The age of the Video Game Awards has come and gone, and we're all thankful for it. But if you thought yourself shot of Geoff Keighley, you'd be wrong. The latest attempt to emulate the Oscars for gaming features a respectable panel of journalist judges, and it's called, quite simply, The Game Awards.
Us folks at Senshudo never miss an opportunity to second guess the games press, so here are our picks for what we think (and largely hope) will win tonight.
Game of the Year – Dragon Age: Inquisition
The RenEAssance is in full swing. While Ubisoft’s franchises appear to be devolving into the same primordial sludge of towers and mini-map icons, the Worst Company in America have quietly rehabilitated their most talented and maligned studio. BioWare may have dropped some of Dragon Age’s more traditional RPG mechanics since the peerless Origins, but the lessons from Skyrim have been well learned: Inquisition is a mammoth and magnificently beautiful return to Thedas, full of trademark BioWare dialogue, Thrones-esque politicking and love interests ahoy.
Best Indie – Shovel Knight
Another standout success for Kickstarter and a rare one for Nintendo, indie platformer Shovel Knight succeeds in a crowded field by nailing down classic 8-bit era mechanics with some ingenious modern twists. The game perfectly captures not just the NES aesthetic with its colour palette and parallax scrolling, but the tight controls, pleasing difficulty and peerless chiptune soundtracks, with two contributions from Mega Man composer Manami Matsumae. An indie classic, destined to sit alongside the likes of Fez, Bastion and Braid.
Best Narrative – The Walking Dead S2 / South Park: The Stick of Truth
Our first split decision between two Senshudo favourites. The Walking Dead’s decision to follow fan favourite Clementine proves a fruitful one, with the same gripping dialogue, tough decisions and ability to make people enjoy quicktime events that propelled Telltale to stardom (and a position in this year’s Best Developer vote). South Park is an altogether different experience, recreating the TV show’s aesthetic and a history of references and story beats with the craft and humour of its best two or three parters. TWD is a game of immense atmosphere by a studio at the peak of its powers; South Park: The Stick of Truth is quite arguably among the best comedy games ever made.
Best Performance – Trey Parker – Various (South Park: The Stick of Truth)
Sorry Spacey, your luck’s out. Quantity wins out over acting pedigree, as Trey Parker gets our pick for writing and voicing pretty much everyone in The Stick of Truth to hilarious effect. Particular props for the audio logs in the alien abduction level, skewering the absurd audio diaries of System Shock, Fallout 3’s Mothership Zeta DLC et al to near perfection.
Best Remaster – Grand Theft Auto V
They said it couldn’t be done, but the quintessential detached 3rd person slaughter/tennis sim now has a 1st person mode. It’s brilliant, too, and merely the centrepiece of a bevy of smaller improvements atop the shinier graphics and better loading times. GTA V was more of a next-gen game on 360 and PS3 than anything released on the newer consoles to date, and in its remaster we can finally appreciate why. There is plenty left to criticise in story and characters and satire, but content wise, this is one of the most complete games ever made.
Best Action/Adventure – Sunset Overdrive / Bayonetta 2
Another split decision with a singular winner: fun. Sunset Overdrive has Insomniac casting off their attempts at gritty system-selling shooters for a return to the Spyro and Ratchet era; a spiritual successor to Jet Set Radio with familiarly honed combat mechanics and a range of wacky weapons. Bayonetta 2 meanwhile is Bayonetta 1, but shinier: and never has being identical been more welcome. The best arcade brawler on the market, this sequel is just as tough, just as beautifully drawn with its bio-mechanical monsters, and just as bonkers. Hideki Kamiya, never stop making games.
Best Fighting – Super Smash Bros. for Wii U
Suffice to say this was not the toughest category. Smash Bros still struggles to apply its mechanics and many licenses to single player, but between this and Mario Kart 8 we may never need another local multiplayer game. 8 player bouts are frantic, the character roster is enormous and better balanced than ever, the soundtrack is incredible and Nintendo continues to show us why 1080p 60fps is a standard to aspire to. Quite possibly the best game on a system now well stocked with amazing titles.
Best Sports/Racing – Mario Kart 8
The Wii U is well represented in our vote, and little wonder why. Mario Kart 8 is just about the best reviewed game of 2014, and a strange omission from the Game of the Year vote. The best Mario Kart game to date: stunningly beautiful, precision engineered and full of the little flashes of Nintendo character – I’m looking at you, Luigi Death Stare – that characterise the best of their output. With a fully functional online mode, it’s just about the most fun you can have with whatever time you have spare – jump in for five minutes, or spend three hours chasing those high scores and collecting a new vehicle improvement with every race.
Developer of the Year – Telltale / Nintendo / Ubisoft Montreal
We simply cannot call this one. It would be fair to say that there will be internet outrage should Ubisoft win it, but a lot of people play and enjoy their enormous output of very good if very broken games. Telltale deserve plaudits for managing what many suspected was impossible: keeping up TWD, The Wolf Among Us, Tales From the Borderlands and now Game of Thrones to a high standard, with a team probably 1/10th the size of Ubisoft. Nintendo meanwhile, for all their hardware and marketing issues, continue to produce derivative but brilliantly designed and polished games that showcase the very best video games have to offer. My heart is with Nintendo, my money is on Telltale, and my inner cynic says Ubi.
Best Candy Crush uh... "Mobile/Handheld" – Hearthstone
Odd that the 3DS is not better represented, but there can be no doubt as to the world domination of Blizzard’s Magic The Gathering-lite. Hearthstone is a vaguely hardcore mobile crossover smash: proof that proper developers can use polish and proper design philosophies to conquer the insidious likes of King’s Candy Crush output. Perhaps not the greatest game of the year, but a bold move for the World of Warcraft dev and a work of marketing genius.
Best Score/Soundtrack – Destiny
A sense of inevitability to this one. Destiny was a dream team of talent, and though not all of it delivered, the soundtrack was as good as you could hope for. A collaboration between Halo stalwarts O’Donnell / Salvatori, (Sir) Paul McCartney and Bungie sound designer C Paul Johnson, Destiny’s soundtrack borrows from the best sci-fi cinema to deliver on the game’s vision of space’s sweeping scope, momentary peril and boundless possibility. An honourable mention for the similarly sciency Alien: Isolation, which enhanced the process of sneaking between and hiding in lockers to no end.
Games for Change – This War of Mine
A slightly jarring sponsored category, but if it bags This War of Mine an award, we’re all for it. A brilliant left-field indie game that combines real testimony from war survivors with great mechanics and gameplay. The result is a game which, in the spirit of the brilliant Spec Ops: The Line, is engaging and rewarding without necessarily being fun to play. A lesson in storytelling and another sign that games can deal with serious subject matter.
Best Shooter – Call of Duty: Advanced Warfare
Call it CoD: Double Jump all you like, but nobody was honestly expecting this game to shake up the formula quite as it has. A collaboration between Visceral offshoot Sledgehammer Games and two lesser studios, Advanced Warfare had a lot to do to make up for the disappointment of Ghosts, and early signs didn’t look too promising: I admit balking at the seeking grenades and drones appearing to play the game for you. What we actually got is something closer to the later Ghost Recon games; a slick adaptation of the formula which learned a few lessons from Titanfall, and brought some of the fast-paced fun back to the battlefield.
Best RPG – Dragon Age: Inquisition
Little choice in this category as our GOTY, then, so a word for the runners up. It’s no small feat to fight off competition from Dark Souls 2 – perhaps not the perfect sequel fans hoped for, but another tantalising and infuriating glimpse into the Souls universe – and Divinity: Original Sin, the indie sleeper hit which aims to bring back the best of old RPGs with a more comprehensible UI – but Inquisition simply is that good. A diehard DA: Origins fan would probably pick Divinity, but there’s no doubt which game has been enjoyed in greater numbers, and frankly, which is more surprisingly good.
Best Family - Mario Kart 8
No Mount Your Friends? Again, what more is there to say about Mario Kart 8? A racer with the family friendly aesthetic to lure people in at Christmas parties; the complexity to give them a damn good thrashing; and the odd maddening Blue Shell to throw you off kilter and into a sherry-fuelled temper tantrum.
Best Online – Destiny / CoD: Advanced Warfare / Dark Souls 2
Your guess is as good as ours, so here's a picture of somthing Portal related, as that should always win every prize ever.
Another difficult call in a tough category. All three were struck by the usual server issues, but more importantly, all offer something very different. Destiny aimed high with its MMO/party shooter aspirations and shot a little lower, but should be praised for ambition; Call of Duty has injected some life into a flagging franchise with a great multiplayer component; and Dark Souls 2 continues to utilise one of the greatest ever innovations in online gaming: the persistent, invadable single player realm. Smart money is on Dark Souls, but could go any which way.