That's a nice range of GOTY winners.

I'm going to get slammed for this but one thing that really annoyed me about the Walking Dead reviews was that a lot of them bullshitted and said your choices matter. They don't, i can't emphasize this enough, but they really don't matter. Your choices matter more in those choose your own adventure Goosebumps books for kids. Still a nice experience though.

Please go read the Telltale forums as this has been debated to death over there.  At the end of the day every persons story was different and the way it made you feel was different depending on your choices.  The choices changed how YOU experienced the story, I played the game with the mindset that I would do what was right to help me and Clem survive.  I had to change that mindset numerous times.

Your choices don't change the outcome but they make a big difference to the journey you had from beginning to end and that's what they meant with the tag line.  

yeah that's what i wanted to say and i am only in episode 3 atm. i already had some situation where i thought that it would have been better to decide different or felt very good that i did what i did. sure the game itself will be probably the same with the same levels but you really feel bad or good that you decided how you decided even hours after this situation. maybe not if you don't care about the story and persons and always think it's only a game and not reality.

I'm afraid you're quite wrong: none of the German adventure games I listed are big hits in Germany, most of them can't even be called hits over here. I read a few months ago (in an interview with one of Deadalic Entertainment's executives) that even the best-selling adventure games rarely sell more than 50.000 copies in Germany. This year several of the German adventure developers and publishers went bankrupt. The only franchises developed in Germany which can be called hits (i.e. 1 mio+) are Crysis, Anno and The Settlers. BTW: I didn't list these adventure games because they're made in Germany. IGN's nominee Botanicula (a great game and deserved nominee) is from Czech Republic, Yesterday was made in Spain. Sherlock Holmes (probably the 2012 adventure game release with the highest budget) in Ukraine and Primordia in USA. If all those German games I additionally listed were made in Italy or France, I'd have bought and played them as well. Germany just happens to be the country with the most adventure developers and publishers which fund them today.

And no, I don't think that IGN and other NA gaming sites (not GamrReview, btw, they e.g. reviewed Deponia and Zerzura and even nominated Zerzura for best adv game) ignore those adventure games I listed because they're from small German developers or from other small developers. I think they WANT to ignore classic point&click adventure games in general as long as they're not developed by genre legends like Schafer/Gilbert or Charles Cecil (you will see huge media coverage of their upcoming games next year). Many of NA gaming journalists think and often prove in respective articles which are disguised as praise of the rise of a presumably dead genre that classic point&click is either outdated or not worth their time. Interative movies, a few visual novels (as long as they're made by Chunsoft) and the strongly overrated admired subgenre of horror adv games are the only adventure subgenres that get NA media attention these days (The Walking Dead combines two of these subgenres => winner in all adv game polls of the year). If IGN was really interested in classic adventure games, why would they nominate adventure games which are at least as little-known (Dear Esther, Lone Survivor, Thirty Flights of Loving) as the ones I've listed?

absolutley ridiculous.

http://www.ign.com/videos/2012/12/21/the-5-recent-psn-games-you-might-have-missed

as stated in that video. even psn games are not being reviewed because of the lack of manpower. not because they "dont want to".  Ign has reviewed lesser known and much shittier games in the past. Because they dont want is not the reason for why they dont review certain games

Of course it is. This video even proves that they're more interested in taking the time to make a video to mention PSN games which won't be reviewed than reviewing more games from a genre they don't really like.

How did far cry beat halo for best shooter? Haven't played neither just though halo would beat far cry....Congrats on journey winning GOTY its a great little game.

Anyone got the platform specific awards?

Categories: http://www.ign.com/wikis/best-of-2012/Overall

Because they were more concerned about "balancing" awards than actually issuing them correctly.  My bet is they did it to appease PC fans.  Just like they gave Journey GOTY to please PS3 fans and Halo 4 best graphics for the 360 fans.