If you wish to watch our winners in video form, check out the below video. Other than that, here are the write-ups!

Best Mechanic: Self Mutilation in The Missing

Runners-up: Web-Swinging in Spider-Man, District Health in Vampyr

While seemingly a hard sell for most people, the way The Missing handles the use of self mutilation to solve puzzles is brilliantly executed. Dismemberment, immolation, and many other brutal forms of self mutilation act as J.J.’s means to progress through the world and learn to rebuild herself. These mechanics serve to act as a metaphor for the struggles and the pain that many trans people go through in everyday life in order to survive in the world. J.J. breaks herself down to build herself together again. After all, this is a regeneration story.

Worst Mechanic: Red Dead Redemption 2’s Morality Meter

Runners-up: Detroit: Become Human’s Trust System, SNK Heroines’ Items

Red Dead Redemption 2 is full of all sorts of thoughtless and actively fun-hampering mechanics, but the morality meter easily takes the cake. Even the concept of a meter to measure some sort of arbitrarily considered moral code feels outdated in 2018, where so much of the industry has either thoughtfully omitted such mechanics or adapted them into more nuanced and subtle presentation. Drifting your morality meter in either direction requires barely any thought, and provides little to no bearing on anything that happens throughout your experience. Being a Cowboy Angel won’t stop Arthur from beating up disabled men for three dollars in the story, nor will being Satan’s lil’ Cowpoke affect the titular and forced redemption arc later in the game. It’s a meaningless system that feels integrated largely because its predecessor had it, but also because as a AAA video game such features are required. This is all saying nothing of the fact that in Red Dead Redemption 2’s online component, players can pay to reset their morality meter with a microtransaction currency, which is just, man that really just is everything wrong with AAA gaming wrapped up nicely, huh?

Worst Game: The Quiet Man

Runners-up: Detroit: Become Human, SNK Heroines: Tag Team Frenzy

Oh, what to say? Square Enix has had a real strange year, but nothing has quite reached the heights of sheer bafflement that the company achieved with The Quiet Man. What feels like both a fake game from a movie and an Arrowverse rip-off, The Quiet Man is a disaster on every conceivable level. From FMV sequences that look and feel like a rejected pilot for a show on The CW, to gameplay sequences that feel like they were cobbled together in a couple weeks (by Human Head, a legit developer, no less), The Quiet Man is an embarrassment on a scale rarely seen for major publishers. Sure, Square Enix has taken risks on smaller-to-medium sized games in the past couple years, with games like Tokyo Dark and Nier: Automata both being successful, but it’s impossible to understand just what exactly the company was thinking with The Quiet Man.

The post Game of the Year Awards 2018: Day Four appeared first on Gamesline.

You can check out our full write-ups right here, but as always, we’ve got a handy-dandy video to run down today’s awards!

Best Moment: The Ending (THE MISSING)

Runners-up: Walking through town (Deltarune), The Last Climb (Celeste)

The ending to THE MISSING isn’t just impressive because of its elaborate presentation, though that certainly helps it. This final sequence, where both the true nature of the game, as well as an insistence to push back against an all too common tragic and surrealist end are revealed, is exactly what we should be looking for in video game narratives. From the dramatic scripted scenes, to a final optimistic chase and victory over a now understandable enemy, THE MISSING’s ending takes advantage of being a piece of interactive media, and provides a path of emotional resonance through the whole experience. By exploring largely ignored and important territory, THE MISSING was able to take what would have been a novel experience in its own right, and push it above into the type of representation we should be accepting as the bare minimum. Also it made me cry for like three hours.

Hella Brokenest: Fallout 76

Runners-up: Vampyr, The Quiet Man

Even before its release date, nearly every comment online about Fallout 76 was one of deep frustration and consistent ineptitude. Bethesda’s games are rightfully infamous for how shoddily they’re held together, but their latest release heaps another spoonful of worry on top of an already wobbly foundation with online functionality. With the standard crashes, bugs, and game-breaking errors now paired with an unstable connectivity requirement, Fallout 76 is going to need a lot more than some fan mods to be anywhere near something worth the money Bethesda’s asking for it. Let’s not forget that they’re using the same twenty-year-old engine they’ve been using since Morrowind, and plan to continue to use it into the next generation.

Best Character: Susie (Deltarune)

Runners-up: Madeline (Celeste), Nia (Xenoblade Chronicles 2)

The power of mean girls shines within you.

Susie from Deltarune is our favorite character in a game this year. Her character arc, from schoolyard bully, to reluctant party member, to two-bit villain, to genuine friend was, in true Toby Fox style, equal parts touching and hilarious. Susie is in many ways a perfect response to the sometimes simplistic pacifist outlook of Undertale. As she moves from lashing out with violence out of fear, to using violence as a way to defend those she cares about, Susie encapsulates the complicated questions Deltarune seeks to ask. She adds an edge to the game (no pun intended), and always reminds us that these characters are just tweens doing their best in a scary situation. Susie’s scenes with Lancer are among the funniest in Deltarune, and she brings serious heart to the game, making me care about the fate and feelings of these dumb kids. To give Susie the best compliment I can: she is unbanned from free ham sandwich day.

Worst Character: Markus (Detroit: Become Human)

Runners-up: Arthur Morgan (Red Dead Redemption 2), Lara Croft (Shadow of the Tomb Raider)

David Cage is a man who divides opinion among the masses at the best of times, but with Detroit: Become Human, the master of gaming misery has hit new lows in the character department with the game’s lead, Markus. Cage has, of course, always been about as subtle as a nuclear bomb, but his clumsy attempts to roll Jesus Christ, Martin Luther King, Che Guevara, Jason Bourne and Mahatma Gandhi into one with Markus are unbelievably horrible. As Detroit fumbles around with its dead-on-the-nose Biblical references and Markus’ literal freeing of the android slaves, it’s hard to believe that you’re watching a sincere effort at storytelling unfold before you; so laughably ham-fisted are Cage’s attempts to make Markus a relatable, sympathetic leader that the game’s entire thesis statement looks like it’s being drawn into parody. Under Markus, a game that should’ve been an easy thematic slam-dunk stumbles and falls in mystifying order, and only serves to highlight that of all people in the industry, David Cage is certainly not the one with the chops to tackle difficult social concepts.

The post Game of the Year Awards 2018: Day Two appeared first on Gamesline.

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