Ok, the voting period is over and it is time to award the awards. It has been very interesting because some categories have has as many entries as voters, meaning two things, first that luckily there are many, many good games to be played and second that you are all wrong.
So on the results!
YWBL4DA Best Single Player Game Award
No game got voted more than once, so no game gets the award.
YWBL4DA Best MMO/F2P Game Award
And the winner is… World of Tanks!
It is truly a very fun game, the upgrade structure is very grindy but the fact that you can swap from battle to battle makes it very fast. The levels are nice and despite some graphics problems it looks very good. For me, the game has two flaws, the first is that the game becomes much slower in the high levels when you get to use tier 3 , 4 and 5 tanks, and the second is that in order to make a team and play together for a 24 hour period, you have to pay. Even that would be acceptable if group size was not limited to 3 players.
Still, for a game that is free, you get a lot. And it deserves our award!
YWBL4DA Best Indie Game Award
And the winner is… Sanctum!
Sanctum is weird. It’s graphics are weird, the guns are weird and the monsters are VERY weird. But it is the first game to make a successful combination with three very different elements: Tower defence, first person shooter and coop. All of these elements could work better, but the game is very enjoyable and when the onslaught comes and the system fails, it is epically fun. Also, the text to speech function is awesome.
YWBL4DA Best Coop Player Game Award
This is an important category, given that our group is mainly coop oriented. It was a close race between Dungeon Defenders and the winner, but at the end, a single vote gave the victory to… Portal 2!
What can I say about Portal 2? It is coop, but completely different coop from other games. It is puzzle solving coop. The two players not only collaborate in the actual actions that it takes to solve the puzzle, they also push their brains together in order to find the solution. Those moments when you think you have found a solution and want to explain it to the other guy, but it seems so crazy that you can not even put it in words are beyond what any other game has done before. I played Portal 2 coop with Labchimp and Johnny and both times we laughed so much that at the end I was crying and with a sore throat. The voice of GladOS, the very last puzzle once you are in front of the vault, the personality traits of both robots… a delight.
YWBL4DA Best Surprise Award
This one goes narrowly to… Bastion!
I cannot say much about this game, as I have not played it. It has had very good press and it seems that the voiceover is pretty unique. I need to get into it.
YWBL4DA Biggest Disappointment Award
Of course, YWBL4DA’s biggest disappointment this year was Battlefield 3.
This one was pretty much evident. We were all waiting for this game and unfortunately, politics got in its way. It is a disappointment because expectations were so high that factors that have nothing to do with the quality of the game itself have made it very divisive. A pity, because I am firmly convinced that the game is awesome.
YWBL4DA 2011 Game of the Year Award
Well, this one was hard to choose. There was a tie in votes between two very strong contenders, Portal 2 and Skyrim. They are both very different, excellent games. One of them is big, full of content and detail. The other is a miniature, a smaller detailed experience. One of them is an open world where you can do anything, the other is crafted to make you live very strong scripted moments. Both are awesome and very successful. It was a very difficult choice and it took me a while, but I did choose.
YWBL4DA 2012 Game of the Year, with a grand total of 0 votes is Saints Row the Third!
I know, nobody voted for it, not even me. And I don’t care, Saints Row the Third is the best game of the year.
You jump off a flying VTOL, parachute to the ground, land on a car, take out your giant pink dildo and use it to hit on a tank until it explodes, then you request a cluster bomb airstrike on a bunch of wrestlers. What other game can beat that? The story is bonkers, makes no sense and yet when the end comes, it does make kinda sense. Every cutscene and mission will make you laugh out loud. I will not spoil anything but believe me, it is awesome fun. It is funny, yes. Really funny.
The graphics are very good, the weapons are awesome, the voice acting is incredibly good… It laughs at other games, it laughs at you, it laughs at itself.
It is the best game of the year and fuck democracy.