‘GTA 5’ Wins Game Of The Year At Spike’s VGX 2013 Awards
GTA 5 won Game of the Year at Spike’s VGX 2013 Awards. Is it really any surprise?
Even a troubled launch filled with glitches and server problems wasn’t enough to kill the momentum of one of the most anticipated games in years. Ever since Grand Theft Auto 3 took the series and defined the sandbox genre, giving gamers the chance to do all kinds of naughty things, there has been no slowing it down.
To understand how influential Grand Theft Auto is, keep it in mind that without it, we might not have seen Saints Row, Prototype, Crackdown, Assassin’s Creed, or any of those sandbox titles that have taken so many hours of your life. In most of our cases, we wouldn’t want a single hour of it back.
Since breaking seven Guinness World Records for sales, Game of the Year GTA 5 had some serious competition not only from its peers, but from the next generation consoles. Call of Duty: Ghosts might have had a chance at the title had it not been for it being basically the same thing we’ve seen every year with only minor changes. Battlefield 4 suffered mostly the same fate that Rockstar’s magnum opus did, but it didn’t have the name recognition to overcome it all.
Grand Theft Auto 5 for Game of the Year from VGX. Oh lordie that advertisement money sure went far.
— Meister Doom (@Omega_Zed) December 8, 2013
Naming GTA 5 Game of the Year was something many gamers probably saw coming. Here is a list of the titles that gave it the greatest challenge, and why they probably didn’t make it:
Tomb Raider – A welcome reboot to a series gone stale, Lara Croft starred in an origin story that told us how a rich British girl became a master survivalist. The problem was most likely the Quick-Time Events, which are one of those annoying video game trends that make us wish the developers had just tried harder.
The Last of Us – Being a PlayStation 3 exclusive, it might have alienated Xbox 360 owners, but that didn’t stop one of the best story-driven zombie adventures from challenging Grand Theft Auto 5 as Game of the Year. It may have been the exclusivity that held the game back.
BioShock Infinite – The third and debatably best chapter in the series may have been held back by its smaller environments and confusing storyline. Even though it held one of the best twists in video game history, a mind-bending story can’t seem to compete with open-world gameplay.
Super Mario 3D World – Probably the best Mario game we’ve seen in years, it took many of its gameplay elements from earlier games in the series, and even some spinoffs. It’s a blast to play, but the problem is that it was made for the least popular mainstream console on the market. It may be worth buying the Wii U just for this game, but it’s not enough to beat out Grand Theft Auto 5.
What title do you think should have won Spike’s VGX 2013 Awards’ Game of the Year? Is GTA 5 the one you would have chosen?
