I know, I know....I still have not caught up on all the games of the years for the 2010s. I hope to revisit those years at some point by creating a page to immortalize all my games of the years, which this year will reach a milestone of continuous games of the years for forty friggin' years. Surely, my own game of the year award is the only continuous running such award in the entire industry, which sort of makes it the most prestigious in my mind.
My game of the year is simply awarded to the best game I played that year. In some cases, the game that has won was released years earlier but just that year had come to my attention. I'll leave it up to the gaming media to show us the real breakthrough games each year, with the shiniest graphics and most brilliant gameplay innovations, as I am not the one who can play the latest and greatest titles that are released each year, for the most part.
This year I finally picked up my wife's Nintendo Switch to see what games, other than Mario Kart, were worth playing. I found a few very original titles, as well as my only release day purchase of the year, Deadly Premonition 2. Other than that, I jumped around the decades of gaming and caught up with a few great titles from the past.
Here are this year's winner, and runners-up:
Game of the Year: Golf Story (Switch)
I've never picked a sports game to be a game of the year, unless one counts racing games of course, but Golf Story, an amazing hybrid of sports and RPG, was a masterpiece that easily wins it. Golf video games, with their own unique game mechanics, have always been fun for me, but not a fun that hooks me for extended play sessions, until now.
It's a top-down role playing game, where the battles are not just golf matches, but small challenges along the way. Instead of upgrading armor and weapons, one upgrades golf clubs and related equipment and skills. The usual game mechanism for golf videogames is present in the form of a shot bar that the player uses with an eye on the wind to make a shot.
They definitely got the golf right, as matches are perfectly balanced and quite challenging at times. Themes and courses vary as the story progresses, too. They also got the story right, as the player works their way up through the ranks in hopes of making it into the final championship tournament. Golf Story is fun, innovative, and perfectly balanced to provide an engaging and enjoyable gaming experience for the ages.
Runner-Up: Untitled Goose Game (Switch)
After enjoying Goat Simulator a few years ago, I felt the rampaging animals screwing with people genre was going to be a thing, but it took a few years to get Untitled Goose Game, an action-puzzle game where, duh, the player takes on the role of an annoying ass goose and terrorizes an unsuspecting small community with honking and stealing and other goose antics.
Doing exactly what I would do were I reincarnated as a goose, goose travels around and steals items, scares people, and gets shooed away. The goals are presented in a small checklist for each area, and finishing each section opens up the next one. The one drawback is that the game is just too short, but for what one gets, it's worth it. The graphic style and sound are perfectly crisp and bright but not cartoonish.
Why is it that every modern triple A game experience wears out its welcome with endless side quests and dots on a map that overwhelm any player hoping to get back to their lives at some point, but a gem like this is over in a few hours? I don't want another Assassin's Creed 200 hour campaign, I just want a sequel to Untitled Goose Game that lets the goose loose on Las Vegas or something.
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