Game Awards 2021

 Is it time to do another one of these already? Boy, time sure flies when you're …err in all of this *gestures at all of 2021*. Did we play any games during this time? You bet your sweet bippy we did. Some new, some old, some precious, others not as much. Strap in your clockwork orange chair, and be ready to consume our recap of the things we got around to playing in 2021.

Best Character

Queen (Deltarune Chapter 2)

^ Queen ^

Deltarune's back? Deltarune's back. What are you doing back here? Oh, another chapter dropped! And honestly it’s even better than the first one. It introduced some new layers, new mechanics, and a baller new character. Queen is the personification of “Welcome to the Internet” by Bo Burnham, she's got her whole modems operandi based on flawed data collection methods and she doesn’t take (close application window) for an answer! This game had a ton of laugh out loud moments and most of them came from this character.

Yeah, Queen's easily the star of the chapter. She's got quite a number of gimmicks strengthening her character. Her face is an LCD display, which she uses to communicate all sorts of things in the middle of her lines. She's really pushy, judgemental, and involved in the majority of the game's set pieces. It's hard not to be endeared by a character that does the over the top cartoony noblewoman laugh. 

Runners up: Herlock Sholmes (The Great Ace Attorney), Adelle (Bravely Default 2), Linus (Stardew Valley), Linhardt (Fire Emblem: 3 Houses)

Worst Character

Michael Thorton (Alpha Protocol) 

2001 called, the said they want their *NSYNC member kidnapped by the CIA back.

Michael Thorton is one of -those- protagonists. The type that tries to recapture the essence of coolness from 50+ year old movies, but since those movies were problematic in pretty much every conceivable way, they tried to modernise him a little bit. I've seen many try to attempt this, but it never works. The game pretends that you have a choice on how your Michael Thorton's personality is shaped, by letting you pick how to respond to any given situation: Suave, Aggressive, Professional and Impatient (aka end the cutscene). No matter what you do, he's always some cocky asshole who thinks he's better than everyone, and he snarks his way through conversations like some bootleg Homestuck chatlog. 

Thornton is a real white dude’s white dude. He’s like Archer from Archer, unironically. His customisation options are like: goatee, other goatee, soul patch, trucker hat, backwards trucker hat, ski glasses. However you try to play the game: polite and respectful, sincere, actually responsible and not leaving a trail of bodies and exploding factories in your wake (y'know like some kind of actual spy…) You’ll be sure that the narrative will course-correct you back into the dudebro zone by embellishing your interactions with some snarky comments about your co-workers arse or bombing an archaeological research site while popping a wheelie into the sunset.

Runners up: Sylvain (Fire Emblem: 3 Houses), Shounosuke Nanase (Chase: Cold Case Investigations), Apollo (Cross Code), Cuno (Disco Elysium)

Best Soundtrack

Deltarune Chapter 2  

Are you ready to CYBER? No wait that came out wrong. There were a lot of strong contenders this year, but I always give it up for whatever soundtrack I keep shamelessly coming back to throughout the year. Deltarune’s music is immediately catchy and has this manic nausea-inducing fanfare quality that's just the appropriate vibe for 2021.

While I think there were overall stronger soundtracks this year, it's hard to deny that the standouts in this were the stand-outs of the year. The biggest downside to this soundtrack to me is that it has a bunch of music from the previous chapter, but I suppose that's more an issue of how this game's been published, and not so much with the score itself. Of course there would be repetition between chapters of the same game. Either way, Cyber World was my favourite track all year, and I love it. It's got big Mega Man Battle Network vibes, and I'm here for it.

Runners up: Bravely Default 2, Cross Code, The Great Ace Attorney, Freedom Planet, Fire Emblem: 3 Houses 

Best Art Direction

Ever Oasis

Possible we used too much chlorine in the water feature.

Just look at this. Really colourful, playful round shapes, adorable lil boys and girls, and draped everything in a desert nomad theme. It features several cute species of friendly characters that honestly aren't that common in games. You have the little chubby birds, the scorpions, the lizards, etc. You populate your adorable little oasis with adorable little settlements and shops, all themed around plant life. It's just a really pleasant looking game.

I’ll be honest, I'm a bit of a sucker for art in 3DS games specifically, having worked on several myself. The soft hand-painted art style reminds me of some of the best of Level 5 games and Skyward Sword and such. The chunky character designs and movesets allow the limitations of the game’s scale not to bother you so much. And the worldbuilding that fuses North African fashion with natural plant-based fantasy architecture is masterful. I sure hope Grezzo have another original project in the works.

Runners up: Ape Out, Chicory: A Colorful Tale, Control, The Great Ace Attorney, Eastward

Ugliest Art Direction

Paradise Killer

IDK, needs more iridescent purple skulls.

Miamiwave cosmic blood cult murder mystery Paradise Killer was probably not accidentally hideous, which makes me feel a little better about giving them this. The aesthetic is Jojo’s Bizarre Adventure meets Trump Tower meets Danganronpa meets Unreal Engine mockup thrown together in 2 days. It’s all gold statues and spangly goat skulls crying blood. It doesn’t help that the game itself begins obnoxiously cryptic in what it expects you to do (pro tip: just run around the place interacting with everything and talking to everyone, no really, that's the game) . But if you’re the sort of person who might enjoy it I probably already had you at cosmic blood cult.

I saw a weird CG trailer for a scam where they tried to sell the idea of a private island full of crypto currency to gullible idiots, and to my surprise the incredibly tacky and artless aesthetic was almost identical. Now for Paradise Killer, the kitschiness was by design, because it was some kind of lavish cult's idea of cool. Actually now that I'm typing this out, I guess it's the same for the cult that Cryptoland targets, so I guess there's no difference. More bleeding marble goat heads in this one though, I suppose.

Runners up: Star Wars Jedi Knight: Dark Forces II, Stardew Valley, Red Faction: Armageddon, Freedom Planet

Best Story

Tacoma

At least every night is Taco nigh-ah wait damn I read that wrong.

When you start Tacoma, you'll probably have a lot of assumptions on what this story is like, and for the most part, you wouldn't really be wrong. An accident happened on a remote spaceship, someone is tasked to investigate the incident, and that someone is you. The story then revolves around you going around rooms of the ship, playing back the events that took place in the area before the event, and piece together what went down. You get a mixture of people living their normal lives on the ship, being confronted with the issue, and then slowly preparing for their demise. It's got big Majora's Mask vibes in that respect I suppose.

Tacoma goes full tilt into pure “environmental storytelling”. It’s just a game of junk to carefully observe and take from it what you will. But it’s masterful in its depth, you can learn each character's backstory and hang ups and motivations and underlying political foreshadowing all in various bits and pieces to peep at around the place. The more you get to know everyone the more uneasy you feel that you’re ultimately about to discover their fate. And of course, it surprised me with a lot of the events in such a short story in a short game, and made me do a little cry at the end. :’x

Runners up: The Swapper, Paradise Killer, Cross Code, Chicory: A Colorful Tale, The Great Ace Attorney

Best Original Game Concept

Say No! More

A game by Shia LaBeouf's acting coach.

Clue is in the title, you just say “NO!” A bunch. It’s like a rail shooter for self esteem. Sometimes you don’t say “NO!”. Seemed like a novelty premise, and I mean, it is, but the idea is pushed as far as possible and it has a surprisingly engaging narrative in this bonkers linear nope-em-up.

Yeah, I think they explored this concept pretty well. While the game is mostly about saying no, it also teaches sometimes to withhold them. It also starts the game with letting you choose from a giant list of "no"s in different languages, so you can really personalise your inner No. As you progress through the game, you learn different types of No's, like patronising No, dismissive No, quirky No, etc. And it all does this to deliver a story about both self esteem and unionisation.

Runners up: Unrailed!, Half Minute Hero, Chicory: A Colorful Tale

Funniest Dialogue

Deltarune Chapter 2

A real teat for the eyes

People often accuse Toby Fox games to be meme games, and that's kind of true, but only in the sense that it spawns memes, and it is able to do that because it's just funny. The guy's got a good grasp on expectations and interpretations, and subverting it. The two main stars of the chapter are the main villain, Queen, and Birdly. Queen's just a hoot full of sight gags, observations, and snappy burns. Birdly made a very brief appearance in chapter 1, where his character was mostly established as an aggressively overly confident dweeb. It pretty much just builds from there, with some incel-i-ness sprinkled on top. Amusing characters from the first chapter are still great in this though.

Like Undertale and Deltarune Part 1, this game absolutely excels in weaving the humour and gameplay together, making it more than just zany text. But also the text? So zany. As referenced earlier, it’s got bangin’ new characters, a bonkers new setting, detachable hands, and the ability to build on ideas and reference jokes from the previous game plays right into its troll-y sense of humour. I’d remind you to watch out for dogs on the road, but you probably won’t remember.

Runners up: Half Minute Hero, The Great Ace Attorney, Say No! More

Biggest Surprise

Ever Oasis

Name a better basis for a system of government than this. I'll wait.

From the trailer this game looked like a potentially somewhat limited Zelda-like action-adventure. It was on the little boy console with a sonic heroes style swapping mechanic and no multiplayer. Looked really polished and cute though. Turns out it's REALLY polished, nicely balanced, beautiful and just a fun time. Though it's much more accessible and basic, there are signs the combat is heavily inspired by Monster Hunter. And yeah you crawl dungeons, gather resources, stock shops, craft weapons, level up your party. The Egyptian-inspired furries are really cool, it’ll be a bit of a shame if the universe of Ever Oasis never comes back in any form.

I initially stopped paying attention to the game when I heard it didn't have any multiplayer at all. It seemed like it would have been a perfect fit. The style of game seemed like it was building on what the Final Fantasy Crystal Chronicles games on the DS were doing, but impressions from others made it sound limited and a little dull. When a friend was playing it though, they made it sound a lot more interesting, and once I bit the bullet and picked it up, I couldn't put it down. I guess the lesson here is, don't listen to the recommendations of strangers over friends who have a better grasp on what your tastes are.

Runners up: Everhood, Gnosia, Freedom Planet, The Evil Within

Biggest Disappointment

Grand Theft Auto 3

Handsome Handyman? More like Handsy Handsyman.

I fully recognise that this game was important and one of the most influential titles of the past few decades, and probably was really impressive back in the day. Unfortunately that was then, and we played it now in the cyber year of Luigi 2021, and it was r o u g h from top to bottom. Looks terrible, acting is a blend of cringe and racist, controls require prayers for things to reliably work, missions that are both half-baked and probably weren't QA tested enough, a city layout that is a pain to navigate, and just tons of weird glitches in every single session. Whenever a mission was unclear, buggy, or just stupidly hard, we'd look some help online, and without fail we'd see a forum thread talking about how this mission is the worst mission in the game. They can't all be the worst one, ok? 

This was definitely my most masochistic endeavour of the year. I expected it to be a little rough and have some frustrating sidequests, but WHEW. This game was a TEST. Like Paul Atriedes and the pain box kind of test. It was funny seeing a lot of the comments about the disastrous remaster release at the latter end of this year, because several of the bugs mentioned (outside of the texture upscaling blunders obviously) were actually in the original PC version, or at least the version with a patch I needed to get it working. Such as the recurring NPC car pileups outside the base of the second chapter, where you walk out your home base and immediately everything is exploding around you, before you even did anything! I don’t know if I would have gotten through this game without having Tobi there to help me furiously navigate the rotating minimap, and laugh off the 30th time I get randomly detonated during a precisely timed escort mission.

Runners up: Borderlands 1 DLC, Orcs Must Die! 2, Metroid Prime 2

Usual Suspects Award for Most Time Wasted

Fire Emblem: 3 Houses

Dimitri takes plate armour horse gymnastics very seriously.

Yeah, so I did like 3 playthroughs in one year. And this game is already probably the longest Fire Emblem to date, since they decided to extend their gameplay with a harry potter-esque magic school simulator that you can waste hours on. I spent almost 300 hours on this game in total. Just like, sipping tea, handing out lost handkerchiefs, and 360° no scope horseback manoeuvres.

While I didn't do the full three runs like Allie did, I still did two and a half of them, which is a lot of  game. The reason why is because the game is like medieval anime Hogwarts, and at the start you can choose one of three houses. Since all the students are precious, there's a big allure to starting over and trying out the other houses, see what their deal is, and follow their side of the story. Very cool, but it can be exhausting.

Runners up: Stardew Valley, Monster Hunter Rise, Gnosia

GAME OF THE YEAR

Monster Hunter Rise

Red touch yellow, kill a fellow. Red touch black, 1hit KO tail attack.

Here we are again, greeting our old friend Monster Hunter in the GotY category. We've pretty much got matching shirts and secret handshakes at this point. So what is it about Rise that makes it deserve this spot, besides just being another entry in a series we like? It starts off by having one of the more visually distinct settings in the franchise, and strongly themes everything around it. Then it gives you a dog who is a ninja, and you can ride like a tiny little horse. It gives you a zippy line that lets you Spider Man across the map. It allows you to scale every wall in the levels. You can ride monsters now. There's a tower defence mode. There's just a lot of stuff, ok? Things that I honestly think I can't go without any more, and consider to be mandatory from every subsequent entry.

Perhaps it helped some that we’ve skipped over Monster Hunter World, though by the sounds of it that game changed the formula so much that we wouldn’t have been able to just co-op it in the way that we normally do. Still, it took all the best lessons from every previous game in the franchise to give the biggest upgrade yet for fans of the WiiU/3DS era. As usual I didn’t jump into a whole lot of new games this year even compared to Tobi, so thrillingly original newcomers were at a bit of a disadvantage again. Still, MHR is a worthy GOTY, being the best of one of my all-time favourite franchises. And it might be the easiest one yet, as we played the whole thing up to the end of the first Elder dragons DLC!

Runners up: Chicory: A Colorful Tale, The Great Ace Attorney, Metroid Dread, Mario Party Superstars, Say No! More

DINOSAUR OF THE YEAR (released before 2011)

Minish Cap

Is the hat wearing him? He screams for he does not know.

Minish Cap and the Oracle games, ah heck, pretty much all of the handheld Zelda games are largely neglected in discussions and forgotten. And they’re almost all like, must-play top quality games of their respective platforms and generations for what it’s worth. In Minish Cap, you have a race of little tiny fluffy boys who are adorable and you can shrink down to fit in little holes and ride lily pads. It has a sprawling castle town with a bunch of somewhat tedious quests and a lot of back tracking. I guess it might not thrill everyone to go back to, but it’s a solid entry full of charm and fresh ideas and has that kinda weird paper mario era sense of humour and whimsy.

People who know me, know that one of my favourite settings and aesthetics is being shrunken down to being smaller than a lil mouse. Tiny creacher in a big world, like a Smurf or Borrower. Minish Cap's pretty much that, but also a Zelda game. It has cool new items, fun dungeons, gorgeous pixel art, and fun characters. The only real marks against it are that it's on the short side, and that the difficulty ramps up a little steeply as a result. Still dope though.

Runners up: Xenogears, Balls of Steel, Ys

Craziest Amateur Game

Say No! More

Perhaps I shouldn't have said No! to parachutes.

If you've read what we said earlier in the original concept section, this winner shouldn't come as a surprise. An on-rails game about standing up for yourself and unionising using the power of saying "no" is bonkers. Bonkers and low-key adorable. You gain your powers to listen to a secret banned cassette tape, because saying "no" is banned in general.

And from there you’re off on a rebellious office space odyssey. On rails, open plan, mandatory overtime and in hot pursuit of a lunch box. Say No! to set personal boundaries, woosh enemies, counter negativity and also there’s a wizard? It’s blessed and extremely funny. Say No! to… NOT playing this game haha gotcha.

Runners up: Paradise Killer, Stardew Valley, Everhood, The Good Life

Citizen’s A-Vest Award for Egregious Design Transgressions

Dr. Doom Jazz (Paradise Killer)

4 Skulls would push it into business-casual attire.

Admittedly, everyone in Paradise Killer looks like they’re dressed for their first cocaine and swingers party. But I extra hate on Dr Doom Jazz because his torso is longer than the Justice League Snyder Cut. His open lab coat and personality both scream liability grade fuckboy and his robot arms have a sticker saying “Child Labour” on them. There’s probably some context for that but I just wanted to point that out idk. Ugly bitch too many skulls.

When you're looking for a doctor, the last one you'd probably speak to is the topless one that has a sticker with the word "pain" on himself. He's perpetually stuck in what I can only describe as a pelvic thrusting pose, has a sticker of a plaster on his metal robot arms because he's quirky I guess. The thing that bugs me most though, is that someone clearly drew a very crude stethoscope on his design after the fact.

Runners up: Michael Thorton (Alpha Protocol), Comet (Gnosia), Torque (Freedom Planet) 

Maximum Swaggage Award for Best Dressed Bae

Palamutes (Monster Hunter Rise)

Palamode

I think the Palamute's many looks speak for themselves. They have style, they have grace, they wield weapons with their face. Palamutes are icons with the freshest drip.

Horse armour was so 2006. Armour for a dog that you can ride like a horse? That’s the future baybee!! What really impresses me besides the obvious swagger is the brilliant range they’ve managed to come up with for all the Palamute outfits in this game. Knight dog? Check. Unicorn Dog? Check. Librarian? Gilly suit? Snowy poodle? Halloween Jack o Lantern? Night Mare? Skeleton Cerberus? Ch-ch-ch-check! 

Runners up: Alex (Full Metal Furies), Otome (Gnosia), Tethu (Ever Oasis), MC Mode (New Style Boutique)

Peepee the Cat Award for Ultimate Creacher

Noots (Ever Oasis)

Birds of a Falafel

In Ever Oasis you build up a marketplace and sell luxury goods to the various species living across the desert. Seedlings, Serkah, Lagora and Drauk are all recruitable adventurers, but then there’s the Noots. They are mysterious little round rich birds who don’t fight or farm, they just show up and buy buy buy! They are very polite omg they’re so cute I'm gonna cry. Sometimes you can have a festival and the sultan of Noots shows up!!! He has a lil’ wee crown. ;o;

Our friend called them Peep 'n Bows, because every time you did something for them, they would do a little squeaky noise, and bow in gratitude. They are so precious. 

Runners up: Chomps the Cat (Stardew Valley), Pizza (Chicory: A Colorful Tale), Wagahai (The Great Ace Attorney), Pocket Lancer (Deltarune)

Headache of the Year

Countersniping Darcy (Alpha Protocol)

Terminate Mr. Darcy with extreme pride and prejudice.

I had the most miserable time with this fight. To set the scene, you enter an area with a bunch of crates, sandbags, fuel tanks, parked trucks, and two small towers. In the tower on the very end of the map resides Darcy with a sniper rifle. He's tucked in there pretty well, so you can't really shoot  him back. The intended goal is for you to slowly make it over to the other tower and use the sniper rifle there to shoot him back. Unfortunately for the player, the sniper rifle there is bugged, and your cursor won't land on him, and while you're trying, he does successfully shoot you. It felt so simple, but because you die so quickly, it takes many many tries to figure out it is utterly busted, and the frustration builds with each attempt. When Allie got to this fight, I had an almost nostalgic feeling for it, thinking "Ah, right. This encounter really stuck with me. Easily the most memorable section of the game for me." That feeling faded pretty fast though, as Allie started to boil and I got reminded just how maddening it was.

I also had.. A very bad time. It already took me an age to figure out what the game intended me to do, since you expect your usual tricks to work… but then when we got up there, it just… it tricks you into thinking you missed by your own hand. So you try again. And again. So close! I just keep near-missing… every… single… what the fuck… I think we managed to beat it in the end by using a cheese strat of rushing right up to the sniper tower and chipping away at a corner of his arm. It’s not the first time the game seemed to be really wonky with its difficulty. It had some cool ideas and I don't hate the principle of turning a shooter into a tactical RPG but… sometimes it wasn't strategy, it was just a broken boss battle you had to find a tedious way around. Game bad.

Runners up: Kingdom Come, aka parking lot full of cackling, exploding crackheads (GTA 3), Star Wars Jedi Knight: Dark Forces II, Stone Tablet puzzles being the most obscure shit (Full Metal Furies), Blinding can't-see-shit-o-vision in kaleidoscope mode (Everhood) 

Worst Trend of the Year

MeTooTwo

You may thank me for not using photos of "The Cosby Suite"

Stop me if you’ve heard this before: Big name guy at big name game developer gets called out for running their working environment like a sloppy frat dungeon. Pearls are clutched. Creepy DMs are leaked. Women’s lived experiences are debated. If you’re thinking “yeah that was 2019 thanks for the reminder” then well congrats on not being in denial I guess but also WELCOME TO THE SEQUEL: ITS BIGGER, COWARDLIER, AND GUEST STARRING DISTURBING REFERENCES TO BILL COSBY! This year Activision-Blizzard is getting sued by the state of California in the biggest case of sexist misconduct in video games… so far. Which rules and all that they’re getting justice. But it’s not just them. Ubisoft, Riot Games, Insomniac and others I've lost track of have also been outed for protecting the jobs of absolute creeps within their ranks. It’s equal parts vindicating and exhausting to read story after story of behaviour that I personally already knew was kinda what the industry was like.. but seeing people pick it apart and try to weigh up their performative outrage with their desire to continue supporting a brand whose games they like…? ugh… Anyway, the main point is, can we just take a few centuries off from sexually harassing our co-workers? It’s cheugy bruh.

You can easily argue this wasn't a trend this year, but an on-going one for every year before and unfortunately after. Let's just say that the trend is dipshits being exposed and everyone is forcibly confronted with it, rather than just the people who are on the receiving end of it. A special shout-out to Activision-Blizzard though, who were being sued by the state for gender discrimination, and to save face they hired a woman in an executive position… only to not give her equal pay. She left the company by now for obvious reasons of course. What's there to say other than acknowledging that it sucks, but that it's good that our noses are being pressed on this mess. It's the only way we can clean house.

Runners up: "IP crossovers that just don’t fit the brand or narrative at all", "Rumours that become expectations that become disappointments", "NFTs and the looming threat of Play-To-Earn cryptogames"

Deja Vu award for Ballsiest Ripoffs

Nickelodeon All-Star Brawl *and* MultiVersus are tacky smash bros-likes with all your favourite unrelated characters from various IPs owned by MEDIA CORPORATION

Nigel Thornberry got into Smash Bros before Waluigi, suck on that.

Now that Smash Brothers Ultimate is fully finished, there's a void in the video game landscape. I don't even play Smash Brothers, but I can appreciate what an event every announcement of it is. Luckily other companies were ready to capitalize on Smash's final update, and are here with clones of their own. We have the Nickelodeon one and the WB one. There's not really much to say about these other than that they're just doing, and unfortunately they're doing it worse, using less interesting rosters.

I certainly don’t think taking the all-star push-em-off-platform brawler mechanics from smash bros is inherently a rip-off and not a valid genre of its own. But these games feel particularly noteworthy because they both got announced this year and they were just such a strange coincidence(!?) Plus, not unlike the PlayStation game PSASBR, they did just straight up lift a bunch of their moves and animation ideas from smash.

Runners up: Super Fighter M is quite the Mario Bootleg, RAWMEN is Splatoon, Do a barrel roll in ExZodiac.

Words & Deeds Award for Most Awkward Moment

"Tobi correctly predicts dinosaur extinction event, didn’t realise it would be him" (Minecraft: Eternal)

(Excessively dramatic reconstruction.)

So during the pandemic we’ve been teaming up with 2 other friends to play various 4-player games throughout the year. We decided to take an ill-advised deep dive into a Minecraft mod that was near enough ALL THE MINECRAFT MODS. Tobi and Gronkwena were getting mad into the fossils-to-dinosaurs modpack and had created their own massive dinosaur park with hundreds of newly reborn species next to our base. At the start of our fateful session Tobi joked that this week might feature an extinction event like the meteor that killed all the dinosaurs. Meanwhile, I was out on my adventures to defeat the Ender Dragon (the final boss of vanilla Minecraft, if you care) for precious dragony resources. But I came across a problem. The mod compilation had a bug in it, which meant the ender dragon would never die. I pestered Tobi to fix it for me, and he found a kill command. He came to The End dimension and applied the command and it worked! The Ender Dragon died. Unfortunately, it worked too well. We did not consider that this kill command would work across all dimensions, and it wiped out every single NPC across every dimension in the game. The villagers, the enemy mobs, and of course… the entire dinosaur park.

Me and my big mouth. The moment I pressed enter on the command, we were slowly watching the dragon explode, when the other players were asking who all these names were. Names? I looked in the chat, and the entire screen was filled with the names of all the dinosaurs. The lil critters I named by hand. They were all gone. Every single one. I felt so bad, and then folks reminded me that I called it, making me feel even worse. So thanks, forum guy who posted the solution to the bugged Ender Dragon. RIP Mable.

Runners up: "Invincibility bug on our incapacitated target, so we had to kick him into the sea" (GTA 3), "Scarecrow, DC's gassiest lad, instantly dying from gas, while Joker passes through without a hitch" (LEGO Batman), "Death by Airdrop" (Helldivers)

Dumbest Premise

"We have an annual festival each year and the competition winner gets to touch the sword that seals a pandora’s box of horrors that should never be opened. Just a little touchy, no take!" (LoZ: Minish Cap)

GEE WHIZ

So let me get this straight. You have a sacred chest that contains all the evil in the world, and instead of hiding it away where no one can ever touch it, you bring it out every year to let your strongest warrior touch it. The kind of person you wouldn't be able to stop if they tried to do anything shady with the chest you don't want anyone to open. Sorry to spoil the opening of the game for you all, but the champion opened the chest and all hell broke loose. Who could have ever foreseen this possibility?

I had to ask Tobi several times if I actually had this right. So… you’ve got a Pandora's box… you’ve got a yearly competition… and the prize is… you get to touch the box of evil… the seal of the evil box… it doesn't give you super powers or anything… you just get the power trip of touching the thing… that if you tried to move it would ruin everything… but nobody would ever do that because uh… it's illegal i guess…?

That’s politics, baybie!!!?!

Runners up: "Someone controlling Dr Wily invited all the most powerful robots to a robot fighting tournament… but then turned them evil! Also spoiler, the man behind Dr Wily was actually Dr Wily himself." (Megaman 6), "Eggman made another Sonic clone who can create more clones of other Sonic clones by using the crystal that turns virtual reality into reality." (Sonic Forces), "The dying queen of America wants a near-mute package delivery person to connect everyone's PCs in a pandemic, so everyone can look at everyone's files, and crown the new American apocalypse princess." (Death Stranding)

Most Tears Shed

SCOUT gets PTSD and wipes his memories  (Murder by Numbers)

Time to commit Sudoku

SCOUT is your lil’ scanner robot drone buddy in the wonderful story-driven picross puzzler Murder by Numbers. He just kinda showed up one day and wanted to help you solve murder mysteries, and has no memory of where he came from and why he was made. So you agree to help each other, he helps you find clues and you help him get his memory data back. SCOUT contextualises a lot of the gameplay by turning the puzzles into visual decompression/decoding processes so I think he succeeds in being very endearing.

SCOUT pretty much won me over immediately. He's so inquisitive and excited about everything, and so hungry to absorb information. Unfortunately as you can tell by the title, he didn't lose his memory without a reason. As he is slowly amassing his knowledge back, he starts piecing back together his memory, and he doesn't like what he found. Turns out SCOUT was the one who wiped his own memory, to forget about the trauma he was subjected to. When I started playing a puzzle game about making little pictures of staplers and flags, I didn't know I was signing up for punches in the soul.

Runners up: The Extraction (Tacoma), Chicory: A Colorful Tale, The Great Ace Attorney 2, Do a lil cry (Freedom Planet)

Most Terrifying Moment

Victoriano’s Fun Mansion (The Evil Within)

Blood syringe vaults, is that classical gothic or gothic revival?

We kind of touched on this in our Halloween post, but I guess we're revisiting it for a little bit. The Victoriano manor is basically the part of Evil Within where things become a little bit more like a traditional spooky game. Fancy looking Resident Evil-y place with little puzzles, tight corridors, unkillable enemies that chase you, and jump scare ambushes. The place also has a number of weird pocket dimensions and gross experiment rooms if you're into that sort of thing.

Evil Within more than made up for a lack of other scary moments in games I played throughout this year. And it had so many distinct ideas. Some games have one horror idea, like oh there's zombies/mr long limbs and they’ll pop out at you periodically throughout the game. But The Evil Within has a hearty supply of little bastard traps and new things you suddenly have to deal with throughout. I had to really put a lot of thought into what section of the game really frayed my nerves the most, and I think it was probably the good old fashioned haunted mansion section. Not only do you have to deal with the usual zombies and explosive traps, but now sometimes Ghost Ruvik just shows up and chases you down while you’re trying to solve HORRIBLE puzzles. There was also a zombie standing behind a piece of laundry that for some reason I couldn't for the life of me get a clean kill on. Tobi found that very amusing. Oh and yeah, and watch out for the random meat grinder??? Eh, you’ll probably forget. Good luck with that though.

Runners up: The Lord of Dragons trial (Bravely Default 2), Fridge Duty (Control), Invisible zombies (The Evil Within), The Lamp Lady (The Evil Within DLC) 

Bognor Award for Exemplary Fucking-Shit-Up-itude

Intern (Say No! More)

Say No Door

Saying “no” to stuff is hard. It takes courage. You never know how people will react. But that’s also why it's so… so powerful. In Say No! More the intern (spoiler: dats u) gets the power to full on Fus-Ro-Dah people with a well timed "no". Who knows what kind of doors, windows or glass ceilings this will open up for you? Just don’t let it all go to your big rectangular head.

The power of "no" is very versatile. You can wield it to both inspire and resist change. You use it to stand up for yourself, and for others. You can use it to break and build someone's self-esteem. No responsibly, kids.

Runners up: Chu-chu's stand in Shevat. (Xenogears), Magnamalo can pull flying Raths out of sky and suplex them (Monster Hunter Rise), Ash Tray Maze (Control), The Syndicate (Paradise Killer)

That's it. Another year in the can. Let's seal it in its tomb with all its construction workers and architects, and never speak of it again. Here's hoping it doesn't end up cursing anyone couple centuries from now.