Last year Forza Horizon 5 had a higher Metacritic than all the nominees.
Also won the third most amount of awards last year but again was left off the Dorito Popes awards show.
The Campaign didn’t release in time for the Awards show. So I understand that not getting a nomination. Forza Horizon 5 is my hill to die on as to why The Game Show Awards are a farce and should not be taken seriously.
2021 MS as a publisher set the record for highest aggregate Metacritic score for the year. So while Deathloop was not out on the Xbox, or Psychonaughts 2 released on the PS4 (due to prior obligations) they still count for MS produced games.
The Halo campaign has been super bizarre in public reception too.
Everyone loved it when it released.
343 bungled their live service system and Halo Infinite was all of a sudden hated.
But.... The campaign was still great. But people's opinion on that seems to have changed too. Folks shit talk the campaign all the time, which I don't understand. It's bizarre.
I think infinites campaign is a series low. There's no reason to replay it. There's 0 set piece moments, generally the same aesthetic for the entire game, forgettable characters, a world that felt empty.
I was expecting it to be about 3 times longer than it was and was surprised at how linear it was for a supposedly open world game. No desire to replay at all.
You can fast travel to the FOBs and get guns and vehicles there, I guess...
But that just leads me to other complaints I have about the campaign. There's such easy access to weapons and ammo that you can pretty much run BR/rockets over 80% of the time. Not to mention unlimited scorpion tanks. One of the main reasons for Halo 1 restricting you to two weapons (where most shooters up to that point let you carry unlimited) was to force you to switch things up.
Yeah but once you've cleared the area there's no reason to fast travel back, there's nothing else to explore. Skyrim for example has fast travel that makes sense, it unlocks incidentally as you go around the map and there's often bits you missed the first time round or things you can only collect in certain areas. Halo has the boxes to find, that's it.
A lot of that is because of the move to open world, which I think was a big mistake.
The open world didn't even fit the story. The story makes everything seem urgent, but then you spend tons of time rescuing meaningless marine squads while Cortana keeps nagging you to do the important stuff.
Cutting out the open world fluff would allow for better pacing, more variety in story missions, and simply more story missions.
I'm not hating on open world; it makes sense for e.g. RPGs. But in RPGs you're, well, role playing your own custom character, and exploring/discovering. With Halo you're playing a set character, a soldier that has military objectives. Halo should have linear campaigns.
100% agree. Felt like 343 saw all the other games going open world and decided to do the same. There were arguments that odst did the same, but odst was a smaller, more engaging city and you'd do these big set piece missions in between. Infinite feels like you spend way too much time in the generic overworld
But in RPGs you're, well, role playing your own custom character
Not necessarily. The Witcher series has you playing a specific character. I personally prefer blank slate rpgs but it's not like they're the only ones that exist.
It did seem like alot of fetch quests. Open world was kinda lame because halo was always moving in the past. First your in space, then on earth then on a different planet, then on the halo ring etc. I felt trapped in one spot in halo infinite. One BIG spot, but still.
Yes, couldn't have made a better comparison. Really thats why they call it halo infinite. Your in a time loop. That really cool moment where all the unsc soldiers hop in a warthog with you? Trash you get to do that all day every day! No thanks LMAO
I kind of gave it initial praise and then started hating it.
On the surface it was a major leap to feeling like actual halo again from halo 4 and 5 but the campaign quickly went from sweet linear mission to cool open world with grapple to uhhh more open world that looks identical, uninspired unlocks, weird pacing no memorable missions in the entire middle half of the game, and then like at the end like nothing happened… I saved the stupid pilot big whoop.
Idk. I feel like there were 3 teams that worked on it that barely spoke to each other and were all rushed so nothing is connected or coherent. The linear mission team, the open world team, and then the story team just seemed so disjointed. The open world gets totally closed off for like the last 1/3 of the game?
It’s a pain to replay missions and they fucked with coop. The campaign is objectively worse than all the others atleast imo and that seems to be the general consensus after the honeymoon period wore off.
Gotta love comments like this, so blinded by fanboyism they talk out of their butt. Playing the new God of War right now and there’s no way you can call it “samey” to the previous installment, unless you’re just judging off trailers and haven’t played it yet. Which would be where your talking out your bootyhole
I beat the invisible elite boss on legendary first try, I find Legendary in Infinite is incredibly easier then past games because of how much you can upgrade and in the open world you can take whatever sightlines you want
Seriously. I'm quite good at games and always run the hardest difficulties but even I never once even dreamed about doing a LASO run in any of the other games. Infinite's LASO? Done in like three days tops.
Everyone is absolutely allowed to like different, but the boss fights made Infinite for me. Most of the encounters truly felt epic and challenging. I’ve played every Halo on legendary and its rarely a challenge. So I really enjoyed the arena boss fights.
I really liked the Halo Infinite campaign. But I don’t think it was ever close to GotY territory. A game can be quite good and not deserve a nomination. I think that’s what happened with Infinite.
Though if there’s an award for best grapple then I’d like nominate Halo Infinite.
It's called a honeymoon period and nearly all hyped games experience it on the internet. Plenty of people disliked the campaign at launch (me) but got downvoted and insulted for saying their opinion.
It's different people. Folk still complained about it being open world, empty, getting rid of another storyline once again, no co-op and there only being 3/4 actual characters were all complaints you could find back at launch. But the complaints were mostly drowned out by praise as overall it was good.
Now that people are done praising it you see the complaints. And reasons for why folk don't defend it/praise it in response to hate are
Extreme opinions usually do better on any social media. So saying its shite is better than nah it was good or fine.
Most people that thought it was simply just good don't care enough to comment on posts about it.
343 fucking up with the MP putting off folk that enjoyed the campaign. So while they won't start making up they hated the campaign they won't reply to a comment regarding the campaign cause who cares about the game anymore.
You can’t really blame people when in reality the campaign is just a couple of hours while multiplayer could be 100-200hrs or more.
So games like Gears and Halo have made their bread by being more on the multiplayer side of things (a trend that I personally would love to see reversed a little).
So it’s only fair that a game like Halo would be remembered and judged on what is meant to be the most significant part of the offering which is the multiplayer.
I've never liked infinite's campaign. First three missions were good, but the rest of the game is just those copy-pasted. By the time I beat the final level, I thought "That's it? What the fuck? Where's the rest of the game? Wheres the content that I paid $90 for and waited and hyped for 4 years?" and I'm still upset about that
I think Forza Horizon 5 is a good game, but I don't think it's good enough frankly.
I've played a few hours and stopped. I had fun, but it's kind of just what it is. In the end, I've put way more hours into Mario Kart, into GT7 because the progression is rewarding and the driving mechanics have more depth, and I'm afraid to say, but even Wipeout held my attention longer.
And in the end, it's racing games, they have less appeal.
I agree, it's probably deserving of some awards, at least a nomination, it's doing something new-ish very well, open world arcade racer, but at the same time, I'm not surprised it hasn't, I don't think it shows the awards are a farce, because I also don't think Forza Horizon 5 is a masterpiece that's pushing racing games to new leaps, or where everything was done to perfection, and I think the issue is it's lacking depth, it's a good fun, like an NHL game, always fun to play here and there, but I don't feel it goes beyond that.
Obviously, my opinion and personal preference plays into it, so YMMV.
The Halo campaign was soooo boring. The most bland AAA campaign I've played in recent memory. Good mechanics and gameplay. Awfully repetitive level design. Mind numbingly unengaging story.
Nothing about Halo infinite’s campaign was incredible. The story was bad, the mission design was boring, the environments were sterile, etc. Furthermore, 343 couldn’t match the feature set of older halo games. As far as I’m concerned, halo infinite is the worst halo game ever made. Thank God it was on gamepass because if I had purchased it outright, I’d be pissed.
games with compelling stories have always been praised and are constantly at the top of people's favorite games lists. idk what planet you live on, but most games are not much more difficult than making popcorn to watch a movie.
Xbox hasn't put out a game that even remotely competes for anyone's "best game of all time" since halo: reach. Get your head out of your ass and realize that story is important if you want to make a real impact on the players to the degree that they praise the game decades later. There is a reason why COD isn't remembered fondly anymore, they stopped having compelling stories to accompany their toxic PvP cycle.
Bruhhhhh you just angered a lot of PS gamers. Oh well, I don’t get why plot is so important to the modern gaming audience. Meanwhile gameplay is supposed to take some backseat. . I mean, I play games for the story second and the Gameplay first. Tbh, Games are not movies. And what better way to bore me to death when I’m not in a mood to watch a film than to have to press QTE’s and watch hours of cutscenes time after time again. Yet Playstation is still pushing stuff like that out. As a ps gamer during the ps2 and ps3-era, I feel super isolated by Sony.
Also, a “AAA” game is really just a game with a large cost- budget to make. Halo: Infinite definitely had a high budget. The game had a lot of issues with its performance, content, story and monetization, but at the end of the day the gameplay loop, at least for me made up a lot of that.
Forza Horizon games have been basically the same since Forza Horizon 2 came out. With very little differences each year outside of location, I think it's hard to justify the 5th one winning Game Of The Year.
Uncharted was on the fourth iteration and of the same thing and was nominated. What does Elden Ring do so differently then Demon Souls, Dark Souls (1-3) or Bloodbourne. God of War Ragnarok is also so very similar to 2018.
Point is quality games get nominated when they are similar to previous games in the series. The metacritic scores have been increasing each iteration too. Which can also mean that they are changing just enough to be better every couple of years.
You really think forza 5 has the impact a game like a last of us 2 does? A God of War? Cmon bro. Microsoft could do it but you gotta demand more from them.
Yeah, I’ve heard great things about Forza Horizon, like nothing but good things. But I’ve never seen anyone compare them to games like The Last of Us and God of War, those games story’s are palpable on a fundamental raw level
I did want more for this year, but I understand 2021 was lacking for Sony, we were supposed to get Horizon, GT7 and GoW. But everyone blamed Covid for them getting delayed and now they are all finally out.
2021 MS was the highest ever rated publisher according to metacritic.
But Forza Horizon 5 did win 3 awards at The Game Awards last year and was nominated for a 4th, so OP' post is BS. Unless he's referring to truly exclusive games in which case we should exclude all of the Sony games which have appeared on PC.
Forza Horizon 5 was also nominated for and won multiple awards at other events too, so let's not pretend like the Video Game Awards is the only one that matters.
Yeah with game pass as a platform across xbox and PC, I think the day of Xbox exclusives is over. Microsoft doesn’t need you to buy an xbox if you have a gaming PC, they are more than happy to just sell game pass subscriptions.
Sorry I am passionate about how much I liked Forza Horizon, it was my personal GotY. Not to mention other outlets also, to the tune of 54 sites (including Players Choices).
I also think the VGAs are a joke, and to many people hold them to higher regards then they should.
I brought receipts to the tune of Metacritic score, and 54 other outlets naming the game as their GOTY, and the VGAs didn’t even nominate for the best game of the year?
You may not think the game was the best last year. That is fine that is your opinion, but it sure deserves to be nominated based on critical scores and outlets naming it as the best last year. All I ever saw was how the game doesn’t deserve to be nominated, because it isn’t an exclusive or it’s a racing game. Last year I even saw that it missed the cut off day, but was released before that arbitrary date and was nominated for different categories.
Yeah, this is misleading because it's limited to a single source, when other sources had both Forza and Halo way up there.
What we should be complaining about is the fact that we had two very well received exclusive released late in 2021 and 2022 has been basically empty.
2023 will likely change things. But 2022 has been very unimpressive. In fact, I would not have bought an XSX based on their 2022 lineup. (I bought mine in 2021 based on their late 2021 lineup).
You should look up when Death Stranding released on PC. But not like that really changes anything those games have been released on PC. So by your definition are no longer exclusive.
Not to mention this was posted yesterday after they have been available.
That always shocks me, Forza games are one of the few things that always brings me back to Xbox, it's practically the best thing in the racing genre. I'm mostly a Playstation person (well, tbh I play *everything*) but i'm always hyped up to see a new Forza. I haven't played Horizon 5 yet but I know damn well it's good and I'm itching to try it.
Meanwhile Gran Turismo 7 just kind of lost the magic to me and with how much of a hellhole it is on the monetization makes me shudder and keep my distance. It's sad to see GT7 gets recognized but FH5 doesn't. Even more so against all those really, really BAD sports games on top of that. That and there's not much else. NFS is kind of just a very sad shell of what it once was, Wreckfest was awesome but I don't think it can count in this, a lot of the other racing games were just... Simply average at best.
Forza Horizon has always scratched my racing itch. But it’s not just about simply racing, Motorsport, GT, NFS, Project Cars, Assetto Corsa etc all drop you into the car and start the race.
I love driving around the map from race to race, I love taking a 2020 ‘Vette off the top of a hill and seeing how much air I can get. Having drift courses around the map and the speed traps etc.
I like being able to drive the cars, instead of being dropped off in a race. With no escape from the course.
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u/andyb2383 Nov 15 '22
Agreed. We need to demand better.