Only on opposite day.

The idea of GOTY being "deserved" or not is completely irrelevant. It's GB's game of the year, and no one elses. They could have given it to Gal Gun and as long as they all agreed on it it would have deserved it. People need to stop obsessing about dumb awards and review scores. The main function of GOTY is to re-cap the games that came out that year and say what needs to be said about them in depth, while also providing a shit ton of content.

While I agree with this, it is quite hard for me to let go of the expectation that a critic will be critical of every game and will articulate its shortcomings regardless of whether they like, love, or think it's the best game they have ever played. I have been having an internal argument which of three games is my favorite game of all time. But while those games pass the 'I'm trapped on an island'-test, the 'I can always come back to this'-test and the 'I'd rather play this game again than a new one'-test; I can still name several issues they have or at the very least construct arguments how they could be better.

Shadow of Mordor had glaring death-stare issues and if you put it side by side in terms of reception to similar games, it feels like those issues were not even acknowledged or just dismissed entirely.

I'll just never be able to truly accept everyone hating Brad for getting Destiny on number 10 that year, while a way more poorly developed game received number 1 without any objections.

This. Horizon 2 was/is great, and it really annoys me how many people just outright dismiss the Forza series' quality because they aren't into the genre. I'm talking in general, not specifically GB staff here, but even in terms of GB, Jeff is the only one who seems to even really acknowledge them. I digress. Wolfenstein would have also been a solid choice that year, IMO.

That said, SoM winning it in 2014 didn't bother me that much. I think it's a bit of a disservice to call the Nemesis system a gimmick. I think they (deservedly) got credit for a neat, new gameplay idea (something which is sorely lacking in gaming, BTW). Most of the OP's critiques are totally fair from a "looking back on it now" sense, but a novel idea that mostly worked understandably won over some hearts and minds in its day.

I've never been that big on second-guessing stuff like this after-the-fact, though. I view these sorts of things as snapshots in time, and as such, I totally get why SoM won the GOTY in 2014.

I bought this game a year after it came out and there had been so much hype around it i wanted to give it more of a chance but after 5 hours i couldn't look at the shit stained world anymore and was just sick of killing the same type of enemies over and over. will the sequal have more than just every shade of brown in the color pallet?