Welcome to the second and final day of our community awards! Today we’re taking a look at our negative awards, as well as our remaining positives. From the team at ITF Gaming, I’d like to say thanks to our readers for reading our articles and giving their input for our Best and Worst of 2013 awards. Now – onto the awards!
Glitchiest Game: FIFA 14
This year’s best sports game, according to the community, is also its glitchiest – if not by far. FIFA 14 gained 32% of the vote for glitchiest game, with Aliens: Colonial Marines and Battlefield 4 not far behind with 26% and 24% respectively. Sniper: Ghost Warrior, Need for Speed: Rivals, and Total War: Rome II, as well as fan-nominated Splinter Cell: Blacklist (Wii U) and Payday 2 all got 3% of the vote. Lastly, we had one irate fan who submitted the following nominee: “fuck you EA all the games almost are published by you on the list”.
Flying punches were not an advertised feature of FIFA 14.
Shortest Campaign: Call of Duty: Ghosts
In a toss-up between the behemoth first person shooters of this year – Battlefield 4 and Call of Duty: Ghosts, Infinity Ward’s shooter managed to take the Shortest Campaign award, not necessarily for the better, at a total of 40% of the votes to Battlefield 35%. The remaining 25% was made up by Aliens: Colonial Marines, Sniper: Ghost Warrior 2, Star Trek and fan-nominees Crysis 3 and The Walking Dead: Survival Instinct.
Oh no! There goes half the plot.
Biggest Disappointment: 6-way tie.
There was lots of disappointment to go around this year, as the Biggest Disappointment award is split between 6 vastly different games. The collective winners (or losers) are Aliens: Colonial Marines, Call of Duty: Ghosts, Dead Space 3, Remember Me, Star Trek, and fan-nominee Sim City.
The biggest disappointment is that we didn’t find Nemo.
Worst Multiplayer: Tie between DotA 2 and Tomb Raider
In our second tie of the day, we have only two competitors – Crystal Dynamics’ Tomb Raider, and Valve’s Defence of the Ancients 2. Both of these titles racked up 50% of the voting, meaning that all the other titles were considered passable by our voters’ standards, while these two titles lined the bottom of the barrel in our community when it came to multiplayer.
Lara doesn’t play well with others.
Best RPG: Ni No Kuni: Wrath of the White Witch
Namco-Bandai published Ni No Kuni dominated our RPG section this year, blowing away its competition with 80% of the vote. The only two nominees who received votes, Dragon’s Dogma: Dark Arisen and Pokémon X & Y, each received 10% of the voting to round off this category.
Best Downloadable/Indie: Resogun
Indie developer Housemarque’s first title for the PS4 has released to critical and community acclaim. The title received numerous positive reviews, as well as 67% of the votes for our downloadable or indie game of the year. Charlie Murder came in second, with 17% of the votes, while The Stanley Parable and State of Decay each got 7%.
Explosions and abundant colour – easily the most and least common things in modern gaming.
Best Software Line-up: PlayStation 3
2013 was undoubtedly the PS3’s year, with The Last of Us being the pick of numerous exclusives released for Sony’s console. Racking up 60% of the votes, the only other devices which received votes were the Wii U (we told Darryl he wasn’t allowed to vote in the poll) and the 3DS – which each had 20% of the votes.
Now if only that wasn’t the end of its life cycle.
Best HD Remake: Legend of Zelda: Wind Waker HD
Nintendo’s Wii U re-release of The Legend of Zelda: Wind Waker in HD form certainly impressed our readers – especially so, since it got 81% of the votes. Kingdom Hearts 1.5 HD RemiX got approximately 13% of the votes, while the Hitman HD Trilogy pack got 3%. A disgruntled Shenmue fan also had their say, as they submitted a nomination for “SHENMUE HD SHOULD HAVE BEEN” (Yes, it was all in caps).
Link is easily distracted.
Developer of the Year: Naughty Dog
The developer of the year award was a clean 60:40 split between Naughty Dog and Rockstar respectively. However, the former won out with their simply sublime launch of The Last of Us, while the latter perhaps faltered in GTA V’s online segments slightly. Surprisingly, no votes were cast for Tomb Raider’s developers, Crystal Dynamics, or BioShock Infinite’s, Irrational games, which came as a shock here at ITF HQ.
From Crash Bandicoot to The Last of Us, we can hardly say its natural progression, but it’s certainly positive progress.
Shame of the Year: Aliens: Colonial Marines
While this year had quite a stark contrast of shovelware and excellently developed titles, but none was adjudged to be a worse title than Aliens: Colonial Marines by our readers. The Gearbox-outsourced game was poor enough to receive 55% of the votes, while fellow terribly made titles such as Ride to Hell: Retribution and Star Trek, amongst others, only managed to collectively fill the other 45% of votes.
Considering they were fighting Xenomorphs the whole way through development, I think we can cut the developers some slack. Actually no, this game is terrible.
Game of the Year: The Last of Us
Almost unanimously weighted, The Last of Us won 2013’s Community Game of the Year with a massive 75% margin between itself and its closest competitor – Grand Theft Auto V. With 84% of the votes going to The Last of Us, 9% going to GTA V, and Bioshock Infinite and Assassin’s Creed IV: Black Flag receiving 2 and 5% respectively, the final poll came in. Congratulations to Naughty Dog and The Last of Us, a studio and game which dominated both our writers’ choices and our fans’ choices this year.
Plot twist – this is reality, while everyone was busy playing The Last of Us.
Once again, thank you for joining us to celebrate the Best and Worst of 2013 Awards, we hope you enjoyed reading our entries and contributing to the list yourself. May 2014 be just as prosperous a year of gaming – though possibly a bit less shovelware would be a good thing.
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