The days are getting shorter and darker again, so that can mean only one thing… Spoogy month, baby. It's time to play cold, dank, feel-bad games. This year's pick was Resident Evil 7: Biohazard.
Should have called it... BayouHazard
We've both played a handful of games in the series, so we roughly knew what to expect. We made a little bingo card to bolster our bravery and cockiness, and jumped right in. Unfortunately I had to jump out, as this entry made me queasy almost instantaneously. Resident Evil 7 changed to a first person perspective, which wasn't very compatible with my stomach. After messing with the settings for a while, I gave up and just mooched off Allie's playthrough.
It’s up to the girl with the iron stomach and itchy trigger finger again. Also my toes are cold, better get my blanket. OK first of all, this game's really realistic looking. Damn. I’m already quite ascare and I don’t want to get chased by a stinky guy.
Revenge of the soyjack pointing meme!?
I’m being chased by a stinky guy!!! I knew it, I bloody knew this would happen!
We're playing as "Ethan", a guy coming to look for his wife in some rural looking area in Louisiana. I wish I could tell you more about Ethan, but he doesn't really give you much to work with. He rarely speaks, and when he does, he says stuff like "You don't understand! You're not listening to me!", then continues not explaining things.
"You might be involved" well yes mate... im trapped in the house.
Yeah it’s funny that he’s even made it to the house alive, because he damn near got himself shot by a cop coming to rescue him. At least he’s decently quick on his feet when it comes to snatching up power tools and going 1 v 1 in a frankly pretty tense and brilliant first boss fight.
So the main structure of the game is that you go to a part of this family's land, and each area is being watched over by a member of the Baker family. They're all pretty rustic, in the sense that they use rusty knives to settle family arguments. The first one is the aforementioned smelly guy. I think his whole deal was that he's immortal, because he kept showing off. It mostly seemed to illustrate that Ethan was pretty ineffective at doing anything to him.
Look who's finally out of his room!
I do gotta say, I kinda feel like I'm just kind of swinging my knife at things and going “is this… anything?” The interactions can feel quite vague at first, though once I got a gun in my hands I have to admit I was pretty good at stoppin’ and poppin’.
That you were. Unfortunately for more than half of the game, there wasn't a whole lot of that. It was just sneaking and skulking, avoiding traps and finding items, and a whole lot of looking around. Every time we got used to an area's gimmick though, it was time to move on to the next one, and repeat the cycle all over again… Usually anyway. In typical Resident Evil fashion, they kind of lose steam after a while and put you in an action game where it really is about shootin' dudes.
Trust no bitch.
Yeah I do think the sections themed around each boss character had very strong gimmicks. The second character, featuring wasp nests and centipedes was very NOT HEHE for me. They would also randomly insert these playable bonus flashbacks via VHS tapes. What did you think of the third guy, ACME’s second biggest client after Wile E. Coyote?
I thought it was pretty cool. It starts out as a VHS tape of a Saw-esque Escape Room a previous person who wandered onto the estate was subjected to. There's no combat or nothing. Just a series of small rooms with stuff in it, and your goal is to light some birthday cake's candles. There was a very ominous clockwork clown scribe in the room that you have to return to a few times, which I was very excited about since "creepy clown" was on our Bingo card. Cool section though.
Looks like hes about to sign the declaration of inde-pain-dence
Shortly after this, you’re eased into the rather anticlimactic twist of the game. On top of it having the usual resident evil style secret military science zombie gone wrong type projects in a hidden underground bunker, the reveal of the source kind of… brought it in line with an awful lot of other horror games. And I dunno, I mean, I guess I don’t respect the genre of “redneck cannibals” either, but this is even more cliché to me actually. Speaking of cliches, upon the reveal of a second spunky female character besides the woman you came to rescue, I was dreading the likely opportunity for the game to “make you choose” between which damsel to rescue, leaving the other to a cruddy fate. Wow that’s so poignant. Like a harem dating sim.
Once we enter the lore-dump phase of the game, the game kind of takes a nose-dive in general for me. A lot of mystery and horror stories start crumbling once you start explaining, and it's no different here. Unfortunately combined with the pivot to a shooty game, it felt like they simply didn't really know how to make it all come together and have a dramatic climax. People started shouting more, I guess? Ethan called a child a "bitch" a bunch, which really felt unnecessary.
Drawer full of shoes. This is the most depraved thing i've seen so far.
Man yeah, Ethan kind of gave me these weird vibes I can only describe as “deadbeat frat house boyfriend”. I didn’t hate the pacing of the game, and the final boss was a fun spectacle… but yeah. I came away feeling the game overall was well executed but lacking in that extra spark I look for in a horror game. It had jump scares, and it even had a brilliant sense of dread and suspense. But it wasn’t haunting like Amnesia, it didn’t make me agonize over my lack of agency like Danganronpa. It didn’t have bizarre and unexpected moments like NightCry.
I see it as a haunted house experience in the end, kind of cool, but also a little basic. So yeah, I'm in a similar boat as you it seems. Speaking of which… This will contain some light spoilers, but here's our Bingo card. Unfortunately we didn't hit a single bingo. Things were looking so great for a while, and a fan boat would have been the key to it all. We were so stoked when they were leading up to escaping over the swamp by boat, but unfortunately it was just a stinky lil regular motorboat.
Wait… his wife was called Mia… was she called Mia because she was M.I.A.?? OHHHHH I JUST GOT THAT
brb gotta fax this banger sentiment to the motivational poster dept
This time already, huh? Feels like we only just did one of these. Here's a little behind the scenes information for y'all. Other years we play between 70-80 different games between the two of us, and this year, it was "only" 50 of them. Hard to say if games are just becoming longer, if we're starting to slack. In spite of this, our list of nominations in the categories seemed longer than usual. Either way, let's get this thing going.
Best Character
Herlock Sholmes (Great Ace Attorney)
Deduced Bigalow: Courtroom Gigolo
Yes, you read that right. The Ace Attorney depiction of Great Detective Herlock “don't sue” Sholmes is a giant loud man made out of 20% leather and 80% hubris. The formula works thusly: the arrogant brit guy meddles and proposes some smooth brain filibuster, our underdoguish relatable heroes step in and say the smart things, and Herlock takes credit because he is tall and white. And THAT, my friends, is my theory as to why Sholmes has appeared on this year’s worst character award! Huh, Tobi, did you have something to say…?
While Sholmes thoroughly sucks and is designed to be annoying from start to finish, I had a sneaking suspicion he'd be earning Allie's maximum amount of points in the vote pretty quickly. Ace Attorney games typically excel at serving endearing himbo investigator characters whose worth is questionable, and this time around they just maxed out all the sliders. His whole shtick is that he's supposedly so intelligent, observant and starved for excitement, that he looks past the most straight-forward answers, and will latch on the most outlandish conclusions instead. A little one-note, but never fails to entertain. As a little aside, his bootleg name really bothers me, but I'm fairly certain he'd enjoy hearing that.
Any guy can be a babydoll but it takes a man to be a muppet.
It Takes Two is a pretty dope game about two parents being cursed by their depressed daughter, because she's tired of them bickering all the time. And you know what, she's not wrong. Cody and May are passive aggressive narcissists who hold an infinite amount of quiet grudges and only seem to communicate in sarcasm and whataboutisms. Cody is a lazy stay-at-home dad who is only interested in being "the fun parent" because all that other stuff is too much pressure, and longs for some time to himself. May is a perpetually stressed and overworked career woman who takes home all her baggage from work and resents her husband for being able to enjoy some family life. It Takes Two sends them on a journey to figure out what's wrong and how they can fix things, but somehow every solution their end on is "if only we didn't have a child."
I’ve seen some tedious bickering couples in video games. Too many, really. But Cody and May somehow take it to the next level. They’re both the type to be sore losers and even sorer winners, which makes it a hilariously awkward game to play with your friend/partner. But there’s also something so bafflingly sinister about their knee jerk solutions to things. They’re so single-minded and wrathful, ignoring any potential to just fix things with love and culminating in one horrifying decision involving an elephant that had me gasping in disbelief. Dr Hakim may have hope for this couple, but I sure don’t!
Runners up: Shun Akiyama (Yakuza 4), John & Joan Garrideb (The Great Ace Attorney: Adventures), Madison Paige (Heavy Rain)
Best Soundtrack
Xenoblade Chronicles 3
In the last few years there’s usually been a kind of clear winner for me in terms of game soundtrack, because I get obsessed with something and listen to it while at work. But this has been a weird year for me in a bunch of ways and that just didn’t happen yet. Still, a bunch of games had really great soundtracks that stood out to me while playing and it's hard to compete with the absolute musical juggernaut that is the entire Xenoblade Series.
Xenoblade soundtracks are usually pretty beefy, with a ton of variety to boot. This one's no different, but actually incorporates music into its plot on top of all that. The main characters are "Offseers", folks who play a little dirge on their flutes to pay respects to those that have passed away. Flutes have a very strong presence in this OST as a result. You got your usual EDM, sad vocals, acid jazz lounge music, choirs, and copious amounts of butt rock from having their moments in the spotlight though.
Runners up: The Great Ace Attorney, Chicory
Best Art Direction
It Takes Two
May admiring the view while Cody falls off a beautifully textured cliff.
One thing that becomes abundantly clear very quickly is that It Takes Two is an art heavy experience. The entire game is just lovingly crafted, unique props from start to finish. Since the main characters got cursed, they shrunk down to the size of little puppets, and so every object in the game is colossal and all the surface textures have to be detailed as hell. I'm a sucker for Borrower-sized perspectives, and this game delivers on this in spades. The range of different types of locals in which you can be tiny is fantastic, and all the individual parts are put together so nicely.
We were a little late to the party to this game that rolled up by surprise and swept 2021’s GOTYs for many major publications. But when we picked it up, we quickly felt its accolades were well deserved. It’s a bombastic, breath-taking type of game with an agreeable handmade hyper colourful hyper detailed art style. What really sealed the deal is the sheer range in environments the game offers as well. Toy boxes, gardens, winter wonderlands, clock towers and intense, abstract roller coasters. All very cinematic, and all running smoothly on a split screen!
Runners up: 13 Sentinels: Aegis Rim, The Great Ace Attorney, Inscryption
Ugliest Art Direction
Cruelty Squad
This is not glitched out, this is me going up a staircase.
Sometimes you get a game that was just made for one of these quirky awards. This year there was no contest. Cruelty Squad is the ugliest game I've ever seen. It is military-grade MSPaint Shitpostcore. The developers were searching to find a way to make game art so dementedly obstructive that it triples the difficulty of the actual gameplay. There’s shades of green in there that violate the Geneva convention. Though I suppose all the cannibalism does too.
It's almost impressive in a way. It's a game that starts out looking gross and hard to look at, and every time you buy an upgrade, you roll the dice to see if they will make the game even uglier. I remember Allie meticulously preparing for a mission with a particular load-out. After a solid 10 minutes of reading equipment descriptions and deliberations on what would be good combinations, we started the mission, only to be greeted by a screen with only two colours. Pure black and one single shade of bright red, and then the thickest, fleshiest looking border around the screen that basically obscured half of the already unplayable looking mess.
Runners up: A Story About My Uncle, Deep Rock Galactic
Best Story
The Great Ace Attorney
Me when i decrab and beetle off hut-wise
Ace Attorney usually delivers on this front, so I already expected to enjoy what Great Ace Attorney was about to serve up. The gimmick of this game is that it takes place in the late 19th century, a time when Japan and England were making cultural exchanges to try and strengthen their bonds. Cases are drenched in charming historic trivia and cultural references, which are nicely integrated in the mysteries that the game is focused around. Since the game deals with foreigners dealing with white people, the story doesn't shy away from deeply uncomfortable instances of discrimination, which just add to the texture of the writing.
This game has the nice advantage of being refined from many games before it, while also serving as a good jump-in point for players who never tried or fell behind on the series (hint hint). The overarching plot is really solid but where it shines is in the details: all the theming and clever original ideas for the mysteries that weave brilliantly into Sherlock references, the period politics, characterization and stuff. I also think it’s the funniest and spiciest game to date.
I had played Pony Island by this developer before so I knew to expect a tightly designed and well executed game system with a satanic twist that wouldn’t overstay its welcome. (I was pretty on the money) Plus it was a card game, that's cool I like those. What I didn’t expect was MULTIPLE original card game designs, all very much my jam and brilliantly designed with intense stakes and moreish unpredictability. If anything, this game under-stayed its welcome… come back, game! Come back and play with me more!
Yeah, it's difficult enough to design a single card game with bespoke mechanics and gimmicks, but somehow Inscryption made like four of them. They were abandoned as quickly as they were introduced, so I was certainly left wanting more. I'm a huge fan of the Pokémon Trading Card Game on the original Game Boy, so I was pretty stoked to see this game take many cues from it.
Runners up: Chicory, It Takes Two, Frostpunk
Funniest Dialogue
The Great Ace Attorney
maybe that opium habit for starters
Ace Attorney has gotten very adept at straight man helpless observer style comedy. You're a reasonably normal person in an endless sea of extremities. This is most apparent during the Dance Of Deduction sections, in which Herlock Sholmes will point out the most minute details he noticed of a scene, and then form the most outlandish conclusions out of them, and you have to drag him back into the realm of normalcy. Whenever I heard the Dance of Deduction music, I knew I was about to be exposed to the new dumbest thing I've ever heard in my entire life. The man will see a Japanese person sleeping on his sofa, and somehow will reason his way into thinking the emperor of Germany has come to his house to serenade him.
The comedy really shines through the smartly dressed yet completely demented cast of perfectly written characters in this series. With the clown king Herlock, his brutally honest assistant Iris, passive aggressive Ryunosuke, unflappable and subtle Susato, drama lord Van Zieks, manic poet Soseki, and a whole load of other unhinged weirdos, the ratchet level in the courtroom is always dialled up to 11.
I would say this year was a year of games that I expected to be good and remarkable, and turned out to be phenomenal. I had heard DQB1 was a decent Minecraft-like but I never got around to it, and I had heard DQB2 was an all round better iteration with robust improvements. What I didn’t know is that this game is absolutely insane. There’s a full-on dramatic narrative that ties it to the mainline game (Dragon Quest 2) over the top of this extravagant builder system. You have to break out of prison, befriend a giant worm, rescue monsters, rebuild a castle, make your NPCs shit, mourn the dead, build a hot spring, betray your friends, defy the gods… But the one thing you don’t have to do is build roofs on the houses (because it's like a top down RPG.)
A lot of Minecraft's lasting appeal is how freeform and open it is, where you can just play with your virtual LEGOs and build what you want and make your own fun. That's great and all, but if you're looking for a more guided and structured experience, that can be pretty lacking. Dragon Quest Builders tries to solve this by giving you pre-build worlds loosely based on the now ancient Dragon Quest 2, and gives you a bunch of missions to mess around in these worlds. It honestly works quite well, and consistently goes that little step further than you'd expect. Really leaves you thinking that for as big as Minecraft is, there's soooo much more it could be doing.
Runners up: It Takes Two, Inscryption
Biggest Disappointment
Neverwinter Nights
More like... Neverinteresting.. Fights... yeah gottem.
I didn't really know much about this one. I figured it was another one of those by the books Baldur's Gate-likes. I was a little bit shocked to see how limited it was time and again. You can get party members, but they don't seem to matter or be integrated in the story. It's a game with a finite amount of gold, but an infinite amount of expenses. It's a game that's stingy with experience points, but very steep difficulty curves. A game filled with barrels, chests and loot bags, and the meagrest rewards that just don't really add up to anything. These little nothings get put in your very limited inventory space with weight limits. If you wanna make room in your inventory, you can sell them to vendors for an eighth of their worth. A game of many words, and nothing to say. A game where important story characters can share the exact same character model as the least important generic NPC, and a portrait that doesn't even come close to matching their model. The only things it is more than underwhelming, is long and repetitive.
I wasn’t expecting that much from this game, but when it started out I thought I was pleasantly surprised. It was a straightforward, more linear and combat-driven DnD game compared to Baldur's Gate, which in contrast might have been more in the spirit of roleplay but it has you reloading your save if you accidentally enter the wrong hut and get obliterated by some level 60 squatter. But then there was just more and more game… with more and more samey basic dungeons. And then there would eventually be some obnoxiously difficult, non-optional bosses that I was apparently underleveled for in spite of doing all the side quests I found along the journey. Salty. >:(
Runners up: Yakuza 4, Hexen
Usual Suspects Award for Most Time Wasted
Dragon Quest Builders 2
Is this a mixed hot spring? Well there's a chimera in it.
I was never as hardcore into Minecraft and Terraria as Tobi, though I did always enjoy and play for hours. But somehow the adventure focus and arbitrary limitations of DQB2 really spoke to me especially and I found myself hella lost in the sauce of gilding my parapets, petting my regular pets, furnishing the perfect bedroom for my farmers and suchlike.
Indeed. Whenever we played builder games like Minecraft, I could tell Allie had a "what should I do?" kind of mentality in it. Some might argue it's the series' biggest strength, but it can easily work against it. DQB2 lets you do what you want, but always makes sure you know what you can work towards. Even when you're done, it's still holding your hand, making suggestions if you want it to. Even if you're just doing nothing but mainline story quests, there's so much more game there than you'd expect, and it's good.
Runners up: Xenoblade Chronicles 3, Fire Emblem: Warriors
GAME OF THE YEAR
Xenoblade Chronicles 3
Noah's Snark
I have such a strange relationship with Xenoblade games. Whenever a new one's announced, I look at those trailers and think "I don't know about this one. I'm not really feeling it." Then when I get around to them, that feeling turns to "oh right, I love these games". Xenoblade 3 has a strong story concept, which reverberates across its entire story. Its characters and sci-fi writing is engaging and the quality doesn't let up in spite of the sheer scope of the game. I was pretty surprised at how often and for how long it kept introducing new mechanics and characters, and how it didn't stop developing all the earlier established elements. It borrows and builds a lot on the previous entries, but I'm fairly certain it can stand on its own, and you don't need to know anything of the previous entries. I sometimes struggle with sticking with a 5 hour game, but I devoured this 100+ hour one with ease.
Xenoblade Chronicles 3 styled itself on my favourite parts of most of the previous games. A tight main cast with tons of emotional exposition and friendship moments like the first game, a cool military mecha space opera inspired style like XBCX, and the big quality of life and animation upgrades from XBC2. XBC3 is absolutely rammed with cinematic sequences, its trademark huge continents to explore, and a story that (thus far!) feels like they actually got to sit down and make everything that they wanted to make. This comes at the cost of inventing any particularly crazy new combat or upgrade systems and most of the enemy designs seem to be recycled from previous games. But was it worth it to go all in on story and characters and worldbuilding? Hell ya.
Runners up: 13 Sentinels: Aegis Rim, Splatoon 3
DINOSAUR OF THE YEAR (released before 2012)
King's Quest VI
When alls been said, I'm just a clam in a bed.
I played a handful of retro classics this year that I didn’t super get into. And then I played a couple ratchet looking adventure games and they were glorious. KQVI was the most ambitious in the series yet, and the most batshit crazy which was quite a feat. Drawing inspo from Alice in Wonderland, Aladdin and Greek mythology, this game has you dangling participles, bamboozling genies and entering death’s domain still wearing your flesh.
Old Sierra adventure games are already a little unhinged and cursed by default, but KQ6 finally seemed to fully embrace it and dialled everything to 11. For something that presents itself as simple and straightforward, you will have no idea of predicting what's lurking around the next screen. This game had beefing sticks and logs, druidic human sacrifice rituals, "old lamps for new" guy, getting drunk off mints, sleepy clams, and deeply awkward poetry. Very entertaining though.
Runners up: Mega Man X, Suikoden III, Toonstruck!
Craziest Amateur Game
Inscryption
But it's just not in the cards, right?
We already mentioned Inscryption was four games in one, but did we mention it's also an Escape Room? The game takes place in a cabin where a guy is making you play card games, and you can walk around the cabin and there's little puzzles around the place. Oh right, and the guy's a lil underlit lightmare boy who won't let you leave and makes you cut off your fingies and uses human teeth as tokens, so it's also a horror game.
I’ll try not to spoil Inscryption but yeah this game goes places. You’re not just playing a card game, you’re a prisoner trying to escape a card game. Each time you lose and restart the roguelike adventure things change. The cards start talking to you, you can find objects around the place… mysterious codes you’re not meant to see, evidence of corrupt data and video footage… While it's ultimately a bit camp and silly and there’s an ARG that doesn’t amount to much, it's still an extremely cool and intense game to experience that I hhhhhhiiiiiiiiiighly reccommend.
Runners up: Cruelty Squad, Sludge Life, A Story About My Uncle
Citizen’s A-Vest Award for Egregious Design Transgressions
Roy Earle and his hotdog suit (LA Noire)
Do I smell bacon?
I enjoyed openly detesting every character in LA Noire, but especially this guy. His tweed suit with fleshy wiener sleeves, pill themed tie (because he's narcotics division) all round ugly colour scheme. He walks around like he thinks he dresses well too. Hate this era, hate these guys, love getting in the car and driving off without him.
Roy Earle sucks so much that it's tempting to turn this into a bonus round of our Worst Character award. Luckily for him, his stupid hot dog suit. I honestly didn't even catch that he had a stupid pill-themed tie. That just makes it worse, given how much he whines about how the entire field of medicine is bad. Much like Allie, I don't care for this whole aesthetic, ugly patterns and colours or not. At least he has the decency to leave the glizzy at home when he attends funerals.
Runners up: Crazy Frog Civilization (A Story About My Uncle), Camilla (Fire Emblem Warriors), Roly & Patricia Beats (The Great Ace Attorney)
Maximum Swaggage Award for Best Dressed Bae
Enoch Drebber (The Great Ace Attorney)
Enoch Drip-er
A lanky disgraced chaotic Tumblr sexyman with 'tude? In my Ace Attorney? It's more likely than you think. While Drebber shared a name of an existing Sherlock Holmes character, this one's pretty much got nothing to do with the inspiration. This Drebber's a mad scientist who pretends to be a robot, lives in an upside-down room and crawls into vaults. His design is very clockwork-inspired, as are his movements. The latter just makes him a joy to watch.
Great Ace Attorney absolutely slays with its brilliant character design and inspired over-the-top animations. It goes really hard on theming its characters for no reason other than to delight the players stuck cross-examining them for what feels like an eternity. You might be wondering what kind of evil steampunk supersoldier cyborg this guy is, but he’s literally just some goth nerd and you just got to admit his outfit slaps. I also love his little nintendo switch plus and minus buttons.
There were so many good nominees for this year, but I could fill an entire second list of blessed critters just from this game. Wrigley was chosen in the end because I think he embodies the spirit of this game the best. You arrive on the island with a bunch of distraught ex-farmers no longer able to grow crops on some poisoned soil, you venture out to find some kind of solution and I gotta admit I didn’t expect a giant worm in a straw hat with a somerset accent whos immediately eager to help to be that solution. Then he happily follows you on your adventure for the rest of the game, able to terraform anything into grassy land and talk about how he loves it. As far as I know he’s unique to this game. A good ecological lesson and the positive worm representation we all needed.
Allie was so smug, claiming she'd know when this game would click for me, and she can double that smugness now, because I admit she was correct. Wrigley was immediately endearing to me. Just a giant gross lil worm with a hat who's so friendly and helps me rebuild a broken world. The latter is already a type of game progression I'm a sucker for, so tying it to a creach instantly ensures I wouldn't be able to resist its charm.
This one's been a long time coming. I think Square Enix as a whole is pretty terrible at minigames, yet for whatever reason, they can't seem to resist adding them in many of their titles. Kingdom Hearts inexplicably decided to dedicate an entire world to these minigames, the 100 Acre Woods from Winnie the Pooh. We start off with Hunny Hunt, a game where Pooh is trying to raid some beehives with a balloon. You have to jump from branch to branch, to try and hit bees enough so they leave Pooh-bear alone. Jumping and platforming in general is pretty terrible in Kingdom Hearts, so minigames that make you do this on a timer can be maddening. The second minigame is Tigger wanting to stomp on Rabbit's carrot garden. Your task is to rush underneath him and volleyball him out of the way for as long as you can. The only nice thing I can say about it is that it made me realise all these minigames were optional, and I haven't touched a single one since.
This year I finished my first Kingdom Hearts game. A game especially beloved by a lot of people I know. And I can see why they have a lot of nostalgia for it. It’s got an amazing cinematic style for its time and it goes super hard on being cosy and whimsical in a really memorable way. I just don’t understand how all these people actually got through the game?? You’d think the twee little Winnie the Pooh side-world would be the place you come to relax from the obnoxiously hard boss battles, but no, it's a gruelling slog through barely-functioning minigames that rival only FFX’s chocobo challenges in my abject misery.
Runners up: Platforming traps (Hexen), Most of (Cruelty Squad) really.
Worst Trend of the Year
NFT gaming
Bet you forgot this nonce island feverdream was last year.
Ah, NFTs. It seems so long ago now that nobody would shut up about them, before they all packed up and moved on to the next techbro scam (AI Art generators). One of the most fascinating aspects for me was seeing the insane takes on what the future of gaming could look like. What if… you paid money for a unique asset in ~a game~ that nobody else could ever obtain? What if that asset could exist in all games, presumably hand crafted by a collective of infinite game artists and programmers? Like a weed smoking blue hyena furry in the next Tomb Raider game? What even is a video game if not a static gallery for rich people with no taste? Think of the potential! And think of how much money game developers could make if they created a micro-economy in their own videogames and sold you assets through microtransactions! What… they already do that? OK yes but what if they could do it and have to sacrifice a significant portion of that income to some cryptocurrency group? What if they could make it even more like gambling!? Do words have meaning any more? Can I sell you that?
It feels good to see a trainwreck die quickly within the same year as they made their push to promote them. NFT Gaming sounded completely unrealistic if you think about how it would work for 5 seconds, but then I suppose it wasn't meant to actually work. It was just a ploy to get people to invest early in things that could potentially maybe someday perhaps kick off out of FOMO, and all it actually does is promote the crypto currencies that power them. Some big companies that really ought to know better tried to get a slice of this pie with awkward metaverse plans, where they hoped to create their own Ready Player One dystopia. Unsurprisingly, they struggled actually making this dreamed up copyright infringement slop lacking in any sort of game design. The best we always seem to get from them is "what if you could do virtual meetings and buy T-shirts with real money to show off during said meetings?" …cool.
Runners up: AI Art Discourse, Everything is superpowers
Dumbest Premise
'I am going to marry the princess to usurp the throne and then kill her after the wedding, but also I don’t actually need the princess there because I was going to get my magic genie who can grant ANY WISH to impersonate her for the fake wedding.' (King’s Quest VI)
When she's got stars in her eyes, nice, when she's got cruficixes... run?
Hey, Alhazred, my boy. I've got some notes here for your scheme. So I get the regicide and kidnap the princess parts. Not sure why you're leaving her alive in a tower, when you're just going to get rid of her after the wedding. I was fully under the impression that she was being kept alive because she needed to be part of the wedding ceremony, but to my big surprise, she wasn't. He got a genie to impersonate her during the wedding, while she was still chilling in her room. I think we can streamline this evil master plan a little. He clearly has no qualms with offing people, since he took out the king and queen.
Big Al, my man, my dude… is there a reason you couldn’t have just asked the genie to like, grant you buckets of power and money in the first place? Maybe you should have wished for a lil’ bit of that common sense.
Runners up: Prove you're worthy of a loan by becoming a sex worker. (Yakuza 4), "The Puzzle Knight? You're the one behind this Puzzle Dungeon?!" (Shovel Knight: Pocket Dungeon)
Words & Deeds Award for Most Awkward Moment
The butter machine (Toonstruck!)
Wheel of the worst thing ive ever witnessed in a videogame.
This game was top to bottom one of the most cursed things I have ever played. It’s like if Cool World, Animaniacs and Ren and Stimpy had a clown together. If you’re not sure what you’re looking at here, it's an evil BDSM barn where a sheep with a torpedo bra whips a leather mommy cow causing a machine to make butter while Christopher Lloyd watches. Despite how much this wretched 90s cartoon fetish game makes my skin crawl, it was actually laugh out loud funny, plays to its medium surprisingly well and I ended up having a weirdly good time. I suppose that means the masochist police cow was me all along.
You might also be wondering what the "glue" machine thing is about in the screenshot. I'd like to direct your attention to the right, where you'll see the word "Elmer". Elmer was a super old horse who used to exist in this barn next to the cow and sheep. You can probably put two and two together. What an incredibly cursed game, made worse by Christopher Lloyd being weirdly chill about everything.
Runners up: "Eh, just go through the mist door, there won’t be another boss. We JUST fought one. We can spend all these souls in a little bit." (Dark Souls II), Regicide for the greater good (It Takes Two), There's a cat with two buttholes and there's two poops in its litter box (Sludge Life)
Most Tears Shed
Sporting Handshakes (Inscryption)
Yes I've known realistic mole since highschool.
When you boil it down to its essence, Inscryption is mainly a collection of cool card games. Some get spotlighted, and they're great. Others only get explored a little bit. When you beat the game however, the game gives you the opportunity to sample more fleshed out versions of those underutilised card games. You get a short little game session, shake hands, and move on to the next one.
In your journey to try and escape you start to learn more about the structure of the game and the adversaries you play against. By the end of the game the once terrifying faces in the dark feel like old friends, the creepy cabin becomes the place you played a fun little game, and you get excited to see more of these games... And that's when it's ripped from you by the necessary oblivion. As a clock ticks down you get a glimpse of more potential content as you play some final games with your old “enemies” and they approach you to shake hands and omg it's so sad I do a lil cry.
Runners up: Prison 2.0 (Xenoblade 3), Building coffins for your comrades (Dragon Quest Builders 2)
Most Terrifying Moment
Haha he can’t get through the door (Dark Souls II)
The rest of the Mr. Men fell out of touch with Mr. Tickle.
There were a decent amount of scares in Dark Souls 2. Thought I'd bring up this funny example though. So there’s these long grabby bois in the wharf area that hide in dark corners and jump out trying to grab you… But as you can see, they’re kind of wide set. After avoiding several of these, I got to this area where there was a narrow doorway, big enough to fit me but not this jerkass, so I took the time to stop and smugly laugh at him. Then he broke down the stone walls and chased me. F
That was just super mean. They don't set it off immediately. They give you a moment to feel comfortable and cocky. Only when you feel nice and secure, and ready to devise some cheap strategies to hit the thing from a safe distance, the thing kicks off. Proper jump scare. A rare earned one though.
Runners up: Gottem with the ol’ falling through the floor trick (Cruelty Squad), Gottem with the ol’ falling through the floor trick (Layers of Fear), The knife and pliers (Inscryption), Oh there’s bosses (Chicory)
Bognor Award for Exemplary Fucking-Shit-Up-itude
Malroth (Dragon Quest Builders 2)
........................in bed
It was a pretty easy pick for this one. Dragon Quest Builders 2 is a game about building stuff, as the clever folks in the audience might have deduced. You're "the builder", and building stuff is what you do well. On the flip side though, you also have Malroth, who is the god of destruction and main antagonist of Dragon Quest 2. You'd think the two of you wouldn't get along, but somehow you're besties.
Malroth is a natural at fucking shit up, and it actually plays a really big role in the game’s narrative. Sometimes he gets envious of the builder’s ability to create, and wants to try that for himself but he just sucks so bad at it and it's such a tearjerk moment when he tries his best. ;_; He’s not just a theoretical badass though, he’s your number one clobberin’ guy who bodyguards you with a unique set of club weapons way beyond any NPCs and your own stats and he, uh, well let’s just say he can scale it up a bit. He’s also got a spicy attitude and loves to high five.
Runners up: 12FT PAUL BLART MALL COP (Cruelty Squad), Zelda oneshots bosses (Zelda: Wand of Gamelon), Kaiju tub (Bayonetta 3)
There! Now that we've obliterated 2022 and high fived, I'm looking forward to building a better 2023 and playing more silly games.
