The time has arrived. After a huge selection of quality nominees, after rounds of voting, and many hours of gaming, Analog Addiction is proud to announce the winners of each Game of the Year award below.
Dragon Age: Inquisition, developed by BioWare, is the third installment in the cherished Dragon Age series. It represents a major evolution from its predecessor, Dragon Age II, incorporating elements that were well-loved in the original Dragon Age: Origins but also introducing new features that stand on their own. While Inquisition improves upon Dragon Age II in many respects, it falls short of the exceptional standards set by Origins.
Unfortunately, the open worlds in games like Middle-Earth: Shadow of War, Halo Infinite, and the original Assassin's Creed do more harm than good.
I legitimately loved Halo's switch to open world. They made traversal of the map entertaining, and everything involved just tied into the (what I consider) awesome gunplay.
The entire time I really felt the slow takeover of the map, and all the little steps forward felt satisfying.
I don't know what more people really want there, considering the setting and story. A handful of soldiers hunkered down on enemy territory; slowly trying to win the battle.
I agree I liked the switch to the open world, it was large with beautiful land scapes. However, it did feel a bit empty, and wasn’t as action packed as I would have liked. A lot of the bases felt like fillers instead of something of wonder. Let’s see what 343 under new management does from here cause Halo needs some updating
I'm surprised they scrapped the Slipspace engine. I thought the graphics looked great, the sandbox physics were as good as ever, and the AI worked well. Clearly a lot of work went into it and it appears to have been optimized for the new generation of GPUs. The only issue I had with it was the lack of environments, would have been cool to have different biomes on the ring to explore. A bit more variety in missions would have been nice, maybe some timed events where you have to manuever a banshee through forerunner architecture or some mongoose speedruns would have spiced things up.
I think R* are the only ones who have made compelling open worlds. I can’t stomach most open world games and how boring they are with busy world. It’s like a flex to make this massive environment, but it’s extremely boring to traverse and play in. GTA V and Red Dead Redemption 2 blew me away with how incredible their worlds were. Elden Ring was the only other game to give me that sense of awe.
GTA V and unfortunately, Saints Row the original have had some of the most aggressive open world features where the world doesn’t feel so bland. To me what makes GTA V so special is the way the characters react to the world around them vs how the world reacts to them. For example, in GTA when you switch to Franklin and he walked past an attractive female he responded “ damn you fine” or in Saints row you can run up in the pawn shop flash a gun and watch them respond by raising their hands in the air, or they press the silent alarm making you have to run away from the cops. Halo infinite doesn’t have those kind of moments that make you feel apart of the world it just feels like it’s there.
Trevor talking to random vegan npc: "You suck c*ck, but you don't eat meat.... It don't make sense to me "
Classic. Such a shame we won't get that humour again now that R* have gone all in on virtue.
AC Odyssey with the next gen patch is pretty incredible, especially if you like a sea shantie. Lol.
I’m back on an open world kick after Horizon. I don’t know what clicked in me but exploring the map and seeing the detail work has me loving open worlds again. Playing AC Odyssey on hard and really enjoying it and the map. Reinstalling RDR2 tonight because damn, that map is just incredible for sightseeing.
Halo Infinite felt off. It's like the developers didn't know what they really wanted to do
Depends on which open world titles u play, most of em are shitty AF, but I honestly admire open world genre, sometimes to just take a break from fighting and missions you explore n see details you haven't noticed before cause you were too busy body at first, then boom finding some dope equipment or things to sale
Masahiro Sakurai, the director of Super Smash Bros., explains why he believes online play isn't a good fit for the series.
I feel bad for Smash fans. Those guys have been trying to maintain the scene active for 20+ years and get nothing but hate from Nintendo.
Sakurai explains how he and Nintendo still don't understand how the internet works.
FTFY
Exactly, online play would be wonderful on Smash if Nintendo gave a crap about their online services. To be fair though, Nintendo's online offerings would be great if it were 15-20 years ago lol.
I've always said that Nintendo is either innovative and ahead of the curve
or 20 years behind, no in between
I’m sorry, but if a game is MP then there’s no f*cking argument that can justify no online MP. What he says about competition being different from just playing with friends shows me how out of touch these people are.
It’s not until a new generation that understands things steps in to clean-house that we’ll see some evolution here.
His argument is nonsensical. "You'd be limited to just playing people from your region". As opposed to being limited to playing people FROM YOUR COUCH!
What I don’t get is how do you not have competition and experience the same issue if you have a friend that’s way better than you?
It's a big fighting game so online multiplayer is a must. Competitive smash is the only thing I see fun in these games anymore asides from the big character reveals, singleplayer is laughable and you ain't gunna have people over for couch gaming much.
If Nintendo makes a new smash, it needs a huge evolution for singleplayer/couch play to be enjoyable for me any more. But we all know they'll just do a deluxe edition for their next console lol. They really need to up their servers as well.
I can't imagine Nintendo producing a better smash game than ultimate. Roll it forward with a deluxe edition maybe with an extra character or two and call it a day.
Some other developers can try pushing platform fighters to the next level, because I don't think Nintendo is up to the task.
They already created a better smash brothers game than ultimate when they created melee
he sounds more like is trying to justify Nintendo ineptitude to create a proper network infrastructure in order to Smash Brothers work properly online.
