@Gabu Scribblenauts was a nominee for Best Original Game Mechanic and Best Puzzle Game. And that's really all it should be nominated for. It seems widely recognised by those who played it that Scribblenauts was a great disappointment. It has an incredibly innovative game mechanic and so it deserves to be a nominee in that category, but that mechanic was not put into practice very well. The game was very badly marred by its control scheme for many people, myself included. Even though I really enjoyed the creative freedom, I could not deal with the frustration and couldn't finish the game. Also, the level design wasn't very well considered. This is the kind of disappointing first game that can set up for an amazing sequel. So let's save the recognition for when they make it and fix these very serious issues. Silent Hill I think suffered from being released quite late in the year. I agree with you that lack of combat is a big risk, but that's not entirely innovative. RE4 took away your weapons for one chapter, for example. Merely extending that one chapter into an entire game does not really count as innovation. The one mechanic that fascinated me about Silent Hill and could potentially qualify as innovative is the "game plays you as you play it" feature. But as I understand it, it's not a very deep mechanic. It doesn't alter story progression. And boy, Gabu. You've sure turned into a hater from seeing a game you like appreciated by people other than yourself! I recall you saying you "loved" the game. Now you're saying "it's a pretty good game". Oh how fickle art thy love.clicketyclick
Clickety, first, I don't know what it is, but all of your posts always lose all of their paragraph formatting whenever I quote them, which makes responding to them rather tedious. :P Are you using quick reply or something?
Anyways...
Did you actually play Silent Hill: Shattered Memories? It sounded like you did, but then at one point you said that "as you understand it".
Yes, Scribblenauts was disappointing. But I thought we were talking about innovation, not how good a game was? Has our tune now changed, faced with an example of a clearly innovative game that was not the best and which did not receive the GOTY nomination as a result?
And as far as Resident Evil goes, if you're talking about the chapter where you played as Ashley, you could still kill the enemies in your way if you knew what you were doing - and if you didn't, then you were in for a much harder time, which means you really should. Conversely, you can't kill anyone in Silent Hill. And when you're not in nightmares, you don't even have anyone to kill. That's the most interesting thing I felt about Silent Hill: Shattered Memories - the chase sequences were actually chase sequences, and they weren't just cutscenes where your character runs on their own; you actually have to consciously run away and you can't do anything else to save your hide. I have never played another game that had that mechanic in it. You want to talk innovative, there it is.
And yes, I did probably at one point say that I loved the game, Miss Archivist. Like all normal people, my opinion of anything has the capability of changing through retrospection and reconsidering games after having played them. As I already said in the other thread, I absolutely agreed that it deserved the title of "best game no one played". But best, or most innovative, game of 2009? That I cannot agree with. It just wasn't. Heck, I thought that Darkside Chronicles was better than it. Although it did not have the strategic dismemberment of others (pioneered by Dead Space, not DS:E) or yourself (which I have already said was indeed a very great scene), I thought that the narrative in it and its gameplay was just all-around better - which, given your discarding of Scribblenauts as a contender, you yourself have admitted is an important factor.
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