Awards Time! Give a game up to 3 awards.

[HQDefault]

(Inspired by this thread on the Accursed Farms forums)

 

For context:

 

If you've ever seen the youtube series Ross's Game Dungeon, you're likely familiar with his "awards" segment, where he gives a game upwards of 3 awards. These aren't something as basic as "good music", they're usually done to highlight aspects of the game that stuck out to him. Some of my favorites include-

"Gold Ore" - the game has a concept brimming with potential that no game since has tried to refine.

"Best Story by a Six Year Old" - The story throws everything at the wall without any attempt to tie the elements together

"Dog Monarchy" - The game has the standout innovation of including a ruling class of dogs.

"Best Exploding Cows" - Need I explain more?

 

Sometimes the awards do contain more general statements of how he feels about the game, such as "Gaming Crack", "Love & Hate", and "All-Time Favorite".

 

So this thread is just for anyone to create their personal set of awards for a game. Share what interesting or bizarre stuff you find noteworthy about some of the games you've played. Here's some that I made to get started:

 

Far Cry 5

 

• [Coziest Game Where You Still Get to Shoot Dozens of People] - I've never played a full-on shooter game that felt this comfy before or since. The whole game, from the environmental design, to your interactions with NPCs, to the ability to relax and go fishing or hunting, everything just gives a sense of hominess and community that almost reminds me of Animal Crossing on a certain level. But the core gameplay still revolves around shooting people and beating them with a shovel. I guess "Cult of the Lamb" is something that more deliberately tries to replicate this dichotomy, but in that game it almost feels like the division between "comfy community builder" and "murderous cult leader" is played up for laughs. Meanwhile, FC5 merges the coziness with the combat pretty seamlessly.

 

• [Love & Hate] - Far Cry's formula (at least post FC3) is kind of like comfort food to me. It's not likely that anything using this formula will break one of my all time favorites, but it's very easy for me to like. It doesn't take much for me to get absorbed in the gameplay loop and environments. Unfortunately, FC5, seems really opposed to me doing that. Not only does the game stop you dead in your tracks to force you into the story missions, but as you make progress in each section, the game repeatedly adds more and more hazards to annoy you. Especially the planes. Once you're close enough to a boss fight, you start getting hounded by planes circling the area 24/7, and no matter how many you shoot down, they'll always keep coming. But once you do clear a sector, then it goes too far in the other direction and nullifies ALL random enemy spawns, which just makes exploration feel a little less exciting. This all leads to a gameplay pattern where every chapter of the game starts at its best and ends at its worst, which almost makes me dread playing the missions and making progress.

 

• [Diabolus Ex Nuke] - The game's become kind of infamous for its ending, and spoiler alert, it sucks. It just sucks. If you decide to keep fighting the cult leader, which you are obviously going to do given how much work it took to get to him in the first place, nuclear war starts. For some fucking reason. There might be radio broadcasts about political tensions being high, but that still doesn't explain why you only get hit with a nuke if you decide to kill this random cult leader in Montana.

 

F.E.A.R. 2

 

• [Whiny Game Engine] - You might recall in Ross's video for Revenant, he called it one of the most temperamental games ever made. Well, FEAR 2 is definitely up there.. Instead of behaving differently depending on a series of tiny differences in your system, FEAR 2 has two modes of behaving- it runs or it doesn't. And all too often, FEAR 2 chooses "It doesn't". I suspect this is less prevalent on other machines, but man, there are SO MANY things that can cause the game to just refuse to launch. I've had times where it just works without a hitch, sometimes it only runs if I set the game to my native resolution ahead of time, but other times I'll try reinstalling both my graphics AND audio drivers, and it STILL won't work. There is such a long laundry list of things that can cause this game to boot up to a black screen that this alone makes it hard to recommend someone buy the PC version.

 

• [Minority Report] - Most people seem to regard FEAR 2 as an inferior sequel... I am not most people. I mean sure, I agree that some things aren't as good, such as bullet time being a bit less polished, and the horror elements not being as strong. But on the whole? I think it's a tighter and more enjoyable experience than its predecessor in a myriad of ways. Environments feel much more varied and interesting, the combat is still a ton of fun, the slide kick is way, WAY easier to pull off and therefore is infinitely useful. Hell, I even like the inclusion of proper aim down sights (Although they still should have added an option to disable it). And even if the horror elements are less prevalent than before, I didn't really care since I didn't think the first game was even remotely scary. There was a handful of moments in extraction point that creeped me out a little, but other than that, I have no fucking idea what people are talking about when they say FEAR is a superb horror experience. It really never was. So having the sequel recognize that and use the horror as more of a thematic anchor felt like the right direction for me. And all that makes the "Whiny Game Engine" award all the more frustrating, because I WOULD play it a lot more if it would let me.

 

• [What?] - Yeah, I'm not gonna try to defend the ending. Whoever drafted that is a crazy person.

 

Call of Juarez: Gunslinger

 

• [Death of the Author] - I've seen games and movies where the narrator is telling the story in past tense as we watch the events transpire. I've never played a game where the narrator slowly has an existential crisis while telling the story, watching the gameworld fall apart as he drops everything to ponder his mortality for a moment before someone gets him back on subject.

 

• [Drawn to the Horizon] - The vistas in this game are absolute top-notch stuff. Even if this game's sketch-outline aesthetic isn't your favorite, you have to respect the artistry that goes into these landscapes. I mean just look at these mountains here, the sense of scale is stunning. 

 

• [All-Time Favorite] - I did not in a million years expect this to become one of my favorite shooters. Like, it's a budget 4-hour title that uses the common modern shooter tropes of regenerating health and ADS (not that those are inherently bad, just often slapped into games without understanding what makes them work) and has a very slim selection of weapons. Now I have played Call of Juarez: Bound in Blood and enjoyed that quite a bit, so I was at least expecting this to be good. But sweet friggin' christmas... When you successfully dodge a bullet before being thrust into bullet time, turning the tables and clearing out everyone in the room, followed by the main character pausing the story to go take a piss... You'll understand. Everything in this game just fits together perfectly in a campaign that is all-killer, no-filler.

 

        Go play this.

 

Xenogears

Just one for this game, but it's a good one:

 

• [Best Game that I Never Want to Play] - Do you ever look at a game, appreciate the aesthetic, tone, characters, and story, and then think to yourself: "Too bad it's in a genre that I don't give a flying shit about actually playing". That's the vibe I get from Xenogears all over. Even as someone who doesn't usually like this game's brand of super metaphysical narrative, I found myself supremely interested in the game's world and characters. Not to mention the overall art direction is just fantastic across the board. Unfortunately, it also uses just about every JRPG gameplay trope that I don't care for. Static turn-based combat, random encounters, bad pacing between cutscenes and gameplay, all of that sort of thing. While there are some people who do enjoy or at least tolerate this style of gameplay, I'm not one of them. But hey, if someone were to make a fan game in this universe that plays completely differently, I'd be all over that like frosting on cake.

Edited November 14, 2023 by HQDefault