LogFAQs > #939438670

The 10 Games That Made Bracket (And How Long They Lasted)
-Final Fantasy XV (Round 3)
-DOOM (Round 2)
-INSIDE (Round 1)
-XCOM 2 (Round 1)
-Overwatch (Round 2)
-Stardew Valley (Round 2)
-Dark Souls III (Round 2)
-Street Fighter V (Round 1)
-The Witness (Round 1)
-Uncharted 4 (Round 1)

Notable Snubs:
-Titanfall 2
-Ratchet & Clank
-Darkest Dungeon
-Hyper Light Drifter
-Hitman
-The Last Guardian
-Phoenix Wright: Ace Attorney - Spirit of Justice

Headliners: Final Fantasy XV, Dark Souls III, DOOM

Busts: Uncharted 4, Overwatch

Snubs Analysis:

Do NOT be fooled by all the awesome in that banner, this year is NOT as cool as those pictures imply. 2016 very much felt like an interim year for the industry; a lot of companies had blown their load in 2015, and a LOT of others were saving up for the storm that was on the horizon. Nintendo was definitely the guiltiest of the latter; the Wii U was doing ok-ish in 2014 and 2015, but it just DIED this year. The standout releases were a Paper Mario game no one liked, and a crossover between Shin Megami Tensei and Fire Emblem that ended up infinitely lamer than the concept implies (yes I played it, and yes Im one of those people thats still salty that it was what it was). Oh, and a Star Fox game that may have very well killed that series for at least another half decade. Again.

So snubs were, again, lacking. Personally, neither new-age Hitman game appearing in bracket was a massive disappointment, as they are the best stealth games ever. Yes, EVER. If you havent played them, do yourself a favor and grab the second one, which allows you to purchase and slot in the entire first game as DLC. Its the most freeform stealth Ive ever experienced, and there are so many ways to accomplish your assassinations that you can spend a dozen hours in just one level. Its insane. Maybe its best they didnt make bracket cause theyd have surely gotten fodderized by some nonsense.

This site isnt big on FPSes, a fact Im sure youre very, very familiar with if you ever bet on Halo or CoD scoring a big win in the past two decades and getting instantly burned by your pick. But, even in spaces where shooters arent well-regarded, I see a lot of love for Titanfall 2, a game incidentally made by a lot of former CoD people. Personally, I was having a lovely time with its parkour-based movement system and great setpieces until I clipped through the fucking floor, and for some insane reason, no matter how many times I reloaded my save, I kept glitching in the same exact place. Yah, no. I wasnt replaying everything up til that point on the off-chance that the game would un-fuck itself when I returned to that point.

Speaking of jank, anyone remember the Last Guardian? Yknow, that massively anticipated game that was eternally delayed, the PS3 game that never was, the successor to my favorite game ever, Shadow of the Colossus (yah, if youre coming from Ultis write-ups that must have been some serious whiplash)? It did actually come out, and a lot of people really liked it! I definitely didnt, because whatever qualms one might have with SotCs controls, TLGs were infinitely, infinitely worse. Still, would have made an interesting entrant.

And then theres a handful of little snubs, like some decent indies in Hyper Light Drifter and Darkest Dungeon. Ratchet and Clank was a pretty good game, though considering Up Your Arsenal has always been destroyed in these, I cant see this one doing much better. And of course the obligatory Phoenix Wright shoutout, the last one of the write-up!

Bust Analysis:

This year was so bleh across the board, picking busts was actually kinda hard. There was the obvious one, though. Im old enough to remember when Uncharted was one of the biggest deals in gaming, when the second game was regularly placing on top 20s and even top 10s of all time. Over time, though, it seems like its placement on those lists has receded more and more, and the series as a whole just doesnt have the same amount of clout. Maybe its when we realized that we were getting sick of hyper-linear cinematic shooters and wanted games that felt a little more organic, though honestly things have come full circle at this point and games like Doom Eternal are whole heartedly welcome after the 70 billionth open-world game.

I say all this, but believe it or not, Uncharted 4 was the consensus game of 2016 according to GotYBlogs. Yes, really. Thats more an indictment of the year than anything else, if you ask me. Look at the consensus GotY in the second half of the decade according to that site:

The Witcher 3
Uncharted 4
Breath of the Wild
God of War
*Not actually determined yet because of how close Death Stranding and RE2 are*

Personally, UC4 sticks out like a sore thumb. The other three are massively generation-defining in some way, whereas UC4 is mostly a retread of PS3-era game design with a massively bloated story and atrocious pacing. And for a game that brands itself as cinematic, it kinda lives and dies on how well-paced and structured that cinema is.

Perhaps, then, it shouldnt be a surprise that it got absolutely smacked by Mario Kart 8. 58-42 in a debated match is NOT a good look, and while you can argue that MK8 has the Nintendo factor going for it, its also a frickin kart-racer. UC4, on paper, should be closer to the kind of game this site likes. Now, MK8 proved to be fairly legit, so this isnt insanely embarrassing, but still. You have to wonder if UC2 in its prime would have dropped this match.

Do you know what was a very close second to Uncharted 4 in terms of GotY awards received that year was? Overwatch. Now, this wasnt much of a bust if youre a savvy enough contest-goer to know that casual bait like that was never going to do well on this site, but lets think about it. It won pretty convincingly over Death Stranding, 56-44 style. So far so good, right? After all, this match was decently debated, and Death Stranding cant be THAT bad, right?

Oh, yes it can! Xenoblade absolutely curbstomped Overwatch with 73% of the vote, in the match that solidified it as a contender for the Quarterfinals. This made Overwatch a peer of games like Nioh and Dead Space 2 and a bunch of other shit this site doesnt care about. Keep in mind, Overwatch was one of the biggest games of the decade, and ushered in a short-lived wave of hero shooters that all collapsed immediately because no one was gonna budge from Overwatch.

But, uh, note the term short-lived. The hero shooter phase turned out to be one of the shortest lived fads of the decade, as PUBGs rise single-handedly halted that genres momentum and made battle royale modes the in thing. Add that to the Blizzard/Hong Kong debacle, and its no wonder Overwatch severely underperformed in a format where it might have benefited from a contest title boost.

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