And thus, game of the year for 2016 begins! John, Scott, Michael, and Rose all sit down to hash out the first categories for day one. If you want to keep our winners and losers a surprise, then listen to the podcast linked above. We deliberated, discussed, and debated each category until a winner, and two runners-up were decided.

For today’s GOTY we gave awards for Best Soundtrack, Best Audio Design, Best Visuals, and the What The Fuck Award.

Best Soundtrack: VA-11 HALL-A

Runners-up: DOOM, Furi

There were a lot of solid soundtracks this year, but few were as accomplished as VA-11 HALL-A’s two-part, 62-track OST: Sounds From The Future and Second Round. With a style that’s both wildly varied and totally unified, VA-11 HALL-A delivers no end of instantly iconic bangers. There’s the head-bobbing pulse of “Good For Health, Bad For Education,” the driving power-rock of “A. Rene,” and a plethora of great songs for any mood. It’s a soundtrack that epitomizes every piece of cyberpunk media which came before it, while also being its own unique work- and for that, the VA-11 HALL-A OST is the perfect music for mixing drinks and changing lives.

Best Audio Design: Oxenfree

Runners-up: Overwatch, Devil Daggers

There’s something incredibly impressive about how different games can use their audio design in wildly disparate but powerful ways. Oxenfree on its own is a narrative experience much akin to games like Life is Strange or a Telltale series, but its core conceit really sets it apart from the pack. As you wander through the mysterious Edwards Island, a handheld radio can be used to tune into the supernatural elements of the island, letting you hear things that feel eerie and wrong. From cut World War II sound clips, to haunting orchestral music, everything you can hear on the radio creates an incredible atmosphere of unease for an already anxious situation. When you actually tune into specific objects, the distorted hum that accompanies the equally disturbing visuals makes every second feel powerful, dark, and dangerous. 

Even aside from the general sound work, all of the voice acting you’ll hear in the game sounds crisp and real, like you’re really listening to a couple of friends talking. This becomes even more effective when things like possession come into play, making the distorted voices of familiar friends feel all the more corrupt. Oxenfree lives and dies by its audio design, and when you still call to mind exactly how a game sounds, long after it’s done, you know it was good.

Best Visuals: Hyper Light Drifter

Runners-up: VA-11 HALL-A, Mirror’s Edge: Catalyst 

Very few games nowadays manage to have an entirely unique aesthetic identity, especially when it comes to pixel art. Hyper Light Drifter’s visuals, while definitely steeped in inspiration from its forebears, are still uniquely its own. An off-pastel color palette set to a drab and dying world. Areas that are not only visually interesting and have great environmental storytelling. Hidden areas always have subtle clues leading you in their direction. So many amazing touches, and it’s hard not to mention the game’s intro. It’s seriously an achievement, you’ve gotta check it out.

What The Fuck Award: The Coleco Chameleon

Runners-up: Palmer Luckey and his meme investments, CS:GO Gambling

It’s somewhat trite at this point to jump on-board the “2016” train, but it seems like even the games industry couldn’t avoid being an absolute wreck this year. We’ve seen multiple bizarre occurrences this year, but one stands glorious atop this festering pile of feces – and that’s the Coleco Chameleon. Having started life as the Retro VGS in 2015 (and failing spectacularly), 2016 saw RETRO Magazine’s Mike Kennedy reboot his pie-in-the-sky console into the Chameleon. However, a disastrous Toy Fair showing, which alleged the console to be little more than a Super Nintendo inside an Atari Jaguar shell, and the ensuing fiascoes saw the Chameleon devolve from a pipe-dream into spectacular farce.

A second faked prototype – revealed to be a DVR capture card – followed by Kennedy’s attempts to portray himself as a hapless schmuck who got taken for a ride by a skeevy hardware guy saw Coleco Holdings pull out, and the venture die officially. Allegations from people close to the project at one time or another that Kennedy had funneled money out of RETRO Magazine and Game Gavel (themselves largely unsuccessful ventures) into a separate LLC in order to cut his business partners out of Chameleon profits didn’t help Kennedy’s image; and even saw RETRO Magazine hemorrhage some of its few remaining staff members. Kennedy has since continued to occasionally surface in the retro scene for all the wrong reasons, but it’s unlikely he’ll ever bungle something as hard as he did the Chameleon.

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Luckey explained in detail why he came to this decision. He sees the Oculus Rift not just as one of the first VR helmets on the market, but also the best possible VR experience for newcomers. It’s smart to put your best foot forward and prove to the curious onlookers and skeptics alike that VR really does work. At some point, however, overpricing VR helmets prevents newcomers from trying just as easily as it might convince them that this is the next step.

Oculus is positioning itself to be the elite VR helmet on the market. But the market is about to be full of competition and which will prevail? Cost and experience or convenience and ease?

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Take a good look at that image. Done? Now look at it again. Come August 17th, this edition of Time Magazine will be released and permanently alter the mainstream perception of virtual reality. That isn’t a good thing, unless you hate the Oculus Rift, in which case I’m glad somebody is getting enjoyment out of this.

That front cover is a lot of things. Aside from being an odd conversation piece in the dentist’s office and something I desperately want framed and hanging in my room, it’s an image on or even below par with most stock photos. It’s also a gross misrepresentation of VR sets like the Oculus Rift and the potential they carry. It’s hard to say how much editorializing this cover went through, or how much input Palmer Luckey had, but the end result is…well, you can see the end result right there. Not really appropriate for such an important new tech, but maybe they were going for the “fun and whimsical” angle, which they missed by several miles.

Then again, this isn’t Time’s first cover which features a poorly staged barefoot tech dude with a virtual reality headset that ends up grossly misrepresenting the actual product. So maybe there’s a precedent for it. Maybe “barefoot tech mogul” is a new popular stereotype in American culture that I’m not aware of. A snippet of the article even goes out of the way to mention how Luckey’s “feet are black because he doesn’t like wearing shoes.” Jeez. Is there some weird Dan Schneider stuff happening at Time that I’m not aware of?

Uncomfortable foot jokes aside, this cover does more damage to the Oculus Rift and the concept of virtual reality as a whole than any naysayer could hope to achieve. It isn’t total garbage, but it comes across as visually inert and weirdly blithe. A large portion of Time readers probably don’t know much about modern VR or the Oculus, so do we really want their first impression to be…this? It’s great that Time has devoted a feature to Palmer Luckey and his creation, especially at such a critical cusp in its development, but the execution could be much better.

On the flip side, I can’t wait for the memes to come out of this cover. I took the liberty of making a couple myself:

The Creation of VR.

With this one, I could probably get a job at Time. Hey-o!

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