The mid-December Gaming Digest, 12th December 2023.

The One about the Game Awards, and also one of the biggest scams of 2023?

A not so brief intro to the 2023 Game Awards

The deeply masochistic part of me that revels in my self-destruction decided it would be good to stay awake for The Game Awards this year, knowing that the pre-show started at 12:30am and the ACTUAL show wouldn’t begin until 1am. It was a 3 hour experience and I was fighting for my life by the end of it, but I did it, just to bring a little summary here of everything that happened. And I will be blunt and honest about the entire thing, where usually I will try and sugarcoat things a little and be understanding (negativity gets clicks and I repel anything that might be good for my career), I found myself feeling rather cynical towards the end of this show.

All in all, it felt like a strange affair in which the actual draw of the show, the Awards, were rushed through in order to get to the fluff of the show, the adverts. And there were a LOT of adverts - I didn’t count but there were multiple Hoyoverse offerings throughout the show, Hideo Kojima got a whole ten mins to promote his new (interesting looking!) game, numerous celebrities were carted out and forced to be cHaRiSmaTiC and we got trailers for shows based on games too.

I look forward to The Game Awards each year as they feel a little like a Winter E3, there have always been trailers and announcements to look foward to, but this year just felt a lot less like a celebration of games and those making them, and a lot more like a sales opportunity. What a fantastic opportunity it is, to get your product in front of the eyes of a very captive audience who, having possibly missed the introduction to the segment, may not even realise it’s an ad at all and think it’s just a new release. Would that be so bad? Perhaps not in the grand scheme of things, but it just leaves this slimey layer on my perception of the whole event, especially in a year where we have seen mass layoffs from many of the major developers.

And when I say ‘rushed through’, the majority of the awards were literally rattled through in under a minute, some of the bigger ones got a little more time with brief nominee trailers shown, but even when the awards winners were allowed on stage they were given very little time (under 30 seconds) to say their thanks before a musical track began playing and their autocue displayed the words ‘Wrap it up’. Perhaps understandable, some winners do have a tendency to go on for a litttttle too long, referenced by Judge himself this year, but it feels like the focus was pulled away from the people who actually made the games what they were, to put a spotlight on some moneymakers. And if I truly wanted to be cynical, I’d say that’s a pretty damned on-the-nose read on whats happening in the gaming industry at large. The lobsters in the pot have boiled, and we are by and large very accepting of ‘just a few microtransactions, to keep the team afloat’.

I digress.

My belief was there would be a fairly predictable sweep for Baldurs Gate 3, rightfully so, and they did end up taking away the awards for Players choice, Best Multiplayer and Game of the Year, to the upset of more than a few folk. It would be an upset either way, what an immense year it has been for us to experience new games, truly any of the nominees could have won and it would have been more than fair.

Alan Wake 2 took home best Art Direction and Narrative, and their developer Remedy also took home the award for Best Studio/Game Direction.

Faker took home best esports player - if you’ve read my previous substacks you’ll know his story. Potter took home best esports coach; muchly deserved as the first woman to coach an esports team to a world title in Valorant, even if that team is… well… Evil Geniuses.

Other nods went to FF7 Rebirth [most anticipated], The Last of Us [Best adaptation], Honkai Star Rail, Super Mario Bros: Wonder and Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom, and honestly i’d say some titles were robbed but it was just such a stacked year in which many games would have deserved many awards. The fact Spiderman 2 didn’t recieve a single one may feel like a slight in any other year. This year, it simply feels like bad luck.

Now onto the ones I disagree with.

Cyberpunk 2077 won the award for Best Ongoing Game, and while truly just from seeing the updates to the game without playing, I believe the patches and work CD PROJEKT RED have done to Cyberpunk deserve SOME sort of award, I don’t feel this was the one when up against Final Fantasy 14 and No Mans Sky, both of which are truly ongoing games rather than an RPG with DLC. A perhaps more uncharitable view would be that ‘fixing’ a game to the standards expected at launch should not qualify as an ‘ongoing game’ - if CDPR had simply left CB2077 in the state it released in, they would have done irreparable damage to the brand and ruined the trust a lot of fans have in the studio itself. This comeback, from my perspective, was necessary, but I don’t think ‘ongoing’ was the vision had for the game nor do I feel it’s a good way to describe the vision for the updates. Let me know your thoughts on that. Does a DLC release count as an ongoing game? Should that sort of title go towards games with continual events and updates? Is it just a matter of silly semantics that shouldn’t really matter either way since an update is an update?

Oh, that’s it. That’s the only one I truly went ‘ehhhh’ at.

But what about the rest???

A few trailers, a few drops, a few interesting developments.

The Finals announced their immediate live-drop that night with the game becoming accessible almost immediately. This is the game that caused a little controversy over their unapologetic AI usage in game assets, I personally won’t be playing it for that reason despite it being right up my alley, just feels like shooting myself in the foot as an aspiring VA. Each to their own, blah blah, if you wanna play it I’m not going to guilt you.

God Of War: Ragnarok announced a brand new free DLC releasing today! Called ‘Valhalla’, it looks to be an arena type update allowing for a new way to play and a little more story to uncover, for free if you already own the game.

As stated earlier, Kojima had a long-ass segment [look, I respect his work, truly! But it was a long segment] talking about his new game; ‘Last Sentinel’, a Cyberpunky dystopian looking story with no known release date, but I’m jazzed to see what sort of weirdness has been cooked up as that is my favourite genre. That wasn’t the only thing Kojima has had his hand in either - Jordan Peele was brought on stage to announce a secondary project known as ‘OD’, touted to be a unique experience unlike any other game, with some stunning facial mo-cap and reknowned actors. Little is known about it, but again, one to keep your eye on if you’re into cutting edge narrative in your games.

Animated! Wow.

Makers of Untitled Goose Game, the adorably chaotic silly goose game that took the world by storm a couple years ago have been hard at work on a fascinatingly weird little number called ‘Big Walk’, I watched the trailer and was non the wiser as to what the game would really be like, which just serves to intrigue me further - Goose Game had some delightful humour and little details that made it the hit it was, so I look forward to seeing if that’s a trend that will continue from the Australian devs.

Then there was the painfully awkward segment involving Anthony Mackie, and if I were to be truly honest, it was physically cringeworthy to see an attempted at manufactured charisma. At least, that’s unfortunately how it came across, a person or PR team desperate to have a ‘Keanu at E3’ moment, and just letting nice-heckling members of the crowd dictate the flow of the segment. Perhaps we can chalk it up to nerves, it’s a stressful time to be announcing new projects, but the fact his involvement was simply to promote a new series of Twisted Metal on the streaming service Peacock did nothing to help the segment be more palatable.

A rousing live performance of one of the tracks from Alan Wake was definitely a highlight, alongside a live performance of the theme of Final Fantasy 7 Rebirth, but this guy and his DOUBLE CONTRABASS FLUTE certainly stole the show: Look at that thing!

I fear there is much more to say about the Awards, but much of it has been lost in the annals of my brain and in the comforting march of time, so I suppose that’s all from me. Overall, a 6/10 advertisement show with some awards in between.

Alone in the Dark has been delayed again.

The anticipated re-remake of the 1992 Horror Alone in the Dark has been announced to have a third delay. Originally touted for a September of this year release, this was later pushed back to early January, then delayed again until March 2024. Previews to the press have garnered favourable coverage, so hopefully this will be the final necessary delay to release a fully functional product.

The Day Before the end???

I had no idea what this game even was before I saw it trending on Twitter/X, so if you’re in the same boat, here’s the tea:

A Day Before was due to be an open world survival set in present day America developed by FNTASTIC, creators of games like ‘The Wild Eight’, ‘Dead Dozen’, ‘Radiant One’ and ‘Propnight’ [honestly, hadn’t heard of any of them, but they’re largely survival games that got decent scores, aside from Propnight which seemed not to impress].

It became one of the most wishlisted games on Steam, according to VG247, and looked to capitalise on the communities of survival games like Day-Z that are ever ravenous for something newer and better to sink into. It had a number of controversies before release, including battling trademark claims made by somebody who managed to trademark the name/use case after the game was announced, and also claims of plagiarism against the trailer, wherein it seemed to be a like-for-like recreation of the Call of Duty: Black Ops trailer. Many questioned it’s legitimacy due to all of these issues and more, and the constant stringing along during a lengthy development.

It was later delayed from it’s intended release of November 10th, perhaps to add a little polish and perfection to what was a highly anticipated game with some complex systems to explore in the survival wheelhouse.

And then, finally! It released on December 7th. It resembled more of an extraction shooter than a survival MMO, supposedly there were no zombies (the main? survival aspect? of the game? as advertised?), no actual survival mechanics like thirst or hunger, and very little interactivity with the world at large… and also no melee. There were also, predictably, issues with the servers upon first launch, and very quickly poor reviews began to pour in from dissatisfied buyers of the $40 game, ‘Bigger scam than Star Citizen’, ‘Bad Tarkov with Zombies’, ‘Turns out it is a real game, kind of wish it wasn’t’.

A helpful review.

And on December 11th, three days after release, FNTASTIC released a statement:

It says 12th, maybe if they were truly from the future this could have been avoided

If you can’t read that, they’re shutting down altogether as a studio and keeping the cash to pay off their debts to their ‘partners’. THREE DAYS! After release! You have to wonder how much cash will even be left following what must be thousands of steam refunds, but wow what a true feelsbadman if ever I’ve seen one, a slap in the face to those who dared believe in the project and a good old slice of smug pie for those who claimed it was a scam all along.

So, a scam? Or an incredibly unfortunate development process for an overly ambitious project displaying just how on a knife’s edge these processes are? It’s hard to believe the writing wasn’t on the walls inside the studio, knowing they were delivering an entirely underdeveloped project. Judging by the way their entire online presence has been slowly scrubbed away over the course of the day, I think the answer is fairly obvious.

UPCOMING RELEASES:

Here are a few things you might look forward to:

December 14 | Bulletstorm [VR] | PS/PC

Bulletstorm comes to VR, an old-school action shooter

December 14 | Five Nights at Freddy’s: Help Wanted 2 | PS

Another VR, a sequel to the first Help Wanted VR game.

December???? | Baldurs Gate 3 | Xbox

Still no word on when, but I’m sure it’s coming to xbox soon! right???

And that’s that for the week! I’ll be spending some time on a BIG ol’ roundup post of everything gaming from 2023 over the next few weeks, alongside the weekly posts. Keep safe and have fun out there!