Orange Box: GOTY?
Sunday, November 11th, 2007 - 4:36am
I keep seeing this brought up here and at other sites. How can a compilation of games be considered Game of the Year?
Portal? - Sure
Team Fortress 2? - Sure
Episode 2? - Sure
Peggle Extreme? - Sure
If your going to give a "most bang for your buck" award then The Orange Box takes it hands down. GOTY shouldn't be a grouping of games (whether it be decided by IGN, GWJ, PC Gamer, Your own opinion, Tony Danza, etc).
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I don't know that it would be fair to call Orange Box itself GOTY. One of its parts - definitely, sure. But it would be almost like giving the WoW battlechest GOTY because it comes with the original game on top of the new expansion. Granted, all 3 (of 5) games in the Orange Box are new. The sum of its parts equate to (in quantity, not necessarily quality) that which could be built in a similar time-span, with an existing engine, and called a single game. So, yeah. Major toss up, but I think the title of GOTY would better serve one of its individual parts (namely Portal) or one of the other major titles to come out this year. There have been a lot.
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Agreed, plus Peggle Extreme was just a preorder bonus, wasn't it?
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Yeah, it has more games but you don't have to pay extra for any of them. I say, for my money, it was Game of the Year.
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I was listening to the IGN Podcast and they were discussing that on the 360 the only way to own the games were to buy the package. Because of that, they would consider it as being one game for GOTY potential. On the PC, you could buy Episode 2 as a standalone (although why would you) so the Orange Box isn't considered as one game.
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The concept of Game of the Year meaningless. It doesn't signify anything, so nitpicking whether or not something qualifies serves no purpose.
Danjo Olivaw Lives
Portal and TF2 more than push the whole thing into GOTY.
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Yesterday I would have been behind either Portal or TF2 alone, but then I played the Crysis demo. Then I played it again. And I think I'm gonna play it again in a little bit. It is probably the most fun I've had playing a single player FPS since Half-Life.
As long as fighting the aliens later in the game does not equal fighting the mutants in Far Cry, Crysis is going to be amazing.
It signifies that you think the game was the best one to come out that year.
Fedaykin98 wrote:
Portal alone classifies a GOTY in my book so far.
*Legion* wrote:
Why do you hate this term so much? It's just a sales booster for games that deserve it. Valve deserves it the most, thus Game of the Year.
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Crysis definitely has potential, but given how Far Cry started to fall apart following the mutant thing, I'm taking a wait-and-see approach. At the moment, Orange Box has my vote, followed by Halo 3 and BioShock.
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Nah. Bioshock and Halo 3 stand higher in my regards. Rock Band and Mass Effect are still not out, looks like UT3 might come out right at the end of the year, so it's still early to declare a winner.
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It's not a sales booster because it's so subjective. Every game ever made has at least someone that thinks it was Game of the Year material.
Danjo Olivaw Lives
Someone thought the N-Gage was a good idea, too. Majority rules.
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Wait a minute, why does subjectivity matter for whether it's a sales booster? Aren't positive reviews in general sales boosters, but similarly subjective?
True, true. I guess I just don't see a game becoming Game of the Year, whoever dictates that title, without first already having gangbuster sales to begin with. It's an odd predicament and I don't see the point of it. Is this for the irresponsible consumer to see on the box? Do I even care if an irresponsible consumer buys crap?
By the way, who hands out the title exactly? And why do they deserve that responsibility?
If Majority rules, then Portal it is. You can find gamers that dislike Halo, Bioshock, Team Fortress 2, Half-Life, all of them, but I'll be damned if I've seen one person disparage Portal. I'm sure they're out there, but few and far between. Like the avatar, Sokkratez.
Danjo Olivaw Lives
And the same will almost assuredly be said (and has) of Assassin's Creed and Mass Effect. If it were a simple matter of yays outweighing nays, then Portal wins by default, but it isn't, unfortunately.
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"If ads put your sanity to the test
come on down to Rat Boy's nest!
light up a stogie, and soon you'll see
how rock can be commercial-free!
'I'd hit it!'" - HP Lovesauce
I think a good analogy for GOTY is the pre BCS college football national champion. There was always room for discussion, and those who didn't win can still make a good argument for being the best.
It is just an honor, it isn't like there can only be one good game per year.
We haven't seen all of the contestants yet. I though Bioshock was a shoe-in until I played the Orange Box. World in Conflict, S.T.A.L.K.E.R., and Peggle all can make an argument.
COD4 just came out, we haven't seen Crysis, Assassin's Creed, or UT3 yet.
I don't think any of these will be any less fun to play if we give one a gold star that says GOTY on it. So far, the Orange Box as a whole has my vote, but I think Bioshock gets the nod if we are looking at the individual parts of the OB rather than the whole.
*Legion* wrote:
I don't think Bioshock will win anything. Maybe last year, but with TF2 and H3 and COD4? No way. Honorable mention at most.
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I can't say what gets the nod for Game of the Year, not having played many of the candidates and other candidates not even being out yet. But I'd agree that GotY for Orange Box is perfectly fine for the Xbox 360 (and presumably PS3) SKUs since those are the only way to play those games. It's one retail product so it can get the nod, just as any other collections of games could get the nod. The only reason collections like Battlechest Starcraft and the like don't get considered is, I think, because none of those parts really came out that year. Orange Box has at least three games that came out this year.
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Heh, meanwhile I'm torn between Puzzle Quest and Forza 2 for my GOTY nominees.
Can't we all just agree to back some mindless MMO expansion for GotY?
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I'm going with Bioshock. Out of all of them, it's the one that totally enthralls me in every time I start it up. Just my two cents. Although I've probably killed more time with Puzzle Quest. Talk about a productivity killer.
So, if MS packaged every X360 game into a single set and charged $2000, would that be a shoe-in for GOTY?
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No because the value of that set wouldn't even come close to comparing to the Orange Box. Also, if you could only buy XB360 games in the one massive set, I suppose it could be up for GOTY, but it wouldn't win because no one would own an XB360.
Fletcher wrote:
If we're going to base this on a game's merits, it's pretty clear to me that Portal is the deserving game by itself. The game was a work of art. As a puzzle game, it was innovative, and while not always challenging, forced the gamer to change his thought process, and by the time it was truly put to the test, the puzzles were almost instinctual. The comedic announcements by GLaDOS act as a separate realm of entertainment for the game. The game's length, a thing some might consider a weakness, was, in my opinion, a great strength for the game. It was long enough to be a (very) memorable experience and entertaining, but short enough so as to never even come close to the realm of tedium.
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I don't think I'd vote for Portal alone, nor the Orange Box as a group. Each of the games in the Orange Box are distinctly different with the sum being greater than any of the parts alone. For a single GOTY I expect ...well, more. I wouldn't knock Portal in any way for being a small contained experience--it's well worth its standalone price--but if purity of gameplay was the sole scale of judgement, Hoop and Stick would be a perennial contender.
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Portal should be more than enough to earn GOTY imo. It might not be the "best" game as such this year, but on the other hand it might be up there with the best "casual games" ever released. It deserves the title just for the new, different and great experience it offers.
While Bioshock is a good game, its also in pretty much in any way a normal game which is just very well made.
Do you guys really think ANY other game besides the Orange box is going to provide as much good entertainment for the same price?
The man wears a bucket of KFC on his head. I wouldn't expect anything less. - Pred
So a lot of games have an extremely different MP vs. SP version. Should they be treated as different games for GOTY consideration?
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