Gone Home Winning Game Of the Year is Like Twilight Winning The Pulitzer Prize

Gone Home is far more flawed than a Game Of the Year has any right to be.

[JP1369]

A bit late, no?

[electricrabbit]

A little, but I wanted to write the article in a more critical way. That and I wanted to avoid all of the random people screaming about the game.

[pop-voxuli]

"I" wanted????

[BenRage3]

I agree with the points the author makes, but someone needs to proof this. There are several spelling errors. I agree that Dear Esther was a better game.

[electricrabbit]

Author here! I went in and corrected the ones I saw. We did proof it beforehand but it appears that we didn't catch some errors. Thank you so much for your feedback and if there are any other spelling errors I missed please let me know. I appreciate your help good sir!

[xDHAV0K24x]

maybe PC's GOTY....

[Metallox]

Gone Home it's a walking simulator, and not even the story justified its original price. It's boring, far from being entertaining.

Perhaps the only considerable thing it had was the references to the 90's.

[JohnathanACE]

There are much better ways out there to re-live the 90s.

[DaleCooper]

LOL, now that's a great headline. I agree with most points in the article too. Great read.

[wynams]

or Obama winning a Nobel Peace Prize

[iNFAMOUZ1]

blalblalbla my jounalism sucks and i pretend to write good articles, usless garbage.

[Blacktric]

Big words coming from someone defending a pretentious walking simulator that thinks it's "art".

[TekoIie]

"It also constructs a very believable horror environment that really builds up the incoming terr-

Oh wait it’s not’s a horror game?"

I had the exact same reaction. I honestly thought I had mislead myself, but the more I look at the artwork for the game the more I feel like I was right to expect a horror game.

I agree with the part about Terry though. There could've been clues thats gave some insight into how he's coping with his past and how it affects him today.

Overall I feel as though the game would've been better had it been about the family and perhaps how disfunctional they were rather than put a focus on Sam.

Sam's story alone felt a bit uncompelling if that makes sense. Having a balanced representation if the families thoughts through a turbulent time would've been far more intersting and insightful in my opinion.

I could go on but this comment is probably long enough.

[aquamala]

a very short game that has gameplay consists of walking and solving simple puzzles, and win GoTYs, what game does that remind you of? yeah Journey.

[Ogygian]

Journey did something ground-breaking: it put you with other people in such a way that most players thought they were playing with AI.

Gone Home plays like a relatively good Half Life 2 mod. I much preferred Dear Esther though, which had a far more vast and beautiful environment.

I'd even argue that Gone Home took its main idea from Dear Esther.

[JohnathanACE]

Lets be honest here, the only reason that this game got so much praise in the first place was because of its gay themes and characters. Critics (much like in the movie industry) gave this game high praise for that reason alone and idiots jumped on the Gone Home bandwagon with them. When I first saw this game getting good reviews I thought to myself "wow this must be a really amazing horror/mystery game" but upon doing a little research on it I found out it was a game were you just walk around a house reading stuff to do with a family and their gay daughter that I honestly don't care even a little bit about. This game was $20 at launch and could be beaten in less than an hour and literally has no replay value what ever. There is barely any game play and honesty the story is just stupid gay propaganda/ politically correct bull sh*t. I'm glad to see an article finally criticizing this terrible game instead of giving it undeserved praise like so many other journalists.

[Ogygian]

Despite being a PC gamer into RPGs and strategy games, I found MoH:Warfighter more enjoyable than Gone Home. All you do is wonder around a house clicking on things and listening to speech. What pretty much makes me angry is that if this game featured no love story, or a heterosexual love story, it would have received average reviews, but this game was overrated as all the hipster reviewers played it and cried "OMFGHOMSEXROMANCE 10/10".

That's not that I have an issue with the love story portrayed at all, but reviewers must remember that they're rating GAMES here and not books or films.

I would have given the game 72% for a relatively interesting short story and nostalgic setting (for Americans - here in the UK that type of house is quite alien) hurt by very little game-content and replayability.
As it is I trusted the reviews and paid around £5 more than I would have had I known how short and shallow the game would be.
A game of the year needs polished, ground-breaking mechanics, with story being a secondary indicator of greatness. If we prioritise story and ignore gameplay, future games like Minecraft or Skyrim will be robbed of well-deserved awards.

[N8]

Didn't it win because of the whole lesbian thing? Being homosexual always gets you the awards. Games, music etc. I'm not homophobic by any means but it just seems like company's do it for popularity.

[Gore-Content]

Are these people even capable of writing something constructive? They're publishing controversies after controversies.

[electricrabbit]

I don't know does a constructive analysis of a game lauded with praise count?

[LordMaim]

Wait, who the hell voted Gone Home the game of the year? Were there no other PC games released last year?

[Wni0]

Thats a bit unfair.

First of all, the story is pretty good as far as videogames go. The gameplay is mostly just fetching or finding, but the level design is great for what its trying to do. Bioshock infinite is just walking through "cutscenes" to get to the next shoot em up, so its not like the rest of 2013 was anything special, (a few indie games excluded.)

Where as twilight, wouldnt even hit the top 200 movies of the year, Gone Home certainly would.

[born_naughty]

I haven't seen many game of the years that are worthy of that title.

[dagallas]

I agree the game had a "horror" vibe and going into it I was curious what they were going to do with it. The summoning thing in the closet was creepy I guess, but it was just a Easter egg. I wasn't bored playing but,I played it with steams family library thing though so I didn't pay for it either.