For the past few years, I’ve had a Game of the Year post–well, several posts every year. I’m careful not to say best game of the year because it’s not that. I have no interest in debating the theoretically objective best game of the year (which is always subjective) and I rarely play the games considered for the award, anyway. I was just griping to Ian that the actual Game of the Year (It Takes Two by Hezelight Studios) made me grit my teeth because I HATE the narrator–the sleazy book who is so focused on sex. I am also not charmed by the main guy of the studio, Josef Fares, as many others are.
I want to play Deathloop by Arkane Studios because the main character has ticker-tape synesthesia as I did in the hospital, but it’s first-person, which I cannot do. I would also like to play Returnal by Housemarque, but will not be able to unless it comes to PC. Then there’s Life is Strange: True Colors by Dontnod Entertainment and Deck Nine. I watched Aoife Wilson of Eurogamer play the first chapter and there’s so much to like about it. I LOVE Alex Chen, the protagonist and her ability to feel other people’s feelings. I’m an empath and it’s not an easy thing to deal with. Plus, she’s bisexual! And loves cats! There’s a black cat in the game. And there’s D&D, too. What more could I want? Here’s the issue: in the first chapter, there’s an event that I knew was going to happen that I really disagreed with–the death of Alex’s brother. This is not a spoiler; it’s in the trailer.
They did the same thing in the previous game by killing off the dad. I watched the first chapter with a jaundiced eye, not caring much about Alex’s brother (who is great, by the way) because I knew he was going to be dead by the end of the first chapter. And the way he died is just too twee for me. The son of the woman he’s dating has a habit of playing in an abandoned mine. He tells Alex (who he just met!) and she tells her brother. They go to get the kid and it’s very treacherous. Now. If the brother had slipped as he was getting the kid, well, I wouldn’t like it, but it would at least make sense. But, no. The government sets off explosions every night and the brother notified them not to that night because of the search for the kid. But, inexplicably, they set off the explosions, anyway, which I knew they would because you have to have THE DRAMA, which made me sigh and roll my eyes.
After that, I was done with the game. The setup was so heavy-handed and poorly thought out, it made me cringe. Like I said, if he had died while saving the boy, I would have accepted it, albeit with a frown. But this? Come the fuck on. That’s just bad writing. Really bad writing. But people eat that shit up with a spoon! I’ve never liked the series of games, though I’ve really tried. I played the first chapter of the first game and HATED it. Not only did I think the writing was bad, but the mechanic of rewinding time stressed me out to the max–no pun intended. I gave up after the first chapter and never went back to the game again.
So. This year has been a difficult one. Not only is there a pandemic going on (which has become an endemic), but I had non-COVID-related walking pneumonia, two cardiac arrests, and a stroke. I ended up in the hospital for two weeks at the beginning of September, the first week spent unconscious. The second week was me in a heavily drugged state, not knowing what was real and what were delusions.
I was told that I could use playing video games as rehab, which sounded right up my alley. I didn’t do it for the first week I was home because I couldn’t really see, but I decided to give it a go the second or third week. I can’t quite remember which, but it was one or the other. I fired up Dark Souls III by FromSoft, my favorite game of all time, and picked up the controller. I took a deep breath and jumped in. I was at the end of NG, first DLC done. I went to Firelink Shrine and just futzed around outside, killing the scrub enemies. I was worried that it would be a trial, but it wasn’t. It felt good and it made me tear up because I hadn’t been certain I would be able to play video games again.
When I give out awards, I make up cute and/or sarcastic names for the awards and it usually takes me several posts to get through them all. This year will be different in terms of quantity because for the three months I was dealing with my health scare/family issues, I didn’t really feel like playing any new games. That’s one quarter of the year. And I’ve been playing one game for nearly a year, more heavily in the first six months than in the following three, but I still play it almost every day. Even if it’s only for five or ten minutes. I’ll get to that in a minute.
This year, I have less to say about games than I normally would because of the whole nearly dying thing. But that doesn’t mean I don’t have some awards to give out! There aren’t that many and they’re not as creative or fun as the last few years, but I might as well give them out, anyway.
And, because I’ve nattered on and on for nearly a thousand words, there’s no room left for the actual awards. You’ll have to hold tight and wait until probably tomorrow for the actual awards themselves. Which means I have another day to think about it. Lucky for me!