Game of the Year Awards Nominees and Winners

For those of you who didn’t listen to the Game of the Year Awards postcast, or heard it and just wanted a visual recap of the nominees and winners, here is the complete ballot.

 

Best Game of the Year
Deathloop
Forza Horizon 5
Halo Infinite
Metroid Dread
Psychonauts 2

Worst Game of the Year
Balan Wonderworld
Battlefield 2042
eFootball 2022
Grand Theft Auto: The Trilogy – The Definitive Edition
Madden NFL 22

Best PC Game
Forza Horizon 5
Guilty Gear -Strive-
Halo Infinite
Hitman 3
Psychonauts 2

Best PlayStation 5 Game
Deathloop
Guilty Gear -Strive-
Ratchet & Clank: Rift Apart
Returnal
Tales of Arise

Best Xbox Series S/X Game
Forza Horizon 5
Halo Infinite
It Takes Two
Psychonauts 2
Resident Evil Village

Best Switch Game
Death’s Door
Ender Lilies: Quietus of the Knights
Metroid Dread
Monster Hunter Rise
Shin Megami Tensei V

Best Remake/Remaster
Alan Wake Remastered
Diablo II: Resurrected
The Great Ace Attorney Chronicles
Mass Effect Legendary Edition
Myst

Best Strategy
Age of Empires IV
Evil Genius 2: World Domination
Jurassic World Evolution 2
King’s Bounty II
Wildermyth

Best RPG
Fuga: Melodies of Steel
Pathfinder: Wrath of the Righteous
Scarlet Nexus
Shin Megami Tensei V
Tales of Arise

Best FPS
Back 4 Blood
Deathloop
Halo Infinite
Lemmis Gate
World War Z: Aftermath

Best Action or Platform Game
Hitman 3
It Takes Two
Kena: Bridge of Spirits
Marvel’s Guardians of the Galaxy
Returnal

Best Sports Games
F1 2021
Football Manager 2022
Forza Horizon 5
MLB The Show 21
Out of the Park Baseball 22

Best Adventure Game
Bonfire Peaks
Gnosia
Life is Strange: True Colors
Overboard!
Sherlock Holmes Chapter One

Best Fighting Game
Guilty Gear -Strive-
Melty Blood: Type Lumina
Nickelodeon All-Star Brawl
Persona 5 Strikers
Samurai Gunn 2

Best Casual Game
The Artful Escape
Chicory: A Colorful Tale
Mario Party Superstars
Townscaper
Unpacking

Best Expansion
Animal Crossing: New Horizons – Happy Home Paradise
Disco Elysium: The Final Cut
Final Fantasy XIV: Endwalker
Outer Wilds: Echoes of the Eye
Subnautica: Below Zero

Best VR Game
Demeo
I Expect You To Die 2: The Spy And The Liar
Resident Evil 4 VR
Subnautica: Below Zero VR
Wraith: The Oblivion – Afterlife

Best Graphics (Artistic)
The Artful Escape
Chicory: A Colorful Tale
Death’s Door
Fuga: Melodies of Steel
It Takes Two

Best Graphics (Technical)
Far Cry 6
Forza Horizon 5
Hitman 3
Ratchet & Clank: Rift Apart
Resident Evil Village

Best Voice Cast
Deathloop
Halo Infinite
It Takes Two
Psychonauts 2
Ratchet & Clank: Rift Apart

Best Voice Acting
Ozioma Akagha as Julianne Blake, Deathloop
Jack Black as Helmut Fullbear, Psychonauts 2
Erika Mori as Alex Chen, Life is Strange: True Colors
Maggie Robertson as Alcina Dimitrescu, Resident Evil Village
Jen Taylor as The Weapon/Cortana, Halo Infinite

Best Writing in an Action Game
Deathloop
Halo Infinite
It Takes Two
Psychonauts 2
Returnal

Best Writing in a Narrative Game
The Artful Escape
Fuga: Melodies of Steel
Life is Strange: True Colors
Marvel’s Guardians of the Galaxy
Sherlock Holmes Chapter One

Best Music
The Artful Escape
Deathloop
Marvel’s Guardians of the Galaxy
Narita Boy
Psychonauts 2

Best Song
“The Banks of the River Are Lined with Gold”, The Artful Escape
“City Lights / Ode to Somewhere”, Deathloop
“Cosmic I / Smell the Universe”, Psychonauts 2

Best Sound
Deathloop
Forza Horizon 5
Ratchet & Clank: Rift Apart
Resident Evil Village
Returnal

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In 1987, Capcom created a new winner with the Street Fighter series. Knowing the demographic, they went for teenage boys with the desire to play fighting games in the arcade in competitive fashion. But is a good fighting game without some eye candy?

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Out of all the characters, Chun-Li held her own as a cute skinny yet muscular female with moves like no other. Her Spinning Bird Kick would allow her to flip upside down and whack the opponent upside the head a few times as they fall to their back on the stone.

Chun-Li, or “spring beauty” in Mandarin, was famous for her sexy anime legs and their spinning doom. Gamers would perform the move that the worse possible time for their opponent, such as in mid-jump when your opponent had nothing but death and peril awaiting their landing.

Ken and Ryu had spinning kicks too, but without the inverted impossible moves of Chun-Li it fell short of awesome. When it comes to animated violence, perceived hot chicks and young boys battling for ego and rights to be the winner, the Spinning Bird Kick and Chung-Li was a great choice.

The British rock band Arctic Monkeys have an instrumental song titled “Chun Li’s Spinning Bird Kick” and was nominated for a Grammy for Best Rock Instrumental Performance (wikipedia).

It does without doubt, every Street Fighter II player remembers the crazy spinning kicks of Chun-Li and this is what makes her have retro gaming moves!

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“Gold Rush”

It’s amazing how economies thrive on virtual worlds like Azeroth. One can buy and sell wares at an auction house to bring in money and spend money. Unfortunately, on my return back to Azeroth after a large siesta from the virtual world, many things seem to have changed… it costs an arm and a leg for almost everything. Perhaps the Burning Crusade expansion has set a new level of cost?

Here’s the deal. If you’re a brand new World of Warcraft player, you’re going to find yourself having to harvest the materials of the world (known as “mats”) for yourself because the auction house is way too expensive for everyday items. Inflation is out of control, imagine going to the store to purchase a leather jacket for the price of a car. You’d go cold wouldn’t you?

Once upon a time things were different, “low-bee” items (items between 1 and 15 let’s say) were a reasonable price, usually in the silver range of money. Today, they’re weighted in gold. The concept of supply and demand is at work but how is it we can purchase the supply at such a high cost? Because we’ve got friends or other characters with a lot of unused cash!

With Burning Crusade we saw basic quests tossing around gold as if it were common place. A character would save up thousands of gold for mounts and then horde the gold as if it were precious until they realized it was nearly infinite in supply and would start passing it around their guild or to other low level characters in their account. The end result, a low level character can go into the auction house with 100 gold in hand and buy whatever they need for basic materials no matter the price.

The laws of supply and demand take on a whole new meaning when people buying have nearly infinate supplies of cash. For me, I’ve decided to purchase some materials while “grinding” for others because they’re just too costly to purchase. However, I’ll do what needs to be done to also exploit the high prices when selling items back to the auction house and contribute to the over-inflated economies.

Perhaps, over time, Blizzard will create a platinum piece to replace the common nature of the gold as it depreciates in value. Although that’s said more in jest, it’s unfortunate that brand new gamers to this MMORPG won’t be able to take full advantage of the auction house as they could years ago with the influx in gold deposits.

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