[GOTY] vgZero 2011 Awards - Biggest Surprise & Disappointment

Biggest Surprise

Winner - Dead Island

The video game industry is one of the more diverse entertainment industries and through this the market has a wider range of products and often you'll find something unexpected making its way into your life. Often games will get denied at first by the consumer whether it be down to returning to a classic franchise which had a less than stellar previous outing or perhaps the game might be retreading an overused idea. This award is for the game that offered unexpected brilliance and 2011 was a strong year for surprises. Indie developers got into the act with Bastian which for a small digital-distribution title it offered fantastic writing and voice work to match its unique art style and classic isometric gameplay. Some games were expected to be good but ended up surprising everyone by blowing away all expectations like The Witcher 2 which was one of the best PC (and soon to be 360) titles in years thanks to it's beautiful visuals of a rich fantasy world along side a much more refined gameplay system than its predecessor. There were several more modest titles that rose above expectations such as Shadows of the Damned which while liking polish had great writing and was incredibly fun - a quality often forgot about in modern games. Ultimately there can only be one winner and that is of course Dead Island a game revealed several years ago that fell off the radar and became close to vaporware but made a triumphant return with an emotional CG trailer that brought the game back to the lime light. Dead Island surprised not only by being developed by a relatively small Polish developer (Techland) famed for budget racing titles and the first-person western franchise Call of Juarez but by also taking the much-used 'zombie' scenario in a new direction. Not only was the game set on a tropical island but it was also sandbox allowing you to explore freely and even took cues from Left 4 Dead and had 4 player co-op. Featuring RPG mechanics and a quest log system added depth to the game and aided the experience by giving you more control over the development of your character but also more freedom to do what you please on the island. Dead Island was the best selling new IP of 2011, and with good reason too.

Runner up - Deus Ex: Human Revolution

Deus Ex was one of the greatest games of all time, the sequel Invisible War... not so much. Fans had a right to be skeptical over future games thanks to the flop sequel but after the franchise laid dormant for 8 years the prequel Human Revolution released and put fans' minds to ease as it blew away expectations. Eidos offered an experience that was close, if not on par, with the legendary original. Deep skill-trees, you decide how to tackle every situation from a variety of options, well written... the list goes on. We agree that Human Revolution was a better game than Dead Island but this is about the biggest surprise and while Human Revolution met skepticism Dead Island was the bigger shock.

Biggest Disappointment

Winner (Loser) - Dragon Age II

Now if we flip the coin we see that not every game can be a winner. Some games just fail to meet up to fan demands or critical expectation. Game of Thrones: Genesis was a strong contender purely because of the hugely popular book and tv series it is based upon but unfortunately it was a rushed under-developed tie-in and fans had to look else where to get their fix. Some games are just unfortunate enough to be shooting above their own weight, as was the case with Homefront. The game was hyped up to be a challenger to genre leaders Battlefield and Modern Warfare but released with a whimper, the game did find some love though as our reviewer fell in love with the game and it managed to develop a small but devoted following and established the foundations to be built upon. Some games shoot heavily under their weight and this was evident more than ever in 2011. id Software's first full game since 2004's Doom 3 was met with lukewarm reception, Rage was hyped not only because of the new technology being used but because of id's first-person shooter pedigree. The game faced numerous bugs at launch and was overall infuriatingly average. On the contrary Uncharted 3 released to critical acclaim and was widely praised as an excellent game but fans couldn't help to feel disappointed as instead of a huge increase in quality as seen in the jump from 1 to 2 the third game was equal to the second, if a little worse. It just goes to show that no matter how good a franchise is when it plateaus... it's still stagnation. However one game was more disappointing than the rest and by quite some distance and hits a lot of the targets mentioned above. Acclaimed developer? Check. A sequel to a widely praised title? Check. Hype? Check. Dragon Age II had a high bar of expectation and it fell well below. Bioware met heavy criticism for their changes to the sequel. The art style wasn't particularly unique or good looking, it just came across as lazy and ugly. The first game wasn't particularly a looker but it featured a lot more detail and still passed off as a respectable looking modern game for its scope. The deep combat system of the first was cut down heavily, party control and the control of the protagonist was limited as it became more action based than strategy. The game had a much smaller scope than the first by being more linear, featuring less speech and less quests, more repetition, and by losing the unique varied opening scenarios the first game had. It was a backwards step in every way. Dragon Age II managed to lose fans of the first game, lose fans of Bioware and turned away potential new customers. Let's hope Dragon Age III corrects these faults and returns to the style of the original or finds a happy median.

Runner up - Rage

Rage wasn't a bad game. The problem was it was incredibly average and was coming from a legendary developer after 7 years of work. The game looked good but the new technology wasn't incredibly impressive and upon release had a lot of visual bugs. The world was bland and the gun play was boring. The game had potential but unfortunately fell well short of greatness.

Stay tuned as we still have more super well respected awards to dish out to the best developer, publisher, trailer and more!

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