Game of the Year? Who cares?

The end of the year is nearly upon us and you know what this means?  Every single piece of shit website in the world putting up their lists of "best games of 2015!"  Well who fucking cares?  It's not like anyone can agree on what the best game was anyway.

Now, me moaning about this shit doesn't mean that I think 2015 was a bad year for gaming, quite the opposite really, 2015s actually been pretty damn good.  The reason I'm taking time out of my day to moan about GotY articles is because they are so fucking pointless and predictable that without even looking I can guess what some of the winners or nominees are going to be.  Let's just list off a few that will probably get awarded something

Witcher 3
MGS5
Fallout 4
Bloodborne
Batman
Xenoblade X
Mario Maker

just to name a few.  But what do all these games have in common?  Well it's the fact that you already fucking know they are really good.  People have gone to great lengths to talk about these games BECAUSE they are so good, so why the fuck do you need some twat on IGN who couldn't tell a controller from a horse dildo to re-tell you that these games are great?

These articles have exactly one purpose, and that's so fucking kids can brag about how daddy got them GotY for Christmas or whatever?

"Uhh what did you get for Christmas?"
"I got Mario Maker"
"Well that game sucks because my mummy gave me Fallout 4 and THAT was Gamespot's GotY 2015 don't ya know" *smug smug smug*

No one over the age of fucking 15 gives a shit what the game of the year is.  Are people so insecure about their own fucking opinions on games that they need to have them validated by twats writing for big news sites?

But wait, here's the best part!  I promise you, beyond a shadow of a doubt that most of these writers voting on and deciding the best games of 2015 haven't even begin to dig through the thousands of titles that were released in the year.  All these fucking websites are probably happily skipping over a ton of games that got buried under AAA hype or shit that didn't ever get an English release.  Sure, you can name Dancing All Night as 2015s best rhythm game but have ANY of these writers played Chunithm?  Musica?  RevX Beat? the latest versions of IIDX or any other long standing Konami arcade rhythm game?  No of course they fucking haven't.  I imagine that the pool of games that they have enough knowledge about in order to vote on is actually pretty small and that's what really makes these lists a complete waste of time.

Share your favorites with your friends, that's a great idea because maybe your buddy played something that you missed but don't waste your time with these stupid fucking IGN, Gamespot, Polygon fucking stupid lists.  You already know what's on them and you've probably already played them or heard them talked about to death.  Why not go dig through the steam listings or your local game store to see if you can find a hidden 2015 gem?  Seems like a better use of your time then being told that the good thing was good.

No Hopes for Mario Maker

Everyone likes a bit of the old Super Mario Brothers, classic platforming at it's finest.  Even the newer 3D games still manage to be enjoyable experiences and I can't really think of a Mario game that you could flat out call "bad".  Maybe there are a few mediocre ones but generally speaking they are all well made and fun to play.

So then Mario Maker gets announced and at face value this sounds like an awesome idea.  It's a simple set of tools for making your very own Mario games and levels and the idea of a bunch of Mario fans coming together and making levels for each other sounds awesome.  We've seen other games like it that were pretty fun to play such as Little Big Planet and now this is essentially that but with Mario instead of weird sock puppet things.

Except then I started thinking about the concept and my inner pessimist got the better of me and now the idea of Mario Maker make my eyes roll.  You see, custom Mario levels and games is not really a new idea, it's been going on for a hell of a long time except people didn't have a nice easy tool to do it all with.  Oh no, to this day exists a thing known as ROM hacking, which is where truly dedicated fans will take a Mario ROM, change all the bits around and make their own game with it.  The most famous example of this is probably Kaizo Mario World which is essentially a Mario game only for the most hard core of experts

Something may seem a little different to how you remember

The thing is, ROM hacking isn't exactly easy so it meant that the people who took up projects like this probably knew these games pretty well and had a good idea on how to make a decent level or two.  Now every Tom, Dick and Harry can make a Mario level so just how many idiots are we going to have giggling it up at the fact the recreated 1-1 from NES Mario or the hundreds and hundreds of shitty throwaway stages that are going to be uploaded by complete tossers who don't know what they are doing.

Mario is a big name and it attracts a lot of people which is great, it's always good to see more people gaming but most of these people probably know fuck all about designing a good level in ANYTHING let alone Mario, myself included.  It's going to suffer the same problem that Little Big Planet did with it's 100 pre made courses that will be awesome, a few really good user generated levels and then thousands upon thousands of complete trash stages that most people will only play for about 30 seconds.  Hundreds of people just recreating levels from other games in Mario Maker which may be slightly entertaining but the whole point of this shit is to create something original so if you are the kind of person looking forward to that then power to you but I sure as fuck won't be wasting my time with that crap.

There's a reason I'm a blogger and a speed runner rather than a game designer.  I'm trying to design my own fucking shitty RPG Maker game right now and every time I finish a map for a dungeon I can't help but get sad over how fucking crap it probably will be once I implement it.  Most people are probably in my boat and because of that I probably won't be dropping money on Mario Maker.

Please Mario fans, prove me wrong and then laugh in my face, I'd love it if you did that and I'd buy the game full price in a heartbeat.