My The Game Awards Winners if I Had to Decide

TGAs have like a 50% chance of awarding some dogshit as the winner and like a 10% chance of getting the noms right in the first place so it's all useless but for whatever is worth, here is where I land.

Below the fold bc the list will prolly be long.

GAME OF THE YEAR: Elden Ring

Plague Tale seems cool and I know my wife likes XB3 but everything else on that list is mid at best so this is an easy choice for me.

BEST GAME DIRECTION: Elden Ring

Immortality is a close one here because I respect how it does what it does a lot but ER is like... bro they solved the open-world problem. Colossally huge game where every action, moment, and sight matters. An incredible feat of guidance on behalf of its directors/leads.

BEST NARRATIVE: Immortality

I don't have a lot to say here because I like what Immortality does but I am pretty soft on it vs. Sam Barlow's previous works. Out of the nominees it stands a cut above for sure, though.

BEST ART DIRECTION: Elden Ring

ER has incredible art and art direction but I'm not gonna lie this list of nominees is dogshit. Horizon is an ugly game, God of War has little new to it, Scorn is a good execution on someone else's artistic ideas, and Stray is just... I'm sorry it does nothing for me. The list feels insulting. Where's Signalis? Destiny 2? Splatoon 3? Sephonie? Just no appreciation for games as an artform, just budget.

BEST SCORE AND MUSIC: Metal Hellsinger

*Incredible score. They could have simply just gotten some great licensed tracks for this but Two Feathers wrote some incredible tracks and the guest vocals on every song is brilliant. I know it's trite to say about a rhythm game but truly Metal Hellsinger is nothing without its score. It's incredible.

BEST AUDIO DESIGN: Elden Ring (I guess)

Everything else here is undeserving of nomination. MWII doesn't have good audio design it just has military fetishism and even if I'm a racing game girl, GT7 does nothing spectacular. It sounds fine. ER wins by default of everything else being whatever on here.

BEST PERFORMANCE: Manon Gage

*Is Sony going to infest every category? What the fuck is this dude. Anyway, my thoughts on Immortality are irrelevant to how much of a powerhouse Manon Gage is in Immortality. Incredible performance.

GAMES FOR IMPACT AKA THE ACTUAL CATEGORY OF GOOD GAMES AKA WHERE TGA PUTS THE DESERVING GAMES IN THEIR LITTLE TIMEOUT CORNER FOR NOT HAVING AN INSANE BUDGET: Citizen Sleeper

Play Citizen Sleeper. Cyberpunk done right.

BEST ONGOING: Final Fantasy XIV

Deserves this award every year until the end of time.

BEST INDIE: Tunic

Look at that cute little fox I wonder who drew that. Tunic is magical. So much more than the sum of its parts and its parts are genius.

BEST MOBILE GAME: Apex Legends Mobile

*This will sound biased but this is the only game that I feel isn't infuriatingly evil garbage. Apex Mobile is like, an astoundingly good port of the game and has very little bad microtransaction shit. Everything else on this list makes me blindingly mad for simply existing.

BEST COMMUNITY SUPPORT: Apex Legends

Apex repeatedly commissions artists in its community to get their art in the game, in their tournaments, in their community events and does so much with its streamer population both in and out of major tournaments. It fucking owns. Genuinely puts everyone else in the esports game to shame.

INNOVATION IN ACCESSIBILITY: [ABSTAIN]

I have no idea what any of these games did that wasn't as good or better than Forza Horizon 5 having sign language support.

BEST VR/AR: Bonelab

I haven't played it yet but every Bonelab clip I see is the sickest shit on earth.

BEST ACTION GAME: Neon White

It's the only good game on this l---actually no I've watched my wife play Shredder's Revenge it seems cool.

BEST ACTION/ADVENTURE: Tunic

See reasons stated above.

BEST RPG: LIVE A LIVE

I don't think Elden Ring is an RPG in the way that any of these other games are. Live a Live seems rad. It deserves to win for the effort of bringing this game to the west.

BEST FIGHTING GAME: Multiversus

Game is good. Didn't play the other ones; I'd vote for KOF but fuck MBS.

BEST FAMILY: Splatoon 3

Why is this in this category and nowhere else fuck you Geoff Keighley. ###BEST SIM/STRATEGY: [ABSTAIN] Dune Spice Wars is what I'd vote for but it's not even out it's in fucking early access jesus christ.

BEST SPORTS/RACING: Olliolli World

Olliolli continues to be rad. I'd have voted for GT7 if it didn't shit the bed and be arguably the worst of Sony's offenders this year.

BEST MULTIPLAYER: Splatoon 3

lmao what the fuck is overwatch doing on here instead of literally anything else this year. elden ring pvp deserves more of a spot here than ow2

CONTENT CREATOR OF THE YEAR: Nibellion

king

BEST DEBUT INDIE: Tunic

Shouts out to Dicey.

BEST ADAPTATION: Cyberpunk Edgerunners

If you vote for Arcane you're on my permanent shitlist. Especially over Edgerunners. Edgerunners is like, fantastic. An incredible adapation of the source material and a better exploration of its genre and themes than the fucking game it's adapted from. God. Arcane is going to win and I'm going to be so pissed people have zero fucking taste.

MOST ANTICIPATED GAME: i'm not voting for this this is stupid

BEST ESPORTS GAME: Apex Legends isn't here so I'm not voting.

BEST ESPORTS ATHLETE: people seem to like that faker guy but he plays league so idk, doubt it

BEST ESPORTS TEAM: DarkZero (Apex)

ask me sometime about their 2-win run in the pro circuit. the best shit. dreams being achieved shit. love them, love gen, love that game and its scene.

BEST ESPORTS COACH: [ABSTAIN]

BEST ESPORTS EVENT: EVO 2022

It's EVO. Better than anything else.

arcane deserves love too. to be fair I haven't watcted edgerunners, I've only heard friends say it was good, but it didn't speak to me.

arcane on the other hand gets a ton of things right, and a ton of things that directly speak to me. The music is probably one of the most important points, with how it ties in to the characters, the big mood swings, and the events happening.

sure, as an adaptation, it can't be as faithfull as edge runners if you think about it being an adaptation of league. but league doesn't matter here, the lore around league does. it's way more written and livirg than most people know, or even want to know, because of the bias of how toxic the base game is. I can say for example that I've continued following stories of characters and cities way after I stopped playing the salt game.

as an adaptation, Arcane gets the cities right (which are arguably entire characters in their own right), it gets the actual characters very well, with respect for them and what they represent, without falling in easy stereotypes. especially as in league, the characters can be dangerously close to stereotypes.

maybe edgerunners is a better adaptation, with a stronger base material to anchor itself to, but the game awards have never been about the technically correct wording of the category, and arcane is also an adaptation, so it makes sense to vote for whichever show you liked more.

Erica

@erica

talk account