[johnny_ultimate]

Originally Posted by hypersquirrel

The thing I found about Dark Souls is that if you know what you are doing it is easy....

The only challenge Skyrim posed me was not smashing my controller after the 20th claw door. I never found myself actually caring what happened. If I died I would respawn at the last door I went through. Usually no more than 5 minutes playtime. I could explore 100 dungeons but after about 5 they felt tired. No point having hundreds of dungeons if each one has the same puzzles as the last.

Skyrim was an amazing game but it was 2 steps forward three steps back for Bethesda.

I'd agree with this. Dark Souls is tough but fair (bar maybe that guy with the giant arrow on the flying buttresses, and the final boss on anything but a heavy build) once you get past the slight baptism of fire it opens with. Play by the rules and tightly-honed mechanics and there's no reason for frustration to set in. Unless you get repeatedly cursed The rewards are so great in the game that it just enchants for the entirety of the playing time - earning access to yet another brilliantly designed area is far more rewarding than the characterless caves & dungeons of Skyrim (although no denying the overall world is a beautiful place - just one where the rewards are hidden beneath much more fluff).

There's always DoDonPachi Resurrection for anyone who really wants to indulge their inner-masochist

[oxo_]

When was the actual vote held ? Don't remember seeing it at all, nor seeing an exact date beforehand saying when votes could be cast

Also, why was there no nomination section (for PC especially) for best FPS ?

[Mr E]

Nominations were done over 4 weeks in December/January. Voting was open for a week near the start of January.

Action/Adventure is a better umbrella category than FPS (and having both would have meant very similar sets of games being voted on for each)

[oxo_]

Advertise the actual vote better in future, please Pissed I missed it, honestly never even saw it available at the time.

I disagree on lumping FPS's into Action/Adventure, especially so for PC.

BF3 is a FPS game, Brink is an FPS game, Left 4 Dead is an FPS game. While they all have action and some adventure in them, so does Skyrim, Settlers, Civs and Dirt 3 :/

An FPS is an FPS and deserves it's own category, actually in fairness, it deserves it's given category of FPS to never be taken away from it in the first place.

I mean all the above with the greatest respect btw, thanks for all the work you put in !

[sheehy83]

Mr. E made a thread in the main games section linking to the awards which he updated frequently with updates about the voting. can't see how he could have made it any more visible

[oxo_]

Yeah I just missed it, probably because I view the site a lot via the iphone and it's fairly slow most of the time on it, that and it tends to mark threads as read when I've not read them
Personally I'd feel a site wide announcement would've been in order.
I say that because Boards has such a huge readership and I'd give more weight to a game of the year vote run on Boards than I would run from any magazine or elsewhere. The forums are user led and the votes the same and it's an Irish perspective, which to me is more important.

Ah well, no worries. I agree anyway more or less with the ultimate votes the way they came out, apart from the lack of an FPS category

[funky penguin]

I'm terribly biased towards soundtracks, and I think it's an incredibly important element in gaming...... so can I request a 'Best Music' award for this year? (Maybe under the 'fun' category?)

[Mr E]

I think that can be arranged.

Arranged..... geddit?

[funky penguin]

I do, and I love it!

Cheers!

[monkeykm]

Hello!! Game awards 2012 pls!

[Mr E]

Start of December.