The Awards for 2023 Go to...

Avant-garde Award:

While it doesn't have the level of customization found in most block games, The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom still provides players with a great deal of freedom.  In particular, they can choose how and in what order to tackle the challenges the game has to offer.  For better or worse though some more meanspirited people have turned the game into a Korok torture simulator.  I suppose this sort of thing was inevitable, but unexpected nonetheless. 

Backlash Award:

Usually games maintain an air of anticipation until their release day even if the previews don't seem promising.  In the case of Lord of the Rings: Gollum though, it got trashed two days before launch due to gameplay footage being leaked online.  This game literally never had a chance.  The design is awful, the gameplay is awful, the graphics are awful...even the voice acting is not good.  Also, who came up with that design for the elves?  They all look like chemical substance abuse is on their daily itinerary.   

Brutality Award:

While there are five different difficulty levels to choose from, World of Horror is not an easy game even on the lowest setting.  The themes and atmosphere certainly support the notion of being doomed from the start.  When it comes to random elements, the proverbial deck is stacked against the player.  Couple that with the roguelike design philosophy behind the game, and it becomes abundantly clear that the player is in for a world of hurt each time they begin a new run. 

Canvas Award:

While not the most exciting or innovative game in terms of gameplay, Phantom Brigade is certainly a pretty game to look at.  The variety of colors is of course welcome, but the subtle use of varying shades of reds and blues mixed with the pastoral landscapes of green and brown create an interesting contrast between the two opposing sides of the conflict.  Normally in these types of games grey tends to be the dominate color, so it's nice to see a visual design that takes a step back from that.  

Ecology Award:

Koopas, Goombas, pipes and plumbers...coins, mushrooms, stars and question blocks...we've seen it all many times before, and that's not a bad thing.  Mario is probably the most iconic character in video game history.  That said, the folks over at Nintendo seem to really like re-using old assets.  I guess they ascribe to the old adage "don't fix what isn't broken."  Oh well...at least we get a cool new elephant costume this time around.

"Engrish" Award:

Despite rapid improvements to AI translation software, there are still a fare amount of indie games that suffer from localization issues.  In the case of Midnight Shift we have a number of misspellings resulting in great lines like "Good evnening" and "My axe is thirty" Don't worry though because despite being the lone employee on duty at an isolated gas station, it's still possible to call the "Pilice" for help when a masked assailant shows up looking to cause trouble. 

Esoteric Award:

While technically still in early access, I decided to go with Nebulous: Fleet Command for this category because it serves as such an excellent example of obtuse design.  Not only does this game feature Newtonian physics and realistic electronic warfare, it also has highly customizable spacecraft.  Players can even create their own kind of missiles; down to the guidance system, warhead and propulsion.  While it's not quite as detailed as Children of a Dead Earth in terms of the simulation, the complexity is still staggering to behold.   

Lemon Award:

The PC version of Star Wars Jedi: Survivor was rated the worst PC port of 2023 by Digital Foundry.  Five months, and many patches later, it still doesn't run well.  It's unclear if it ever will.  While other games released in 2024 such as Redfall are also quite buggy they had low potential to begin with.  Star Wars Jedi: Survivor, on the other hand, is alright on other platforms.  It's simply the PC version that is terrible...which is a shame considering how much effort went into making the game to begin with.   

Testosterone Award:

Are you manly enough to rescue the influencer princess from rogue cyborgs?  Playing like a first-person version of Hotline Miami through an anime lens, Mullet Mad Jack tasks players with maintaining a continuous killstreak in order to prevent their health bar from slowly depleting.  The result, unsurprisingly, is a frantic cornucopia of violence all the way to the finish line.  Seriously, you slide down a ramp while shooting bad guys at the end of each stage. 

Underdog Award:

I was actually very critical of this game in a post made just recently on this blog, but since then have been shocked to hear how few people seem to know it even exists.  A forum post highlighting a link to the game's lackluster sales thus far was filled with response comments that were almost entirely variations on "Never heard of this game" or "didn't even know it was out".  Then again, The Invincible did come out in what is one of the busiest times of this year when it comes to big new releases.  Chalk it up to bad timing, I guess...  

Eldritch Quest

While not the first ever made, the original Alone in the Dark was the first video game I ever played that had clear ties to H.P. Lovecraft's Cthulhu Mythos.  Since then, I've played may more, but honestly feel that direct adaptations of his creations don't work nearly as well as games that eschew those details in lieu of key thematic elements (cosmic horror and a fear of the unknown).  Enter The Last Door, a game that feels very Lovecraftian without any shoggoths prowling about or copies of the Necronomicon waiting to be read.  Much like Shadow of the Comet though, it does feel very reminiscent of old Sierra "Quest" games; except more EGA than VGA.

For those who are too young (or too old) to remember Sierra On-line was a California-based developer and publisher that was known for making a number of adventure game IPs with the word "Quest" in the title.  Some of the most famous examples are King's Quest, Space Quest, Police Quest, and somewhat later on down the road, Hero's Quest (eventually renamed Quest for Glory in order to avoid copyright infringement with a board game of the same name).  Two of the most defining aspects of Sierra games were item-based puzzle solving and a fair amount of text to support the on-screen visuals.  Both of these things are fully represented in The Last Door.  Where the game differs though is in the visual presentation.  I'm not talking about the blocky character sprites...those are actually very true to the originals; right down to the minimalistic double digit pixel count.  In truth, that aspect of the the entire design continues to work surprisingly well.  It's kind of amazing how much visual information can be communicated just by adjusting the colors of a pixel or two.  Want a character to look baling?  Just make the pixel at the top of their head the color of skin instead of the color of hair.  To make a character look unshaven all one has to do is use a slightly darker shade of skin tone on the lower two (out of four) facial pixels.  No, that aspect is fine, rather it is the background environments that look noticeably different. 

Back in the days of King's Quest I to III, Space Quest 1 and 2, in addition to the original Police Quest, every visual had to be made using EGA graphics.  This meant developers had to choose a maximum of 16 colors from a total palette of 64 for any given onscreen image.  The result was, unsurprisingly, very sharp images made up of mostly primary colors.  The Last Door isn't limited by this constraint having access to several orders of magnitude more colors to choose from.  Perhaps because of this, the backgrounds have a somewhat murky look (kind of like a low-res scan of an actual photo).  On the plus side though, the wider color pallet allows for some interesting use of light and shadow.  Combining that with parallax scrolling for foreground, middle ground and background objects, actually produces some truly unique visuals.  Despite not being an accurate recreation of EGA graphics, the overall style does tie well into the game's themes of a veil that obscures reality and hides the true nature of the world.  

The time period in which The Last Door is set is another interesting choice.  1890s London might be familiar to table-top gaming enthusiasts in the form of the "Cthulhu by Gaslight" RPG.  Meanwhile avid readers of fiction might be well versed in that time and place through the works of novelists such as H.G. Wells, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, Bram Stoker, Oscar Wilde, or William Hope Hodgson.  Personally, I found the setting very similar to the "Cthulhu Casebook" trilogy by James Lovegrove, but unlike the other examples, he wrote those novels in recent years and just happened to set them in the 1890s.  Regardless, it's an under-utilized setting in video games so I'm glad to see it represented here, albeit in a highly pixelated fashion.  

  

Game of the Year Awards

The end of the year is fast approaching and in the video game industry that means it's time to hand out awards. Since everyone and their pet has a "best of" list picked out this year I thought I would join in to with my own choices. The twist is I'm going to use a special set of categories I created back in 2009. So with out further ado here are my winners of the year:

Avantgarde Award Winner:

While some my draw comparisons to Populous or Black and White this game is really only related to those games in that they are the next closest thing even if it might still be very distant. To put it in a nutshell From Dust is a game in which nature is both your ally and enemy. I can't think of another game that came out over the last decade where that is the case.

Backlash Award Winner:

After fourteen years in development I think fan expectations had exceeded what any game company could hope to achieve. Let that be a lesson to developers not to take too long after announcing a game they are working on. I've talked about The Duke before so I wont rehash the same stuff over, but I will say this; you can't thrive on nostalgia and one-liners alone.



Brutality Award Winner:

In truth the hardest game released this year is the aptly titled The Worlds Hardest Game, but since it isn't that difficult for some indie developer to turn out something that will make a Buddhist monk curse in frustration I decided to give this dubious award to Dark Souls, by far the most challenging non-indie game to be released this year. You have been warned.


Canvas Award Winner:

I actually don't mind grey and brown as much as some people who hang out on gaming forums. In fact making things too colorful can result in a very garish look which is, in my opinion, worse than an overly subdued color pallet. Fortunately, Link's final outing on the Nintendo Wii manages maintain that difficult balance between bright tones and consistent patterns better than most titles to come out this year. Now if only it could be in HD....

Ecology Award Winner:

If your not sure why I picked this game I highly suggest you visit it's Metacritic webpage and read a sampling of the negative user reviews. Virtually every single one mentions a recycling of themes from the previous title in the series aggravated by the fact that they turn one of these out every year in addition to a pile of other modern military themed FPS games that are churned out all year long.

“Engrish” Award Winner:

"You Defeated!" is now officially part of the gaming lexicon thanks to Dark Souls. Aside from the smattering of typos and incorrect item descriptions the reason this title stands out again is the pre-patch gift description for Black Firebombs which contains the phrase "more powerful than a STD bomb." After reading this I had a metal image of my character slogging through Blightown with a life draining status indicator flashing the word "SYPHILIS!" over and over. Alas, it did not come to pass.


Esoteric Award Winner:

While not a proper game (rather it's a Half-Life 2 mod) I chose it anyway because this game has got to be one of the most bizarre releases this year with its forth-wall-breaking commentary on linearity and game design. To call the game difficult in the you-die-a-lot sense would be a gross misrepresentation. Needless to say I found this a hard game to digest and process all the way up to the finish and beyond.



Lemon Award Winner:

Visit the Bethesda forums if you want to know the full extent of the glitches and bugs to be found in the land of the Nords. What truly blows my mind though is the fact that millions of people keep rushing out to buy every new release even though all previous installments have been rife with issues. To be fair its partly because of the expansive and emergent gameplay, but seriously, wait until they patch it if it bothers you so much. A little patience will save you a lot of heartache and more importantly it will send a message to Bethesda to clean up their games better before plopping them on store shelves.

Testosterone Award Winner:

Full frontal nudity, blood, gore and some rather stomach turning acts of violence against a sorceresses make this one of the most painstakingly detail examples of brutality in a fantasy setting. You might argue there are far more grotesque sights in a variety of other titles such as Gears of War 3 or Dead Space 2, but what makes this Polish game stand out is the fact that it is presented in such a matter-of-fact fashion.

Underdog Award Winner:

More open-ended than the over-rated Final Fantasy series, but less tedious than the Harvest Moon series this particular jRPG sequel looks like it will become the best game of 2011 that no one played. That's not to say the game is issue free, but if your looking for a lighthearted fantasy life simulator your in luck because this is the game for you.


So there you have it. My choices of the year. Some of the awards are dubious at best and I chose Dark Souls for two categories, but hey at least I didn't charge any of them entries a fee like they do at the Spike TV Video Game Awards, BAFTA or certain other award shows which will remain nameless simple because I don't want to give them the publicity even from a low traffic blog page such as this.

Video Game Awards

Well, it’s the end of the year so we’re starting to see a variety of award events across the internet (and TV if you count Spike’s VGA show). The problem that I have with these ceremonies is their tendency to be the same when it comes to award categories; Best [PS3/Xbox360/Wii] Game, Best Graphics, Best Music, Game of the Year. They all have it and it isn't terribly original. So, why not come up with a few new categories? Let me present to you ten award categories that I would like to see:

• Avantgarde Award: The game with the most original or downright bizarre concepts.
• Backlash Award: The game that received the harshest criticism.
• Brutality Award: The game which offers the greatest challenge at the highest difficult setting.
• Canvas Award: The game which makes the best use of colors other than grey and brown.
• Ecology Award: The game with the most recycled content and cliché themes.
• “Engrish” Award: The game that gets the most creative with the English language.
• Esoteric Award: The game with the longest and steepest learning curve.
• Lemon Award: The game with the most glitches and bugs yet is still considered playable.
• Testosterone Award: The game with the most gore, profanity and nudity.
• Underdog Award: The game which is low on marketing hype, but high on quality.

Of course some of these awards are rather dubious, but a list such as the one I’ve presented here might actually be informative to the viewer instead of just giving out pointless bragging rights. And when you get down to it most gamers have already decided what their favorites are so why not throw a curve ball and give people something different?