News Oblivion wins "Ultimate GotY" at Golden Joysticks

http://www.bit-tech.net/news/2006/10/27/oblivion_game_of_the_year/

 

How can you have "Game of the Year" different to "Ultimate GotY"? Surely if it's the Ultimate GotY it must also be the GotY???

 

Either way it deserves it - great game

 

I agree to be honest

 

Because its in a class of its own???
But deserved, not quite as good as Morrowind, but still great.

 

GRAW didn't deserve the award it got, and imo. I would have said Oblivion didn't deserve the awards it got either, were it not for the fact that there were very few decent games out this year.

*is still pissed at bethesda for limiting TES IV so much*

 

The one award that made me laugh was EA being publisher of the year - I don't think many of bit-tech's forum members would necessarily agree with that.

 

Think you might be onto something there. EA deserved a wooden spoon or something.

 

EA? Best Publisher? You what?

EA's employees obviously got their extended families to vote for them, either that or bribery!

Wooden Spoon? Nah that would represent something vaguely useful.

 

No Company of Heroes?

 

too new

 

Oblivion GOTY and EA publisher of the year? Pfft, what a gyp.

 

Best Character Lara Croft... dont make me laugh.

Lego Han Solo > *

 

That depends on how it's applied. Sideways, anyone?

 

Replace "spoon" with "large mallet" and you're there.

 

Party was brilliant. Ask me about it when I've recovered from my hangover!

 

Oblivion, thanks to the ease with which it can be modded, is a clear contender for being the best game of all time, let alone one measly year.

 

Doesn't really make it GotY because people can mod it to make the game actually good though. It's like the devs thought they'd make a hash job of the game and let the community fix it. Morrowind is far superior to Oblivion, and it has the same mod support, the only difference is it's actually a good game without mods.

Don't see how you can have an award ceremony for games that doesn't let you vote for any game released that year. I voted on there and the choices were awful.

 

Mod support is part of a game no question. If you're looking at what makes a truly great game, one that lasts for years, you've got to include how easy the engine is to modify.

So the engine Oblivion has got (when slightly tinkered with) absolutely outstanding graphics, among the best ever on a PC game. It's got a good combat system, good spell system and good character progression system.

Now to the faults, the difficulty is out of whack; it's just mobflation. Easily fixed. Don't like the instant travel option, don't want to see locations on your compass before you arrive? Again easily fixed. Want more armour, weapons, spells, locations, even a ship you can sail around? All out there if you want it.

The same could be said for Neverwinter Nights, sure the original game was good, but the modding community raised the bar.

Ease of modification -is- a design factor to be considered, as is support for the modding community. For instance Bethsheda get massive kudos from me for releasing their own builder utilities for free to the community.

End of the day if you just want to buy a game and that's all there is to it then there are consoles for that. Modding games is an integral part of PC gaming.

 

They didn't release their own builder utilities to the community though. They released a single part of them(TECS IIRC) but the modding community was(and as far as I know still is) having great trouble introducing new meshes and animations into the thing. There is plenty they're not able to do because of Bethesda not helping to make things doable. This is understandable given beth are obviously out to squeeze every cent out of TES this time around, and won't want to be competing on all levels with the modders, but it does mean that the ability to mod TES4 isn't nearly so great as it could have been.

As for the main game. To me it feels like just too empty. There are so many things that it the world would support perfectly, so much fleshing out that could have made it the best game I've ever played, and a perfect sequal to morrowind. As it is, it feels like it needs another few hundred of man hours spent giving it depth at least.