GotY Criticism
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While it's true game journalists (and the majority of the judges for this year's events were, in fact, game journalists) often receive their review copies well before a game ships to retail, it just seems somehow seedy that ballots were being passed around - and winners chosen - before anyone could legally purchase some of the games in question. Before some of the review copies had even shipped.
Let's take Spike's "Best RPG," Mass Effect. This is a game that takes roughly 40 hours for the full experience, and while it's not necessarily necessary to play it for 40 hours to give it a fair review, I would suggest it's necessary to play it for at least that long in order to call it the "best RPG." There have been a lot of other RPGs released this year, many of them obscure Japanese titles for the PS2, but they were released this year, and they are RPGs. Is Mass Effect better than all of those games? I don't know because I didn't play them, but I'm hoping someone on that panel did, otherwise Mass Effect, while certainly a great game, can't in all seriousness be called the "best." "Newest" may be more apt. It was released about two weeks before the awards ceremony.
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And now on to Super Mario Galaxy . This one earned two awards, "Best Action Game" and "Best Wii Game." Really? Best action game? I understand 2007 was a shooter-heavy year, but surely there was an action game people could actually play we could have voted for. "Most anticipated Action Game" would be more like it, I think. Or "Most Screenshots Wanked Over by Nintendo Fanboys" perhaps. This one was a shoe-in, not because it was actually a great game, but because it was called "Mario" and we'd been teased with trailers of it for over a year. But, I say this again, the game hadn't even been released when it was put on the ballots.
If this is the way we're going to play, we may as well just call Madden '09 "Best Sports Game" for next year right now and save everyone the trouble of pretending to be involved in the process. Better still, let's pass the hat around and see who ponies up the most cash before we start handing out awards. It's what everyone assumes we're doing anyway. May as well be honest about it.
Anyway, I'm setting my own criteria. I'm giving our The Russ Awards and there will only be one category. And the criteria for this award are the game must have been out for a full year, it must be enjoyable, re-playable and fun. It must have cute characters, a catchy theme song, collectibles and lots of swag to send to me.
These criteria close the door on some of my favorites released this year, like BioShock and Call of Duty 4, but they'll have their chance next year, as it should be. Therefore, I'd like to proclaim as my game of the year, knowing full well this award will have absolutely no chance to make it onto a product box and will therefore fail to cement my name as one of the "people to watch" or "tastemakers," and deprive me of a slush fund for another year: Viva Pinata.
