The GILM Awards 2017 Favorite Diamond in the Rough Discussion

General Discussion Events
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Favorite Diamond in the Rough

What was a game you loved from this year that didn’t fully come together for you but that you want people to know about? What game do you really love but just hesitate to recommend when asked? Here’s the thread to talk about what games you wish just clicked a little bit better with you.

As this is a special category, it has some special rules:

  1. This is a discussion thread. There won’t be nominations, we won’t close this on the 10th, and there will be no poll to pick a winner.
  2. This is the thread for games that didn’t completely work for you and you alone. The game you think is a diamond in the rough might be someone else’s GILM of the Year; your favorite game this year might be a game someone else bounced off! This is not the place to tell someone else they’re wrong and that the combat in Battlebots 32: Revenge Of The Army Women was actually revolutionary and you just don’t get it.
  3. This is for your personal diamond in the rough, and why you thought it was such. It’s not a vector for starting arguments.

Time to start your discussions! Don’t start arguments, work to make a personal case, remember there’s no voting, and let’s have a good talk about games that just quite didn’t make it!

Q&A

Q: Uhhh, sorry to ask, but... what are the GILM Awards?

A: Nothing to apologise for! Just head over to our pinned topic if you need a catch up! You can also find details on the process for the awards here.

Q: How do I nominate a game?

A: To nominate a game, you have to write the game in your post and bold it, ideally at the top of your post. If we don’t know what you’re picking, we can’t count it. You get one (1) nomination. For a game to be eligible for the voting phase, it must have two nominations.

Nomination: (GAME)
(Rest of Post, full of lists and good takes)

You can make a list as long as your arm, just be clear chose. We welcome thoughtful posts about how you made your decision and discussion, as long as we keep it positive and respectful.

Q: I disagree with someone else's choice!

A: As per our Code of Conduct, be considerate about other people’s perspectives. There’s no need to puff out someone else’s candle to make yours a little brighter. Negativity is only going to hurt your case for what you love. What’s said in the thread stays in the thread. The mod team frown deeply on people taking disagreements thread-to-thread, like bringing up a user’s nomination in a previous category in a case against the present one.

Q: Someone already nominated the game(s) I wanted to twice, what do I do?

A: We still want to hear your thoughts! Be mindful of what has already been nominated, but as always, this topic is a conversation, so feel free to write about other nominated games.

Q: When does the nomination process end?

A: The period of time to make your nominations will end 12/10/2017.

Q: Can I nominate ports, re-releases, or remasters?

A: Generally, only games that saw their first release in 2017 are eligible. Full remakes may be eligible, but games like White Day: A Labyrinth Named School, which is a full remake of a game released in 2001 from 2015 that was ported to PC and PS4 this year, are still not eligible if they are ports. Expansions on existing games that stand alone, like Uncharted: The Lost Legacy or Dishonored: Death of the Outsider are eligible, but please consider these games on their own, separate from their full game companions. Please see the pinned topic for more information on eligibility criteria.

1 Like
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Mass Effect: Andromeda

Listen. I know. I KNOW. But it’s still pretty charming! The characters are kinda fun and it has an infectious positive spirit! That spirit also involves colonialism, but…like, Kumail Nanjiani’s in it! That’s fun! I really wish they had gotten the chance to expand on it with story DLC and a sequel to iron things out, because I think this thing really deserved another shot. There are things there that work. Lots that don’t, but I think it’s more than “terrible garbage game, killed the franchise, Mass Effect is now a punchline.”

9 Likes
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LEGO Marvel Super Heroes 2

It’s a lego game.

For anyone that’s played one of these before, that’ll probably be enough to know what to expect with this. It’s very similar to all of TT Games’ other stuff. The combat is at best simple, at worst frustrating, the voice acting and writing is a very mixed bag, the U.I is pretty messy, the puzzles are sometimes far too obtuse and the game doesn’t always control great.

But I had fun with the story and the game genuinely made me chuckle a few times. I was also happy with the amount of playable heroine characters there are compared to the last game. The open world that unlocks after beating the 20 story missions is also, like the previous game, a nice way to kill a few hours listening to podcasts and flying around as your favourite obscure Marvel characters.

It’s a lego game, but one of the best thus far. Here’s hoping they’ll eventually get a year off and come at the formula with some new ideas.

1 Like
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This is the PUBG category, right?

It is simultaneously the best and worst game I’ve played in many years. While not personally a huge fan at this point, it seems pretty undeniable.

Movement is full of rubber-banding. It’s clumsy, awkward, and frustrating. Jumping takes forever to master, and 10 keybinds for stances, speeds, leaning, crouching, going prone, etc. You mastered it? Amazing! Now desync several meters in a random direction, and get shot out of cover.

Shooting is okay, but with tons of variable ballistics, attachments, stance variables, etc. it’ll take some time to get a feel for any given gun with any given configuration. Solid depth, but again subject to horrible amounts of lag. It feels gross. Or did, and can sometimes. Oh, your Uzi was set to semi-auto, do better next time!

Interactions are simple enough, but again, particularly at the start of rounds, super prone to server lag. Hit “F” 20 times to try to pick up 3 items. You got 2. Press “F” to get into the car. waits a second Press “F” to get in the car? Then pop in, and back out of the car. Cool, that was the goal. Hitting F generally results in nothing happening the first couple of times for any given action. It feels so bad.

The menu doesn’t work most of the time. Reload it. No, now re-ready up, refreshing it un-readied your whole team. Now teammate two needs to refresh. Wait, teammate four crashed out after last round. Again. Every other round, averaging to every round in squad games between the four players. I pressed ready, but nothing happened? Oh, we’re loading in. It just didn’t display a change of any kind.

The VOIP is full of bigotry, sustained high-pitch notes/screaming, and no indication whatsoever of who is talking, so you can’t even report people. At least you can mute it. Hope you remembered to mute yourself too though, because it defaults to always transmitting, which will get you super murdered.

The game looks half a generation behind, while running like a game a generation or two ahead. Hardly unique to PUBG, but it runs like garbage relative to how it looks. (Also improving drastically over time.)

There is a single music track in the game, and it’s a fairly bland super short loop for the menu. (Newest PTR version at time of writing has a new track here, and it’s actually really good.)

There are not characters.
There is not a story.

The PR/community team has accused other games of stealing its ideas, while standing on mechanics other games could accuse them of copy/pasting. They’ve been inconsistent with bans, enforcement of rules, and who/when they seem to be listening in ways that the community as a whole hasn’t been happy with to put it lightly.

This game is bad.
It’s also the most fun, exciting, addictive multiplayer game I’ve played in years.

There are not characters. Which makes every player, friend or foe, a character.
There is not a story. Which makes every experience a story. Every gunfight, ever glitch. Every kill and death.

I hate this game… so much, but also love it? I think by the time it’s had all the issues ironed out, I will have burnt out, having played the absolute worst possible version of the game, gleefully, for a year or more. I feel so much more comfortable with this category than GotY, which was the other place I suspect we’ll see it.

8 Likes
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Absolver

While it fails in several things & I often times found it frustrating, it is doing something really interesting in the genre space of fighting games. Also as a collector of masks I appreciate the fact that I can collect them in the digital world now too.

4 Likes
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The Surge
After Deck13’s mediocre to plain okay Lords of the Fallen, The Surge picks up the Dark Souls-like mantle and does more with it, evolving it’s mechanics in a unique way. It has a better setting and better mechanics that set it aside and make it feel like it’s its own game instead of resting heavily on From Soft’s strict design philosophy. The environments being the scrapped and disheveled factory that houses rogue machines and corrupt humans in robotic rigs. The combat, loot system and upgrade system has a really satisfying gameplay loop. You can select enemy limbs to dismantle in order to loot the specific limb or headgear that you dismember. The difficulty is a bit easier than something like Nioh but strikes a really nice balance. It gets a little repetitive but all in all an impressive improvement from Deck13’s previous game and I hope it sold well because I’m interested to see what they do next.

Oh right, your main character is also a paraplegic that undergoes robotic rigging to walk again but that reveal (early on in the game) is best seen for yourself.

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Seconding Absolver.

It seems like the team is committed to building that game out, but every time I dip back into it, I find more things to love.

3 Likes
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Wolfenstein 2. The interface is at times terrible at giving good feedback. Related, it’s sometimes very hard to figure out where to go next even with the ‘hint’ button. It crashes more than I’d like it to. It has optional stealth but very rarely does enough in the level and interface design to make this work. Certain difficulty spikes cause extreme frustration. The shooting itself is perfectly adequate, but nothing revelatory.

And yet I enjoyed playing this game so much. A less thoughtful developer could have made a version of this game which had paid a little less attention to the events of the last couple of years, how they relate to the themes here, what kinds of characters you would actually want at the centre of an anti-fascist revolution. It could have just leant entirely on the more zany, overblown elements of the story (or which there are many). The fact that this game felt so current and relevant, and the way it could mood swing rapidly without me ever feeling emotional whiplash had a lot to do with how - despite the flaws - I remained rapt throughout.

1 Like
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It’s going to be Steamworld: Dig 2 for me. A game that does have much going on, except for digging and platforming. It might have been stressful in places, but it sure was a fun experience. So many quality of life changes compared to the first game, and sure is closer to super metroid type of games. A small adventure that might bring you back if you want to continue digging.

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i was considering nominating Destiny 2 for a while, but seconding it is much easier and i am happy to do that

i know it’s probably a weird category to put such a gigantic game but yeah, it’s really fun but it’s got serious glaring flaws, but i still love the game for what it is.

the plot is very “whatever” to me, but i found myself really enamoured with the lore writing and basically any of the side stuff that pertains to the characters rather than the story. the lore that comes with your additional subclasses is honestly really compelling in the way that Star Trek writing is at its best: knowing how much of the universe to show you at a time to give you the context you need to appreciate what’s being said

the game is bursting at the seams with strong classic sci-fi concepts (the in-universe justification for why you don’t get to name your Guardian actually kinda blew me away), but it struggles to put those ideas to use on anything that’s central to the plot. however it’s made for some of the most fun i’ve had this year while plumbing the depths of a wiki for lore on characters that never appear in-game

3 Likes
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I second PUBG

What a great game. What a busted unplayabe mess of cheating and unstable framerates.

I couldn’t stop playing it either.

1 Like
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Blue Reflection.

Honestly Gust as a studio is made for categories like this in a sort of “you’re so close but you probably needed a bigger budget” sort of way.

1 Like
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Black Survival

I wrote pretty much my piece on the game in my Mobile nomination post, so go check out my feelings about it there.

Question: Are we allowed to talk about multiple games, since this isn’t really a nomination thread but giving missed gems visibility?

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Finally a category for me to discuss Nekojishi.

It’s a gay furry visual novel that indulges in all the tropes you’d expect with that format, and has pacing issues. But it has a fascinating cultural perspective, some moments of genuinely interesting writing (despite a so-so translation), interesting takes on mythology, great characters, and some buckwild twists that shocked me more than Doki Doki Literature Club (a game I considered discussing here, but ultimately that game is more rough than diamond for me).

1 Like
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Honestly, I’m tempted to stump for Prey in this category. There’s a lot I don’t like about the game – besides reminding me of Alien Isolation in its setting and enemies, it follows its lead in being outstaying its welcome instead of ending earlier and stronger; the difficulty curve is kind of unnecessarily brutal in places; the abilities take a while to really come into their own; the attempt at a BioShock-style morality system doesn’t really work – but dang if there isn’t some brave choices made in that game, with a great aesthetic and alternate history nonsense that I really dug.

2 Likes
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Call of Duty WW2 is my pick. The multiplayer is ok very typical of the series with minor changes.The campaign feels and looks fantastic and has an unbelievably good espionage sequence that felt like it was plucked from a better game. The rest of the single player feels like a knock off HBO show though. Not quite good enough to recommend but it has its moments.

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PUBG

I’ve fallen off this boat pretty hard but it was still a really good 100 hours of a buggy game.

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I nominated it for GOTY as well, mostly because it was being passed over, but I’ll throw it in here because it applies.

Resident Evil 7

It does so many things right. It goes out on a limb for a brand new experience and absolutely nails it. I can’t think of many other games that are so confident in their decisions and stick to them so stubbornly as RE7. They more or less throw out everything you associate with the franchise for the past ten years keeping a few trappings here and there for flavor.

The problem is the game stumbles hard on the third act, ditching so much about what made it amazing in the first place. It also keeps one of the old tropes of the huge, disgusting monster bosses, which kind of defeats the purpose of the intimate horror it had been building up to. It also forces a player choice which is probably one of the worst I’ve seen in recent memory.

All told though, the parts of it that are excellent make up for the rest and it absolutely should be played, just power through that weird little bit about 3/4 of the way through.

1 Like
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I’m seconding this nomination. You dig, you occasionally hit monsters with a pickaxe, you get some gems and sell 'em. The soundtrack is so good (I like just sitting in the town and relaxing sometimes), and there’s something deeply meditative about digging, collecting, and selling. I love it.

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This is not gonna be a popular choice but it’s Pyre for me.

I went into it thinking that the visual novel part would be a bore and I’d just be waiting eagerly to enjoy the weird religious basketball aspect, but not long after playing I felt the complete opposite way. That game’s strength comes purely from it’s cast of characters and stellar art direction but man do I not want to actually play it. The rites aren’t intolerable by any means but kinda started to feel like a chore, something I had to power through so I get could get some more of those story bits and conversations with my band of misfits on the road.

Just like Transistor, it’s an absolute joy to look at and listen to, but it really doesn’t do anything for me gameplay-wise. It’s a shame and I really wanted to love it, but it didn’t come together for me.

1 Like