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2020 Game of the Year Awards — Achievement Awards — Best Sound Design

Posted by BinaryMessiah on 12/12/2020

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Soundscapes are something that is heavily underlooked in games. Most concentrate on soundtracks and voice acting, but sound design can also make or break a game. You need to feel immersed and part of the experience and the right sounds matter. A game with great sound design with bringing you into its universe without you even knowing. Think of a game that feels alive or bustling? A major part of that is sound design.

Cyberpunk 2077

It’s hard with open world games to make you feel like you are part of it. There is so much sound involved in making you feel like you’re in a large city compared to a hallway in a ship. The sounds of the city are incredibly important in open-world games. You need a lot of ambience and many games don’t get it right. Cyberpunk sounds like a living breathing world and more so than most others have accomplished. More than just honking cars, people chattering, and footsteps. Cyberpunk 2077 feels alive and sounds like it too.

Runner-Ups

The Last of Us Part II

Resident Evil 3

Ghost of Tsushima

Marvel’s Spider-Man: Miles Morales

2020 Game of the Year Awards — Achievement Awards — Best Indie Game

Posted by BinaryMessiah on 12/12/2020

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Indie games are no longer the underdogs of the industry. They proudly push the boundaries of genres, gameplay, storytelling, and controversy. They lead while larger studios tend to follow suit and copy using them as guinea pigs. Indie games now give us gameplay experiences larger budget games can’t provide and blow-up financially and critically. This was an amazing year for indie games with so many I hard such a hard time deciding which go here.

Hades

Hades is the new love child of Super Giant Games whose claim to faim was Bastion and Transistor. With a similar art and combat style, Hades is oozing with Greek mythology culture and art. The game has procedurally generated dungeons, but the RPG elements are addictive and you can’t stop coming back for more. The animations are beautiful, the voice acting is great, and it just feels so polished and fun.

Runner-Ups

Deep Rock Galactic

Spelunky 2

Carrion

Paradise Killer

2020 Game of the Year Awards — Achievement Awards — Best Voice Acting

Posted by BinaryMessiah on 12/12/2020

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Diversity is the key to the voice acting game. It’s not just about delivering good lines. Usually, unique voice actors such as celebrities can really drive a game home as it doesn’t happen very often. Just because you have a lot of dialog or lines doesn’t make the voice acting good either. Look at The Elder Scrolls or Fallout. Tons of dialog, but all the lines are mediocre at best and sound cookie cutter.

Cyberpunk 2077

Cyberpunk had some of the most diverse voice acting this year. Each actor really delivered the character home and the addition of Keanu Reeves as Johnny Silverhand was a pleasure to listen to. Each character felt unique and individualized and what won me over was the sheer amount of them. That’s something that’s incredibly hard to pull off with this many characters and so many lines of dialog. CDPR could have just taken a shortcut like Bethesda and gotten a few actors to voice multiple characters, but they didn’t, and it paid off.

Runner-Ups

The Last of Us Part II

Half-Life: Alyx

Ghost of Tsushima

Marvel’s Spider-Man: Miles Morales

2020 Game of the Year Awards — Achievement Awards — Best Graphics, Technical

Posted by BinaryMessiah on 12/12/2020

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A game that looks good usually has state of the art technology driving its engine and pushes systems to their limits. The visuals should be consistent, beautiful, and groundbreaking in some way. With the launch of next-generation consoles and new graphics cards we are on the cusp of what the next set of games can look like, but we did get a glimpse this year.

The Last of Us Part II

Naughty Dog knows how to push PlayStation hardware in ways no one dares or dreamed could be possible. The Last of Us II looks amazing on the PS4 Pro with highly detailed textures, amazing lighting, fantastic animations and motion capture, and it just overall looks impressive, almost next-gen. While there were a lot of other amazing games released this year with ray-tracing and other technology they weren’t as consistent with their impressive visuals as The Last of Us II was.

Runner-Ups

Cyberpunk 2077

Marvel’s Spider-Man: Miles Morales

Microsoft Flight Simulator

Resident Evil 3

2020 Game of the Year Awards — Achievement Awards — Best Graphics, Artistic

Posted by BinaryMessiah on 12/12/2020

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There are great graphics and then there’s great art. These are two completely separate things. A game can look good technically (Serious Sam 4) but be sterile and uninteresting to look at. Then there are games that are both. There weren’t a lot of really artful games this year, but what we did get was incredibly impressive. What makes a game uniquely artistic would be in the eye of the beholder, but generally it is a unique art style in and of itself that no other game can produce.

Cyberpunk 2077

A cyberpunk setting has been done numerous times, but never in as much as detail as Cyberpunk 2077. From the amazingly detailed cybernetic enhancements on every character to the striking vehicles, advertisements, propaganda, and object clutter, there is so much beauty to look at here. Some may say it looks too realistic, but that’s the game’s thing. A fantasy future set in a realistic tone.

Runner-Ups

Doom Eternal

Hades

Sackboy: A Big Adventure

Ori and the Will of the Wisps

2020 Game of the Year Awards — Achievement Awards — Most Disappointing Game

Posted by BinaryMessiah on 12/12/2020

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This award (de-ward?) is never fun to give out. There’s always a large handful of titles that end up here and don’t make the cut which is sad. There are a lot of games released each year that are overhyped or are just plain bad. From technical screw ups to too many cuts, to just plain nothing promised, disappointing games plague every single year.

Warcraft III: Reforged

Man, oh, man where do I start? One of the most anticipated remasters of all time got completely bunked because corporate heads couldn’t agree on something. From the terrible new cut scenes, to awful retexturing, no ultrawide screen support, poor framerate, and somehow the original being better than the remaster? A lot went wrong with Warcraft III and it just shows how Blizzard has gone downhill over the years in both terms of quality and workplace issues.

Runner-Ups

Predator: Hunting Grounds

Marvel’s Avengers

XIII (2020)

Disaster Report 4: Summer Memories

2020 Game of the Year Awards — Genre Awards — Best RPG

Posted by BinaryMessiah on 12/12/2020

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RPGs are always evolving, but there’s one thing that never changes. Stats, and evolving character, story, and combat whether it’s real-time or turn-based. Role-playing games have always been known as the meat and potatoes of storytelling and deep gameplay. While Eastern and Western RPGs seem vastly different these things are always the same between them.

Cyberpunk 2077

Cyberpunk is the definition of RPG. A dystopian cyberpunk settings, lots of stats and upgrades in forms of cyberware implants, tons of characters, a great story, a huge world to explore, and lots of armor, weapons, food, and other items. This is a memorable and deep RPG, probably one of the most memorable in a decade.

Runner-Ups

Yakuza: Like a Dragon

Final Fantasy VII Remake

Genshin Impact

Wasteland 3

2020 Game of the Year Awards — Genre Awards — Best Platformer

Posted by BinaryMessiah on 12/12/2020

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This was a surprising year for platformers. Usually they tend to be indie games with maybe one large budget title or long running series returning. I’m so happy that this genre is making a big return outside of Mario. It’s one of the first genres ever invented for games and it’s sad that it’s just not as popular. There were so many great platformers this year that weren’t just okay, but absolutely fantastic. Giving us rich stories, amazing controls, fun gameplay, extraordinary level design, and beautiful visuals.

Ori and the Will of the Wisps

Ori and the Will of the Wisps is the perfect sequel. It adds enough stuff to the original to not bog it down or over complicate it in any way. It feels like a true sequel rather than an expansion or a few steps back. With another heartfelt story, a atypical use of light vs dark, and amazing controls. Wisps is a fantastic platformer that must be experience by everyone and just beat out its competition which is saying a lot.

Runner-Ups

Crash Bandicoot 4: It’s About Time

Sackboy: A Big Adventure

Ghostrunner

Spelunky 2

2020 Game of the Year Awards — Genre Awards — Best Single-Player Game

Posted by BinaryMessiah on 12/12/2020

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A new category this year is single-player. Single-player games have always been the main stay of video games and for the last decade or so publishers have been pushing back thinking multiplayer games are all that sells. 2020 saw more good single-player games, especially large budget ones, than any other year this decade. Publishers are finally starting to see that single-player games sell. It doesn’t have to be Mario, Zelda, or The Elder Scrolls to make millions either. This category also includes no multiplayer component at all. Strictly good ‘ol offline fun.

Ghost of Tsushima

Ghost of Tsushima is just a blast to play and I couldn’t put the game down. Its world is a delight to explore and the gameplay loop is addictive and a lot fun. It’s also mostly devoid of bugs which was an uncommon thing this year for major game releases. It has great characters, wonderful voice acting, and just looks downright beautiful,

Runner-Ups

The Last of Us Part II

Assassin’s Creed Valhalla

Cyberpunk 2077

Marvel’s Spider-Man: Miles Morales

2020 Game of the Year Awards — Genre Awards — Best Multiplayer Game

Posted by BinaryMessiah on 12/12/2020

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Multiplayer games have to be fun to be popular and exciting. It’s a must and there was a dry spell of really good multiplayer games this year. Most people are playing great games that have been ongoing for years such as Fortnite, CS: GO, and DOTA 2. There was a least a good variety of multiplayer games this year ranging from all different genres.

Deep Rock Galactic

This is actually quite a surprise. No Call of Duty winning this year? Black Ops shot itself in the foot by releasing a year too soon, but Deep Rock Galactic is a little indie game that took the industry by storm in a surprising way. The four player co-op shooter has you playing as Dwarves with unique abilities that allow for a great symbiosis between all the characters. It’s addictive, fresh, and not a Left 4 Dead clone.