REVIEW: Video Game of the Year: A Year-By-Year Guide to the Best, Boldest, and Most Bizarre Games from Every Year Since 1977 (nonfiction book) by Jordan Minor

Video Game of the Year is nonfiction. I bought my copy new, I think.

Review:

As the title says, Minor picks one game from each year (1977-2022) to discuss in more depth, although there are also "Extra Life" sections between the years that discuss, as far as I could tell, a random selection of games (sometimes there were thematic aspects tying them together, but sometimes they were just a weird mishmash, not even held together by chronology). 

As Minor says in the introduction, "video game of the year" rankings are subjective, and different readers will likely have their own opinions about different years. As messy as the "Extra Life" portions tended to feel, it's possible that they were a way for Minor to fit in games that were still worth mentioning but that weren't going to get "game of the year" status. 

Goodness knows, I didn't always agree with Minor's choices. 1993 was probably the best example of a "game of the year" choice that had me shaking my head. He opted for NBA Jam. I'd probably have chosen Myst. It was also the point when I realized how different mine and Minor's gaming experiences were - as someone who rarely (never?) played sports-related games, this was clearly an area where Minor knew a lot more than I did and had been more personally affected. Meanwhile, it seemed to me that point-and-click adventure games were one of Minor's blind spots, although I appreciated that a few titles were mentioned in the "Extra Life" sections.

Minor's choice of Depression Quest for 2013 also seemed a bit odd. Although he did talk about the game itself some, I suspect that it wouldn't have been chosen if it hadn't served as such a convenient bridge for Minor to write about Gamergate.

My biggest complaint about this book is that there are no screenshots. If Minor's excitement about a particular game prompted me to want to see what it looked like, I had to stop reading and hunt online for the appropriate screenshots myself. I also wasn't wild about the various black pages with colored (single-color or even rainbow-colored) text, although at least the pages in this book were easier to read than similar ones in another book I'm currently reading.

Overall, this wasn't bad, but it wasn't great either.