Game Awards 2024: Breakouts, Brainlords, and Boner jokes

Happy 2025! 2024 hasn't been so bad here, feels like we're a little out of the covid era. My moods a little better personally. And between us we played 65 games! Seems like it was a great year for new co-op experiences, action RPGs, political satire, and... like, a whole lot of talking about dicks and bums it seems. We did some crimes, we did our times, we even bust some rhymes.

Best Character

Kim Kitsuragi (Disco Elysium)

I say the magic words: Abear-cadaver!

Kim has the patience of a saint. Imagine being called up for your job to go to some terrible neighbourhood where you will be subjected to a number of bigotries, where you essentially have to babysit the human car crash. Your partner has none of his stuff, has done a number of crimes, and struggles with being coherent, and you have to stay professional. I'm not sure if I could do it, but Kim could. While he starts out stern and seemingly joyless, nothing made me happier than seeing his facade crack and be excited about things. Pretty sure trying to make Kim like you is the most common achievement in the game.

I already have a soft spot for a good support character, as well as a character that's kinda quietly judging you and reacts to your choices in the game. For an NPC Kim does an awful lot, he gets involved in just about every conversation in the game and tells you everything you need to know about your role. He’s so well fleshed out as a character, being believably stoic yet sometimes petty, aloof yet geeky, principled yet forgiving, and sarcastic yet deeply kind. The game also has well-performed voice acting which helps.

Runners up:  Futaba (Persona 5 Royal), TOMCAT (2064:Read Only Memories)

Worst Character

Bonaire (Alundra)

They HAD to have known.

So like, I dunno, worst? Best? Nah worst… Alundra is one of those games from an era where publishers just didn’t really respect Japanese games very much, and thought it would be best to quirk everything up a notch for the anglo market. So they took this high fantasy tragedy about elves fighting evil gods and injected some surfer dude characterization in there. His name sounds like boner though, very funny.

When I first saw Bonaire, I knew I'd either adore or hate him. There would be no middle ground. He's got this tiny little smile, and he talks like a Ninja Turtle. Most of his dialogue is about thinking about babelicious betties, even though everyone is dying. You'd think a creepy horndog character would be rizzing up the local ladies, who somehow think he's amazing, all the time. Unfortunately he prefers his women ethereal, so he's only "checking out the tasty morsels of babitude" in his dreams.

Runners up:  Desuhiko Thunderbolt (Raincode), Sigma Jet (Ripened Tingle’s Balloon Trip of Love)

Best Soundtrack

Disco Elysium

With a name like that, we're in for some Disco music surely, right? Regrettably …no. You'll have to settle for mostly Alt Rock and shoegaze, with the occasional quirky "hardcore to the mega" outlier. It all fits super well though, contributing heavily to the game's moody atmosphere. It also thematically fits quite well that the dour music doesn't match the fun vibes that are being announced, as that's pretty much what the main character's like too.

At first I was like, “wow this rave music is annoying”. Then it was in my head nonstop for like 2 weeks. Then I looked up the soundtrack and got kinda hooked on it. I’m a sucker for moody music, and this game’s soundtrack is so unique and adds a lot to the game. It’s mostly ambient yet kind of melodramatic, mystical and evocative. It’s just been a total mood for the year.

Runners up: Persona 5 Royal, Live-A-Live, Bastion

Best Art Direction

Sushi Ben

She can sear my scallops with just a look

We love a crisp, sunny game with blue skies and bad bitches. The minimalist art style looks like a cross between Mega Man Legends, Untitled Goose Game and Katamari Damacy.

Yeah, I really like this type of artistic direction. It works really well for VR too, where the simplified style also conserves resources, which you can spend elsewhere. Sushi Ben is a game about being in a quiet coastal village, doing chores for the community and a sushi restaurant. Such a cosy game needs a pleasant aesthetic, and it absolutely delivers on that. Also helps that it knows how to be extra when it calls for it.

Runners up: Baldur’s Gate 3, Darkest Dungeon, Shovel Knight Dig

Ugliest Art Direction

Super Paper Mario

Straight Outta Context

You know what's one of my favourite video game aesthetics? Paper Mario on the Nintendo 64. A really creative and cohesive visual direction that influenced the gameplay in turn. The whole game feels like a bunch of lovingly made papercraft dioramas. You know another game aesthetic I loved? Paper Mario: The Thousand Year Door, the sequel to Paper Mario. It took what's good about the original, and really pushed the paper angle to the next level. Then came Super Paper Mario, a game whose art direction probably just thought "well paper is flat, so what if the whole game was flat?" This game became this weird mix of nice assets from Thousand Year Door, mixed with new original assets that feel like temp placeholders made by their least artistically inclined programmers, slapped together in uninteresting ways. 

Nintendo had this weird low point for graphics around the late GC/early Wii era, that zelda 4 swords adventure game had the exact same problem. Mismatched assets at inconsistent resolutions, and a bunch of quick and flat abstract visuals with no lighting. MSpaintcore ass colour palette. They had a bunch of new original enemies, just so that they could be like “this ones a floating square”. Ball it up and throw it in the paper bin.

Runners up: Psychonauts, Lethal Company

Best Story

Baldur’s Gate 3

Yeah that's right... I play for the narrative.

What I love the most about BG3 isn’t its big overarching plot idea, it’s the fact that it's such an incredible triumph of game-specific writing. The challenge to create a prewritten D&D style tabletop scenario with multiple solutions, interchangeable characters, told through largely optional conversations, with tons of branching paths affected by player choice, multiple outcomes through dice rolls, side-quests, enveloping a perfect balance of combat and exploration, and functioning around multiplayer co-op. All that and it somehow managed to be engaging, thrilling, funny, raunchy, digestible and unpredictable. Just… how??

Yeah, the scope of it all is impressive for sure. While I agree that the main story is not the strongest element for me either, it does do a great job at informing the state of the world and its inhabitants. It also weaves in nicely with the gameplay, and some mechanical twists. The open-ended nature of it also meant I wasn't sure how things were going to play out. We had a number of moments where we just tried something, and it ended up being accepted and viable. The developers thought of it too, because it was acknowledged through pre-recorded voiced dialogue.

Runners up: Persona 5 Royal, Disco Elysium, Yakuza 6

Best Original Game Concept

KeyWe

Pretty fly for a flightless guy.

When I saw this, I knew we were going to play this. Close your eyes and imagine for a moment that you're a little Kiwi bird, drafted in the postal service of some Oceanian country. You're just a bunch of lil guys and you can't even fly, so you have to parkour across the desks and floors, to do all the sorting and stamping and labelling. It's a delightful co-op experience.

A tactical action variety party game, I guess you could call it. Like, Overcooked meets Untitled Goose Game. As a kiwi you can jump, butt-stomp, peck, tweet, and pick things up with your beak. Use these to great effect in all sorts of elaborate and oddly specific minigames, including sorting coins, pasting stamps, patching leaks, using a typewriter, and yelling at cassowaries! It’s just so out there, it’s wacky and cute and if you can handle that very specific kind of action co-op where you have to constantly be in sync with your partner you might love it too.

Runners up: Escape Academy, Disco Elysium

Funniest Dialogue

Disco Elysium

As if you wouldn't steal chips from a child, Harry.

Difficult to describe the distinct dialogue style of this game. It sure is… something. Fans say it's radically leftist, but it's really more like it satirises all political extremes with a ton of ironic bigotry and exaggerated liberalism and just… big words and esoteric subject matter circlejerk. And much of the most cringeworthy opinions come from the mouth of the player’s character, the one you’re supposed to have the most agency over! I guess that's its appeal though. It's an RPG where you have to make choices, and designing your character's strengths means sacrificing something meaningful, such as imagination, wit, physical ability or integrity. You the player have to overcome the horrible challenge of being the one at the wheel when ur only options are "hnnnngh" and "papa horny" and I guess that's pretty ascended.

Ironic bigotry, satirical depictions of political beliefs, and verbal diarrhoea makes up three quarters of the game here. If you're not into ironic edginess, there might not be a whole lot here for you. If you don't mind, or actively enjoy it, you'll appreciate how unabashedly far it's willing to go, and how colourful it's willing to describe things.Since the game sets you up as a pretty awful guy right off the bat, and people find you annoying, it provides a nice avenue to indulge in roleplaying as a pathetic shitty guy who's willing to pick fights with children. The remaining quarter is people talking about how drunk they are/were, and that is pretty consistently tedious and unfunny. 

Runners up: West of Loathing, Going Under, Ripened Tingle’s Balloon Trip of Love

Biggest Surprise

Going Under

Put 'em up! No, not the prices!

Going Under is a roguelite about being in a techbro startup, through the aesthetic of those weird corporate slides that say "synergy" a lot. Since you're the intern at a company that is trying to revolutionise "drinks", you're tasked with a bunch of menial tasks that are not part of your job description, and you have to put up with the remains of previously failed startups, since your colleagues don't really want to deal with them. The game's got sass for days, but there's a surprisingly solid game underneath it all. 

I really expected to like the concept more than the execution, as it seemed like a gamejam type idea with a few low-hanging jokes to be made. It’s a bouncy action dungeon crawler with slightly frustrating weapons and enemies that I thought would suffer from the indie games curse of getting way too hard to finish. And anyone who ever mentioned it before its release had gone pretty quiet about it afterwards. But after persevering a bit and checking the accessibility/difficulty options, I was starting to get the hang of it. The overarching story had some good twists and turns, the characters were cute, there was tons of weapon variety. The theming went hard and never ran out of jokes, each dungeon felt a bit different because they had really well-used sub-themes (job outsourcing, dating apps and crypto mining). So yeah I totally finished it and had a great time.

Runners up: KeyWe, Bastion, Gregory Horror Show

Biggest Disappointment

Super Paper Mario

Well at least there's one aspect of the game that's too easy...

This game had the reputation of getting a lot of backlash at the time, but later becoming something of a cult game? Here and there it definitely has some funny and bizarre ideas you wouldn’t expect to see in a modern Nintendo game, but… I think Mario games still fundamentally have to be a few key things: whimsical, forgiving and ACTUALLY FUN TO PLAY.

I had tried this game before back during the Wii era. I was already disappointed at how different it was from the previous Paper Mario games, and "took a break" after a few chapters. This break would last 15 years. I figured I owed it another shot after we'd keep seeing mentions of how underappreciated and great it was, if only people were willing to give it a try without the preconceived notions of what a Paper Mario game should be. Fair enough. After clearing out biases and playing the whole thing now, we can report it's still a stinker. It's pretty ugly, the dialogue is long-winded and not super interesting, the scenarios are novel but with weak execution, its platforming mechanics are very weak, its flipping and cursor mechanics are undercooked and overstay their welcome pretty quickly, and the game is full of "haha, wouldn't this by annoying?" type of game design. You might be able to appreciate what a troll game it is, but other than the music, I personally got very little out of it.

Runners up: Marvel's Guardians of the Galaxy, Halo: Combat Evolved, Cubivore

Usual Suspects Award for Most Time Wasted

Baldur’s Gate 3

Still here, but they've got no skin in the game.

I'm not too surprised by this. I think we both knew this was happening the moment we picked it. An easy 100+ hours of our lives. Having played the Divinity games from this developer made me pretty confident we wouldn't regret the time investment though. The only thing that made me a bit hesitant was that I don't really like Baldur's Gate 1 or 2. Knowing that the developer changed eased my mind a lot though, and deservedly so.

Yes indeed. The upgrade from “action combat with pause” to “actual turn-based” makes such a huge difference, and I will never understand people who think they don't like turn-based combat in an RPG. Divinity + familiar DnD5e rules were a match made in heaven. Much like a real DnD session though, everything takes ages. Battles are tactical and require communication and planning, there are hundreds of conversations to be had, crimes to investigate, dice rolls for every interaction, flowers to stop and smell, etc etc. Plus the game is massive. Time well spent. And I want to play it again!!!

Runners up: Adventure Bar Story, Persona 5 Royal, Darkest Dungeon

GAME OF THE YEAR OF THE DECADE (released after 2014)

Baldur’s Gate 3

Having a Bhaal.

An all round solid game that just scores well on all kinds of fronts. Ambitious, well-made, entertaining, spicy, great use of DnD mechanics, fun combat, good visuals and designs, good performances, good writing… We’d already become big fans of Divinity:OS, particularly appreciating the well-balanced turn based rpg mechanics and co-op gameplay. BG3 was all that and a bag of dicks.

I still think I prefer the Divinity games at the end of the day, but I was very impressed with Baldur's Gate 3. It's my favourite translation of DnD mechanics to a video game, with the design, writing, and excessive indulgences of a Larian game. The game has a billion hours of content, and the moment we were finished, we were already discussing what we'd do differently if we were ever going to do another playthrough.

Runners up: Persona 5 Royal, The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom

DINOSAUR OF THE YEAR (released before 2014)

Batman: Arkham Asylum

Giving it the ol' Grant Gustin

I had played this before, so it was nice to see it again with a pair of fresh eyes. It's still a well realised 3D Metroidvania game. I was a little surprised to see how janky and old it became, but I suppose that's not uncommon with playing retro titles. It's a sign of the industry advancing. What's there though still has a lot of atmosphere, complexity and creativity. Except for the boss fights. Those were pretty bad even back in the day.

Yeah I have loads of shit to talk about this game, there's a lot I had beef with just on principle. It’s a dumb game for wrestleheads who think that solving mysteries is just following footprint trails to a perpetrators house and then you beat them in a fistfight. And I’m just a bad match with stealth and assassination games somehow. But… well, it was quite good wasn’t it? It had a load of new mechanics and they all worked well. The level designs were bold and memorable. Rich with cool art setpieces and secrets to find. It had a bunch of cool bespoke moments that I wish there were more of. Controversially, I think my favourite bit was actually the killer croc level where you have to go around a maze of rafts while he would pop up and chase you down, clock tower style.

Runners up: Bastion, Psychonauts, Final Fantasy Tactics

Craziest Amateur Game

Gregory Horror Show

Things I say when I definitely didn't wee myself.

We already extensively covered this game in a Halloween post but let me see if I can sum it up again real quick. It looks like an evil animal crossing in a papercraft furry style. You check into a spooky hotel and you have to stalk the residents (who are animals or furniture) who carry a soul in a jar with them and you have to find their unique weakness to exploit to run off with their stuff. Once you do that you have to avoid eye-contact from then on and if they catch you they’ll terrorize you with a kid-friendly Mortal Kombat fatality. And you give their souls to the grim reaper in your dreams so that you can escape someday.

Yeah, we already covered this one not that long ago, so we don't need to spend much time on this. It's a cute social stealth horror game in a hotel, with silly little guys. Everything about it feels off, but that just contributes to its atmosphere. I've played nothing like it before, and I doubt I'll ever play something like it again. That's exactly what I wanted out of it though.

Runners up: West of Loathing, Sushi Ben

Shadiest Co-op Shenanigans

The mystery of the midnight chub (Stardew Valley)

That's one hoe down

Playing co-op games stirs the cheeky gnome DNA within me, and when we were playing Stardew Valley in co-op, it was only a matter of time before I'd find ways to get up to no good. What I settled on was the following; instead of emptying out my cluttered inventory in the appropriate chests at the end of the day, what if I just throw my junk on the floor? Even better was when I noticed that tossing stuff on someone's bed will make the item become invisible, as it would disappear underneath the covers. Then people would go to bed, pick up the rubbish, and may not even notice as the screen would turn black. The perfect crime. If anyone asks, I didn't see or do nothing'!

One morning I woke up and there was a chub in my bed (the fish, but it is also slang for boner) so I obviously assumed Tobi had done it as a raunchy joke. I was like ohhh you! And he was like what? He sounded unusually convincing, had he gotten better at lying? But who else would have done that other than my gremlin witch wife? Still, he seemed… weirdly surprised… Then one day, I was working in the kitchen and our cat Pumpking walked in and dropped a sardine at my feet. It was him all along!!!

Runners up: Murbulyn (Tobi) keeps trying experimental eye surgery to get an eyepatch (Baldur's Gate 3), Tobi feels karma hard when he steals the milkshake and it was poisoned (Escape Academy)

Citizen’s A-Vest Award for Egregious Design Transgressions

Harry Du Bois (Disco Elysium)

The thin blue pantyline

I don’t know what they were like, going for in this game… but I hate every single item of clothing I found. I hate the aviators, the default outfit, the wife beaters, rave wear, windbreakers, utility pants, body armour, flares… It’s like a greatest hits show of all the 20th century’s worst politically-coded menswear.

This had way more clothing items than I expected, honestly. Unfortunately it's very difficult to not look like you tumbled into a charity shop's bin. Most of the clothes you find are either filthy or tattered, or they make you look like you're playing dress-up. And yeah, a lot of it feels politically-coded. It also doesn't help that Harry himself is a clown-shoes kinda cop, even if he doesn't own any actual clown attire. 

Runners up: Felix (Ys 9), My Son (Gregory Horror Show)

Maximum Swaggage Award for Best Dressed Bae

Tokiko (AI: The Somnium Files: Nirvana Initiative)

Cuts like a NAIX

Tokiko's got a look that says "I just woke up" and "I pilot EVA mechs for a living". Her fit settled on three colours, an understated grey and black, and some purple for accents. Perfectly coordinated with her hair. I did suspect her of being a robot for the longest time though, in large part of her design.

AI:TSF-NI’s take on near-future fashion is a whole lot of sweater-dresses and gradient leggings with that sleek kinda techwear/2010s cyberpunk look. I like it. Tokiko’s design has that perfectly styled “messy” hair to match her intense yet calculating and detached personality. She’s quite a unique and interesting character too. Villainous, intimidating, relaxed and tragic. Nice to see an anime lady over 40 steal the spotlight as well.

Runners up: Sovereign Spaw (Baldur’s Gate 3), Lexi Rivers (2064: Read Only Memories)

Peepee the Cat Award for Ultimate Creacher

Cube (Live A Live)

Servers up!

In my favourite chapter, you play as this little 2-ft tall orb with chicken wings, roller skates, a baseball cap and glasses. Perfection, right? And they’re just the embodiment of creacherly innocence. Granted a new experimental artificial intelligence to learn how to love and support, you bring your shipmates coffee as everything falls apart around you. In the digital world though, you’re quite powerful.

You immediately know Cube's a premium lil guy because he's got angel wings and an ironic name. Lil bro's basically a sphere, and they named them Cube. I think if I were in some kind of nightmare scenario, I would love to be comforted by them too. I don't think he really understands what goes on around him, but he knows that hot drinks and R2D2 noises can heal anything.

Runners up:  Judgement Boy (Gregory Horror Show), Kiwi (KeyWe), Zombi Neko (Gregory Horror Show)

Gamer Grub Award for Tastiest Looking Food

Butt-stamped cookies (KeyWe)

Ass-sorted biscuits.

Apparently it's an annual tradition that this postal service makes cookies, and it does this on the same station and conveyor belts as their mail sorting. They come in two base flavours, plain and chocolate, and a choice of two toppings. All of this, lovingly made by little kiwi birds.

It’s hard to turn down a colourfully iced festive cookie, made with fresh fruits and chocolate. Even if they’ve probably got a bunch of kiwi butt feathers pressed into them.

Runners up: Sunfish Pocket Omurice (AI The Somnium Files: NirvanA Initiative), Burgers (Galaxy Burger)

Headache of the Year

Diagonal Jumps should be illegal (Alundra)

I just wish she didn't tell the evil gods to "hang ten"

Tobi did me the favour of playing Alundra this year so I could watch and help him solve some of the puzzles. One thing I couldn’t much help with though, was that diabolical landstalker-type platforming. There is NO WAY an old game with camera angles and grid-snapped controls like this should have diagonal jumps. There’s also just a ton of jumping puzzles that use strict timers, slippery ice, teleporting monsters and demanding absolute precision. Ugh, no thanks!

The platforming in this game is pure evil. It's bad enough that the game has no sense of depth, making it sometimes impossible to judge where platforms are. You're not even graced with any room for error distance-wise. The game just expects you to try and fail a lot until you get it right. Absolutely heinous "how was I supposed to know that?" school of design-ass game. Worst were the rooms where you are surrounded by platforms, but you can't tell which ones are above or below you, or are in the fore or background, as they all share the exact same graphics. To see it introduce timers was just too much, man. This is the type of game why Save States were invented.

Runners up: The worst cover shooter level ever (Bloodborne), Sammer Guys Trial (Super Paper Mario)

Worst Trend of the Year

The “Sweet Baby Inc” thing

A solution basically presents itself.

Unfortunately, it's now time for the annual 'dumb shit that makes you sigh' award. Let's start from the beginning. What is Sweet Baby Inc? It's a small Canadian consultancy company for video games. They'll look over game narratives and such, give feedback on how it might be perceived within certain communities, and help them smooth things over or contribute to narrative design where needed. Fairly standard within the field of entertainment. Unfortunately because the usual suspects can't ever be normal, this company is being perceived as a giant shadowy organisation that controls video games on a global scale, with the goal of pushing straight white men out of the medium. Think the gamer version of George Soros conspiracy nuts.

I’m sorry that the last 4 years of this award have gone to essentially the same thing… a new buzzword for gamer-identifying-incels prostesturbating about women, blacks and queers being increasingly humanized by the media. This keeps happening though, and having some kind of tangible impact on the games industry, so… here we are. It is getting stupider and more embarrassing each time though, and I think a lot of big companies are waking up to the fact that they can’t be reassured or appeased, they have to be put on mute.

Runners up: Mass lay-offs across the tech industry including videos games, Aggressively dogpiling on games that bombed

Dumbest Premise

Evil Joker tricks an evil doctor into doing the evil job that she was already doing for the evil asylum owner anyway, to produce a t-virus that makes roided-up inmates hulk out even more so? (Batman: Arkham Asylum)

Harvey Dent's old suits are half-off!

Maybe I was just a bit too stupid to follow this game, I mean I was in kind of a silly mode… but like… I find this whole genre so unserious man I dunno. Like this is what happened, right? This scientist was studying injections that make dudes really ripped and dangerous and she did that right in the middle of a prison complex…? And then Joker manipulated her into continuing the research so she did and then Joker nicks the injections and uses them to make loads of huge dudes to fight Batman and then they fight a whole lot and then Batman wins anyway. I don’t know, I just… like whenever people talked about this game they were like “oh it's actually a really cerebral detective game and has manipulative enemies who really mess with you.” Absolutely not what I expected. Grappling was fun though.

That's how I interpreted the story too, so I assume that's correct. What I didn't really understand though is that I suspect the game wanted us to feel bad for the doctor who was doing human experimentation on prisoners? There's a bunch of audio logs dedicated to how she wants to stop or back out because she learned she was working for the Joker, but alas, she was trapped now. She just wanted to do a bit of Unit 731 science for the good guys. How tragic. I don't know why you even need super steroids in this world, since virtually everyone is unbelievably jacked already.

Runners up: The woman I won through a contest doesn't really love me, I guess it's time to turn to evil. (Live-A-Live), The house is burning, hide in this closet, honey (Devil May Cry 5)

Words & Deeds Award for Most Awkward Moment

They was fuckin’ (Baldur’s Gate 3)

Wyll they or won't they?

Ugh. I've got so much egg on my face from this one. So we were exploring when suddenly we passed a shed. The game pointed out some strange noises that could be heard on the inside. We quickly made a joke that something salacious was going on in there. To my surprise though, the game started hinting at it too alongside us. I became suspicious. If the game was giggling with us, we're being set up for some kind of misunderstanding or misdirection goof. No shot that anything actually sordid is going on in there. I say we barge in and do whatever real quest is inside!

Face to face with a sweaty orc getting railed by a bugbear. At least it was only egg on our face, and not… well.. Anyway. Unfortunately they were super pissed and insisted on tackling us with their tackle out. I’d have rather just left them to it.

Runners up: Vice President of getting civil servicemen to beat up a bunch of girl scouts ALSO YOU CAN RUN OVER CHILDREN IN A CAR (Citizens of Earth), Kamihara's half hour car trip (Emio - The Smiling Man)

Most Tears Shed

The relentless tragedies of Inoa Village (Alundra)

Should have dropped in on these grommets earlier. Wipeout!

To my surprise, this “Zelda-like” game only features one village, and a modest overworld that’s kind of annoying to traverse. But they use it to their advantage, with a melancholic and eerie plot centering around a small village where individuals are succumbing to a supernatural illness. Over time villagers will begin to have nightmares about another villager dying, they’ll get trapped in sleep and their dream will come true some way or another. Each time you go out to a dungeon, you’ll dread the return as you just know some sort of disaster will have occurred while you were gone.

The village had been cursed because the king sank a place of worship into a lake. He learned that their god's power was proportional to the amount of worshippers, and tried to undo its influence this way. I don't know if it worked, but the village had been struck by tragedy ever since, and the villagers became extra devout as a result. A lot of these tragedies could seem like coincidences to be fair. Mining accidents happen to miners, some wild animals attack after invading their territory, old people are passing away in their sleep. No need for superstitions about nightmare gods here, friends. Oh what's that? There's a lady who will conjure explosions when she falls asleep? Well ok never mind then.

Runners up: Futaba and Sojiro use words (Persona 5 Royal), Kiryu's letter (Yakuza 6: Song of Life), Karlach is doomed (Baldur’s Gate 3)

Most Terrifying Moment

Gloom Hands (Zelda: TotK)

Hands across Akkala

Zelda has had a thing with creepy hand enemies since even the very first one from the 1980s. They're creepy and gross, and they can catch you off guard, but they're not too bad if you know to expect them. They tend to be slow, and a number of their iterations don't even move at all. Gloom Hands on the other hand (heh) are fast as fuck, boyyyyy.

I first encountered them so early in the game, in some random cave. I didn’t know what was happening, they came at me fast and relentlessly, and I threw everything I could find at them to no avail. I don’t know why they thought the series needed more panicked button-mashing but they got what they wanted. Many hours of game later, I stumbled upon them whilst much more prepared, and discovered they also harbour a dark little secret. Also shout out to the gibdo in the desert, they did NOT need to be that creepy!!!

Runners up: Pretty much any random sounds (Lethal Company), VR headcrabs are no joke (Half-Life: Alyx), The terrible truth (Darkest Dungeon)

Bognor Award for Exemplary Fucking-Shit-Up-itude

Recall Ability (The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom)

Octorok around the clock.

Compared to Breath of the Wild, the sequel Tears of the Kingdom flushes out the old superpowers and brings in a whole array of new ones to navigate the world in a completely different way. One of the most easily overlooked powers, one with seemingly limited use is the reversal ability. Use it to make moving platforms or water wheels move the other way…  wow. But consider… did an enemy just throw a giant boulder at you? A bomb? A cannonball? Return to sender! Did something just fall from the sky? Catch a ride! You can even build a bridge with nowhere good to support it, hold it up in the air for a minute, drop it, climb onto it, and un-drop it! Gravity schmavity.

Even on a technical level this Recall is kinda bonkers.Every physics object is kept track of, and you can undo the past few seconds of almost anything. You built a flying machine and bumped into a wall? No you didn't. Recalled. You're in that same flying machine and you're out of energy? Just recall, and the batteries start recharging. It synergises so well with all the other new abilities too. Attach a bunch of weapons to a rock and make the rock spin for a while, then recall the motion, and bring the spinning rock into a camp full of enemies. You wanna swim through a ceiling (it's a whole thing), but it's just out of reach? Well hold up a platform so it is in reach, put it back down near you, stand on it, and recall it. You'll be lifted up to where you can reach that ceiling now. There's so much utility here. Coolest thing I've seen too was recalling things glued to arrows to transport them up mountains. Real brainlord mechanic.

Runners up: Disruptive in the Tech Scene (2064: Read Only Memories), Shogo the postman punches a seagull (Sushi-Ben)

And that's enough hindsight for now! Time to face the future, and moon the past. Let's play some more games.

Halloween 2024: Gregory Horror Show

What up, paisanos? I hope you're all doing well. Spooky times are upon us, and thus we took it upon ourselves to pick a sufficiently spooky game off the shelf and immerse ourselves in the season. This year we settled on "Gregory Horror Show: Soul Collector", a Capcom game on the PlayStation 2. It's based on a TV show neither of us had seen, nor ever heard of before. I had very little expectations going on, and I'm glad I didn't, because they'd probably have been extremely wrong.

Is it for kids? Is it…"scary" scary? Is this an Animal Crossing creepy pasta? We start this game and it immediately seems based because it has photos of cats on the walls. 

Wait... if you were a mouse then this would be kind of creepy.

Also spoiler warning for ***OPEN SPOILERS*** about this obscure PS2 game, we'll try to leave something to the imagination but eh, we will cover the whole experience.

Looking at the art style, I suspect it's for kids …or people with a Tumblr that posts a lot of Undertale and Helluva Boss content. The hotel is nice and moody with dramatic lighting and creepy creaky noises, but then the characters look papercraft.

Mouse with a house, in this economy? It's a rat with a flat at best.

So to summarise the set up, uh… Gregory is a tired looking mouse guy who runs some sort of mysterious hotel, where the other guests are spooky animals or furniture or whatever and they carry around little souls in jars which you have to steal off them and give to a grim reaper who's in your dreams when you sleep. And you’re not allowed to leave the hotel until you get all the souls.

Is he taking us to Hades or Ikea?

The guests are a good place to start. The game starts simple. Your next-door neighbour is a cat who is a zombie whose eyes and mouth are sewn shut. It sounds grim, but they're weirdly cute, and a belly shirt. They teach you the ropes on how to be a creep. You have to be sneaky silent, peek through keyholes and eavesdrop on residents. This way you'll learn what their schedule is, get gossip from the hotel, and what they're all about.

Stop trying to make "ketch" happen.

You’ve hit the ground running, we’ve managed to scam the souls out of a couple residents already by making them slip up and then racing towards their belongings like a handbag snatcher. I get the feeling this game is going to get significantly harder and more stressful as the maligned guests persist and new ones get added into the mix, slowly filling the hotel with dozens of patrolling guests who will chase you down on sight and uh… um… they’ll uh… it says here they’ll “horror show” you???

"Horror Shows" are essentially when an angry person runs up to you, and you imagine something horrible they could do to you, which causes you to take psychic damage. For instance the sultry nurse lizard might stab you in the brain with her comically large syringe and drain you of all your blood. Someone with a giant cleaver might cut you into minced meat. A cactus could try to woo you. Pretty standard fears from folks with anxiety, based on judging books by their cover.

Speaking of which… this new guest, I don’t know what he is. He’s called Judgement Boy and he's like.. A robot coat hanger?? And when you go near him he sings “JUDGEMENT BOY!!” at you? I think I love him?

Note: he doesn't mean his son, he means My Son.

It took us a while to realise, but Judgement Boy is meant to be a living scale, hanging from the ceilings. He'll ask you some questions about the game, and he'll give you a soul if you get them right. I don't quite get why, but he tries to reframe the questions as a choice between love or fortune, but it didn't fit his questions in the slightest. Whatever! Since Judgement Boy was one of the very few wandering characters in the hotel that didn't hold a grudge after you robbed them, he's alright in my book. Plus I had his dumb little "Do you know my naaaaame~? Judgemeeeeeeeeeeeent!" song in my head for weeks. 

So guests seem to come into the house in waves of 2-4 new characters, unlocking another floor of the house for each wave. Also Gregory has a child(???) who's a little menace, if he spots you he tries to “hang out” and follow you around everywhere just to cramp your style. Seems to be you spend most of the time exploring and collecting items, and a lot of books that seem vaguely themed around the characters, not sure why. Oh and this one raunchy looking book…

Gregory's nephew Lil James basically exists to ruin your stealthiness. The game is about gathering information on the down low, and he's there making sure you'll be as noticeable as possible. If he sees you, he loudly asks "What are you doing?" and stomps his feet coming towards you. Anyone you're trying to spy on will be looking your way. It's so annoying. And yeah, Gregory himself isn't much better. He's running Gregory House (no relation), and somehow has a dedicated goon room, which is used for multiple puzzles.

I'm gonna need a bigger judgement boy for this.

What we dubbed the “goon room” is where he takes the aforementioned raunchy book if he catches you with it. Anyway what else happened? We were excited when we found the exit to a garbage chute, as alternate routes are critical for this. When we unlocked the first floor we had to reunite a split-personality doll girl and ambush a cowardly cactus in a saloon. You’re really breezing through it, to be honest! Finding hints really quickly and getting mad souls in the bank.

At some point we unlock a basement, which is needlessly massive and labyrinthine. There isn't much room to dodge people down there, so you have to make sure you don't come across anyone you've taken a soul from, because it's pretty much a guaranteed Horror Show if you bump into them. It also houses three roulette-wheel-based board games, each more difficult than the last. You play against Gregory, who doesn't even want to be there. The game itself is almost fully random, with most of the squares to land on being filled with "events". These events either give you an item to sabotage the other player, harm you directly, or in the worst event, you get sent back to the very start of the board. 

Woe is Gregory.. nobody taught him about cheese strats.

You absolutely destroyed Gregory at it though, he stood no chance xD. Speaking of going back to the start, we found these chutes that send you down further and further into basement floors…  B1, B2, B3… how deep does this go? When we found the chute in B3… to our surprise it came out in the garden chute on the ground floor!?? What the hell? Does this place work like pac-man!?

It was really disorienting. At least it also added another shortcut into the main hotel. That gave us another option to access certain hallways from, but even more importantly, it allowed more guests to wander into the basements, making the hallways safer too! Necessary, because some of these later guests were quite tricky. One of them was a father and son duo, called Clock Master and My Son. (Yes, that's his name). Trying to interact with the son makes him shout for his dad, who will chase you and can Za Warudo time for a few seconds like Dio. This makes him pretty scary, but if you take him down, you gain his stopwatch that lets you change time yourself. Unfortunately we did him last. What was a resident that stuck out to you?

See!? My Son! Family events are a nightmare.

At some point there’s this chef guy who's a candle, he literally looks like Gordon Ramsay and he’s called HELL’S CHEF? This was made in Japan in 2003. Anyway as we build up more and more characters we come across a problem: sometimes 3-4 of them just decide to hang out in an area for AGES!!! I don’t think there's anything that can be done, you just gotta wait it out.  Alright we’re getting near the end game now, looks like there's no more floors…

The end-game adds another Judgement Boy into the mix. He's essentially the same, but gold. All you have to do is find him, and he'll subject you to a bunch of trivia about the hotel guests. If you fail, there's no real harm. You just try again. We got it on our second attempt, and obtained the final soul for the Swedish grim reaper. Either way, with the last soul submitted, you can leave the hotel. Except when you try to leave, the real proprietress of the hotel reveals herself… Gregory Mama.

Damn she kinda... no, nevermind, she's a landlord.

There’s a pretty rough boss battle (this game isn't made for action combat) and then in an unhinged cutscene everything is burned to the ground… OR IS IT? Then you learn the truth about the Gregory House, the underlying metaphor. Like.. escapism I guess? And thus concludes our playthrough. We laughed, we learned, we loved. Oh!!! I just remembered it was meant to be spooky. Were we spooked? 

Kind of. It's the type of game where you are disempowered with moody shadows  and loud sound effects. Everything feels off, and unpredictable, and by playing the game, you make the game harder and more tense. I'd say it's pretty effective at what it set out to do. I won't pretend it's some all-time classic that everyone should play, but it served its duty as a Halloween game well.

Damn that's so... Ketch.

Game Awards 2023: Lizardkinned and JesterPilled

Happy year! It’s been one! Allegedly. This year we’ve added a few exciting new categories to suit the evolving video game landscape. As usual these awards are for the games that we, Allie and Tobi, got around to playing in the year 2023 by chance. It’s been maximalist, it's been clown-core, there’s been a weird amount of lizards. Not featured on this list but there’s been a stunningly large number of piss jokes as well. Just… thought I'd mention that.

Best Character

Geddy (Owlboy)

Don't be upseddy have some Geddy

Geddy's a real one. When you first meet him, you immediately clock him as an embarrassing lil dork, but he pretty quickly makes a case for being on this list by standing up for his weenie friends. He can have a bit of a temper, but he loves to celebrate small victories and cheer people up. Plus if you squint a bit, he's got that Tingle swagger going on.

Geddy doesn’t seem like the type to pull his own weight in an adventure, but you’d be dead wrong. He stands up to Owlboy’s bullies, he provides reliable firepower, and he even puts up with you dropping him from a great height and leaving him stranded on a floating rock for as long as you like. But what’s really heartbreaking is when as the story unfolds, spoiler, stuff all goes extremely, earth-shatteringly wrong and our guy takes it pretty hard. Watching Geddy lose his last bit of patience with the world is a memorable and sobering moment.

Runners up: Castti (Octopath Traveller 2), Astrid (Spiritfarer), Milliarde (Baten Kaitos: Origins)

Worst Character

Gex (Gex)

Cold Cash and Colder Blood

When I was a kid I really liked Gex’s design. He was a little asskicking wisecracking lizard, he could climb walls, he had purple stripes, what's not to love? But in retrospect and watching Tobi playing the original debut game, he's just everything that sucked about tryhard mascot platformers of that era. Heavily Duke Nukem, James Bond and 90s sitcom dad influenced, he’s the type of guy who’s quips for a kung fu themed level involve doing a bad chinese accent. He's just kind of a gobshite and his jokes are an anti-vibes grenade. I wouldn’t invite him to his own mother’s funeral.

There are few things as insufferable as unfunny comedy, and Gex so desperately wants to make you laugh. Unfortunately he's entirely witless, relies on dated references that may not even apply to the situation at all, and terrible impressions. I've been Well Actually'd that Gex is actually written and voiced by comedian Dana Gould, but it sure doesn't make a strong case for Mr Gould. Awful.

Runners up: Yonny (Pikmin 4), Yoshitsugu (Raging Loop)

Best Soundtrack

Baten Kaitos

Motoi Sakuraba is not really a composer I'm all that fond of, in spite of his colossal discography. He's a guy I associate with safe, by-the-numbers music, which is probably how he manages to score 10 big games per year. Fortunately for us though, there appear to be some instances where he gets to show off what he can do. Baten Kaitos has plenty of safe tracks, but is one of those games where you can stumble on a piece of music and think "this is the worst thing I've ever heard", and then ten minutes later go "This rules". It's not afraid to try stuff.

We had some other really strong contenders this year, but we somehow ended up splitting the difference on this enduringly likeable one. The music really adds to the incredibly unique atmosphere of this game. The battle music is a wiggle-enducer that doesn’t get old. I expected to like this game but find it a little exhausting or flawed, instead I was actually pretty hooked.

Runners up: Octopath Traveller 2, Everhood, Donkey Kong Country: Tropical Freeze

Best Art Direction

Owlboy

All I'm saying is Belle from Beauty and the Beast could have shopped around a bit.

I played Owlboy this year, that handcrafted pixel art game, that labour of love, with an insane amount of bespoke 2d art, animation, worldbuilding. It really is that charming, it looks that good through and through, and it’s even like a really fun game with great characters and story and gameplay as well. It might be a little hard to get to grips with the quirky twin stick shooter controls, but if you like Cave Story and Iconoclasts you can probably get into it.

As a pixel art aficionado, it's easy to see Owlboy's appeal. It features such beautiful, large sprites with tons of animation and expressive poses. The character designs are so charming and full of life, and the environment design goes above and beyond to not look boxy like pixel art games can easily do. Even games with much larger teams and budgets don't get to look like this. It goes out of its way to not have anything but natural looking formations and to reuse things as little as possible, which is quite unintuitive for the pixel art medium. It was all done by a single artist over the course of almost a decade, which apparently burnt him out on making games of its scope. It's a shame, but I'm glad we at least got this out of him.

Runners up: Pikmin 4, Resident Evil 7

Ugliest Art Direction

Magicians & Looters

Bizarrely, passport issue office accepted this photo.

One look at Magicians and Looters will probably make you say "the people in charge of the art is probably one person, and that person probably had two or three other responsibilities too". Pretty much every environment is incredibly flat and dull looking, and the character art is immensely cursed. It's not nice to say they did a bad job, but this is one of those cases where the act of looking at the actual game makes you think the whole thing is so much worse than it actually is.

The ugly art in this game is extraordinary, exceptional. Every time we saw a new character image it was laugh out loud funny. The ratchet levels are off the charts. I think they were going for a sort of ironic/comedic tone, but then everything's quite heavily detailed and shaded, giving it a kinda… Ken Penders quality.

Runners up: The Legend of Zelda: Four Swords Adventures, Tales of Maj’Eyal

Best Story

Chaos;Child & Baten Kaitos: Origins

Activated the Simpic Lobe

Tobi and I played a lot of story-driven games quite separately this year, so it's time for a tie! I played Chaos;Child and um… it's a lot. I can’t really recommend this to a normal sane person, it's got the uncomfortable ephebophilia of Evangelion and the depraved gruesomeness of Se7en. I guess I could just say it's like Danganronpa. It’s exactly like Danganronpa. The game is a gruelling affair with long phases of daily life where you tolerate your horrible incel protagonist from bizarre circumstances meandering between trying to move on and be normal, and fixating on a bunch of horrific murder investigations. It takes long enough for you to really care, and it wears you down with a long, rusty, death slide of dread. Not to be dramatic. The game doesn’t just punch you in the gut, it punches you from two different sides, dropping in with terrible, nauseating tragedy, or the dumbest bullshit you ever read. I’ll never look at edam cheese the same way again.

I have plenty of this card, wanna swap?

Looking forward to checking Chaos;Child out. Baten Kaitos Origins was the one that took me by surprise. It was a prequel game, which usually I don't tend to care for, but I was shocked to see how much it gripped me. It did such a good job at fleshing out the familiar locations and some surprisingly mature takes on rather loaded subjects. It's been a while since I played something that made me feel like I was reading a good fantasy novel.

Runners up: The Stanley Parable: Ultra Deluxe, Raging Loop

Best Original Game Concept

House Flipper

Accidentally clicked on grandpa, sold him for $350.

House flipping became a whole trend for a while. Not exactly one I respected, as it just contributed to a housing market that was already all sorts of screwy. That said, I'd be lying if I said I didn't get the appeal. Starting off with something busted and making it seem presentable again through some elbow grease and aesthetic sensibilities? Of course that could make a compelling game. Doing up houses is half the appeal of The Sims.

Yeah, this is one of those “fulfil all your sick capitalism fantasies in a video game instead of real life” cases. Unlike the sims/animal crossing, the game really makes you start with scrubbing the floors and windows, exterminating cockroaches and installing all the plumbing/radiators in a satisfying snappy microgame. If you want the walls a different colour, you have to paint them yourself, or lay tiles or wallpaper. You can just do up the house in an optimal way to maximise profits, or you can express yourself and make your own mojo dojo casa house. Relaxing and satisfying.

Runners up: The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom, FTL: Faster Than Light, Mischief Makers

Funniest Dialogue

Franken RPG

Life's a beach and then you roll die.

We played Franken RPG at the start of the year so it’s a bit of a struggle to remember, but I remember it getting quite a few chuckles. It’s kind of a dragon quest spoof with a really deadpan, kind of nihilistic humour about it. Every character just tells you whatever dumb shit they’re thinking in the moment like some stream of consciousness, and neither the characters nor the game itself are particularly dedicated in their allegiance to the adventure itself. It’s just kind of a heartwarming, laugh out loud shitpost.

I had such a good time with Franken RPG. I knew I was in for a good laugh when it kept re-using the scorpion graphic with ugly palette swaps and telling me it's a different type of animal. A lot of the dialogue in this game is on the mean side, but it's presented in a dorky Saturday morning cartoon kind of way so it doesn't actually feel that mean. It's also a free game that's around under two hours long, so it gets an easy recommendation from me.

Runners up: The Stanley Parable: Ultra Deluxe, Popful Mail

Biggest Surprise

Magicians & Looters

Girl are you a roll? Cause you seem baked.

As I mentioned earlier, this game looks like it's some bottom of the barrel low effort game. It looks like someone followed a tutorial on YouTube and put it on sale. For a while I assumed the only thing I'd get out of it was the ugly art and the shoddily written dialogue, but after a while we were forced to face the music. …is this game actually kinda good?

I think so. The game’s a snappy, competent Castlevania-like that's somewhat frustrating in parts, but ultimately fun enough and has some cool ideas that are well done. This game boasts a roster of 3 characters that really feel different, a story that unfolds as you play with plenty of dialogue, ferocious gymnastics taught by a talking cat, and the power of vegetables. Most of all, it's demented as hell and laugh out loud funny.

Runners up: Moon: Remix RPG Adventure, Ifan loves Tobi’s Skeleton OC (Divinity 2)

Biggest Disappointment,

The Legend of Zelda: Four Swords (Mad)ventures

The sword forgets but my ass remembers.

I knew there were some not-so-good Zelda games out there, but look, I watched Tobi play Zelda: Wand of Gamelon and this game is… worse? Like it’s just an exercise in frustration pretty much the whole way through. It has ideas, but it feels like they are all ones rejected for being too tedious and unsatisfying. And no, it wasn't JUST because we were constantly accidentally blowing each other up and knocking each other down holes, but that didn’t help.

What a real mess of a game. Everything about it feels like they were just doing some internal testing to see if this is anything, but rather than admit it and say "nah, not really", it ended up on store shelves instead. I can't imagine they spent a whole lot of time on this one. It sooner feels like a Newgrounds bootleg than an official Nintendo title.

Runners up: Dragon Quest VII, Tales of Arise

Usual Suspects Award for Most Time Wasted

Dragon Quest VII

This is him btw, the secret piss guy.

There was little doubt in my mind Dragon Quest 7 would take this. It has a reputation of being long, and that was accurate. There's this infamous photo going around of the script and documentation of this game, and it's just binders upon binders. I don't mind a game taking up my time, but I'd prefer it if it didn't have so much down-time. Dragon Quest 7 could easily be half as long and lose next to nothing. Most of its runtime is spent on revisiting places over and over again and while the dialogue changes every time, I'm not sure if it was worth the effort.  

Indeed. While this category is still judged on raw hours spent on a game, this game did seem like time wasted was a little too apt. It’s got the usual Dragon Quest charm and neat ideas, but even on that front it's one of the least memorable and interesting DQ games I've played… and it's just so absurdly drawn out, with very little regard for what's considered desirable gameplay. Oh, and we were playing the streamlined remake that actually cuts down on a few hours of mind-numbing walking back and forth!

Runners up: Divinity 2, Splatoon 3, Baten Kaitos

GAME OF THE YEAR OF THE DECADE (released after 2013)

Pikmin 4

PUT AN END TO THAT RIGHT AWAY

So we decided to do something new for this year, since we so rarely get around to playing enough new games released in the year to fill out a nominees list, let alone fairly represent all releases. We decided to open up this category to any game released within the decade that was our favourite all-rounder. And wouldn’t you know it? My favourite game of the year WAS a new release, Pikmin 4. Pikmin 4 has everything I liked about every Pikmin game released before it (including Pikmin 2’s weirdly terrifying bosses), with shiny new levels that are the most thematically inspired yet, genius QoL improvements that make the game way more approachable, and SPACE DOGS.

I've had a few times this year now that I was playing something and thought "yup, this is the one. Lock it in." I didn't expect it to also happen with Pikmin, a franchise I've respected but never really clicked. Pikmin was too stressful and hardcore to be enjoyed. Then suddenly here comes Pikmin 4 and it makes enough tiny concessions to allow me to get comfortable, but not too many that it undermines its atmosphere. With less of an emphasis on time crunch, Pikmin 4 focuses more on adventure and slowly easing you into ways to become a better player through challenges and situations that show off the perks of certain styles of play. Occasionally it puts it all to the test in Dandori battles, which are basically tests to see who's more efficient. Oh and yeah, the space dogs are so freakin' cute.

Runners up: Super Mario Wonder, Divinity: Original Sin 2

DINOSAUR OF THE YEAR (released before 2013)

MOON: Remix RPG Adventure

There's really no need.  THERE'S REALLY NO NEED

MOON was one of those games I had heard of for years, but was never available in English. I was so stoked when it got an official release in the west, and it didn't disappoint. In spite of the RPG in the title, MOON is an adventure game where you pretty much just walk and talk. The main antagonist is a ticking timer, which limits how much you can do in a day. The only way to lengthen that timer is to become friends with the creepy NPCs and to catch the souls of dead monsters.

I really thought this would be one of those “creative idea, extremely tedious to actually play” type of games. Your character walks at a crawling pace, you’re given a harsh time limit before you die, getting a sudden game over… and you’re just expected to like… try things and figure out what to do. I would still recommend wandering around in different directions for as long as your patience will let you, and then shamelessly whipping out a guide when you feel actually stuck. But somehow in spite of all this, I never got that bored or frustrated, I actually really enjoyed my time with this game!? It’s so atmospheric, so mysterious, and whimsical.. It really feels like some sort of lost media videogame from a nostalgic creepypasta.

Runners up: Baten Kaitos, Baten Kaitos: Origins

Craziest Amateur Game

How Fish is Made

(the bad kind!)

When Tobi said he had found a weird little indie game for us to play over Halloween, I don’t know.. I guess I expected something creative and scary. I didn’t expect a gross-out-athon where you play a fish flopping around a meat grinder while everyone philosophises at you, videos of parasites, trypophobia bait, and uh… yeah, semen.

How Fish Is Made is bonkers enough that you sort of start wondering if you made it up or not. At some point there's a cabaret show, but it's probably the nastiest thing you'll see all year. There's a strange Katamari thing section. It's short, and  uncomfortable, but at least it's over.

Runners up: The Stanley Parable: Ultra Deluxe, Cotton Heart Caught On Fire

Shadiest Co-op Shenanigans

The Great ChainTeleport (Divinity: Original Sin 2)

All tired out from that scheming.

The hallmark of a good D&D game is the shenanigans factor, so I'm happy to see Divinity 2 immediately make good use of our new category. To set the scene a little bit, at some point in the game, you enter a giant quarry full of scaffolding. In the middle of the area there is a person about to be executed. You make your way over there, and notice that there sure are a lot of oil spills and explosive barrels along the way. I guess not that abnormal for a mining area. You talk to the executioner and try to talk them out of it, and when you can't, a battle starts. We must have re-tried this encounter so many times, but every time the person we were trying to protect would die in a fiery inferno. We tried cleaning the area ahead of time, washing away all the oils and getting rid of the explosives. Utterly pointless because oily and fiery monsters show up, who insist on lighting the whole play area up within a few moves. 

So Tobi proposed an idea… What if we used our character with a teleport ability to teleport our target away from the area? I said that’s absurd, the teleport has a short range and the only safe looking tent is on the other side of the map! We could use another character’s swap-teleport to get them a bit further I suppose, but then… oh hold on… if we space our whole party out in a chain across the map… teleporting the target, then tele-swapping with another party member, then the strongest party member quickly barricades him in with boulders and barrels…? Still, the game would probably just warp him back or ignore the collision…probably… ?
Reader, it worked.

Runners up: Figuring out what a “Fakinhage” is (Spiritfarer), Pawn Tobi is becoming weirdly smug and passive aggressive, and loves to mine and confidently say things he doesn't actually know, in stark contrast to real Tobi (Dragon's Dogma), Kidnapping your partner (Legend of Zelda: Four Swords Adventures)

Citizen’s A-Vest Award for Egregious Design Transgressions

Zaki’s Lizard Panties (Live A Live)

That's it, I'm skink-shaming.

That moment when you slowly realise when this character does a “dragon” attack he seems to boomerang his only item of clothing at you. And then you look closer… Um, what the hell my guy. I don’t know if actual prehistoric humans were that hard up for clothing, but if they were I think being naked would just be better.

Zaki's not just doing a design transgression but also an HR violation. 

Runners up: Jocko The Jester (Magicians & Looters), Giacomo (Baten Kaitos), All the horny designs in (Blaster Master Zero 2)

Maximum Swaggage Award for Best Dressed Bae

Twig (Owlboy)

Nice threads, give us a spin.

Like many teens, Twig's a true cosplaying nerd who's into spider mans. He didn't let his dreams be memes and hand-made himself a fursuit. He correctly deduced that the coolest spiders are the hairy ones, and so that's the direction he took his spidey PJs into. He also had the foresight to think about utility, and turned the big spider booty into a handy dandy pouch.

This is just a really cool and cute design. It’s so energetic, has a unique silhouette, and it's wonderfully animated. I just thought it was a cool spider-thief design at first, but it’s also just a spider costume, with its large spider abdomen actually being a thief's sack of tools.

Runners up: Lizardfolk (Divinity 2), The Great Mizuti (Baten Kaitos)

Peepee the Cat Award for Ultimate Creacher

Oatchi and Moss (Pikmin 4)

Wanna go for a... walk?

Nintendo really has weird, ugly-cute and dangerously memeable absolutely mastered this gen. When they first debuted these bizarre dogs in a trailer I didn’t know what to think. Does Pikmin need its own Poochi wannabe? Aren't the Pikmin already the game’s mascots? Where tf are their noses? But no, I GET IT now. Oatchi and Moss pretty much carry the charm of this game, as well as your character and 100 Pikmin. Their new abilities make them MVP of the game, making you so glad to have them. They’re klutzy and dutiful, they play a big role in the story, and they give a hilarious side-eye.

If it wasn't for the game Nintendogs, I'd probably be thinking that no one at Nintendo's ever seen a dog in their entire lives. They always seem to make dog equivalents of renaissance artists trying their best to depict animals they've only heard vague descriptions of. I'm not complaining though. Oatchi and Moss are so adorable. They remind me so much of those videos of cats and dogs who lack front legs. Sounds tragic when you think about it, but when you see them in motion living their life, they are such pure creatures. Pretty much the same thing here.

Runners up:  Peanut dragon (Cast of the Seven Godsends), Taroimo (Live-A-Live)

Gamer Grub Award for Tastiest Looking Food

Parnasse, confectionary village (Baten Kaitos)

Chocaholism is becoming a real problem on the streets.

I know what you're probably thinking. It's weird to add a food category and immediately pick a village. Villages typically don't chart anywhere on the food pyramid. Look at it though? It's a town made out of confectionery. And it's not just styled after it. It's all edible.

Baten Kaitos’ surreal, over-the-top vibrant 2d environments are one of this game’s most memorable features. What’s more seductive than this glittering, glowing, festive, warm, swirling, oozing town made out of cream and chocolate? The witch from Hansel and Gretel better step up her game.

Runners up: All the cooking in (Spiritfarer), Jelly cubes (Donkey Kong Country: Tropical Freeze)

Headache of the Year

We interrupt this block pushing puzzle to bring you: potentially unkillable enemy respawns (Legacy of Kain: Soul Reaver)

actually what if this is his house and you're moving his furniture around...

After having a surprisingly bad yet good time streaming Tomb Raider (1996) with Tobi, I guess we thought why not dig into the LoK series. And yeah, kinda similar in ways. We had some good bants and some REALLY rough times. It's a really interesting game that goes really hard and has a great sense of mystery, worldbuilding and exploration… buuuut… some extremely detestable design decisions. So one of the game’s main gimmicks is that you can’t simply kill an enemy. You need to use some sort of throwing spear or environmental hazard to stun them and then consume their souls. Pretty cool, except when you have to try and do a really slow precision block pushing puzzle with difficult camera controls, and the enemies decide to keep spawning infinitely.

Yeah, they did a bad job here. If your game's going to get tedious block pushing puzzles that already require you to pay attention and not get distracted, don't add multiple respawning enemies into the mix. It happened more than once, and each instance seemed to be more frustrating than the last. I assume it was done on purpose, but it was a mistake either way. I hadn't heard Allie this angry at a game since those Dark Souls 1 archers in Anor Londo.

Runners up: Kiryu, who already has a full-time job as a taxi-driver, can't take 20 steps without being roped into becoming someone's minigame part-timer. (Yakuza 5), Just grab the red pipe! No not that one (Mirror’s Edge)

Worst Trend of the Year

"Woke" levelled up to its final form, being potentially everything and nothing at the same time.

Wizards of the Cope

Look, people who whine about wokeness are going to be among the worst things every year, but at least I thought I kinda understood what worms meant when they said "woke". No longer the case, it seems, because I sat in bafflement when I saw multiple instances of people calling the Resident Evil 4 Remake's music "woke". From what I can tell, they're objecting to the music having more regionally appropriate instruments peppered in the score.

Yeah I don’t know if it's gonna come back to bite me in the ass, fact that i've started finding it all irresistibly entertaining… But the increasingly absurd examples of how “wokeness has ruined video games” keep coming. Woke because it's got women, woke because it doesn't have enough sexy women, woke because you can choose pronouns, woke because a vampire can have sex with a bear(???) and believe it or not, that's not my current champion… I saw someone complain that a game got “woke” because they focused too much attention on an anime girl’s bare thighs and not her cleavage. George Orwell tried to warn us.

Runners up: Games-As-A-Shut-Down-Service, Let’s announce similar games together in blocks! People definitely won’t lose interest after the 4th consecutive steampunk superpower FPS or cat cafe sim or 4 player destiny-like.

Dumbest Premise

Swag bog witch wants to steal your little sisters youthful energy to become a HOTTY THOTTIE WITH A LARA CROFT BODY (Banjo Kazooie)

Snatch children, not waists.

So can we talk about how Gruntilda is a based cool witch baddie that's pretty much everyone's 2023 goals, and she wants to sip the swagger of a literal child so that she can look like posh spice era Victoria Beckham? Weak bitch, get some self respect and turn that mountain lair into a god-tier hen den.

I felt bad for her. All throughout her house is her sister Brentilda, who uses every opportunity she has to talk smack about her sister. Unfortunately it's not working, because Allie's right, all the slander sounds kinda based. She was doing her own thing and living her best life. Unfortunately societal pressures got to her, and she felt the need to follow gendered conventions. 

Runners up: It's about wanting to kill two people who are no threat, so they spend a lot of time with fake assassination attempts, all to make them a threat and lead them to a place where they can do the real assassination, with the goal of gaining control of something they already have control over? Honestly this entire plot makes no sense from top to bottom, and it's made worse with every forced twist that keeps this necromancing this plot artificially alive. (Yakuza 5), King Knight wants to be the king of everything because uh.. Um.. his mom is horny for kings..? (Shovel Knight: King of Cards)

Words & Deeds Award for Most Awkward Moment

Grandma, you’ve killed me (MOON: Remix RPG Adventure)

His Royal Sighness

So as we established earlier, MOON is a game where you try to do as much as you can within an allotted time limit. If you don't go to sleep before your time's up, you fail and you love all your progress since you last saved. At the start of the game, you go to sleep in your dear old Gramby's house. Then you wake up the next day, and plan your next adventure. 

You’re wholly dependent on Grandma, who’s always waiting for you with a fresh batch of cookies each day to help top your HP up, and always reminding you to get plenty of rest. Perhaps excessively doting, but you’re her whole world after all, the son she thought she lost. After several days managing to venture further and further out, I came home on one exceptionally productive day, right on the threshold ready to sleep in Gramby’s bed and… WHAT SHE’S IN THERE? SHE’S NEVER SLEPT IN THE BED BEFORE!? With nowhere left to sleep, you crumble to dust and have to start the day over. All because your nan needed a quick kip.

Runners up: I bailed out the child bride, and the game decided me and child bride were OTP (Dragon’s Dogma), "Check this out, I'm going to do something smart" *opens an orange and breaks quest* (Divinity 2)

Most Tears Shed

Saying Goodbye (Spiritfarer)

Deerly Departed

A wise man once said, “You are already dead”. Which is the case with everyone you meet in Spiritfarer, as your job is to meet some characters, get to know their lives just enough to really feel for them, and then convince them to fuck off forever. Each character gets one last monologue and a sad cuddle at the end, and you’re left in pieces.

Yeah, this was a rough one. We were taking turns reading these goodbyes because most of them reduced us to cracking voices, pouring eyes, and blubbering noses. There were a couple of exceptions, from characters we didn't really care that much about, but most of them hit really hard. Good stuff.

Runners up: Chapter 8:Betrayal (Chaos;Child), E.L.L.I.E. must administer soup, not be disassembled (Dragon Quest VII)

Most Terrifying Moment

Power tools with your dad simulator (Resident Evil 7)

Aye it's riveting. And welding, and sawing..

A decent amount of Resident Evil 7 stuff was spoiled for me over the years. It has a bunch of scenes and imagery that's going to be pretty memorable, and folks started sharing videos of them almost immediately. I figured I'd seen the big encounter with Papa Baker from tweets and listicles, and when the recognisable moment was done, I assumed we were done with him. Well… surprise. He's back and he's gunning for that Bognor award.

Papa Baker is quite the unstoppable force, I’d say he's built like a brick shithouse but I just saw him kick one of those down barefoot so I don’t know man. Still, a climactic encounter with him has you weaving around obstacles to avoid him, while he taunts you and makes sudden lunges. The game keeps the UI very minimal and natural, the animation is smooth and realistic, so it's hard to tell if you’re on the right track by taking a swing at him. When I made a mad dash  for the chainsaw before he could reach it, I thought it was all over for him, but he grabs a weapon of his own, and I realise it’s still not gonna be that easy.

Runners up: All my homies hate that sticker (Chaos; Child), The fucking hands (Tears of the Kingdom)

Bognor Award for Exemplary Fucking-Shit-Up-itude

The Skip Button (The Stanley Parable: Ultra Deluxe)

Brutalist Wes Anderson looking screenie.

Sometimes its not just people who can fuck shit up, exemplarily. Sometimes it’s an idea. OK maybe the idea was made by a person. I’m not going to name names, because I don’t know The Narrator’s name, but someone thought it would be cool to invent a button that skips you forward in time, and it skips exponentially more time with each use. What could go wrong?

It plays out pretty much exactly how you'd expect, but it turns into this strange kind of chicken race to see who can keep up the awkwardness going the longest. The room with the button has a pretty sober decor, but it's used splendidly to show the passage of time. The narrator's slow descent was a great touch too. Cool stuff.

Runners up: Anne & Bonanza (Owlboy), Mr. Hat’s Hat Shop (Shovel Knight: King of Cards), Castti (Octopath Traveller 2)

Is anyone still here! Congratulations! You’ve made it to 2024. This is gonna be our year. I can feel it. And if it’s not, check back here next year and we’ll do a corpse run together.