By the time this article goes up, I believe The Game Awards may or may not have happened, so I hope everyone had a beautiful time with our beloved Geoff Keighley and his various WORLD PREMIERES.
I was meditating a bit on the concept of The Game Awards, of course never from a place of actually taking them seriously at all, but more from just how absurd they have been and always will be. Do you remember the Shick Hydrobot?
Do you remember, back in 2007, when instead of presenting the awards via envelopes, they painted the winning games on women’s bodies for some godforsaken reason? I’m not linking that, or showing it to you, but I will say if you ever want a truly horrendous photo, you can buy it for an incredible price over at Getty Images)
Obviously things have come a long way since either of these events, but at the same time…they really haven’t. There’s been discourse about games like Dave the Diver being featured under the indie category, which is understandable, but what really gets me is things like “Games for Impact”, and what the hell that even means, as well as the various categories related to influencers and esports. It’s not that these groups shouldn’t be represented somewhere –at least for the esports players– but I’m not really sure how I’m supposed to personally judge the merits of a Counter Strike player versus a Call of Duty or League of Legends player. They’re very different games and skill sets! It’s like if I had to pick between a basketball player and a baseball player for my favorite guy! It’s just silly!
I don’t know if there’s a good iteration of The Game Awards, some other game award shows can come closer to a broader sense of understanding what it means to celebrate art, but you know, maybe there doesn’t have to be a better option, maybe these things just suck inherently.
Anyways, here’s my Three Gaming Awards of this week:
Most Confusing Narrative Throughline: Spider-Man 2
I really liked Spider-Man 2 overall, it’s a game that proves you can in fact do something with the spectacle and budget that a AAA gaming experience affords, and also reaffirms that everything is better when you add in The Symbiote. There’s a really satisfying flow to the movement that perfectly evokes the feeling of what being Spider-Man is like, and also demonstrates what open-world games should be fixated on; the means of actually traversing these vast expanses in an interesting and fun way. I remember when I played Death Stranding, I was fascinated by how important the core gameplay of moving your body was to the overall experience; you didn’t just walk around to do something, walking around was already doing something in-of-itself. Spider-Man 2 is the exact opposite of Death Stranding in more than one way, but it still captures that idea that the movement shouldn’t just be the basic thing you put in and add onto in a throwaway sense, but that the means of navigation should be the first building block in the process of exploring how you want someone to engage with your world. I’m not saying every game should let you swoop around a gigantic New York and climb on every nook and cranny or anything, and I understand feature creep and focus to a deeper degree than most, but I think there is something to be said for interrogating even the most minute aspects of your gameplay, and how it will service your vision.
That said, the story for this one is a great example of the type of pitfalls and issues that any AAA game made will inevitably run into. It’s not that it’s wholly bad or anything, there are great performances from characters like Harry Osborne, and the novelty of going all fully yaoi-brained for the Peter/Harry ship is something I cannot help but respect. Instead, it’s more that there isn’t really a coherent procession for the events that transpire, and the ludonarrative disconnect between the types of scenarios the game necessitates, and what would actually make sense for the world-state is an incredible gulf. While I understand the desire to move away from things like “Spider-Cop”, creating a world where like, Kraven is firebombing New York City (New York City!!!) nonstop with an entire army and no one seems to really do anything about it other than Spider-Man, is kind of insane! I’m not saying I need to see some false idol of a cop show up and lose to keep my superhero story grounded, but you’re telling me you’re gonna start power-scaling to the point where you’re pulling in Scream and using magic Dr. Strange portals and everyone’s walking around NYC and going to concerts and playing basketball games!!!!!?? There’s a Symbiote in your city your shit is about to explode!
There’s a lot of high points when it comes to set piece design but ultimately, you can tell that this was a story cut up and adjusted overtime, with things thrown in and out haphazardly. With reports of things like Miles’ Symbiote arc reportedly cut, a lot of the weird goings on suddenly make a lot more sense. Game development is always going to be hectic, especially at as large a scale as a Marvel game made by a Sony first-party developer, but I still dare to dream of a better production cycle where we don’t end up with a bizarre narrative where Peter Parker is training bees to kill every rat in NYC (???) and Miles Morales’ biggest concern in life is finishing a 500 word essay.
Most Restarted Game Award: Ender Lilies
I actually like Ender Lilies a great deal, so it might seem insane when I tell you I have restarted this game 5 times over the last year and a half. It’s not because I hit a wall of difficulty, or got fed up with a particularly tedious sequence or anything, far from it. Instead, it’s because everytime I get a little ways in, some other game comes out and distracts me, and since I have Ender Lilies on PC, it’s very easy for me to cull as a woman who spends more time bed-bound than not.
If you’ve never heard of Ender Lilies, it’s a Metroidvania published by Japanese studio Binary Haze Interactive, that spent a little time in early access before fully releasing in the summer of 2021. You play as a small girl in a decidedly Soulsian world full of monsters and undead, who has the ability to purify said creatures and use them as weapons or a means of navigation across her hellish world. Like I said with The Last Faith last week, I appreciate any Metroidvania that’s willing to go a bit further with the concept of combat than its colleagues, and Ender Lilies’ concept of a non-violent main character who instead summons others to handle the macabre is a novel approach enough to have me be fully onboard.
The strongest point of Ender Lilies is easily it’s presentation, with a combination of beautiful 2D art that’s reminiscent of Vanillaware’s more storybook sensibilities, and a fantastic mostly piano driven soundtrack that was composed in collaboration with indie artist Mili (most known for her work on Project Moon games such as Library of Ruina). Just as I said Spider-Man 2’s means of exploring its world was a success because of how good it feels, Ender Lilies elicits a similar sensation in cultivating a world that feels worth exploring. What’s going on in this world? What is this “Rain of Death” everyone is mentioning? What was this place like before all this went so wrong? These questions are common in games, and really in any form of media, but what makes them compelling is how they’re presented, and the way you feel as you make your way to their solutions.
Since the first time I played Ender Lilies, I’ve had one song in particular lodged into my brain, and I think of it often. The quiet piano, the sounds of rain, the haunting intermittent hums of Cassie Wei punctuating every refrain. It’s a really fascinating game, and I’m praying to god I can actually defeat my attention span this time.
The Hype Award: Like a Dragon: Infinite Wealth Demo
My wife finished playing through Like a Dragon Gaiden: The Man Who Erased His Name this past week before she left on a work trip, so that meant that I got to dive into the post-credits demo for her over the internet and man, man.
I loved Yakuza : Like a Dragon (Yakuza 7) when it came out a few years back, and while I knew how much I loved it, this demo really drove it into my soul just how deeply it resonated with me. Ichiban is the perfect protagonist, and having him exist alongside series regular Kazuma Kiryu, rather than replacing him, is a beautiful way to actually meld the past and the present into one cohesive and interesting “now”. I understand why so many narratives involve the “passing of the torch” moment, but to me what’s more beautiful is making a narrative where the old aren’t forgotten, and instead work alongside the young to continue making a better today.
Setting the game in Hawaii is a fantastic change of pace for the series as well. I’ve always appreciated the frugality of Ryu Ga Gotoku Studio when it came to the locales of the Yakuza series, but it’s really cool to see them not only step outside the established few districts that have made up the series’ past, but also leave behind the entire country and metropolitan vibe. There’s something deeply unsettling about walking into a convenience store and seeing the more familiar American-style layout, rather than the Tokyo-style that permeated the Yakuza of old, but I’m kind of here for it? I’m especially here for just how packed every aspect of this game is from top to bottom in terms of gameplay systems, gameplay ideas, story concepts, and just, the general everything? The game is called Infinite Wealth and Jesus Christ does it really embody that concept.
When you walk down the street you can wave to random people, which makes them your friend (the game pops up a tutorial that basically says “who knows what will happen!” and I’m dying to know what that means). If you walk past a coffee shop, you might get into a conversation with one of your party members like you did in Yakuza 7, but this time you unlock a slot called “favorite drink” on that character’s Bond Bingo Board, which grants bonus stats or items to you. Hop on a trolley to take a scenic ride around the island, and get roped into playing Sicko Snap, an entire game mode based off of Pokémon Snap where you take pictures of buff men in masquerade masks who are causing all sorts of ruckus around town. Go out into the ocean and your entire party will immediately don swimsuits and start foraging around underwater for bottles to recycle, while carefully avoiding speed boats that will just run you over without a care in the world. You can press down on the d-pad to make everyone get on a line of customizable segways and just fucking rocket around.
That’s like, half of the things I did in that demo. I didn’t even mention the turn-based combat that feels better than ever! I didn’t even mention the actual narrative that you go through pitting Ichiban and Kiryu (who has Persona 4 hair now) up against a corrupt cop named Roman, and a Hawaiian gang leader voiced by Jojo’s Dio Brando! This doesn’t even include the entire goddamn Animal Crossing game they teased at TGS that exists somewhere in all this! I’m just so flabbergasted and blown away by everything Infinite Wealth had to offer that I’m honestly still overwhelmed!
I am dying to get my hands on the game when it fully comes out on January 28th, but honestly I’m glad I got to have this delightful little sojourn in the interim. There’s always been much to do about spoilers when it comes to discussing and engaging with media, but I personally have never minded it. To me, what makes a work compelling is seeing how all of these parts coexist with one another to form a cohesive whole. I love being given a random sliver like….1/5th of the way through a story to just sort of try and figure out; it makes me more excited for when I actually get a chance to see where it’s all going. I remember thinking for a long time with regards to one of my favorite games, Final Fantasy XIV, that anyone who got in on the game later missed out on a chance to spend time between story threads meditating and pondering on what pieces we had, and making up a possibility inside our heads, and that’s how I feel when I get to see something like this demo. I’m left wondering and thinking things that a trailer would only partially stimulate. It’s not better or worse than remaining fully ignorant, just different, and it’s a difference of experience I’ve come to appreciate.
