Bookend Game Awards: Best Action/Adventure Game

I’m not totally sure what the difference between an "Action" and an "Action/Adventure" game is, I’ve taken action games to be games where the combat mechanics are the focus, and Action/Adventure has elements of exploration or platforming being a significant part of the experience. But really I think my picks for both could both easily go in either category, so I kind of hate the distinction.

• Banjo-Kazooie – Lots of platforming ACTION ACTION ACTION, a super fun time finding all the puzzle pieces.
• Hollow Knight – Lots of action. Lots of adventure. Lots of insects. What a time to be alive.
• Hyper Light Drifter – Travel the world coughing up neon blood as you kill everything that move. Once you get used to it a very fun experience.
• Red Dead Redemption – Cowboy Simulator of the year, every year, until Red Dead 2 is released at least.
• Spyro the dragon – Glide, charge, flame, rescue dragons, toast Gnorcs. Find a fault, I dare you. Other than the camera.

And the winner is:

                Hollow Knight

What can I say, I’ve already waxed lyrical about how good this game is in the indie category, I just love me some metroidvania, and this is a DAMN good metroidvania game.

Next up we have the Best Action Game!

Bookend Game Awards: Best Family Game

Yea, this is an award that I don’t totally understand, I suppose it’s supposed to be game with no objectionable content that people of any age could play? But also not too hard? So just kinda accessible? Whatever, these are my nominations:

• Banjo-Kazooie - A classic for a reason, I barely need to make any excuses for this game like I do for most of the rest of this first iteration of 3D platformers that came out in the 90s.
• Legend of Zelda: A Link to the Past – Another absolute classic for good reason, and the last zeelda game outside of handhelds to work in this format but a damn good time. Possibly a bit hard for a “Family Game” though, but who cares.
• Puppeteer – Super interesting style, framing the game as a play with puppets. Gameplay is simple but quite fun and while super wierd, is one hell of a game to see in motion.
• Slime Rancher – Just the most inoffensive fun imaginable. Wander the world finding new slimes and faming them for plorts. The tar can be a little creepy though...
• Spyro the Dragon – Not my favourite Spyro, but probably the best made and most consistent gameplay wise. Spyro’s first adventure has aged very well in my opinion, and is always a good time for the whole family.

And the winner is:

Banjo-Kazooie

It was tough choosing between this and Spyro 1, but In the end I decided as I play at least one of the Spyro games every year, I can’t even pretend to be objective towards them, so thought I better give it to the one I played for the first time. Maybe you already have to be somewhat used to the world of 3D platformers, but as they were developing this with no prior 3D platformers to draw inspiration from, I think it overall plays amazingly well and was a super fun time. I can only imagine how good it must have been playing this when it was new.

Up next we have Best Role Playing Game!