Just in case anyone was wondering no this wasn't an planned blog entry. I wrote all of this within a few hours.
Most of these were very straight forward not much to say. Then we get a few awards you vote for a person or an team. The very first thing I was thinking is who all these people? You barely got anything to go on during the voting process. I know I'm not the only one that had the same reaction. I felt Best Adaptation and Best Fighting Game had the best overall nominees respectively.
I confess I struggled to decide which games to vote for since most of these I never played before. Unless you wanna count games within Marvel vs Capcom Fighting Collection: Arcade Classics. I was really close voting for Tekken 8, I seen plenty of stuff from people playing that. At the same time, a particular compilation game I always wanted within the same category wow!!!
Best Fighting Game to clarify.
It mostly came down to simply more content without additional stuff to buy. To be fair, Tekken 8 is among my most wanted 2024 games. I'm glad there's a particular award for indie games. These developers are truly amazing at what they do. They should've gotten more of their games nominated in any video game awards period.
My thoughts on Game of the Year 2024 nominees
Game of the Year nominees
Astro Bot
Balatro
Black Myth: Wukong
Elden Ring: Shadow of the Erdtree
Final Fantasy VII Rebirth
Metaphor: ReFantazio
I know you didn't came here for these quick thoughts. No sir, you want me to get straight full blown ugly about Game of the Year. Sometimes I wonder about some of my readers. This has to be the most mixed selection for Game of the Year award I seen in a long time. They recently changed some of the rules prior to these nominations becoming public today.
Now that's already oh no what did they do right? I'm not up to date with the gaming community. I don't really know which games truly deserve to be in here. I don't think half of these should be here. We got two PS5 console exclusive games. I mostly don't have much of an issue. The biggest issue being Final Fantasy VII Rebirth is one of three games in a remake trilogy.
In this case recreating what essentially would've been disc 2 of the original game. If we look at it like this then it's not an complete game nominated here. Thankfully I seen enough streams of that game to justify you still get a lot of content. You actually get a lot more than you were expecting to get. Personally I would've had every nominee playable on most platforms.
Not to say console exclusive games aren't great by any means. I just felt you are simply more limited how to go about playing those games. It's a huge risk to make games console exclusive. Unless they are amazingly great to stand out from many other games on more platforms. Therefore, I do give some respect to those games taking such a huge risk.
We're almost through the positive section of this. Three of these games I'm actually happy to see nominated here. Metaphor: ReFantazio has some personal connections to Persona series. Sadly I'm not an huge fan of RPGs myself. I am quite surprised an Sega published game made the lineup. I actually looked into it a few hours, people really love this game.
I'm somewhat interested in giving the game a try eventually. Black Myth: Wukong is the one game I knew about the longest. It's not quite soul like difficult of a game. You play as Sun Wukong, a famous Chinese God that inspired so many characters. We would actually be here all day to cover them all not I'm kidding.
If the game was somewhat cheaper or goes down notably more in sales. I may consider buying it in the near future. I love the concept of playing as this guy in a rather epic action adventure game. Believe it or not, this isn't my vote lol. You might be very surprise to hear Balatro gotten my vote. Yes I quickly looked more into the game.
I kinda forgot about it after awhile. But I already wish list it on Steam. It's a rather unique card game, people sure love card games. It's the solo indie game nominee in this category. Balatro sold me the fastest among all these games. I know some may not like a card game gotten into this category. I'm surprise it speaks for itself.
I'm more alright with a card game making the nominations. Not to mention, Balatro also up for a few more awards within the same video game awards show. I confessed I voted for it in every single category it got nominated in. I would be deeply surprise Balatro ends up winning Game of the Yeard award, it's not likely though.
Oh here it comes!!!
Before we get to the elephant in the room. I still felt like we easily could've had a better selection for this. I still would've kept most of these nominees. Earlier I stated there's a rule change. This is actually causing controversiality right now. The new rule change allows DLCs for games to be nominated within The Game Awards.
Why is this pissing people off? Elden Ring: Shadow of the Erdtree. Before I dive straight into my thoughts on the matter. I'm actually not here to directly bash Elden Ring. A couple people told me great stuff about the game. There's no question, it deserved all the Game of the Year awards the game won. I just felt had the game got excluded, this would've been a more fair vote.
I directly have a few major problems with this being an nominee in Game of the Year award. First off, Elden Ring came out back in 2022 early February. We're currently at mid November 2024. It's almost cheating to allow an older Game of the Year nominee back in a more recent one. Second, DLCs shouldn't be nominated at all.
DLCs can differ many ways from small to being quite massive to what they bring to the table. Sometimes they simply had stuff that barely affects anything at all. For the most part, you can't access any of that. If you don't even own the games you bought it's DLCs for!!! Also majority of these nominees are the actual games.
There wasn't a category for Best DLC considering the rule change they recently done. I felt games selected within the nomination period should get nominated. In all honestly, allowing a particular DLC into Game of the Year just not right at all. This by itself caused a few more problems that could show up in newer award shows.
People will start to consider which older games with a new great DLC could get into Game of the Year. This also came off as either laziness or desperation. I'm sure there's plenty of other great games that deserved it's spot. There's no way they ran out of time during the nomination process. I would be very surprise otherwise that's what happened.
"Oh we gotta nominate a sixth game!!! Come down. No you come down!!! I got it Elden Ring: Shadow of the Erdtree. But that's a new DLC for an older game. Sure but Elden Ring won many Game of the Year awards. Plus this new DLC really makes it even better!!! Alright let's nominate Elden Ring again with a twist!!!
Considering they actually allowed this in their own awards show. Now it begs the question eventually we may get every nominee within Game of the Year all being DLCs for different games. It wouldn't even matter if the games are a few years old or came out the same year of being nominated in. I already know many people going to love this (Sarcasm).
Indirectly it brings confusion simply because it's Elden Ring again. Yes I know this time we're directly talking about it's new DLC. Honestly, this is coming off as you like this section more than the actual game. Which itself might upset it's own fans over the nomination. Last I checked, these were meant to be the very best games of 2024.
Even Balatro is a lot cheaper than the rest of them. At the same time, I'm sure that really delivers what it brings to the table to justify it's price. You would have to be crazy enough to virtually buy the same game nearly twice over. Which is exactly what Elden Ring with it's DLC represents here. Five out of six nominees are the actual games.
Not to mention, some do also have DLCs. They are notably a lot cheaper than this. Now I know for Elden Ring, it's almost like bringing new life with almost an entirely new game inside of that. I personally don't think it's right to allow this. For all I know it might've already won Game of the Year simply because it's Elden Ring.
The very last thing I wanna say is the game a bit overrated. But Final Fantasy VII is notably really overrated oh okay. They also could've stick with the five actual games to prevent any of this from happening. Which would've worked much better than this. Regardless which game actually wins Game of the Year award here.
I strongly felt Elden Ring should get disqualify from this. Mostly due to giving more of a fighting chance. Also to say an DLC better than a game is rather ballsy. Although I confess I did prefer Duke Nukem Forever's DLC campaign over it's original one myself. The entire point of DLCs is to help gamers play more of the games they love.
On that front allowing this is an insult to us gamers as well as the gaming community. I might refuse to vote in this ever again following this one I'm not kidding. Honestly, who cares about the actual size of Elden Ring's DLC. I'm sure most of these nominees is better than the entirely of Elden Ring. Then again size only matters if it gets used right.
I refuse to even label Elden Ring's DLC as the underdog. Everyone knows Balatro is the true underdog here. Even Black Myth: Wukong won a lot of people over. Again Elden Ring as well as everyone involved with that game probably didn't need this controversiality right now. Another negative thought I had regarding all of this!!!
It could be even possible they only nominated Elden Ring: Shadow of the Erdtree just to upset people. Sometimes pissing people off works wonders for things. It was a major factor how fast Mortal Kombat's popularity grew in time. Maybe by doing that they were attempting to cause the same chain reaction.
Another possible factor is they strongly felt that DLC too good to not nominate for an award. But they couldn't figure a better way of doing that. Which resulted in this situation we're in right now. I didn't even expect to put this much thought into this. Well congratulations Elden Ring for this. Obviously it felt like they're playing it safe option.
Whatever happened to no risks, no rewards? Sorry there was virtually no way I was going to vote for that. I don't care how great the main campaign is. Allowing this into Game of the Year nomination kinda made the actual category a joke. I'm sure many people already viewing it that way. Sadly the damage already done, the back lash could get a little worse from here.
Just imagine most of a particular nominated game was terrible. But you only cared about the beginning or ending portions of that game. It's coming off being rather strict how you rather enjoy your games. Therefore, you really don't care about the rest of the game at all. Well that's exactly what they're doing with Elden Ring.
Personally that's a terrible design for a video game. If only the beginning or ending portions were decent. Why are you still playing it? This kept bagging so many issues I had with Game of the Year nominations. I'm actually fine with majority of the nominees myself. Who in their right mind going to be okay allowing this?
It's almost the level of no I can't believe it as Mike Tyson loss to Jake Paul. This also goes to show they don't actually care what we think. Aren't we the voters that took some of our precious time to vote matter to you? They also alienating everyone else over this. They are just making the situation worst for themselves!!!
I mean wow Elden Ring had to be so good, it got nominated again in Game of the Year. Gaming critics already became a joke. Now video game award shows are declining like this. I'm very sure they didn't even need glasses to see what's wrong here!!! It's almost felt like they just inputted a cheat code. In all honestly, I really hope it doesn't win Game of the Year in this award show.
Also bonus points if you also voted for Balatro. Come on fellow supporters we need to get enough votes to win!!!
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