Bookend Game Awards: Best Narrative

Hmm, a tough one, because I am not easily impressed when it comes to narratives, in Games, books or films. I’m very good at enjoying things, then ripping the shit out of everything I perceive to be wrong with them when I’m done. Plus, not a great deal of games I played this year have been particularly story driven, but let’s see.

• DOOM – Kinda cheeky this one, the story itself is fairly generic doom fare, but I love how the doom marine can pretty much just opt out of it and keep fucking up demons with no context if he wants to, in a more active way than just the player skipping cutscenes.
• Hollow Knight – A little cheeky here too, this is more a matter of interesting lore coming together than the narrative itself, per se. But wanting to understand what happened to Hollownest and how the Knight fits into it all was definitely a further motivator to keep playing.
• OneShot – Super interesting story about restoring the sun of the dying world, being a sort of god, breaking your programming and more that would be a spoiler to mention here.
• Red Dead Redemption – You know, it’s about revenge, atonement, family and stuff. Mostly well done but I’ll be honest, the ending that everyone else loves I found horribly contrived.
• Uncharted: A Thief's End – A competent tale of Nathan Drake being left somewhat unfulfilled living a life without adventure, finding out his presumed dead brother is alive and getting dragged into a mad story of racing a British rich boy with an inferiority complex and a south African Mercenary Lady to find the lost treasure of Pirate Captain Avery. It was fun in an Indiana Jones kind of way, as Uncharted generally is. But it kinda loses me when it starts taking itself too seriously.

And the winner is...

                OneShot

You know, until I wrote out their nomination texts, I was thinking this was going to Red Dead or uncharted by default, but after I actually stopped to think about it I realised that OneShot was the only one that actually made me think or feel an iota of emotion. It’s one of the few games I’ve played twice this year, because... let’s just say the second time round is a very different experience. It’s hard to say much more without spoiling it, but I do recommend OneShot very highly.

Join me next time for Best Game Direction!

Bookend Game Awards: Best Audio Design

I have no snark or other comments about this category for once. It’s a legit category and I have some good nominations. There’s actually more names I can think of that I’m mad I can’t give a nomination.

• Hollow Knight – Atmospheric background music, ambient sounds, character voices... eh mumbles, impact interaction foley. Great sound design.
• ICEY – Tries to do a Stanley parable with the narrator, not as well in my opinion, but comes together for a pretty compelling sound mix.
• Lone Survivor – An incredibly atmospheric sounding game, what else can I say.
• Medieval Total War 2 – Another nomination for Europa Barborum 2 in truth. But when the Carnyx wails above recreated ancient music as men scream at each other in our best approximation for ancient Celtic and Latin, just, go damn. Why aren’t the actual Total War games this good?
• Red Dead Redemption – It sounds like the Wild West.

And the winner is...

                Red Dead Redemption

Because the sound direction really does complete the illusion of being in the Wild West in a way few games achieve. You can feel the tumbleweeds.

Join me next time for Best Score/Music!

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!