more people should have played it, why not promote it as a great honor only second to GOTY or something?

[David]

I think Psychonauts won that award a couple years back. It's a pretty lame thing, and an ugly way to put it (since it's hyperbole; I mean, I bought it and played it, and I probably know like one other dude that owns it). And, clearly some other people must be playing it.

[n0wak]

The only thing dubious is their game of the year pick

[elmuerte]

Holy crap....

Idle Thumbs won in the category "Best pocast elmuerte listens to"

We should do the "IdleThumbs Episode of the Year Awards"

• best episode
  
• best song
  
• best guest
  
• best seg
  
• best sound bite
  
• best redirect site
  
• best user letter
  
• best impression of peter molineux
  
• best game industry person talked about
  
• worst seg
  
• worst game discussed
  
• worst use of a brand name
  
• worst game industry person talked about
  
• flat out worst second
  
• best sound bite nobody listened to
  

[Cigol]

No Valkyria Chronicles. It took them ages to even get a review out for that as well. Not that I care... but y'know.

[Noyb]

Were they sponsored by NHL '09?

[Cigol]

To be fair, NHL09 is my sports pick of the year. It's really rather good, particularly it's online mode with clubs made up entirely of human players (from the goalie outwards).

[Cigol]

The only thing dubious is their game of the year pick

If you're curious, as to what Mr. Metal Gear Hater is referring to, then it's Metal Gear Solid 4. Don't watch the video on gamespot if you haven't played the game and are planning to at some point. It's spoilerific. As for MGS4, It's a wonderful game for pre-existing fanboys, but I think something like LittleBigPlanet is more deserving.

[miffy495]

Yeah, when I saw n0wak's post, I was expecting it to go to Burnout or NHL, but Metal Gear is (one of) the more deserving on the list. Damn that was a long list though. I actually asked out loud "Are they ever going to stop naming fucking nominees?" It got sort of ridiculous. Metal Gear certainly wasn't my GotY, but it's one that I respect as a real candidate for it.

[Chris]

Were they sponsored by NHL '09?

I've heard more praise for NHL 09 than I ever have for any sports games, both from people who typically play a lot of sports games and those who don't.

[Jake]

I've heard more praise for NHL 09 than I ever have for any sports games, both from people who typically play a lot of sports games and those who don't.

Does it have cel shading, or some sort of painterly looking cel shading, or something?

[Udvarnoky]

I was under the impression that World of Goo did well?

[Jake]

I suspect that for a game developed by fewer people than you can count on a hand, it did pretty well. That award has always bugged me. Especially (as noted at the start of the thread) its inclusion in "dubious honors."

[Chris]

I think the spirit of the award is a good one but it seems really poorly implemented.

[Cigol]

They are linking to the Wii version, so maybe it's just the port that didn't do well.

[Jake]

Or whoever wrote that article happens to think of World of Goo primarily as a Wii game, so they linked to that. There seems to be less rhyme or reason than you'd think to how a multi-platform game gets linked to or covered or entered into a database on the big game sites.

[elmuerte]

didn't even know there was a Wii version

[Chris]

They are linking to the Wii version, so maybe it's just the port that didn't do well.

The Wii version actually outsold the PC version by a LOT as far as I'm aware. It's frqeuently pretty shocking and depressing how few people buy PC games.

[miffy495]

...I bought the Wii version.

[n0wak]

It's a measure of critical acclaim against actual sales. While the other games (and Valkyria Chronicles) are good choices, none of them had the kind of praise and all out industry-boosting that World of Goo had. It sold well, relative to many things, but not well compared to how much acclaim it had. Sadly. It was also pirated a lot which can account for it seeming to have more sales than it actually had.

Welcome to gaming on the PC

Oh, and Culdcept Saga is really good but it's the definition of niche so there's no surprise that no one bought it. Still, I had some good online games in that.

[Moosferatu]

How well did it play on the Wii, Miffy?

[miffy495]

Quite well, actually. In order to up the precision, it seems they added a bit of Auto-aim functionality. By this I mean that when you get near something you might like to glom your ball of goo onto, it would almost lock in place and the pointer becomes a method of fine-tuning your placement. I have no idea if this is present in the PC version, but it strikes me as a console addition. I never really found that anything got too fast or impossible to handle on the Wii, and it's a game that makes very good use of the remote. I really liked the way they handled it, truth be told.