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2024 Game of the Year Awards — Achievement Awards — Most Disappointing Game

Posted by BinaryMessiah on 12/28/2024

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It always fascinates me how games these days can be disappointing simply by just bad business practices. A game can be perfectly serviceable, but filled with predatory microtransaction or subscription model and completely ruin the experience. That’s been a trend lately. That, and games that over promise and under deliver or have ballooned budgets, but have nothing to show for it.

Star Wars Outlaws

After the success of the Jedi Survivor games by Respawn, it came has a big shock that this game was a dud. With a lackluster story, characters, and terrible stealth gameplay, this Star Wars game feels like a high budget phoned in mess and no one wanted it.

Runner-Ups

Skull and Bones

Test Drive Unlimited: Solar Crown

South Park: Snow Day!

Concord

2024 Game of the Year Awards — Genre Awards — Best Sound Design

Posted by BinaryMessiah on 12/27/2024

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Great sound design is something that gives a game character and a unique tone that the visuals can’t. A game can look good, but sound generic and many JRPGs are a great example of this. Games like Gears of War, Halo, or Mario have great sound design as entire sound bites and effects are iconic and many people can replicate them on the fly.

Silent Hill 2 (2024)

It’s hard to replicate the soundscape that’s as iconic as Silent Hill. From the eerie and wonderfully composed industrial soundtrack to the screams, sirens, static, and wind effects even. Bloober Team pulled it off and made Silent Hill 2 and eerie place to be in. From the new effects like the weird scraping rusty metal sounds that play when enemies are nearby to the heartbeats, squishes, crunches of a pipe connecting with an enemy, and even the scraping sound of Pyramid Head’s sword. It’s haunting and incredibly well done. There’s nothing else out there like it.

Runner-Ups

Warhammer 40,000: Space Marine II

Astro Bot

Tekken 8

Senua’s Saga: Hellblade II

2024 Game of the Year Awards — Achievement Awards — Best Story

Posted by BinaryMessiah on 12/25/2024

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Not all games need stories, and not all stories need to be deep and intelligent, however those are the ones we remember the most. A good story should also have great characters, but some times it doesn’t. Stories are one of the few things in gaming that are malleable and don’t need to follow a specific pattern or recipe.

Senua’s Saga: Hellblade II

Hellblade 2 sadly sacrificed a fantastic story for gameplay as there isn’t nearly as much as the first game, but that’s okay, you play these adventure titles for the stories and character and not really the gameplay. If you play Hellblade 2 from the start knowing there isn’t a lot of engaging gameplay than you won’t be disappointed. This was also the issue with The Order: 1886. I personally loved the story of that game and can remember it to this day, but I went in knowing there wasn’t much gameplay, but what was there was solid.

Runner-Ups

Dragon Age: The Veilguard

Silent Hill 2 (2024)

Indika

Metaphor: ReFantazio

2024 Game of the Year Awards — Achievement Awards — Best Voice Acting

Posted by BinaryMessiah on 12/24/2024

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You can say a line in three different ways and they will all come across differently. Voice acting isn’t just about “sounding good”, but making the character come to life. A lot of voice acting is wasted in games in fact some of the most wasted assets and resources in a game. So many games have bad voice acting (mostly JRPGs in English) and it only seems that most AAA studios can afford the good voice actors. Sadly, this is one category a studio needs money for.

Silent Hill 2 (2024)

Silent Hill 2 doesn’t have a lot of voiced lines, but by golly do the actors really bring it during their short run time. Silent Hill 2 already had passable voice acting for its time, but there’s something here that will kind of dig into your soul a bit with the pain and sorrow in these character’s voices. The voice acting director did a stand up job getting the most out of these guys.

Runner-Ups

Warhammer 40,000: Space Marine II

Senua’s Saga: Hellblade II

Dragon Age: The Veilguard

Metaphor: ReFantazio

2024 Game of the Year Awards — Achievement Awards — Best Graphics, Technical

Posted by BinaryMessiah on 12/24/2024

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For some reason we are still making games for the previous generation that is now 10 years old. Why? This is sadly really holding this generation back. I’m hoping the PS4 and Xbox One are mostly dropped by next year for larger budget games as we are still not seeing the full potential of these systems yet and we’re already halfway through this console cycle.

Astro Bot

You might be surprised that I picked a lighter hearted game geared towards family fun. Astro Bot has one thing graphically that no other game has accomplished. Convincing textures. Not only do these translate on screen well, but you can feel and hear them in the DualSense controller. The detail is absurd and everything feels, looks, sounds, and reacts just like it should. Space blanket material, jelly, canvas, water, metal, glass, etc. It’s unbelievable what Team Asobi pulled off with the PS5 hardware. We need more of this in 2025.

Runner-Ups

Silent HIll 2 (2024)

Dragon Age: The Veilguard

Black Myth: Wukong

Senua’s Saga: Hellblade II

2024 Game of the Year Awards — Achievement Awards — Most Exciting Return

Posted by BinaryMessiah on 12/23/2024

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Some games get announced and become massive stories in the industry. Some due to their nature of going through development hell (Duke Nukem Forever) or a once long dead franchise making its way back. These games can be total remakes, surprise HD remasters, or brand new sequels or reboots.

Silent Hill 2 (2024)

Bloober Team had all odds stacked against them when Silent Hill 2 (2024) was announced. Bloober Team had never done a remake and their own original IPs weren’t blockbuster hits. The reveal trailer was not well done and subsequent trailers did not show what fans wanted. However, despite all of the fog surrounding the game, players were cautiously excited hoping this would be the game to tell Konami to get the series going again. Once the game was unleashed to the masses, Bloober Team exploded into the stratosphere as a compentent developer and were handed the keys to the franchise by the community at large.

Runner-Ups

Dragon Age: The Veilguard

Warhammer 40,000: Space Marine II

S.T.A.L.K.E.R. 2: Heart of Chornobyl

Dragon’s Dogma II

2024 Game of the Year Awards — Achievement Awards — Best New Character

Posted by BinaryMessiah on 12/22/2024

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We didn’t get that many new characters this year, and the ones that were new mostly felt like avatars or were fairly forgettable. A great character isn’t just their voice, but their attitude, looks, style, and the way they move in the game. Look at characters like Gordan Freeman. You never actually see or hear him in the game yet his character design is iconic.

Eve – Stellar Blade

You could argue that Eve is cheating with her sex appeal and it’s an automatic win. Not necessarily. Eve oozes style and she looks good on screen not just because of her skin tight suits, but her personality shows in her fluid animations in combat, the way she talks to people in the world, and her curious nature in the game. She’s more than just eye candy here. Like Bayonetta (Bayonetta) and 2B (Nier: Automata) before her, sex appeal is done tastefully and her entire style ends up being front and center over showing any skin.

Runner-Ups

Zhu Bajie – Black Myth: Wukong

Indika – Indika

Reina – Tekken 8

Heismay Noctule – Metaphor: ReFantazio

2024 Game of the Year Awards — Genre Awards — Best Shooter

Posted by BinaryMessiah on 12/21/2024

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The shooter genre has been a bit stale over the last five years. This genre is one of the few that refuses to innovate or change in any way and tends to fall in the live-service trap the most. This year saw a slight bump in quality, but there just wasn’t a large variety either. Both third-person and first-person shooters made their cut this year.

Warhammer 40,000: Space Marine II

Space Marine II wasn’t just a long awaited sequel, but it’s a third person shooter that feels good and has personality. Sure, you probably need to know something about the tabletop series to really appreciate this game, but for those who have never played a Warhammer game before this is still a lot of fun. With great co-op and a fantastic campaign, there’s not a lot here to hate.

Runner-Ups

Call of Duty: Black Ops 6

S.T.A.L.K.E.R. 2: Heart of Chornobyl

Helldivers II

Mad Mullet Jack

2024 Game of the Year Awards — Achievement Awards — Best Original Music

Posted by BinaryMessiah on 12/20/2024

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Original soundtracks are part of what gives a game its identity. Rarely are soundtracks good enough to listen to outside of the game, or even more so, have a theme or tune that nearly every gamer can hum. This year saw one of the few times when quite a few games had fantastic original soundtracks. We need to get back to great OST’s.

Neva

The heart wrenching moments in Neva are mostly thanks to the games phenomenal soundtrack. Beautiful melodies, melancholy tracks, and the occasional song of whimsy. Neva’s entire story can be told just by the music alone and it’s good enough to listen to even outside of the game.

Runner-Ups

Silent Hill 2 (2024)

Stellar Blade

Final Fantasy VII: Rebirth

Prince of Persia: The Lost Crown

2024 Game of the Year Awards — Genre Awards — Best Rogue-Like

Posted by BinaryMessiah on 12/20/2024

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Many don’t know, but Rogue-Like is derived from the 8-bit video game Rogue that started it all. These games are “like Rogue”. This genre tends to have a die hard set of fans and aren’t very casual gamer friendly. These games are exploding in popularity year-over-year from deck builders, to platformers, to beat ’em ups.

Balatro

Balatro is one of those rare games that just works so well and feel like sorcery. How is such a simple card game so addictive and so popular? The poker game is deeper than you think and is more than just a simple game of chance. You need strategy to win big and defeat the bosses and get ahead of the computer. It’s available on every platform you can imagine and I hope to see a sequel soon.