'Fallout' of the Year Award

 The battles rage

Quick disclaimer, I thought up the name of that title before I remembered there's actually a very famous games series, that I speak about a lot, named 'Fallout'. I was not referring to that game but rather the concept of a 'fallout', as in the consequential wake of an event. See it was a... not really a pun but more a... look just stick with me okay, it makes sense. I think. So the Game Awards went by in a flash and barring some controversy about the way that Geoff decided to run the show and shoe winners off stage with a broom for fear they would sully the time for the almighty advertisers- it was a decent showing. Somehow Hollow Knight Silksong did not make an appearance, and that is the only thing I care about so I consider the show an abject failure, but I have it on good authority that some people out there have other aspects of life they care about or something? Like eating and stuff? (Eh, I don't get the appeal.) But there has been one topic of conversation which keeps popping up again and again; the winner of the big award, and whether or not they deserved it.

Now you would be very hard pressed to call Baldur's Gate 3 a surprise winner of the award considering how everyone already raised the game on their shoulders and carried it off the pitch in slow motion like the final act of a coming-of-age sports movie, but that doesn't mean there was no other game this year with a swinging chance. Heck, back when a lot of us were still naïve believers in the peace there was a genuine belief that Bethesda's very own Starfield was going to be a shoe in. You know, until we actually played the thing and found out how underbaked it really was. (I try to get back into it every week and end up with 4 minute play sessions I just abandon.) In fact, this year was so strong there are several games that never even made the nomination list for Game of the Year that sent people a bit loopy, so of course the winning itself was going to be contentious, no matter how 'pre ordained' it felt.

Between the big five I think only Resident Evil 4 raised eyebrows about it's conclusion for merit of it being 'just a remake'. But I have to honestly call bull on that- Resident Evil 4 is so much of a remake that it takes the basic story beats, locations and characters and totally rebuilds them from the ground up. To call is a 'basic' remake is a total misnomer, it was a fresh game totally of it's own right. Now if a remaster was on the list, or maybe The Last of Us Part 1, then I'd understand the side-eye. Seriously, Resident Evil 4 is not a 'side by side' remake by any stretch of the imagination, it earnt it's aplomb purely by being a premier action adventure game. Just as Alan Wake 2 earned it's nomination. And Spiderman 2. (Disgrace the hyphen!) And Tears of the Kingdom.

Funnily enough, despite it's ravenous fanbase I haven't heard a lot of grumblings about Alan Wake 2 not winning Game of the Year. That audience seem happy enough winning Narrative game of the year, which makes sense given no other candidate really threw their narrative prowess to the test, now did they? At least we're not getting a 'Elden Ring' style controversy wherein people complain "I didn't pay attention to the story and I skipped all the dialogue, which means the game had no story and shouldn't be nominated!" Alan Wake 2 was lucky enough to avoid that crowd of 'geniuses'. The other big games on the list however? Yeah, their fans have had something to say- and it's building up into quite the shouting match. (It's like 'Football' over here, everyone's getting uppity like they're actual members of the team.)

There was a time early on in this year when organised queen-bashing title: Tears of the Kingdom was considered a shoe-in for game of the year for it's increadibly robust mechanics that breathed a new world of creativity into the base of Breath of the Wild. There's little doubt that Breath of the Wild was already a spectacular and wide game to conquer, and so to set a sequel on that exact same landmass yet have it be even more full of activity, non-standard world interactions and flexible gameplay systems built atop on another- it was astounding! It's nomination was a foregone conclusion and the fact that it didn't win was a testament to how incredible of a year for gaming this has been. It's fans seem at peace with the award it did win, and don't seem to complain too much.

Spiderman 2, on the otherhand. (Woah boy.) Apparently the 'honour of being nominated' doesn't rub off on Spiderman fans who are so indignant that they've declared active war on all things Baldur's Gate. Specifically for the loss of two awards, best actor (although I'm quite surprised people expected to win that, most of the pre-show buzz had Ben Starr as the favourite second pick, not Yuri) and the big award itself. For a time Twitter was writhe with 'comparison videos', pitting the combat of Baldur's Gate 3 against Spiderman and critiquing, what exactly? The speed? Of an action game next to a turn based game? Maybe they were championing the relatively mindless affair of thug punching next to the comparatively involved rigors of thinking your way through one of Larian's deviously designed encounters. Essentially fans were dead set on missing the forest through the trees and start a war where no one wanted one.

And then we have 'Super Mario Bros Wonder'. Honestly, I ain't heard jack about this game from the fanbase. It's as though Nintendo lovers have their own cubby-hole of reality that they enter from which no sound escapes, in which they love their little Mario game exclusively. I was genuinely surprised when the game was nominated for the Ultimate prize, and when it didn't win- no one seemed to be angry or aggrieved. The most I ever saw was a speculative article from a thought experiment that asked what Super Mario Bros Wonder might do which would qualify it for a game award. The best they could come up with? 4 player co-op. Baldur's Gate 3 has 4 player co-op! (Although Wonder does have 4 player local co-op, which does make it a bit of a unicorn in today's landscape. Game of the year worthy? That's debateable.)

What Baldur's Gate 3 brought to earn it's reward is bigger than the way it played, the complexity of it's narrative or the.. existence of co-op play. It brought a return to pushing the boundaries of gaming in a way that challenges to the confines of the medium, not just of the tech running the programs. Baldur's Gate 3 oozes with a weave of complex reactionary content that would make most Bethesda writer's heads spin, and consequence that would make DONTNOD and Telltale blush. They slapped in a complex and alive Role Playing heart with consequence, not the trite 'flat RPG building' architecture that so many other RPGs have- and what's more, it was accessible. That's the key to all of this, not just what it does but how it invited in everyone. Showing people that properly deep and complex games are actually worth the investment. Giving Baldur's Gate 3 Game of the Year was a testament to believing in the art of games and gaming, and that was what brought it into the very rare league of it's own.

Game Awards 2023

 

So here we are on the other side of the Game Awards and I have to eat some major crow- Grand Theft Auto 6 absolutely struck no deal with Geoff Keighley in order to make an appearance. I figured it was an inevitability what with the relatively insanity of announcing a game more than a year out from a release window, but more the fool's me- I guess. I just can't believe Rockstar would steal the Award ceremonies thunder like that- I know they do their own thing but damn, that was cold! Ahh I'm losing the forest for the trees again, we should just be happy for Geoff and what he achieved bringing another solid night of the Game Awards sans all those meddlesome controversies that were bubbling in the background. I don't think there are any winners that seem wildly out of pocket, even if a nomination or two absolutely was. (Destiny for best community support? Was that some sort of inside joke?) And I'm happy to say we didn't get another 'Deathloop' scenario of an unending sweep. Thank god.

This year I can't really pretend to have been all that excited about the reveals of the Game Awards showcase because to be honest, none of them really excited me. Don't get me wrong, there was nothing utterly mindnumblingly dull- like the Motorsport sections of Xbox conferences, but the most I saw were those 'yeah, genre fans will like this one' style games. When talking about what makes an Ultimate Game of the Year candidate, it's typically the importability of genre lovers. It's the sort of game that can slide through the gates of who should like the game and settle into just about anyone's laps, which is why Action Adventure games are so often candidates- because there aren't really strict action adventure fans out there- so every type of gamer can make time to slide them into a schedule. In that light, I don't think this year unveiled any potential Game of the Year contenders for next year.

However what we did get was a little looksie-loo at what SEGA are planning to drown the next few years of their line-up with. That's right, we're getting no less than 5 remakes of their classic titles, all of which seem to be borrow roughly the same 'updated' visual style with the exception of the iconic Jet Set Radio, which I didn't know SEGA owned until just that moment. We also got a teaser glimpse of the next Monster Hunter game, which is probably going to be my point to swing back aboard the train after totally blanking Monster Hunter Rise. And we have ourselves the most pitiful viewing of Kojima's next game OD, which was so horrifically insubstantial I can't even cobble up enough neurons to speculate on it. All we saw was literally faces in a 3D capture environment- have they even started putting together builds of this one yet? Sheesh! I mean sure, announce a Jordan Peele partnership if you want, but don't waste everyone's time!

Of course the big upset this year was the fact that despite being nominated for over 7 awards, Spider-Man 2 walked away with a big fat 0- which has set off about half of the potential fans because, whoops- Spider-Man 2 is still being kept off of PC. (If ya'll wanted votes, you should have given us PC gamers a reason to vote!) Personally I'm surprised that they're so surprised. Spider-Man 2 just plain didn't land with the same culture splash the first one did, any reviewer who isn't a career Insomniac meat-rider found themselves lukewarm on a sequel that played things a little too 'safe', and most of the categories Spider-Man 2 was nominated for was also shared with Baldur's Gate 3- the year's actual phenom. They weren't gonna win that fight! I just hope this gives Insomniac the kick in the butt to really try and knock it out of the park with the last game in their trilogy!

But positivity and having fun is a commodity that can be ill-afforded in this world where everything has to be everything else all the time. Many have made their displeasure known about the fact that in a year of record layoffs for the Game Industry, Geoff Keighley mentioned nothing on the topic himself- whereas in the past he has been known to sometimes expend 20 seconds or so throwing some shade where it's needed. That sort of candid armchair solidarity has petered out as the Game Awards have grown into more of a night about having fun and showing off big game trailers, the stand-in for E3 if you will- but this year I suppose people have grown incensed with this status quo. Particularly a lot of the game journalism outlets, the very same who have try their darndest not to care about the award ceremony and to pay it as little mind as possible, sometimes even delegitimising it's growing status with pithy Twitterisms. That same class are now upset that The Game Awards, as the official front of the games industry apparently, isn't doing it's due service. Mixed messages be flying.

And of course it goes on even more than that with questions about Geoff not bringing up Palestine, which is- I'm going to be honest, probably a bit of an insane hang-up to have. The industry lay-offs thing is fair, Geoff clearly turned a blind eye to that, but Palestine? Not sure I really care to hear about what a Game Industry personality thinks about Palestine, personally. The same way I don't really care what an actor has to say, or a Twitch Streamer. It's not really their area to comment. Unless you're seriously asking Geoff to condemn the concept of violence, because if that's the case you really need to check your 'weirdo American' card at the door. In the rest of the world we don't need to hear every single person in the world verbally denounce every horrific war crime, it's kind of a sincere solidarity which isn't helped by performative declarations of outrage. Seriously, Americans need to learn some damn taste.

Honestly the real controversy here has to be the tipping of the show away from the awards and further into the advertising portion of the show. We've seen footage of how award acceptance speeches were literally kept on a timer this time around, even after pushing out Christopher Judge to tell them they have all the time they need. And for what? Geoff had no showstopper announcements for the night, nothing that would have made or broken the evening by it not being present. His team squashed the special moments of so many acceptance messages in order to pander to a middling line-up of game announcements that could have been made at any point. Seriously, it's verging on losing sight about who we should be celebrating here. I want to see the personalities of the industry on display, you know- a freakin' personality!

Geoff Keighley has addressed his shortcomings in this area and claimed that he asked his staff to relax the rules as the show went on. (Which I frankly don't believe. That footage telling the winner to wrap up and sod off was taken from the Game of the Year award- literally Larian's big moment.) But at the very least the man has made note and committed himself to tweaking things come next year, which is a mark of respect and feedback I admire from the man. It certainly speaks a lot more than the endless article writers who never liked the awards, trying to grandstand their dismissal into some grand act of virtue that should be sang about. "Let us all gather around and wring our hands in praise of the brave article writers who slept during the game awards- truly they are the blessed among us!" Nah, rather than tear down the biggest award show of the year, like they are all desperate to do, I'd rather have some fun with the gaming community. You know, 'fun'? Like, the point of games in the first place? (These people, sheesh.)

Woah, Game of the Year hates Xbox?

 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.) 

And so awards season begins...

"I'm gonna be king of the game developers"- Swen Vincke, age 15 (Probably)

The award season of the Games Industry tends to be a little more exciting for the industry it celebrates than other award ceremonies; that is likely because of the very different sort of public reputation we hold compared to, say, film awards. In film the idea of award ceremonies feels like an antiquated and bourgeoisie-coded felicitous orgy of back-patting and fart sniffing, created for the sole purpose of narcissism and worth affirming. Ask the average movie watcher what they're most excited to see during Oscar night, and they'll probably tell you: their bed pillows, because even those that watch the show as an institution are forgetting what they bothered showing up for, as evidenced by the delightfully depreciating viewer numbers that the shows have been afflicted with for time immemorial. When it comes to gaming however, well- we do things a little bit differently!

The game awards are something of a lot more grass-routes and earnest celebration enjoyed by all in celebration of- as much as Geoff can manage to cram into his little show. And that might come from the very open host of it all who everyone knows by name and deed. Geoff Keighley has been a central part of the game's media for over a decade easily, and though I'm sure he makes a buck and a half off of the fame around the awards, we know the passion behind why he started this in the first place. We all know that Geoff just loves his industry so much that he wants to be the one to bring everyone together one night a year. We know that Geoff Keighley is the sort of man we can trust to keep our industry every bit as strong and healthy as we need it to be, by breaking down the 'us versus them' mentality wherever he can. He's a champion of the little folk when he wants to be, and a friend to the upper class when he needs to be. And the award ceremony is a beloved joining together for gamers everywhere because of it!

Personally I think the reason why the Game Awards sees so many viewers (last year's showcase saw 103 million viewers compared to the Oscars 16.6 Million) is because we as the consumer come to see the big new reveals that Geoff has managed to cue up. In the passing of E3 and the coming of independent publisher showcases, there really aren't those big industry events that we can set our calendars to anymore, with the exception of The Game Awards. Geoff managed to score an Elden Ring release date trailer in the past, a Death Stranding 2 announcement- and if I'm right and he's managed to secure the reveal trailer for Grand Theft Auto VI- the man will go down as a legend for all eternity. And we all want to see the future of the industry so we show up in the hundreds of millions! Also, it helps that The Game Awards are so liberal and accepting on co-steaming, allowing the modern Internet in all of it's niches to come together and enjoy the show together, unlike the painfully antiquated Oscars who still think this is the eighties.

Of course we're a bit off from the Game Awards just now. It's time for some of the other ceremonies to get their awards out of the way and hand off to the 'best of the year' before the big show that everyone cares about rolls around. But seeing as how a lot of these events are as much fan driven as they are critic driven, it's typically a good indication of the direction that the industry is leaning by looking at who is sweeping these other shows. Afterall, we know that Game of the Year is going to Gollum, but if we can get confirmation that the Golden Joysticks also granted Gollum that inevitable gratis then we can be comfortable in our belief that the single most deserving game in history got it's dues. Because man does Gollum deserve some sort of break for all the crap he's been through...

But lo and behold it seems there was something of a sweep at the Golden Joysticks, with one game picking up so many awards there is now a meme worthy image of it's Director walking out the event clutching an entire arm full of gold. And that man is obviously the infamous Marine captain Axehand Morgan, going by his cover identity of 'Sven Vincke'. (I'm onto you, Marine scum!) Somehow Baldur's Gate 3 ended up scoring Best Storytelling, Best Visual Design, Best Game Community, Best Supporting actor, (Neil Newborn's Astarion) Best PC game and ultimate game of the year. They should have handed Sven a broom so he could sweep the floors as well, cut the catering some slack. What a way to reward a team that risked it all.

There's certainly a desire for legitimacy that everyone in the industry is forever chasing, proof that this frivolous past time of wasting others time is actually worth something in the end. Becoming a professional in the medium is the first step on that ladder, earning a profit for the first time is the second step and winning a reward validating all your hard work is perhaps the crowning moment. Maybe that is the appeal of award ceremonies for the watchers and the attendees, that moment of ultimate fulfilment disseminated by osmosis out for everyone to collective bask in. That's how we get over the inherent stupidity of what an award even is and what it represents. And that's good enough justification to warrant my vicarious living through these events!

Personally, I love a little bit of award season. I love the pomp and the glamour. I love being one in a group of million all indulging in the nerdiest of passions simultaneously. I love seeing the faces of the madmen who slave away to steal away chunks of our lives in the most elegant and seamless ways. I just love the world of gaming and what swathes of creative passion it unfurls upon the world of art and the work of artists. Gaming pushed so much forward with it, tradtional drawing artists, storytellers, cinematographers, actors, music- everything that the movie industry used to lionise before that all started growing so stale and restrictive. The AAA might be a closed boys club, but the industry is way bigger than them these days. And the Awards season allows everyone to bask in their love of this hobby.

So champagne bottles up and corks popped for the start of another award season- one for what might go down as the best year for gaming in the past decade- which really goes to show how we're somehow still managing to blow the socks off of the gaming world. There's no more gratifying a sensation than being stumped over who wins an award because every candidate is just so darn good, and it's decisions like that which separate the men from the lions. Or it would if any publications took their nominations any sort of seriously. >sigh< At least the public say has it's value in the conversation too, so the real critics can let their preferences shine through. Which is my subtle way of reminding all of you to vote. How politically conscious of me.

The 'Game of the Year' Epidemic

 What's wrong with 'Complete Edition'?

Did you just release your game but still have some production budget left over? Consider the single most low effort and lazy move you possibly can to try and drum up some left over interest; release a 'Game of the Year' version of the game. It's as simple as slapping together the current version of the game into a single package, maybe shelling out for a new box-art package, and if not just getting a simple 'GOTY' stencil out. And from there you can pretty much get away with marketing fraud through lying to people that your game secured such critical acclaim that it was nominated above it's peers for a reward. Like writing a whole bunch of fake references for yourself to be nominated as a Professor; a simply harmless crime that no one is affected by- or is it?

Just this last month we've had two eye-brow raising announcements from high-profile games revealing their intention to wantonly lie to a buying public in the course of their game's life span by releasing 'Game of the Year' Editions. First is Far Cry 6, the latest game from the world's most washed-up AAA development company, which received the exact lukewarm and impressed general acclaim that it deserved for it's troubles. The second is the lamentable Cyberpunk 2077, a game which famously launched in an legendarily terrible state that encouraged Sony, of all companies, to facilitate refunds and pull the game off their store. A screw up the likes of which CDPR will have scarred on them for their entire careers. And a game which did not, crucially, win Game of the Year; regardless of how many of us tried to pre-emptively award one to them before the fall.

Now the excuse for a lot of companies who go this route with their game releases is: 'There's so many award shows and one of them gave us the Game of the Year' or 'We did get an award: for best pettable animal' or some such nonsense. A tongue-in-cheek way of avoiding marketing standards violations and avoid confronting responsibility like a remotely sensible adult. But what they never seem to really grasp is the fact that this is the very attitude which devalues the legitimacy of the video game field for every other sector of the entertainment industry. Like it or not, awards have sliding scales of significance and worth, an Oscar is worth more than a 'Critics choice award', even if it is in that vapid world in which 'Awards' exist. Which I think is part of the reason why Geoff Keighley sought to create his own official award show for the industry to recognise and respect in: The Game Awards.

The Game Awards are 'the Oscars' of gaming and they present a very clear candidate for what game should be eligible for a 'Game of the Year' branding chain. The 'Ultimate Game of the Year' award leaves little room for negotiation and misconstruction: it is awarded to the game that is considered the all round most significant achievement of game development for that year. It's a position that is influenced both by public appeal and a court of trusted critic partners. In other words, it is a position of sacred importance to the Keighley awards show, granted it's worth by the respect the community lays upon it. A respect simply spat upon by every big company who decides to co-opt the 'Game of the Year' title for their quick sales boost without caring about the cost this ultimately has.

Because let's be honest; culturally games are still a looked-down on medium from the outside. Despite it's size monetarily, there's not a serious art critic in the world that respects the work of video game developers because they consider it a lower art form. I've seen video game writers off-handily be written-off as not 'real writers', as if games are written by the script coders. And sure, there's probably a lot of hobbyist writers working on Indie projects, but does that make them anyless legitimate in the profession? What regulatory body of literature has to 'recognise' you before you suddenly become a 'real writer'? And you see that perception spread everywhere. Voice actors have had that stigma for decades now, carrying over from the beginnings of cartoons; unless you're a fingers-in-the-code engineer, you're largely considered a facsimile of a much more legitimate and revered profession as it's expressed in other fields. That's because no respectable outsider takes games seriously.

And it seems we don't bother take it seriously either. If there's no level of standards being enforced or respected for our own revered awards, isn't that kind of like saying none of these awards are worth being taken seriously? That they're part of an industry that shouldn't be taken seriously? If 'Game of the Year' has no value, then by comparison 'Oscar Award Winner' could be used as a white-lie CV buffer because you bumped into a guy who said he loved in a movie one time. (Maybe that guy's name was Oscar; you can't say otherwise!) I roll my eyes at the ceremony of award shows as much as anyone but it's impossible to deny that the impact they have has weight and purpose. When you hear of an Oscar Award winning actor, you assume that actor has expert handling of material with weight. When you hear 'Game of the Year', you think "Oh, I guess this team has a spare 50k for a re-release."

This past game awards saw the coveted and hallowed title be awarded to Elden Ring, of all games; but do you think that's really going to stop God of War releasing a 'Game of the year' Edition? Maybe, maybe not. And I know that in the eyes of the marketing team it's utterly harmless; we all know they mean "This is the version with all the DLC and stuff thrown in; pick it up now"; but companies have managed to find ways around plain lying to people! Fallout New Vegas has it's 'Ultimate Edition', Assassin's Creed has coined the team 'Complete Edition', because that franchise will never being seeing the light of an awards show after how much those developers fell off. There are alternatives. Does it sound as impressive as announcing that your game was the single best received of the year it came out in? No, but nor should it. That's a sash you should have to earn to wear!

But there are dozens of award bodies in gaming, I hear you say. What makes Geoff Keighley's 'Ultimate Game of the Year' award any more legitimate than any of the others?  Effort and passion and collaboration with the entire community. Any two-bit rag can throw it's worthless opinion piece where it wants to, but only the Game Awards reaches out to critics, and respected industry figures and then throws us the last 10% of the vote in a pity-play. Only the Game Awards are elected by a committee of everyone, making the Ultimate Winner the champion of all hearts, overall. I don't think there is any other award body in gaming, in any entertainment industry that I can think of, which attempts to bring everyone together like that... (except for Strictly Come Dancing; but that shows rigged, obviously.) It's about time someone laid a standard of use down on the most affluential title in gaming, and give that badge it's sheen again.

Game Marketing in 2022

Where are my ads at? 

It seems like a dour and stuffy topic, doesn't it? 'The marketing secrets of the industry!' hardly the fun topic of a dumb and silly blog. But I always think it's very interesting to try and tap into the most modern zeitgeist of the video game marketing world to determine exactly what it is that those who try to sell us our games think of us and our wants; that way we can figure out exactly when we're being horrendously talked down to by an army of professional snake oil merchants. Because it is by no means a solid art, marketing, and we can see it change in swathes through not-that-fine of a lens if only we stop and take a peak. And what better example is there of the general trends of industry marketing then observing a recent award show chock-full of trailers from the best of the best across the space? As such, I am going to be talking about the Geoff Keighley show yet again in order to extract salient tactics and techniques.

First I want to talk about the substance of trailers and how they've changed. Time was whenever there was a new video game trailer for an announced title, all that meant was a cinematically rendered animation depicting some vivid conception of how slick the development team wished they could make the game. Pre-rendered cinematics were the speciality of out-house marketing teams and something of a plague of the industry around about the time that players and payers began doubting the validity of marketing material after being burned for the umpteenth time. This Game Awards, however, saw a nearly universal dedication to either showing straight gameplay to us all, or mixing cinematics with a snippets of gameplay to keep us all on the hook. Even when we're talking about games that clearly had very little to show for themselves yet, gameplay still took precedent for most ad spots.

Of course there was some exceptions. Death Stranding 2 presented what we can probably assume will be in-game cinematics, which I'm fine with. Company of Heroes 3 threw an entirely live-action trailer that depicted people dressed in World War 2 garb- which I felt nothing for but I guess fans already know what those sorts of games are going to look like by now, don't they? DONTNOD's name game was rather sparse on the gameplay presentation, but for the most part the games we saw brought the goods. This probably comes to match the general sentiment as cinematic only trailer lack the ability to spark the interest and imagination of the audience like they once did. People write off and forget about cinematics in the modern age; but of course most marketing executives got their start working in out-house marketing firms, so those in-house marketing execs still funnel a little cinematic action into most trailers on the trail end just to keep their old buddies in the black.

Perhaps it's my recent discovery of Left 4 Dead which has made me especially cognizant of this other little trick, or just my coincidental familiarity with most every reoccurring franchise revealed, but there seems to have been a uptick in clever uses of musical cues for sequel reveals. Musical motifs and callbacks work very well in cutting through the cynicism of the watching eye and breaking through to the unspoken emotional response centers in our brains; because it's hard to roll your eyes and go "Uh, they're doing another one of these instead of something new!" When instead of seeing a familiar game with a number at the end, you're struck with a familiar cord that instantly reminds you of how you felt playing the original. It's a clever little trend of marketing that should probably be used a bit more, it's pretty effective.

Supergiant's cinematic trailer was already pretty exciting because theirs is a pretty storied studio, I think pretty much everyone was at the edge of their seat trying to figure out where their new game direction would lead. Of course, in hindsight we literally see a wreath around the new character's head just like was present in the first Hades, but still- many Supergiant titles don't look excessively different from one another. (They've got a style and it's a strong one.) But the real moment of excitement was when the new character was revealed and the trailer strung the musical cues of the original Hades, synching up that dawning moment of realisation for the entire audience; very clever. Death Stranding 2 also did this, having a whistled version of the incredible 'BB's Theme' that I know still tickles the spine of every Death Stranding fan everytime they hear it. Personally, I was struck with those chills but I couldn't place where I knew it from straight away, which prickled up my excitement and invested me fully in the trailer footage. See, it works! 

Of course not every technique for securing attention is high brow, and not all of it is especially new in execution. Sometimes the very best way to ensure that people flock to your game's trailer is to hire on a famous face with a following and allowing that following to follow that face to your product. Celebrity casting has become something of a scourge of late, which I've commented on previously, for the way that it forgoes the 'right person for the job' in favour of the 'most expensive person'. Point-in-case: Chris Pratt for Mario. But honestly, you can turn to any animated movie of the past thirty years and see this in play. In gaming that phenom is lesser, most developers don't have the spare capital to hire big names, but the AAA studios and big developer backers just can't enough of digitised actors lending their voices and faces to games, even in the modern age.

Death Stranding 2 is obviously flooded with famous faces rendered to a super-real fidelity, but I do have a tendency towards accepting these casting choices. When Kojima hires someone, it's because he wants to utilise their unique talents and we really do see that with the main cast of the first Death Stranding. So I give them a pass. But does Idris Elba need to be in Cyberpunk's new DLC? Does he really have a talent only he can provide this performance that a proper voice actor can't? It's really hard to say if he does or doesn't at this point, and maybe I'm just tired of seeing him everywhere, but that casting did raise my eyebrow with scepticism just a little. And then there's the awfully named 'Crime Boss: Rockay City' which seems to have sunken so much capital in acquiring famous actors and de-aging their faces for character models that the team forgot to hire a studio to actually sell the game. I have no idea what the game even is beyond a shooter; so a mixed bag in that department, I'd say.

Overall I'm liking the marketing trends that we're seeing, for the fact alone that they make for entertaining and fun showcase events. The age of guided narrator walkthroughs feels a little old-school, faux-real squad talk is a relic, rightly dead and buried; what the game trailers of today are doing feel sleek, modern and refined. Which isn't to say I loved everything we've been seeing recently. Trailers are still largely being cut together as 'teaser trailers' for their entire marketing run. Most video game companies haven't figured out how to do a 'story trailer' in a manner that actually highlights the story. But we're making good innovations in the right direction. Now all we need is for the games that are planning to flood their audience with microtransactions a week after launch to declare that upfront so we know not to get excited for their games. (Looking at you, Crash Team Rumble!)

The Game Awards were wild

 Wild times

So the Game Awards just passed us by about a day back, and if you're looking for where my predictions stack up to the actual winners; just know that the entire event was rigged by bad actors who wanted me, specifically, to look stupid. That is my story and I'm riding it off a mountain for all I care. But apart from the actual awards I came away from the screen several times fanning myself down and asking; Is this the single best line-up of game announcements we've had at a Game Awards show? And you know what, I actually think it might be. Geoff teased how there were no leaks before the show and he wasn't kidding; the amount of serious material that got dropped out the blue for this show spun my head around like a spinning top and just about had me wolf calling in the middle of the night. Oh yeah, the show ran from 0:30 to 4:00 over here, thanks so much for your very full speech, Christopher Judge.

But even if we actually account for the enduring awards themselves as well, I have to say that the organisers really pulled all the stops out to make this show the true 'Oscars of Gaming'. We had Al Pacino rock up in order to tell us all about how much he watches his kids play games, (at least the man didn't lie to us, I can respect that) Michael Madsen was there promoting a game he's in (With a just terrible title) Keegan-Micheal Key performed some eye-watering comedy. (in that; I wanted to cry and run away) Pedro Pascal turned up and Léa Seydoux was in the crowd, there were more movie stars than voice actors in the crowd. It was a veritable 'who's who' of famous faces, and the kicker is, they were all actually present for the night. Except for Idris Elba; but we'll get to him later. For those that seek validation in the amount of recognisable people who give your show events the time of day, the Game Awards gave you exactly what you wanted. For the rest of us... well, we were eating good too!

The amount of incredible high quality game announcements threatened to put the E3 game shows out of business for sheer lack of filler fluff inbetween the absolute juggernauts. The E3 organisers are desperate to put on a show next year, but I don't why they would even bother with what Geoff manages to line up nowadays. We kicked off the showcase with a freakin' Ken Levine game reveal! 'Judas' looks exactly like a direct follow-up to Bioshock in all the best ways, I love it already. And there's still the interesting conversations about narrative that the game apparently wants to have with us all, whenever it releases- or if it ever does. And we finally got a look-in to what Jedi Survivor is up to, after Disney couldn't manage to secure any footage for their showcase. And it looks like Cal has a lot more movement options, and ridable mounts, in more open looking environments and his very own new Lightsaber broadsword with hand-guard, function. They're still not showing us what the equivalent of the Inquisitor fights are even going to resemble yet, which makes me deeply curious for something very special; and I still have no clue who Bacta-tank man is. Sure, doesn't look like Galen Marek to me, though! (15 points from all the bad lore-guessing channels.) 

What really shocked me were the surprise sequel announcements. I mean sure, we knew Armoured Core was getting a resurgence. (I assumed that after all the Soulsbourne stuff that FromSoftware would go for a soft reboot, but no it's just: AC6) I had to actually deconvince myself midway through the trailer to Remnant 2 that it was actually Remnant 2. "No way" I said. "This game looks way more visually compelling then that original game ever was. The gameplay does seem familiar though. And that hat... wait a minute!" And then there was the real sequel shocker- from a supremely talented indie studio who have never made a sequel ever before in their entire lives; get ready for Hades 2! I guess all it took was for their game to win a Game Award for the team to go "Yeah, we can probably stick around with this property for another outing." (I'm beyond hyped.)

Other huge announcements from the night come from the fact that, against all odds, Death Stranding 2 was revealed right the heck out of nowhere! Hideo Kojima is very much working on a totally different title at the same time, but DS2 was just bubbling back there waiting for a reveal through which I, lover and obsessive regrading the first masterpiece, can ascertain literally nothing. We see Fragile get attacked whilst presumably trying to project Louise, and it seems like she dies; but then she appears very much not dead later on in the trailer wearing her signature gear. There wasn't a single BT, or mention of a BT, in the trailer; and in fact no one appears to be wearing Timefall resistant gear. Sam appears to be much older and Fragile appears to be... well... alive; which is also confusing given her apparently reduced life-span in the first game and- wait, come to think of it... the Fragile who was being attacked is wearing a tank-top; and she has absolutely no Timefall scars on her body whatsoever. So is that a- what? Flashback from before Death Stranding 1? So many delicious and curious questions!

And Baldur's Gate 3 got itself a release date for it's full release and it's... phew, it is a way's away. August 2023 ain't exactly around the corner, not in the slightest. At least we got ourselves a reveal trailer that did away with the pomp and deception and just showed us pretty much everything the early access has in store for us over the next half year. Half Orcs and Paladins- and Aasimar! Who could ask for more? Well we're getting it anyway. Minsc is coming to the full release, as well as Jaheira for people who still remember who she is. (I remember; I'm just being facetious) I can't pretend I enjoy being led along for another bunch of months when it seems like we're only due maybe a couple of updates to tide us over, but I guess the longer this game spends in the oven the better the final release will be. The game is on the right track so far, Larian know what they're doing. Even if they didn't announce a specific day, which is kind of like saying "Prepare for a delay."

But the big moment at the end was perhaps the most surprising. I think we all knew that Elden Ring wasn't exactly going to sweep for merit of it being a less-than-standard game when God of War: Ragnarok was right there. 'New Thing' bias felt like it had a part to play in the amount of awards that Ragnarok won, including best soundtrack- which even the composer who collected the award seemed rightfully confused by. I think we all expected Ragnarok to sweep the show by the ending credits, go home with a big fat 'Ultimate Game' crown and start working on this year's only legit 'Game of the Year' Edition. But upset of upsets! Elden Ring squeaked itself in the big award out of the top turnbuckle- and in an instant all those normies that turned to the latest FromSoftware as the new 'popular' game only to be burnt by it's creative narrative and unrelenting difficulty; dissolved in a single frustrated puff!

The real winner at the end of the night, however, was Bill Clinton; after a 15 year old boy managed to sneak his ass onto the stage at the end of the night and leapfrog Miyazaki's moment with a random hasty joke about dedicating this award to his 'reformed dogs-body Rabi: Bill Clinton'. A stunt which got the boy arrested and quickly released, but which made Geoff Keighley's most ambitious event yet feel like a joke in security. I can imagine Keighley is probably a little devastated right now; but he shouldn't be after giving us the single most packed Game Awards ever with the most high quality announcements from start to end. I know there are some being coy, calling it a positive to middling showing, but I think those people aren't quite remembering how dire some previous shows got; this was the most consistently entertaining night since the show's conception; and I know Geoff is going to spend the rest of his career chasing this high again. Well done, man; you've peaked.

Game of the Year 2022 predictions

 Let me glance into my crystal ball...

It's about that special time of year. The temprature drops to nigh-on unbearable, every time I go out I come back crying with my fingers dropping off, and everyone in the game's industry gathers around for a game of "Nuh-uh! I deserve that award more!" A truly silly and reductive exercise when, if you think about, the real reward of making a great game is the substantial bonus you get for it being successful. At the end of the day, what else matters; you dig? I ain't going afford no down payment on my flat with your ugly little angel statue. What's that even made out of? Plastic? I can't melt down and flog no plastic! It's all meaningless pomp and grandeur for the sake of keeping up appearances for an outside world that couldn't care less about looking in. But it's funny, so we abide by it regardless. Now I'm going to be honest; I ain't played a single game that came out this year, so this is going to be an especially uninformed lightning round of predictions hence forth. 

Firstly is the big one, the knock-out punch, the daddy of them all; Ultimate Game of the Year. The line-up that features such titles as 'Plague Tale: Requiem', 'Elden Ring', 'Xenoblade Chronicles 3', (What a shocker!) 'Stray', (Really?) and even a novelty candidate like 'Horizon: Forbidden West'! Okay, I'm being mean for sure; but we all know Horizon doesn't have a chance in hell at the reward, not when it's own publishers are dead set in ensuring the games do as badly as they possibly can. I wouldn't be surprised if Horizon's publishers are actively bribing the game awards not to vote for them, just to cater to their own sick, self-destruction fetishes. And of course, then there's the game which is already going to get the award; God of War: Ragnarok. I'm more of an Elden Ring, FromSoft kind of guy, so they get my vote; but make no mistake, I know Ragnarok is going to win this one. It's just a too big to fail kind of game.

Game direction is a funny category, with unclear rules, and an even more unclear line up. We've got Horizon, Elden Ring, God of War, Stray and-  Immortality? What the hell is Immortality? Apparently it's this year's latest 'live action interactive story' game, which certainly triggers my fight or flight response just off rip. But assuming 'Best Game direction' counts for the most interesting concept, I'll go with 'Stray'. The cat game fits better here than it does for 'ultimate game' in my opinion. Best narrative is practically the same line-up except 'Stray' is replaced by Plague Tale. It's funny how incestuous all these top awards tend to get, isn't it? How far down the list do we have to go until something unique pops up? Now again, I ain't played a single one of these games so my guess is going to have to be random. I heard good things about Plague Tale and I know that's a largely narrative driven action game, so I'll pick the rat game.

Art Direction is where things get good and subjective, and when we get a new contender to pick through. Elden Ring, God of War, Stray, Horizon and- Scorn? Good lord, Scorn is up for a game award? At least it's in the only category that game could dream of winning. And you know what, I'm willing to actually give them this. The art direction is perfectly atmospheric, even if every thing else fails to carry a satisfying experience. Scorn gets the vote. Which brings us to the music round! Ohh, very interesting; Sonic didn't even make the line-up! Plague Tale, Elden Ring, God of War, Xenoblade and Metal: Hellsinger? Pretty cool; Metal: Hellsinger is actually a rythym action FPS title which delights in it's metal music roots, it would almost be an embarrassment if they didn't win! But lets go crazy; even though I haven't heard a single track; I'm picking Xenoblade. That's right, I'm a maverick; I can't be stopped!

On the same wavelength, we have 'best Audio design', for which the options are 'Modern Warfare 2' (A COD in the major awards? Who'd have thunk?), 'Elden Ring', 'God of War', 'Gran Turismo 7' and 'Horizon'. For which my only frame of reference is actually COD. So, shockingly to myself, I'm going to vote for COD. What is wrong with me? I don't know. Best Performance is a big one, but an easy one; lacking any eight-foot pale-skinned vampiress women, I have to go with the tall pale man instead. Kratos, Christopher Judge, final answer. Games for Impact is a bit funny this year, as not a single game featured caused enough of a splash to qualify for this award outside of the game reviewer scene. I'd only heard of 'As Dusk Falls' and 'Citizen Sleeper', which means I guess I have to flip a coin- Citizen Sleeper, sure, whatever.

Now for the funny categories. Best ongoing game? The same options as last year. But why, there's so many new Live services! You've got Babylon's Fall- oh that shut down... Final Fantasy VII: The First Solider'- oh that shut down... Umm... Avengers? Nah, I guess I'm just going to go the high road and say... uh... Fort- no. Gen- nah. Dest-Ap-fantasy? Crap... Final Fantasy, final answer. I have no clue. Now the indie game of the year is actually pretty competitive this year, we've got Stray, Cult of Lamb, Sifu, Tunic and Neon White; all big splash indie titles that hit the map hard. Personally, I have to give it to Sifu, but pretty much every entry here is worth an award; they're all great. And best mobile game has... wait what? Apex, Genshin, Marvel Snap (hmm), Tower of Fantasy (Ah, Sci-fi Genshin. Of course...) and... Diablo Immortal? Are you... Geoff is happy sharing the same stage as those literal vampire slugs? I don't... just wow. I pick Apex, but it is a crime for that game to share the same stage as Diablo...

Who is getting best community support? It all really depends on who is in what community and which game commands the most interaction, but I'm going to go the high road and pick FF. I have a bone to pick with the 'accessibility options' award. An RPG designed to be playable by the blind got snubbed in favour of a car game last year, and now I'm mad so I'm going to just say Monkey Island. I don't know what options it has, I'm just bitter. Bonelab's is the best VR game I've ever seen, so there's no real reason to even acknowledge the other games in the VR section; which will shovel onto the next big category; best action game. Very curious this one, for the range of options available. Bayonetta, Sifu, Neon White and Modern Warfare 2... (There's a Turtles game but that's not even really in the running anyway.) Neon White shouldn't even technically be applicable, it's puzzle platformer with shooting, COD is a shooter; so this really brings it down to Bayonetta and Sifu. I haven't actually heard anyone talk about Bayonetta 3, (beyond that controversy) so I'll just default to Sifu.

Best Action/Adventure game is where we get even more competitive! Plague Tale, God of War, Horizon... and Stray plus Tunic? Stray? Okay... whatever. As much as I'd love to put down Horizon, I really think it deserves a serious consideration here. Only a consideration, my money still goes towards God of War, but I want Horizon to know I'm thinking about her... Best Role Playing game is straight nasty with what I'm seeing. Elden Ring, Pokemon, (Arceus not Scarlett and Violet) Triangle Strategy, Xenoblade 3 and... Live a Live? Wait... isn't Live a Live a remaster? It is, that original came out in 1994? Was the award ceremony that hard up for RPG games? Seriously? Also, the spin off Pokemon gets a vote but the mainline gets snubbed? Yikes, that is some hard luck, buddy! Elden Ring gets my vote.

Best Fighting game actually has enough choices to exist this year! Isn't that nice? We can choose between DNF Duel (Never heard of it) Jojo's Bizzare Adventure: All Star Battle R, (Another remaster but I'll allow it) King of Fighters, Multiversus and Sifu. Okay, look. Sifu probably deserves this one. And Jojo doesn't have rollback Netcode. But I'm sorry, I don't have a choice. Fandom dictates I must nominate Jojo; there's no free will in this decision. I'm guided by higher Stand powers. Best Family game actually surprised me, because I never even knew a Kirby game came out this year. (Did you know that?) Splatoon, Lego Stars Wars, Mario and Rabbids plus Nintendo Switch Sports came up to face it... There's a Nintendo Switch Sports? And it only came out now? How much is it... £30?! Screw that- Mario gets my vote... damn...

Simulation Strategy is a broad and spacious topic, as evidenced from the fact we're picking from Dune Spice Wars (didn't know that came out already) Mario and Rabbids, Total War: Warhammer III, Two Point Campus and Victoria III. I think you'd be hard pressed convincing anyone knowledgeable that those are all the same genre game; but Warhammer is the only one there I've been personally interested in. (Not enough to actually go out and buy it but... hey-) Which brings us to the very verge of the abyss, the point at which all the topics become less and less interesting. What's the single best Sports game? How about Blood Bowl III? That isn't out yet? Okay than, Forza. That's not an option? Damn, you're really backing me up against a wall here... Olliolli world! I've never heard of it but... that's why I know every other game on that list is total trash. Oh, and Mulitversus has the best mutliplayer; that category isn't even worth an internal debate.

Content Creator of the year seems a bit bloody loaded, doesn't it? Ludwig and his girlfriend are seperate nominees, but Charlie is nowhere to be seen? Scandal! Shenanigans! Chicanery! I expect Lud to hand his award over to the Moist Supremacy the second after receiving his award! Best 'debut' indie kind of feels a bit reaching if you ask me. Neon White and Stray already got their run of the big leagues, I want to surrender this round to Tunic, Norco and Vampire Survivors. And though it was a flash-in-the-pan hit, I think the very rudimentary nature of Vampire Survivors makes it my vote. It's nice to see that even the simple games can run gambit of pop culture.

Ohhhh! Best Adaption? How tantalising... Uncharted is just, a laughable contender, get that movie out of here. Cuphead has it's fans, I'm not one of them. Sonic the Hedgehog 2 looked fine, didn't care for it. Arcane or Cyberpunk Edgerunners? Now that is a very tough line-up! Arcane is a visual masterpiece, but Edgerunners slips into it's anime skin so deftly. This is going to be subjective as heck, but the cultural wave of Edgerunners has effected me deeper than Arcane ever did. I know they're both top tier adaptations, but I can't just snub my main girl Rebecca. She might just climb out of the show and shoot me if I do, you know how she gets!

Most anticipated games is as loaded as an award can get; celebrating the thoughts mafia for a good marketing campaign. And any selection of games is going to leave someone feeling shunted! But out of Final Fantasy XVI, Resident Evil 4, Hogwarts Legacy, Starfield and The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom; this really isn't as easy of a selection as it was last year. I guess I'd end up picking Zelda, but only because Tears of the Kingdom has been on my radar years before I knew it's name; I want to own all of these games at some point in the future.

Esports time! Esports time- lighting round- initiate! Who could be so callous as to ask what the best Esports game is when the answer is clearly the only Esports game responsible for finally ending Kony 2012, thank you, Valorant, for your service! (Overwatch 2 doesn't even get a nomination? Ouch.) Best Athlete is a tough one, because I'm 90% certain that Finn Anderson is just Oleksander Kostyliev with his chin-strap shaved off. But I gotta go with my man Lee 'Faker'; he's giving me a thumbs up! He knows he deserves my vote! I love me some 'best Esports team' choices, especially when FaZe clan seems to be listed twice, only their second nomination is under the name 'LA Thieves' for some reason... Well, FaZe is the only Esports team in this lineup to meet and collaborate with Batman in order to solve a crime, so it has to be them. (I'm not lying, look it up.) Esports Coaches are looking gruffer this year. I'm pretty sure Andrii would mug me if he ever saw me in real life and I think Robert Dahlstrom already has. Only Go Dong-bin had the good graces to submit himself a professional headshot with a fine night-sky tie. That is a man I'd be happy to give my wallet to as he held me at knife point! And Finally we have best Esports event- a meaningless competitor, as I always pick the competition with the most distinct colour scheme. All the others are close to blue on the colour scale, League of Legends was red. The LOL event was the best, empirically.

Which marks the end of my utterly informed and intelligent predictions for the next game awards, if any of my predictions end up going astray, it's reality which is wrong, not me. This year I am proud to say I haven't played a single game that I judged, (which released this year) and only the adaptations were made with full knowledge of what each product contained. If that isn't cause for pride, I don't know what is. I cannot wait, like of you, for the night of the event wherein we'll spend every moment complaining about the awards and waiting for the video game reveals between each award. I wonder what painful celeb cameo will disgrace our eyes this ye- oh wait, it's going to be Chris Pratt, isn't it? Yep, I already know. And he won't even be bothered to show up, he's going to give us a pre-recorded message. Urg; I'm going to start actually disliking this man by the time the Mario movie comes out, I just know it.

Game Awards 2021

 With Activision pre-removed

Just love that you scheduled this for a weekday so that I have to sleep and go to work two hours after this show is over, Geoff, but luckily I was stuffed in a hazy nightmare half of yesterday so I'll probably be fine. That nightmare may have come, however, because of the mere ambiguity which the whole 'will they-won't they' Game Awards was embroiled with alongside Activision. Keighley being sly about his words, not confirming or denying anything, even when the rest of the industry was preparing it's sacrificial pitchforks and funeral pyre for the embattled CEO. But now we have it on decent authority that Activision will not be there. And yes, I'm writing in future tense because this is going to be an actively written blog and it's currently t-minus thirty until the events. So I'm just going to play Hollow Knight for the next half an hour before the disappointment begins.

Time skip

First I have to tell you that I was here for the entire bloody event, so that's why I had a day worth of notes to go over and why this is going up on a Saturday. But you know how much I adore writing about this goofy award show, so I wasn't going to miss it for the world and all of it's stars. Even if that meant suffering the pre-show before the real show and seeing the slow trickle of consent. Although it is good that I did catch that, because it allowed me to see if the first of my highly informed predictions hit their mark.

Games for Impact, the Oscar bait category, went to... Life is Strange: True Colours? What in the... did DONTNOD finally figure out how to write a satisfying conclusion or something, why does everyone go on about that game like it's the second coming of Christ? Meh, the stars were misaligned, I mark this misprediction down to celestial phenomena.

But it gave me enough disappointment to stick around for the reveal of possible one of the most poor taste ideas for a game I've ever heard of- Texas Chainsaw Massacre The Video game. It sounds like a joke, I promise you it's not. They went us to run around in a competitive multiplayer co-op game cutting each other into chunks and happily treading over the corpses of your friends. At the very least we can rest assured in the fact that 'based on a true story' is utter nonsense. At best you could say that 'the spirit which birthed the movie was summoned in reaction to unrelated true events' but that's about the extent of truth behind that. I'll probably have more to say later.

Next the awards utterly surprised me, as they rattled through the entire Esports category in the pre-show as though this wasn't the highlight of the entire night! Well my prediction went like this- Athlete of the year went to Simple. (Tenz was clearly robbed, I call foul) Top team went to Natus Vincere, a team who I don't even remember seeing on the ballot of unrecognisable gibberish, so it must have been a fraudulent write in. Best event went to League 2021, I don't know what 'The International' did so wrong except be an objectively pathetic title for an event. And finally there is top coach... Which went to KKoma!!! Hell yeah, baby, I knew he'd stick it out for me! If there's someone you can rely on, it's Kim! I'm on the board, Boyah!

There were some more footage bits thrown here and there, Telltale reared their heads once again to show something that was not The Wolf Among us 2, so I guess that was just a shared delusion all of us had when that was announced. Evil West also got some gameplay, but I mistook the game for 'Weird West' and so I got first excited and then immediately disappointed. Oh and Best Audio Design went to Forza Horizon 5. What did I say for that again? Resident Evil... damn, I'm not really off to a great start yet, am I?

It was the last announcement of the Preshow that shook me to my core, however, in that it the demon hostess led in by calling it an announcement that we "Didn't see coming". I was midplaying Hollow Knight and half heartedly answered "Oh, Persona 5 PC", only to drop my controller when I saw the ATLUS logo pop off. Imagine how shocked I was, to see that the game announced was bloody a Persona 4 Arena Ultimax port for PC. THE SONG SHE REFERENCED ISN'T EVEN FROM PERSONA 4! IT WAS MADE FOR 5! You might as well just mail me a severed middle finger, ATLUS, because I'm feeling the insult from here.

And thus starts the mainshow, with it's confusing number of mainstream celebrities present. Some made sense, like Giancarlo Esposito. (He's in a game, afterall) But Sting? Simu Liu? Ben Schwartz? Jim Carrey? I get it, Geoff, you have famous friends: no one cares. Oh, and that Activision comment that everyone was waiting for from Geoff? Just as noncommittal as I expected. He disavowed 'predatory practices' which, no-duh, that's the baseline stance of most people, Geoff, it would have been more news worthy if you revealed that you were completely behind all this stuff. Then he aimed his ire towards 'online people', making it almost seem he was really commenting on the harsh backlash that Activision had received from the Internet. Not your best speech, Keighley, it has to be said. Also, why did Geoff sound like Dutch during all of that talk? I was half expecting to hear "The game Industry will be better, son, but you got to have some goddamn FAITH! Just give the industry some time to make some money, make some noise, then get the hell out of Uncle Sam's hair and sail... to Tahiti!"

Two awards rattled past for best Indie game and best indie debut, and they ended up both going to 'Kana: Bridge of Souls'. Which again leaves me down two guesses. Crap. And then Hellblade 2 showed off some cinematic gameplay which blurred the lines between cutscenes and gameplay. All that was somewhat impressive until Keanu Reeves dethroned it later during the same event. (Tough luck Ninja Theory, No one ever expects the Reeves.) Star Wars Eclipse deserves it's own blog, and it's getting one. What doesn't deserve much more talk is the Wonder Woman game which was announced, because it was literally just an announcement, a model reveal, and nothing else. Thank you for that nothingness, Monolith.

Best Performance was the first time of the night I felt truly vindicated, as our 8 foot vampire queen Lady Dimitrescu actually won the award and secured me another point! Thank you Lady D, I always knew you were bigger than the hype. In a blink-and-you'll-miss-it moment, Alan Wake II was announced, although it's so far away that this felt like more of a preventative measure to protect against leaks than anything substantial. We had a Sonic II trailer, Knuckles sounds sexy. Not sure what to do with that fact. 'Horizon: Forbidden West' still looks great, as evidenced by the extended trailer we got. (was that the purpose of that trailer, just to remind us that the game existed? We know, we're waiting.) And then a moment I've been waiting years for; Final Fantasy 7 Remake was announced for PC!!!! HELL YEAH. It's Epic exclusive, but I can wait a year: I just wanted to know that it was coming! Also, the framerate was kinda spotty in the trailer for some parts, thought I'd call that out.

The Best Action game of the year came at us next, and it was a bit of a surprise considering the game in question is a PS5 exclusive, meaning only .05% of the gaming populace even had a chance to play it, and of course it was Returnal. Which means Deathloop didn't get my only pity prize, shame. Of course, this was immediately followed up by two reveals in a row, the first off which was a massive bait and switch. Talking all the big words about some 'Silent Hill Visonary' only to give us a comedy horror with Slitterhead? (I didn't fall in love with the trailer at all, to be honest) And then Arryn Flynn, formerly from Bioware, popped up to throw Nightingale at us, which is a survival game with some of the most heavily conflicting stylistic choices I've seen in a hot minute. From the little we've seen thusfar, I think the design sucks almost as bad as the idea of another bloody crafting survival game. Oh, and Gollum is looking worse the more we see of it, that latest trailer seemed almost last gen.

Cuphead saved the rut the show was falling into at this point, with their full 1930's musical routine celebrating their 'Delicious Last Course' (same joke as last time, but still a little cute cute) which will be an opportunity for me, at least, to finally get into Cuphead. (Liked having the Alastor-esque announcer voice in the trailer, very fun) But then came the big one, the reveal of that Sonic game which I assumed to not be real. I mean, I saw the teaser, but then Colours Ultimate came out and I just assumed the teaser was for that mess. But oh how wrong I was, because Sonic Frontiers is it's own game and it seems to be bringing something very special to the formula: the open world! I cannot rightly convey the amount of times I've wondered about an Open world sonic, and though this will undoubtedly not do as much with that idea as I wish it could, that the step is even being taken is a strong start. But also someone call Nintendo because the trailer was beat for beat an attempt to simulate the hype around Breath of the Wild's reveal.

Best Art Direction came around next, and it's recipient was- Deathloop... what? I mean seriously- what? The game that mimicked grindhouse- got best art direction. I know it seems like I have some sort of vendetta against Deathloop, and I may have actually developed one from that snub alone. Damn. Next was the player's voice, which was the only vote I didn't contribute to, and that landed on Halo infinite. (Pretty sure the campaign for that game was less than 3 days old by the time of the award ceremony, but sure people, call it the best of the year.) Best RPG was rushed by, and thank god it didn't go to Cyberpunk. (though Cyberpunk should have never been in the running in the first place.) The winner was ultimately Tales of Arise. What did I say again? Shin Megami Tensei V? Wow, this isn't my year. Best Score goes to Neir Replicant, meaning Cyberpunk won 0 awards this year. (wow, that sucks. But is totally fair.) And I whiffed that one too. Content creator of the year went to Dream, so I guess that was what the mask meant. Best multiplayer game went to 'It Take Two' (Justice for Josef) for which Keighley gave the snide comment "I've learned not to give him a mic." (coward) and Best mobile game went to Genshin Impact, so I've managed not to get a single right guess in that entire block of awards. You wanna know what's even worse? With my coin toss for Best Narrative Award I was against Guardians of the Galaxy and It Takes Two. I went with Josef's game, and reality sided with the Guardians. (It hurts to be this bad, it really does.)

I'm going to talk about the next bunch of game reveals in their own blogs later, but what I really want to call out is the best action adventure game. I guessed wrong, no surprise, but Metroid Dread ended up taking it with Doug Bowser accepting the reward. Why was the head of Nintendo America snubbing the actual developers from picking up their award? Couldn't they make it? Because Doug didn't explain a damn thing. (First Bowser steals the Princess, no he's stealing artistic credit. Despicable.) Also, there is a Dune game coming out, but it's a 4x strategy game. (Pretty sure we already have like 3 of those already.)

Tiny Tina's Wonderland found all that footage that Randy Pitchford vetoed for E3 so that he could tour a movie set. It was okay, I think I found the woefully ill-advised movie set-tour more memorable in it's sheer unadulterated cringe. Among Us VR is a thing, because trends can't just die anymore. Spiders is shooting out yet another self contained RPG, proving they are every bit the studio Bioware could have been. And Metal: Hellsinger looks suspiciously like a rhythm action DOOM. I don't mean in concept alone, I mean the entire feel of the game from the UI to the movement, made me think of 2016 DOOM.

Best Ongoing game and community support went to Final Fantasy XIV, of course it did, and I picked neither category right. (Slowly losing the will to live over here.) And Epic Games announced a game which very much looks like their own competitor to their own game, Rumbleverse. It had no gameplay and it still looked like complete hot trash. Plague Tale 2 slithered onto stage to remind me that I haven't even started playing the original that I've had laying around for about a year now. (Really need to get to that) Dying Light 2 tried desperately to recreate that original Dead Island trailer, which famously was tonally alien to it's final game. The result was confusing and felt a little try hard. Crossfire X had a long drawn out trailer which looked better than it should, but still sort of felt completely identity-less. I think I've said it before, but Crossfire X looks and feels like that video game which is being played in the background in TV shows, a shooting game that exists to be everyone's stereotypical shooter game. In a total surprise to me, Supergiant Games got themselves a random send-up with a rendition of some of Bastion's amazing music. It was pretty good too, until it just turned into a song from Arcane, because everyone is still going crazy about that show.

Now I thought I had Innovation in accessibility in the goddamn bag; Vale is a game like no other! How was I supposed to know that Forza Horizon 5 added in sign language? What good even is that? So that people can follow along the incredibly in depth narrative of a bloody Forza Horizon game? Crap! It's all crap. At least GTFO showed up to alleviate some of that pain, with a 1.0 trailer that looked simply incredible. I love the idea and execution of GTFO and more of that game is soothing nectar to my soul.

There was some more stuff I want to talk about at a later date in detail, and a trailer for the live action HALO show which still looks tacky. I don't know if it's the lack of colourgrading, the handcam camera angles, or just a lack of heart behind the project, but every shot with a Spartan in it looked bad. There isn't a cinematic bone in this show's body yet. (I hope things change around.)

Best Game Direction went to Deathloop, there it is. (I'll spare you the essay on why that's unearned.) Best Esport went to League, bite me. Best Family game went to It Takes Two, again that's a couple's game. Best Fighting Game went to Guilty Gear Strive; OH THANK GOD I GOT ONE. But my elation was short lived, because Age of Empires IV got Best Strategy game. Oh, oh! But RE4 got best VR! Is this the sign of a late game comeback? (Very late game as the show is almost over) Most anticipated game went to Elden Ring for a second year straight. (Guess not) But at least we got an Elden Ring trailer to soothe that burn, and it was a story trailer! Of course, people still whined about lack of gameplay even after a whole month of raw player gameplay flooding the Internet, but people are idiots, what can you do?

Skipping those boring inbetween reveals, Keanu Reeves virtually took the stage in order to show his unbridled excitement for that mysterious Matrix experience which had been floating around the days leading up to the Game Awards. All we knew was that this was going to be a collab with Sony and was showing the power of the new Unreal 5 engine. Since then the thing has been playable for a day, and as I hinted earlier, it's visually mouth-watering. It looks truly incredible. And probably took way more effort than is feasible to recreate for a fully fledged game, but still this is impressive. Good job, lone Wachowski and crew!

And then came the finale, a Game Awards Orchestra medley rounded out by the game of the year. This year's medley was better than last year's, with tunes that actually flowing into one another and not  stop and starting so much, but the performance was still a little overshadowed by Imagine Dragons dragging out their rendition of 'Build That Wall' into Arcane's 'Enemy'. And the Ultimate Award itself? Yeah, I got that wrong as well, it went to It Takes Two. Well crap. At least we got to see Josef Fares take the stage in order to immediately swear twice and then ramble on about having kids and really loving them. Damn, this guy really is a treasure, isn't he? That little warmth of humanity will really keep me warm as I cry myself to sleep about the less then 5 predications I got right this year; what a travesty. Someone end me.

All in all, I found the show to be a load of fun, even if there was no huge showstopper reveal moment. The two years in the making announcement was merely, I assume, Star Wars Eclipse (which is disappointing already for a plethora of reasons) and the Matrix reveal event was already being built up before the show. I think the skits were totally tolerable this time around, although I recognise that I might have just been trained to think that after this year's E3 had some of the worst and most painful skit packages that I've ever had to endure. In comparison, the worst it got here was a few jokes going on too long, like the Simu Liu 'Halo' bit. (Okay that was pretty cringe from the offset in hindsight) But I'd prefer events like this over the vast majority of this year's E3, a definitely biased B+ For the night. Oh wait, actually the event was so long that I had no sleep and almost died the next day, make that B-. Not the best, not the worst, would have been better if they got THE RIGHT PERSONA GAME; YOU SONS OF-

Game Awards 2021 Time!!!

 You wa Shock!

So I've just finished watching the first episode of Stone Ocean, and right now it's important for me to get to my other duties for today which right now include... the game awards? Is it December already? Damn, this thing sneaks up on us out of nowhere, and with Geoff Keighley deciding to tee the audience up for inevitable disappointment with a talk of a reveal 'two years in the making', (First off, not your reveal to make Geoff, so that's kinda rude) it's about time I get to my favourite part of all of this nonsense- making a bunch of uneducated guess on an event for games I know little about in return for bragging rights. It all comes back to the bragging rights, baby! I haven't even been able to play most of this year's games thanks to the Scalper shut down of the supply lines atop of Covid atop of the stupidity happing specifically in my crappy country. (We're lucky if we can get sticks to feed our hearths down here, let alone a bloody PS5) But none of that is going to stop me being ignorant, so without further ado, here come the predictions. 

Deciding to give it all away in the very first moment, the first game that the Game Awards want people to vote on is the literally Game of the Year. Why would anyone stick around for other games after that? This years selection lacks an obvious winner too, with Metroid Dread, It Takes Two, Deathloop, Resident Evil: Village, Rachet & Clank: Rift Apart and Psychonauts 2 on the docket. What, Demons Souls doesn't count? (Was that in consideration last year? I can't remember) As expected, I haven't played a single one of these games so I can only base my suggestion off what I've seen others make of these games, and for each I have to say that interest seemed to droop off for a lot of these really rapidly. Deathloop was hardly popular for a month around my circles, It Takes Two had a bit more a presence, I didn't see anyone talk about Metroid Dread... Village and Rachet & Clank are two that have stood out this year, but Psychonauts has been the one winning universal praise from everyone I've seen. So I guess I'd pick Psychonauts 2, but it really seems like too niche of a game... I'm guessing that the award is going to go to RE8. (But if it goes to Psychonauts I'm going to literally kick myself)

Now comes best game direction, which is all about creative vision and innovation in game design. The list is actually exactly the same, except that Resident Evil 8 has been switched out for the AAA Roguelite Returnal, which I saw scoring quite a few fans from early on in this year. Rachet & Clank splashed huge waves with it's use of the next gen loading systems to instantly switch between world spaces, which is certainly making use of innovation and Pyschonauts is a total trip. It Takes Two certainly did bring co-op to the forefront once again, but I haven't heard enough of the specific techniques it uses to comment on that and Deathloop honestly falters on it's time-loop premise in exchange for something not nearly as strict and challenging as they led fans to believe with their trailers. I'm sure a lot would look on that as a good thing, but I see it as holding themselves back for what could have been a very interestingly balanced game that would have tugged on game design innovation. Another strong line-up, but I think for technological achievement (which I feel like is another category coming later, but I'll bite the bullet anyway) my money is on Rachet & Clank: Rift Apart.

Next is going to suck, because there is literally no way for this to brag my way through this one. Yeah, it's 'Best Narrative' time, and I haven't played a single one of these titles. There's no way you can pick up the feel for a narrative without experiencing it fully, and I'm sort of at a loss here. Pyschonauts, It Takes Two and Deathloop (really?) are here again, so I have a feeling we're going to a mulitaward winner this year again. (Psychonauts would be the kind of game to score it) Newcomers with this category are Life is Strange: True Colours and Guardians of the Galaxy, two games that I actually want to play and both for their stories. Again, I haven't a horse in this race whatsoever, but the power of ignorance demands I pick one. Straining myself for reviews I've heard for each title, I'd err towards something emotionally stirring (even though there's a specific category for that later) and though True Colours is literally about emotion, DONTNOD has never been able to stir anything in me aside from second hand embarrassment, so I'd lean towards Guardians. But hearing that to be an average game makes me just want to hedge my bets and pick Psychonauts 2, even having no idea what that game is even about... No, I can't be that ignorant- I pick Guardians of the- Life is- It takes- screw it, I'm flipping coins. Guardians, Heads, or Life, Tails. Guardians goes through against It Takes Two. And then It Takes Two wins. That's where my vote is at, people.

The next category seems a little mean on a few of the contestants, as it's 'best art direction', even though one of the entries is a clear art-house game. (Which, incidentally, I'd never even heard of until just now, funny.) You've got Deathloop, (Who did Arkane service in order to get nominated for every category?) Rachet et Clank, (Those furry physics are pretty sick) Psychonauts 2 (Truly trippy once it gets going) and Kena: Bridge of Spirits. (That's the Disney-tier animation game which looks like a literal movie in motion) But wait, didn't I say one of these games was a literal art-house project? That would be the last entry, The Artful Escape, which looks like an explosion of musical colour mad house creativity, it's basically a shoe in. But I've never heard of it. Kena still makes my animation loving heart soar, however, so despite the lacklustre narrative, I'm slapping the congratulatory hand on the square of their back. Kena is my vote.

Best Score and Music, huh. To think this is the earliest way that the Game Awards could find to stick Cyberpunk 2077 in the running is so sad. That was supposed to be the game to sweep this year completely, take every award, swing from the high halls in merriment. But reality is a stark bitch, ain't she? Guardians is here (I'm told the soundtrack is great and nostalgic, but 80's nostalgia feels egregiously overplayed right now), Nier Replicant is up for an award (but it's a remaster, so is that even fair? I don't think so. The music for Nier games might be incredible, but they've got to leave space for everyone else.) Also up is Deathloop (I hope Arkane invested in kneepads for the amount of time they had to spend on their knees in the planning stages of these awards) and then there's... wait, Artful Escape again? Literally it's two things were visuals and music. Alright then, screw it. Give the award to Artful Escape, it's determined to win something, and it probably deserves the Art award as well but the music one will be just as worthy. (I heard there's some Bowie influence in the game, so it might be worthy of the award, I don't know.)

Now it's Best Audio des- Deathloop again? Okay, at this point I'm starting to feel like this is a goddamn conspiracy; how the hell is Arkane up for this many awards!? Resident Evil: Village, Returnal and Rachet & Clank also return, but they seem like welcome friends in comparison to this drunk arse who won't leave the party. Personally, I can't really judge this category to any fair degree, nor do I know how newcomer, Forza Horizon 5, stacks up in these runnings. I would relent and just give it to Deathloop in pitty but- no, I'm getting stubborn now. This game better sweep every critic reward because it ain't getting no hand outs from me! I remember RE Engine Resident Evil Games being pretty stellar on sound design, so perhaps that carried over to RE8. In Dimitrescu I trust.

Oh thank god it's onto Best Performance so that now we can have- two entries for Deathloop. WHAT ARE YOU TRYING TO DO TO ME ARKANE? HOW IS THERE NOT A LIMIT ON THE AMOUNT OF ENTIRES PER GAME? Okay, deep breaths, deep breaths. Both the male and female lead of Deathloop are up for awards. I'm sure their performances are great, I've not heard much of them. Alex Chen's voice actress, Erika Mori, is up for this category, and I've definitely heard a lot of buzz from people who like her character. Giancarlo Esposito is up, because apparently we're giving big time TV actors a shot at videogame awards now. I haven't played Far Cry 6, but if I know Ubisoft's formula, he probably shows up for a grand total of about 8 scenes and hardly has any character apart from 'Evil dictator man who sorta/kinda loves his son'. No dice. And then there's Maggie Robertson as- wait I know that face. And that name... Oh my god it's Lady Dimitrescu. I didn't even realise she would be up for an award when I wrote that last paragraph. Well her performance, hand in hand with the character design, pretty much shook the Internet early this year so is there even a competition here? For whatever reason (I couldn't possibly speculate out-loud in public where I might be judged) Lady D is the queen of this year's gaming line-up. She easily gets my vote, no doubt about it.

Games for Impact. Always hated this section. What games are the most 'award bait' for you to cry all over. It's not that I find the games themselves manipulative in that manner, more that I find the expectation this award implies as an advocate for manipulation. Life is Strange is the only returning entry for this category, with all the others being the kind of out-there games you'd expect. Boyfriend Dungeon is an isometric dungeon crawler/VN where you date your anthropomorphised weapons- wait what? (Why do I actually want to play that now?) Chicory is a colouring picture book turned into a game. (I'm sure there's more emotional depth to it, but the game description gives away none of that.) No Longer Home is another introspective dive into someone's life through the home they inhabit. (I get get odd Gone Home vibes from it, strangely.) And the last I've actually heard of, Before Your Eyes. It's a game where you jump through moments in your life based on how long you can keep your eyes open (it's supposed to be played with eye tracker software) because the moment you blink the scene changes. Powerful in premise alone, I would say. Which makes it my top pick easily.

Best Ongoing game is pretty self explanatory, even though with the state of the industry right now, it feels like any and every game could be done for this award. Heck, could Beyond Good and Evil make it for it's excessively 'ongoing' development time? There are no surprise entries here. Warzone is present despite it's rampant cheater problem, but I guess it did manage to almost totally cannibalise Vanguard's early sales so it ain't dead yet. Fortnite and Apex Legends trade regular news slots for their Battle Royal supremacy. Final Fantasy XIV has overtaken the disgraced WOW for biggest MMO in the world, but I don't think WOW has ever been eligible for this award anyway so there's no change there. All that's left is Genshin Impact which, aside from all the cringey hate that it gets from people who never played it, still manages to be fun for me. So I pick Genshin.

Now is best Indie game, a admirable award that goes to those small studios who set out to make the best they can fuelled with the power of their talents. This years line-up is freakin' fierce with 5 games that could each easily score the award. 12 Minutes is the time loop game staring James McAvoy and Willem Defoe, hard to believe it's indie with that cast, I know. Unfortunately, it doesn't do anything crazy with it's premise like it could, and that hurts it's potential. Then there's Death's Door, which is sort of like a Souls-Like with an adorable art style and puzzle sections. Kind of. I heard it's worth a play, but nothing world shattering. Kena is back, and I completely forgot that was an indie game. Incredible what some people can make out there. Loop Hero was a bit of craze back when it came out, with a simple premise that resonated so much with people. And then there's my pick, Inscryption, which matches Card games with horror in a stylised functional amalgam of wonderfulness. I love it so much. Inscryption all the way!

And now we start slipping into categories I know little to nothing about and don't care much for anyway, such as Best Mobile game. Genshin, League of Legends: Wild Rift, Marvel Future Revolution and Pokémon Unite. I actually played a lot of Pokémon Unite (although I was on Switch) and I have to admit that the MOBA married up to Pokémon so much better than it had any right to. But I can't just not pick Fantasian, which is also here, for it's diorama RPG goodness. (Even if it is a poxxy Apple exclusive. Who the hell plays games on MAC?) And Best Community Support is around too, with what I swear is the exact same lineup as last year. Genshin, Apex, Destiny 2, Final Fantasy XIV, Fortnite and No Man's Sky. I care for none of them honestly. But at a stretch, No Man's Sky did trick me into doing a full playthrough with it's Mass Effect update. Good for them,

Innovation in accessibility is sponsored by Chevrolet, apparently, and despite Far Cry, Horizon, Guardians of the Galaxy and Rachet with Clank all having accessibility options chucked in them- (Gaurdian's Streamer mode is a ghastly experience for certain scenes) 'The Vale: Shadow of the Crown' is literally an RPG following a blind girl where everything is relayed through audio cues. That's just really freakin' cool, there's no real other competition to something that badass. So I pick The Vale. AR/VR is a curious one, because I don't see a single AR game in the line-up. Didn't realise Lone Echo even got a sequel, Sniper Elite VR totally passed me by (but that sounds pretty dope, actually) Hitman 3 being VR is, similarly, something I didn't hear about, 'I expect you to die 2' is... okay and Resident Evil 4 VR is a lovely mess. So I pick... damn... I guess Resident Evil 4, because why not.

Best Action game is tucked away a ways in the selection here and- oh look at that, Deathloop has made it's ignoble return. At least this is a category for which it's well suited. Easily beating Far Cry 6 and it's 'let's make the same game again' song and dance. Returnal made big waves for it's apparently great gameplay loop and Chivalry II practically revived the fervour many thought lost for online medieval hack and slash. Back 4 Blood wasn't the swansong we all wanted it to be, but it was no total disaster either. Still, I guess I'm duty bound to offer Arkane a break and give them the award. This is the only one you guys are getting out of me, so you can stop hounding every damn list with your whimperous begging. (No, that isn't a word, but I like it. I'm making it a thing.)

Best action adventure is literally the same lineup for game of the year except that Deathloop is replaced with Guardians of the Galaxy, but that doesn't really make much of any sense at all because most seem to agree that Gaurdians gameplay is just as lacklustre as all the gameplay footage made it look. Does it really deserve to share room with all these real contenders? Metroid Dread has been annoying silent, which sucks because I'd love to throw it into consideration but I just don't have the experience to justify that. Psychonauts is a return platforming goodness with such gusto it makes you wonder why we every let that genre fall to the wayside in gaming at all. Rachet plus Clank is a mechanical marvel and Resident Evil 8 is more decent action than thrilling horror. I give it to Psychonauts, let Tim Schafer get his recognition. 

Best Role Playing game had the gall to bring make Cyberpunk 2077, a game which (I have no need to remind you) totally oversold on it's roleplaying premise so badly that most size it up next to a Ubisoft openworld title than a proper Role Playing game. Monster Hunter Rise is there as a solid translation of that series' formula to Switch, Scarlet Nexus is up (because apparently that game is an RPG. I didn't know anyone even played it) Shin Megami Tensi V has it's share of loving fans and Tales of Arise blew a fair few socks off. Where's 'Pathfinder: War of the Righteous'? I'm being serious, how did a superficial RPG like Cyberpunk make the cut but Pathfinder, a simply massive (if flawed) RPG marvel didn't? Colour me offended, truly, as I lay my vote down upon Persona's grittier cousin, Shin Megami Tensi.

Fighting games are a wash for me, I don't care for them. 'Nickelodeon All Star brawl' has no voice acting, waste of time. Virtu Fighter 5 exists, but not in my sphere of video game content apparently. I've never heard of Melty Blood in my life, and it doesn't look all that great either. Demon Slayer had a fighter with that same gross 2D to 3D anime style that games were doing 10 years ago. (Can we hire actual artists to reimagine these models next time, or do something like Dragon Ball FighterZ did, where every shot looks like a still from the anime?) I've always had a love for Guilty Gear's characters and gameplay, with special love on it's art style too, so that's where my vote is going this time. (I'm surprised Smash Bros isn't on the list again, I'm pretty sure this entry counts for legacy games too...)

Now we're getting onto the speedround of categories I think, because I'm loosing interest in these titles as they go along. Look at Best Family title, and it's two Mario entries! (Also, It Takes Two is a couples game, not a family game. There's an actual world of difference, Geoff Keighley) New Pokemon Snap is far too niche, Mario phoned it in for this year of games (one of them is literally just a rerelease) so I guess by process of elimination I've landed on the one proper Family game, Warioware: Get it Together. (Although that would make for a weird family experience with the amount of surrealist minigames that make up that game's bulk) Best Sim/strategy is another combination of categories that makes no sense to me. (there's no Sim games at all.) Evil Geniuses 2 hasn't been out long enough for me to play through it, Age of Empires IV has fans, Humankind doesn't hit the rafters it was shooting for but lands high regardless, Microsoft Flight Simulator shouldn't even be in this listing, it's time was last year, and Inscryption deserves another rewards. It's that good. 

Racing and Sports: No need to break it down. Screw FIFA, Forza Horizon 5 because those games are usually pretty good. Best multiplayer game, people like New Worlds, but I remember the insanity over Valheim (which had yet another update recently) and I love an underdog story so I pick that game. Content Creator of the year really doesn't belong in this event at all, but I've heard Dream's music video so I can't, in good conscience, pick him. (Also, he did cheat in speedrunning. Funny as all that was) I've heard of Fuslie though, and she's funny, so I pick her. (Asmongold helped to literally kill WOW, doesn't that public service deserve some recognition?) Best Debut Indie is just best indie with an extra step. The Forgotten City used to be a Skyrim Mod and I love that origin story, so that game gets my vote.

And now the furrowed brow deepens to bone level, because we have an award for Most Anticipated Game. We handing out awards to trailers now? One of these games could easily have a trailer at this event! Elden Ring is a big one here, fans have been literally playing it the past few weeks thanks to the open server test, so it's fresh in people's minds too. God of War Ragnarok is a big one, another contender, for whenever it's finally due. Horizon Forbidden West is the game that I'm loving the look of the most in the visual department, even though that fidelity is exclusive to hardware that might as well be mythical to a rube like me. Starfield is a nothing burger right now, we've gotten a single trailer that was so anemic I can't even remember what we saw in it. I don't even like the write up to this game, I just don't care. And then there's a game that still doesn't even have a title so has to be listed as 'The Sequel to The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild'. That game still is my pick though, because Breath of the Wild slapped.

Best Esports game, who cares, I don't- Valorant. Now it's best Esports athlete, the category I, and indeed I think all of us, have been waiting for. Which of these god-like individuals among the pantheon of Esports deserves the honour, nay the privilege, of being recognised as the best of the best. A titan among gods, the All-father (because despite this being 2021 Esports is still entirely male dominated). Chris' nickname 'Simp' is banned on Twitch, which is going to hurt his chances at godhood, I'm afraid. Heo 'showmaker' looks damn sure of himself with that crooked thumbs up. If my uber driver gave me that look before we set off, I'd be comfortable sleeping tin he back seat not expecting him to roll us over and explode. Magomed 'Collapse' wants me to buy his confidence, with that cross armed down-tilted look, but there's something about it- maybe the posture- which dissolves the whole persona for me. I just can't take him seriously, I don't fully understand it. Oleksander has long arms, and he wants us to know that. Can you see how many things he's holding in those arms? There's like- ten whole things there! I don't exactly know what those things are, but that's got to be impressive, maybe. And Tyson 'Tenz'... well, I don't know what to tell you, that guy scares me. He's got two fingers to his mouth in the shape of a gun, is that a threat? I'm worried about what this man will do to me if I don't pick him, there's not really that much of a choice left, then- I pick Tenz.

As for Esports team... why the hell is FaZe there? I'm pretty sure everyone knows about the very public crypto scam run by members of prime FaZe hardly a few months ago, they tried to use the guise of a charity to smuggle funds into themselves, that's barely a step above stealing from a hospital. DWG KIA, on the otherhand, is nigh on unpronounceable by me, and that draws me to them. (They play Lol, so eww, but the two guys in the picture still look cool.) As for best Esports Coach, I actually remember a few of these names from past years, which is why I didn't even need to analyse this for two long before I recognised my must-pick choice. Mad respect to Kim 'Kkoma' for picking an objectively horrible photo to represent him. Literally the first and third Google image results are worlds better (the second image is the one in this even) and I just cannot hold my hand up higher for someone with enough faith in themselves that they actively want people to see them at their worst to know that they are now at their best. Godspeed Kkoma, you beautiful man. Oh, and Best Esports event goes to 'The International 2021', because that is a comically awful name for an event you want to score any remote traction for and I find that unendingly hilarious.

So those were my totally serious and not at all dismissive picks for the best of their respective categories 2021 in the Games Awards. I'm pretty sure after some of last year's questionable decisions there's a miasma of suspicion floating around the respectability of this year's lineup, but we gamers need something of a live event to come together for and this is pretty much our last resort. So we're stuck with it, is what I'm saying. Ideally I'd have hoped this year would be a return to in-person crowds, but with the recent invasion from Futurama's Emperor Lrrr with the forces from Omicron Persei 8, I'm guessing that's an impossibility. Shame, I'd like to have heard an entire theatre of silence once Geoff Keighley's 'two years in the making' announcement drops. Unless that announcement is PERSONA 5 ROYAL FOR PC- No, I will NOT shut up about it already! We've been waiting for so damn long- let go of me- you can't silence all of us!- Justice for Joker! Justice for Joker! Just- The transmission cuts of there. Hmm...