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Starfield takes home the Golden Joystick Award for best Xbox Game of the Year 2023

Dead Space is absolutely one of the best of the year, no reason at all it shouldn't be included. Saying that the Resident Evil 4 remake is even better so where is that?
That's what I mean though, the nomination list makes no sense at all. If it includes all the best third party games of the year then no way Pentiment or Chants of Chants of Sennaar should be there, and you are missing their GOTY in Baldur's Gate 3. IF it was supposed to just be for exclusive games then the list makes more sense, but shouldn't have any third party games at all. Basically it makes absolutely no sense no matter how you look at it.
 
Not surprised, it's a solid game, just not something you can be casual about. You have to go into the game and it has to be focused on and dedicated to. Not that many people are willing to do that right now with so many amazing games floating around.

Those saying it's a "bad game" without even playing it are exposing their own biases here.

I put a solid 25 hours or so into the game. It never got good. It's just not a good game for many people who are unwilling to cope with its litany of glaringly obvious flaws, the game is decidedly below mid. Being mid would be an achievement.
 
That's what I mean though, the nomination list makes no sense at all. If it includes all the best third party games of the year then no way Pentiment or Chants of Chants of Sennaar should be there, and you are missing their GOTY in Baldur's Gate 3. IF it was supposed to just be for exclusive games then the list makes more sense, but shouldn't have any third party games at all. Basically it makes absolutely no sense no matter how you look at it.
There's just too many good games out this year, and gaming has become so large that we have all kinds of gamers playing all kinds of games, so it's natural that there are people upset with basically all lists for 2023.
 
I put a solid 25 hours or so into the game. It never got good. It's just not a good game for many people who are unwilling to cope with its litany of glaringly obvious flaws, the game is decidedly below mid. Being mid would be an achievement.
I only spent 8 hours with it before I grew tired of the old formula. It was still enough time to realize and understand what I was playing to be a better than average game. A game like this takes hundreds of hours to fully access.

One day, when there's a drought and I'm done with my backlog, I'll take the necessary time to fully enjoy the game. One day.
 

Moses85

Member
No surprise, because it had no competition.

Cracking Up Lol GIF
 

Fredrik

Member
In a year without games like like Baldur's Gate 3 and Phantom Liberty, Starfield would be considered a great game. I still consider it a good game. I gave it an 8/10 I think. Just like Skyrim though, it's gonna take the modding community to really bring out the best in the game. Same as Fallout 3 and 4 and pretty much any Bethesda game that's not Dishonored.

That being said, Bethesda needed to shed that Creation engine a decade ago. The formula has stayed well beyond it's welcome. Congrats on the dub, but I hope they don't take this as "we're doin' it right". I'm sure they've seen all the criticism. They just need to sift through what's constructive and what's blatant fanboy logic, and improve things for Elder Scrolls VI. Jesus Christ creation engine for Elder Scrolls VI would be...depressing.
7/10 to 9/10 is perfectly valid scores imo after spending nearly 200 hours playing it. 10/10 is too high. 6/10 is too low. Metacritic on PC at 86, rounded to 9/10 on a 1-10 scale, spot on.

The low points for me:
1. The tame character design. Pirate design can be cool but no eye candy in a whole universe doesn’t get my approval. And when mods arrive almost every day to add some sort of mild sex appeal the devs should know they f’ed up.
2. Parts of the quest script is just plain boring and the execution on some quests are terribly rushed. The old colony ship was so cool in theory but the execution was like some intern job that didn’t even reach the art team.
3. The main quest becomes a boring collectaton. Oblivion without levels inside the Gates. Just a bad idea. Script was alright but I was bored at the temples at the second one.
4. Not enough reasons to be inside the ship. You spend hours to get it all right with the build editor, plan out the layout carefully, then you can skip it all and fast travel literally from inside a cave on one planet and back to your outpost on another planet without even looking at the ship. Why??
5. No land vehicles. Not a fan of crawling in a snail pace with the over-encumbered backpack full of resources. They absolutely 100% need to add transportation of some sort. Hello Games did it. Bethesda can do it too.
6. There is no real global economy worth mentioning if you just want to trade goods.

The high points for me:
1. The on foot combat, tbh I love it, weapons are cool and it just feels great, lots of weapon variety, love the jetpack too.
2. Ship building. In short: It’s fantastic.
3. Outpost building. Not nearly as advanced as in NMS but still fun and I like to do some environmental story-telling and add some clutter, cargo links is a cool idea too.
4. The visuals. When it looks great it looks marvelous. I have hundreds of screenshots.
5. The world just keeps on going without triggering main quests and it’s one of my favorite things in games in general when a game simply leave me alone.
6. Factions. I really enjoy some quests there and the consequences. Still haven’t played them all.

In the end it went from 7 up to 9 for me over 40 hours or so, then back to around 8 after finishing it and starting NG+. Then cemented at 9/10 after starting over and having spent over 100 hours just building outposts and ships and doing side stuff without getting pushed to do main quests. Hopefully they’ll keep iterating on it like they originally said they would.

Side note: People are rushing these award events for no logic reason, the year ends the last december last time I checked. How about giving people some time to actually play the games??
 
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Fredrik

Member
What’s even more bizzare is I own pretty much all the PS nominees on my Xbox. Why were no sf6, RE4, AC6 or star wars on the Xbox side? I’m sure they would have had a shot. I’m voting AC6 as my personal fave game of the year personally. Then forza. One has mechs, the other has cars. But if I’m talking XB exclusives then yeah it’s gotta be between hi fi Rush, forza and starfield.

You think they would have Atleast put ballers gate 3 on the list if that’s what they were gonna do. And Not even A mention of Spider-Man! Pretty poorly thought out award show. How do you leave Spider-Man and balders gate 3 off the PS5 list?
Don’t overthink it. They just want you to click on the links. Did you vote? Every single category when voting sent you to a new webpage. Imagine the ad money from fans of so many games on so many platforms. The nominees were selected by 100 people or whatever. GAF would’ve done a better job, 100 people is nothing, it’s a wednesday poll about something boring here.
 

RickMasters

Member
Don’t overthink it. They just want you to click on the links. Did you vote? Every single category when voting sent you to a new webpage. Imagine the ad money from fans of so many games on so many platforms. The nominees were selected by 100 people or whatever. GAF would’ve done a better job, 100 people is nothing, it’s a wednesday poll about something boring here.
Nah never voted. Much like yourself I don’t need an award show to tell me what I like 👊🏿…. And he’ll yeah I think we would have done a better job….. my poor starfield wouldn’t be shown any mercy by the gaf. But that’s ok. I won’t begrudge anybody for not liking it. I like all sorts of games that people probably hate 😅… And I don’t think people would nominate cocoon but I wanna give it an award for most original game or Atleast best puzzle game or indie game. It deserves something. I think lies of P deserves something for its twist on pinnochio. Kinda reminds of Alice being a twisted version of OZ. Crazy how some of these old folk tales make great games when you twist their worlds with a little imagination and inspiration. Most devs these days just don’t understand anymore. But this year has been pretty solid for good games that draw you into their worlds. Very pleased with this years releases overall.
 
And how many 1st party games did Sony have that they built themselves in house? Would spiderman 2 even count as they bought insomniac and didn't create the studio from the ground up? All of the nominations for both consoles were really strange imo.
I'd concede this point if Marvel's Spider-Man 2 were from a different acquisition such as Bungie, but lets not pretend that Insomniac didn't spend 90% of its life pre-purchase as a second party studio for PlayStation. The overwhelming majority of everything they've ever released was PS exclusive long before Sony purchased them, going all the way back to their very first game.
 
What could they have listed for PS besides baseball and Spider-Man 2? PS had a slow year.

Anyway, very deserved since there is no BG3 on Xbox yet. Also, wow, seems the GAF hate boner for Starfield is still a rock hard four inches. Sad 😆
Wow, persecution complex is as big as it's ever been. Never stop crying over perceived insults towards xbox, someone has to supply those tears!
 

Fredrik

Member
Nah never voted. Much like yourself I don’t need an award show to tell me what I like 👊🏿…. And he’ll yeah I think we would have done a better job….. my poor starfield wouldn’t be shown any mercy by the gaf. But that’s ok. I won’t begrudge anybody for not liking it. I like all sorts of games that people probably hate 😅… And I don’t think people would nominate cocoon but I wanna give it an award for most original game or Atleast best puzzle game or indie game. It deserves something. I think lies of P deserves something for its twist on pinnochio. Kinda reminds of Alice being a twisted version of OZ. Crazy how some of these old folk tales make great games when you twist their worlds with a little imagination and inspiration. Most devs these days just don’t understand anymore. But this year has been pretty solid for good games that draw you into their worlds. Very pleased with this years releases overall.
Awards can be cool when something really stick out and deserve it. Like Elden Ring last year, PR jippo aside I enjoyed seeing it get so many awards.

I don’t think Starfield deserve the GOTY award at TGA even though it’s my personal GOTY at this point.
It can get some other award. Best ship building or something. Most shameless cloned mechanics from No Man’s Sky in a AAA release by a studio who has never mentioned the game. Most tame 18-rated game. Deserved win!

I would enjoy seeing it nominated though and if I was Geoff I would 100% do it. It’s the Death Stranding of this year. The outlier that create engagement and gets people talking, and Todd Howard would be there. Money printer!

Starfield 💰
Hogwarts Legacy 💰
Spider-Man 2 💰
Baldur’s Gate 3 🥇🏆👑🥳
Zelda TOTK 🥈
Alan Wake 2 🥉
 

StreetsofBeige

Gold Member
As for which games make the cut off or not, it wouldnt be an issue if all these game awards handed out just waited until the year is over. Similar to Academy Awards where they wait till early in the year to do it.

But hey, got to get those clicks.

It's be like get an annual performance evaluation at work. But instead of doing a final chat with the boss in January after the year is over (assuming the company's fiscal date is calendar year), you do final the chat in October. And whatever happens in Nov-Dec 2023 goes to your 2024 evaluation. lol
 
Even better. You support GP. An MS service you dont like.

I like GP, I don’t think it’s a good idea to have games day and date on the service if the quality suffers like it did with Starfield

I’d gladly pay $70 for a version of Starfield that’s actually great and lives up to the hype
 
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NinjaBoiX

Member
Never said it was Skyrim. But people will still be talking about it. Like every other game these days, it will be patched and improved. It will get better over time. And people will still bring up how they think it's mediocre when Microsoft has some successful buzz, just like folks are doing in this thread.
I mean personally to me, it’s nothing to do with Microsoft having any successful buzz.

I just think the game is shit.
 
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MidGenRefresh

*Refreshes biennially
7/10 to 9/10 is perfectly valid scores imo after spending nearly 200 hours playing it. 10/10 is too high. 6/10 is too low. Metacritic on PC at 86, rounded to 9/10 on a 1-10 scale, spot on.

The low points for me:
1. The tame character design. Pirate design can be cool but no eye candy in a whole universe doesn’t get my approval. And when mods arrive almost every day to add some sort of mild sex appeal the devs should know they f’ed up.
2. Parts of the quest script is just plain boring and the execution on some quests are terribly rushed. The old colony ship was so cool in theory but the execution was like some intern job that didn’t even reach the art team.
3. The main quest becomes a boring collectaton. Oblivion without levels inside the Gates. Just a bad idea. Script was alright but I was bored at the temples at the second one.
4. Not enough reasons to be inside the ship. You spend hours to get it all right with the build editor, plan out the layout carefully, then you can skip it all and fast travel literally from inside a cave on one planet and back to your outpost on another planet without even looking at the ship. Why??
5. No land vehicles. Not a fan of crawling in a snail pace with the over-encumbered backpack full of resources. They absolutely 100% need to add transportation of some sort. Hello Games did it. Bethesda can do it too.
6. There is no real global economy worth mentioning if you just want to trade goods.

The high points for me:
1. The on foot combat, tbh I love it, weapons are cool and it just feels great, lots of weapon variety, love the jetpack too.
2. Ship building. In short: It’s fantastic.
3. Outpost building. Not nearly as advanced as in NMS but still fun and I like to do some environmental story-telling and add some clutter, cargo links is a cool idea too.
4. The visuals. When it looks great it looks marvelous. I have hundreds of screenshots.
5. The world just keeps on going without triggering main quests and it’s one of my favorite things in games in general when a game simply leave me alone.
6. Factions. I really enjoy some quests there and the consequences. Still haven’t played them all.

In the end it went from 7 up to 9 for me over 40 hours or so, then back to around 8 after finishing it and starting NG+. Then cemented at 9/10 after starting over and having spent over 100 hours just building outposts and ships and doing side stuff without getting pushed to do main quests. Hopefully they’ll keep iterating on it like they originally said they would.

Side note: People are rushing these award events for no logic reason, the year ends the last december last time I checked. How about giving people some time to actually play the games??

Good post. I think 7/8 out of 10 is a reasonable score for Starfield. I personally absolutely loved the game and would give it a 10 simply because I was thinking about it while not playing and that’s a rare feeling. There’s ton of jank and questionable design decisions around every corner. It’s equally brilliant and shit. Very weird game.
 

Fredrik

Member
As for which games make the cut off or not, it wouldnt be an issue if all these game awards handed out just waited until the year is over. Similar to Academy Awards where they wait till early in the year to do it.

But hey, got to get those clicks.

It's be like get an annual performance evaluation at work. But instead of doing a final chat with the boss in January after the year is over (assuming the company's fiscal date is calendar year), you do final the chat in October. And whatever happens in Nov-Dec 2023 goes to your 2024 evaluation. lol
Yeah and cutting the year in october or november is honestly disrespectful to the devs who work their ass off trying to get a game out before the year ends. Let’s see if BG3 even gets nominated next year on Xbox.
 

Ozriel

M$FT
Your hatred for Starfield is unparalleled! A magnificent achievement. Take a bow!

Conversely, it’s the best game I’ve played this year (although I admit I didn’t give HiFi Rush a fair crack - loved the first level, got sidetracked by another game, forgot the controls and never went back).

I love how I already knew who you were talking to without scrolling up.

If you look at all the major releases this year, it is by far the worst.

Worst, by what metric? Certainly not in sales or critical reception.

Let's not forget Edge, Eurogamer gave it a 6/10. IGN and GameSpot both gave it a 7/10. These are major publications that get tons of visibility. And the Steam reviews are not good. Are all these people just trolling?

IGN gave Death Stranding a 6.8/10. Edge gave it a 6/10. And you still cite it as a favorite game of yours.
Different strokes?
 

DenchDeckard

Moderated wildly
I love how I already knew who you were talking to without scrolling up.



Worst, by what metric? Certainly not in sales or critical reception.



IGN gave Death Stranding a 6.8/10. Edge gave it a 6/10. And you still cite it as a favorite game of yours.
Different strokes?

Great example. People adore death stranding and plenty of others think "what is this trash?"

It's strange that those that love that game can't then look at a game they really don't like and understand that others may love it.
 
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Riky

$MSFT
I love how I already knew who you were talking to without scrolling up.



Worst, by what metric? Certainly not in sales or critical reception.



IGN gave Death Stranding a 6.8/10. Edge gave it a 6/10. And you still cite it as a favorite game of yours.
Different strokes?

I think it shows these day one scores don't really mean anything anymore, look at Sea Of Thieves, got mauled at launch.
Now it's had over 30 million players and years of updates that make it a classic.
 

X-Wing

Member
The game awards should become interesting from now on since both Phil Spencer and the President of Activision sit in the advisory board, but those are one single company now...
 
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Ozriel

M$FT
The game awards should become interesting from now on since both Phil Spencer and the CEO of Activision sit in the advisory board, but those are one single company now...

Sony, Nintendo, Valve and EA are also in the advisory board, and Kotick is leaving.

not sure where you’re going with this, tbh
 

Snake29

RSI Employee of the Year
Lulz. What did Xbox release this year, four first party titles including Call Of Duty: Modern Warfare III? All of which, IIRC, were released by publishers Microsoft acquired rather than actually built in-house. For Starfield not to have been the best Xbox game of 2023 would have been a tremendous embarrassment for everyone at Xbox and Bethesda.

If you look at it. Only Forza was build inhouse from start. All other games were purchased games.
 

Chukhopops

Member
Lulz. What did Xbox release this year, four first party titles including Call Of Duty: Modern Warfare III? All of which, IIRC, were released by publishers Microsoft acquired rather than actually built in-house. For Starfield not to have been the best Xbox game of 2023 would have been a tremendous embarrassment for everyone at Xbox and Bethesda.
You know the goalposts have left the observable universe when four first party titles in a year (and it’s actually six if you count all of them, seven if you count ports from PC) is bad because they come from purchased studios. We’ve come a long, long way.
 

DryvBy

Member
Lulz. What did Xbox release this year, four first party titles including Call Of Duty: Modern Warfare III? All of which, IIRC, were released by publishers Microsoft acquired rather than actually built in-house. For Starfield not to have been the best Xbox game of 2023 would have been a tremendous embarrassment for everyone at Xbox and Bethesda.

It's not even near their best scored game either. Hi-Fi Rush was robbed.
 

adamsapple

Or is it just one of Phil's balls in my throat?
You know the goalposts have left the observable universe when four first party titles in a year (and it’s actually six if you count all of them, seven if you count ports from PC) is bad because they come from purchased studios. We’ve come a long, long way.

It's a story as old as time, unfortunately.

Expect more of the same when Starfield wins more awards as the end of the year draws closer.
 
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X-Wing

Member
Sony, Nintendo, Valve and EA are also in the advisory board, and Kotick is leaving.

not sure where you’re going with this, tbh

It's not Kotick, it's the President of Activision, Kostich.
For neither Sony nor Valve is it mentioned how they are represented on the board. Nintendo has Bowser.
And it's different to have each company being represented by one person and have another with two board members there.
 

adamsapple

Or is it just one of Phil's balls in my throat?
Xbox not having a single exclusive winning GOTY for over a decade says alot about that platform. Just sayin 😘

xbox-has-never-had-a-game-of-the-year-nominee-since-v0-8sjp8fnjc60a1.jpg


Thatll Do Shrek 2 GIF by PeacockTV




egn5HSa.jpg



 

manfestival

Member
Yeah I definitely understand the decision to go with Starfield over something like Hi-Fi Rush. Really enjoyed both games. Honestly, probably enjoyed Hi-Fi Rush more overall as an experience than I did starfield but would likely also pick starfield for xbox goty over it for many reasons.
 

twilo99

Member
You know the goalposts have left the observable universe when four first party titles in a year (and it’s actually six if you count all of them, seven if you count ports from PC) is bad because they come from purchased studios. We’ve come a long, long way.

Oh that’s just a matter of enough time passing to where people forget that certain studios were purchased and not built from within.. just look at Sony’s history and you will understand how it works
 

skit_data

Member
I don't find it very wierd Starfield won Xbox game of the year, it is no doubt the biggest release this year for Xbox as a platform holder.
 
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