True if big!
The Game of the Year Nominations are here and I can't be bothered to go over every entry exhaustively because I just don't care about all the numbers. All you need to know is that I still voted for 'Faker' in the E-Sports one like I do every year- still have never watched the guy a day in my life but he looks like he tries his all. But what I want to talk about are the categories that actually matter, and how shockingly absent one game seems to be through most of them. A game that a certain little tech giant that could rested a lot of their hopes on. A game that dared to take us to the stars and then gave us a loading screen between literally everything we wanted to get to and delivered hundreds of barren planets in a never-ending cycle of diminishing returns. How in the heck is it that Bethesda very own Starfield only got one nomination, and it was for Best RPG. (A category it would never win in a million years with Baldur's Gate 3 also on the list.)
One of the most egalitarian illusions that the Game Awards peddles is the idea that you don't have to be some sort of fart-sniffing critic for a reputable magazine partner in order to have your say at the awards. Anyone can sign up and give their two cents off of a G-Mail account and I recommend you do so right now. But in truth we do know that public votes count for something as little as 10% of the final decision and it's the top critics who make up the lionshare of the voting power. Which in a way does make sense considering there are a lot more of us, but that does leave an avenue of disappointment. Afterall, what is the public supposed to do when a game they want to vote for is never even up for an award in the first place? Afterall there is a sizable movement of people who wish that Starfield was in the running for Ultimate game of the year, despite my personal thoughts, and they get jack squat. They have to vote for what's in front of them. (Which is particularly galling given that it seems this year you can't choose to abstain from categories- which is bizarre.)
But the fact of the matter is clear. For what feels like a decade (and might actually be) there wasn't a single first party Xbox game in the candidates for Ultimate Game of the Year, but there were two Sony nominations. That has to be an absolute kick in the gut for a company who's one sleeper title, Starfield, failed to make the splash they wanted to. I mean, what is there even left to be excited for in the Xbox wheelhouse? Perfect Dark? I don't believe that game is even still in the pipeline given how little we've heard of it. We're better off waiting for a Hollow Knight Silksong release before putting our grubby mitts together for an Xbox first party slam dunk. Meanwhile Sony are so comfortable in their as the head of the games industry right now that they're investing in Live Service titles going forward- so thanks for being so non-competitive Xbox!
Of course, Xbox didn't get totally snubbed this year. Hi-Fi Rush managed to nail quite a few nominations and there might be even be a win tucked somewhere in there which would be a fantastic reward for a little game that seemed to do literally everything right. But yes, you heard me right- Hi-Fi Rush managed to nail more nominations that freakin' Starfield! Yikes. Starfield didn't even got a look in for best Soundtrack and Alan Wake 2 did! (To be fair- haven't played Alan Wake so I can't comment on it's music, but an Inon Zur OST didn't even stir interest: that is wild!) Hell the Golden Joysticks literally gave Xbox a free award with the category 'best Xbox game' which of course dropped on Starfield. So yes, if you blot out everyone else in the world and literally consider Xbox an ecosystem in of itself- then yes: they can win an award. How gratifying. (They also nominated the actor for Andreja in Starfield which is... just wrong. I wouldn't nominate any performance in Starfield for an award...)
Hi-Fi Rush is seeing quite a bit more love, which is probably due to the fact that game faced absolutely no expectations, literally launching an hour after it was announced, whereas Starfield somehow drummed up the expectations of an entire genre of game lovers only to miss the mark with great swathes of them. I don't think Hi-Fi Rush is actually in the running to win any of it's categories however- (I would be very happy to be proven otherwise, however) which makes this yet another year in which Microsoft's grand plan to become a console competitor is flagging. At this point it's starting to feel like a curse. Every game that Microsoft touches underdelivers or underperforms.
In fact, that might actually be right on the money now I think about it. What happened right after Microsoft finished their deal finally securing ownership over Activision? They published the worst reviewed Call of Duty game of the entire franchise, so laughably terrible that no one will even let the team dribble out the old "The team is really proud of our work" crap without tearing them a virtual new-one online. Redfall is well documented for it's disaster. I can't help but wonder if maybe someone from Microsoft just happened to be in the room when the first pitch for Forspoken was made. Or maybe even for the Saints Row Reboot. Maybe there was a Microsoft employee aboard the Hindenberg. Maybe one as a co-pilot of the Enola Gay? Maybe it was a Microsoft employee who washed his hands and sealed the fate of Jesus of Nazareth. After this year's showing, I'm starting to believe that anything is possible!
But the black Jackal Anubis can rest calmly on his laurels in the knowledge that the scales of Justice are evenly weighted, because Sony's biggest game of the year also got snubbed for the ultimate prize. That's right, Final Fantasy XVI didn't get itself in the running but Resident Evil 4, a Remake, did! So there goes Square Enix's chance to win around worried perceptions after the big 'underperformance' fiasco of the game. (Although it wasn't an underperformance by general commercial standards, but rather just by the expectations set by Square, which is probably much worse.) Maybe this will land a lesson on the heads of the afflicted. You know, some sort of lesson that might be something along the lines of: "Stop depriving half of your player audience from buying the damn game"!
So I guess neither one of the two consoles won this battle in the painfully drawn out and pitifully perpetuated console wars- except, of course, for Nintendo who manged to sneak in their with 'Tears of the Kingdom', a game made directly to mock the British people for the shuffling off of it's Queen just weeks prior. (How very improper of them! Harumph, Harumph!) So be sure to make a note of that on your annual conflict-assessment tallies. That's one strike on either side and two knicks on Nintendo's line, the smug brown-nosing teacher's pets! Whelp, better luck next year Console heads, maybe next time the morons at Microsoft won't pass on the actual biggest game of the 2020s. (Man, that memory must haunt the executive who wrote it. Or it would, if Executives have souls. But we all know that Mindflayers, strictly, never do.)
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