Minisode: The Game Awards 2023

Strap in for a rollercoaster recap of this year's game awards, where I, Anthony, bring all the buzz and fervor of the night's big wins right to your ears. Feel the weight of the crown as I revel in Baldur's Gate 3's coronation as Game of the Year and the cinematic mastery of Alan Wake 2, sweeping up accolades for Best Game Direction and Best Narrative. Travel with me through the captivating realms of the latest Avatar game and join in my anticipation for rolling dice in the Star Wars Imperial Assault universe. I'm also tipping my hat to the astonishing artistry in Final Fantasy XVI and the symphonic brilliance that enveloped us in High-Fi Rush.

As we deck the halls this festive season, I extend an invitation to connect over our united passion for gaming. Your cheers and contributions have been the joystick guiding us forward, and we can’t thank you enough. Hear how you can amplify our journey together on social media and be part of the dynamic Project Geekology family. And before you dash through the snow, mark your calendars for January when we'll reconvene for more Project Geekology content. Sending off this mini episode with a heart full of gratitude, I wish you all a holiday filled with joy and a New Year brimming with epic gaming adventures.

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Geekritique (Dakota):
https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCBwciIqOoHwIx_uXtYTSEbA


Twitch (Anthony):
https://www.twitch.tv/odysseywow

Music:
Eric Godlow Beats: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCRpkcYps82PdSo0tK5rEIPA

Transcript

Speaker 0: 0:09

Welcome to a mini episode of Project Geekology. I am one of your host, anthony, and this time I'm doing it by myself. I'm getting a mini episode out. I wanted to at least leave you with something before the year ended. I know that Christmas just passed, but right before the year ends I wanted to get a nice quick episode out for you. I'm going to be covering the game awards of this year and kind of go through some of the different categories, some of the nominees and the winners of those categories. There was also some really cool announcements. I really want to go over that Before all that. I hope everybody has a fantastic holiday season. I hope that everyone had a great Christmas and I hope that everyone has an even better new year and that everything that you are hoping for comes true next year.

Speaker 0: 1:05

So I've kind of been gaming a little bit. Dakota and I. We have been busy. We haven't really been able to get together to record. I've been busy doing holiday stuff, and so I wanted to take a little bit of time and at least get you a nice little episode out.

Speaker 0: 1:24

Talk about the game awards of this year and some of the announcements that I am particularly excited about. I've been playing a little bit of the new Avatar game. That game is actually like really cool. It's very immersive. You get to explore Pandora and I think that that's really awesome. And I also got Star Wars Imperial Assault. I'm really excited because it seems like a Star Wars D&D type game and I'm excited to play that with some friends and so, yeah, this episode is not going to be all that long. So you know what? I'm going to just dive into the meat and potatoes of the topic of this and I don't know if I want to. I think that there's some categories that I'm probably just going to glaze over or just not even cover. I'm just going to hop to it.

Speaker 0: 2:13

What game of the year is? I'll say the nominees were Alan Wake 2, baldur's Gate 3, marvel Spider-Man 2, resident Evil 4, remake, super Mario Bros, wonder and the Legend of Zelda Tears of the Kingdom. Now, I would say that out of all of these, the toss up for me would have been Baldur's Gate 3 and the Legend of Zelda Tears of the Kingdom. I think what would have jettisoned Legend of Zelda is if Nintendo maybe released a stronger Switch, like a stronger hardware. We got the Switch, oled, I think. Maybe what a couple years ago, but that was more of an upgrade to the look of it and how you know the screen and maybe some other minor upgrades, but nothing like, you know, having a Switch Pro For game of the year.

Speaker 0: 3:06

Baldur's Gate 3 won, and I have to give it to that, because Baldur's Gate 3 was definitely an amazing game. The creators of Divinity Larian Studios really just came to bat and they hit it out of the park with this game, so I was really excited about that. So we got Best Game Direction. There was Alan Wake 2, baldur's Gate 3, marvel, spider-man 2, super Mario Bros, wonder and Zelda Tears of the Kingdom, and so I haven't gotten to play Alan Wake 2, I did play the first one. I thought that that first game was really good, so I can imagine the second one is just as awesome, and so you would think maybe Baldur's Gate 3 or Zelda Tears of the Kingdom, but no, alan Wake 2 got Best Game Direction. So that's what kind of has me wanting to check that out. Because it got Best Game Direction. And for Best Narrative we got Alan Wake 2, baldur's Gate 3, cyberpunk 2077, phantom Liberty, which is the DLC that came out for Cyberpunk, final Fantasy XVI and Spider-Man 2. Alan Wake II got that and Alan Wake it was a strong narrative game. That actually doesn't surprise me that it won that Not saying that Baldur's Gate 3 or Cyberpunk isn't narrative, but the Alan Wake games are very strong and story driven, whereas some of these other games you can kind of wander about.

Speaker 0: 4:39

Best Art Direction, which the nominees were Alan Wake II, high-fy Rush, lies of P, super Mario Brothers, wonder and Zelda Tears of the Kingdom I was just going to say Mario Wonder for Super Mario Bros and so for Best Art Direction, we got Alan Wake II. So, wow, I really want to play that game. So best score slash music the nominees were Alan Wake II, baldur's Gate 3, final Fantasy XVI, high-fy Rush and Zelda Tears of the Kingdom and Final Fantasy XVI got that. I'm not surprised. Square Enix is really good when it comes to scoring their games. Like Final Fantasy and the Kingdom Hearts series and some of their other series, they just do a really good job. They put pride into the music of their games. They've been doing it since like years, for the longest time. So best audio design the nominees were Alan Wake II, dead Space Remake, high-fy Rush, spiderman II and Resident Evil 4 Remake, and High-Fy Rush got that.

Speaker 0: 5:49

I played a little bit of High-Fy Rush. It was like very kind of like musically driven. It was one of those platformer games. I thought it was a pretty cool. From what I played, it seemed pretty cool. So we got best performance and the nominees are Ben Starr for Final Fantasy XVI, cameron Monaghan for Star Wars, jedi Survivor, idris Elba for Cyberpunk 2077, phantom Liberty, melanie Libbard and Alan Wake II, neil Neubin Neil Neubon I hope I'm pronouncing that right but for Balder's Gate III and Yuri Lewenthal for Spiderman II. And Neil for Balder's Gate III was the winner of that. And so we got best ongoing game.

Speaker 0: 6:38

There's Apex Legends, cyberpunk 2077, final Fantasy XIV, fortnite and Genshin Impact, and Cyberpunk 2077 actually won that, which is really cool, because all these other games are for service games. Cyberpunk 2077, I mean there's a lot of replayability to it. It's one of those games that you can make multiple characters, there's different paths that you can take, but these other ones are made to be replayed for a long time. Like Apex is one of those games that you could just hop in for just hours and hours and you just kind of get a different game each time. Final Fantasy XIV it's an MMO Fortnite for those of you who want Fortnite, like all of. So two of them are Battle Royales and then Genshin Impact, which is one of those gotcha games that get you coming back all the time. And so we got best indie game.

Speaker 0: 7:30

There's Cocoon, dave the Diver Dredge, sea of Stars and Viewfinder. And Sea of Stars won that. Actually, you know, I've seen a couple of these Viewfinder and Sea of Stars were are kind of on my radar, but I really want to play Sea of Stars. It looks really good. It's kind of it's one of those like like classic looking RPGs and actually I think, yeah, actually I got it on Steam, I need to dive into it. And so we got mobile game category. Best mobile game. There's Final Fantasy VII, ever Crisis, which is this gotcha, final Fantasy gotcha game. We got Hunkai, star Rail, hello Kitty Island Adventure, monster Hunter Now and Terra Nill. Now, I only knew about three of these, which is the Monster Hunter One, the Star Rail, and Final Fantasy VII, and Star Rail won that one.

Speaker 0: 8:24

And best community support there's Baldur's Gate 3, cyberpunk 2077, destiny 2, final Fantasy XVI and no Man's Sky. Baldur's Gate 3 got that. And here let me. There's the individual ones. I kind of just want to, I'm gonna blast through these ones. So we've got best action game armor core six, fires of Rubicon 1.1 over dead island 2. Ghost runner 2. High fire rush and remnant 2. Armor core 6 is pretty good. I got to play that and I haven't beaten it yet, but I got to play a good bit of that and it's a really good game. So we got best action slash adventure game and Zelda tears of kingdom one that. That Doesn't surprise me at all. It's absolutely fantastic. If you have not played it in years, zelda fan, get on it if you have a switch.

Speaker 0: 9:17

Best RPG Bowlers gate 3 1, not one, once again, not a surprise. Ballers gate 3 was just absolutely amazing. Best fighting game was Street Fighter 6. I really really did like Street Fighter 6. It won over Mortal Kombat. 1. Nickelodeon I'll start brawl 2 pocket bravery and God of Rock. I only know three of those. I don't know pocket bravery or God of Rock, but I know MK1 and the Nickelodeon game and I've gotten to play the Nickelodeon one and the Street Fighter one and I absolutely love the Street Fighter game. So we got best family Mario Bros. Wonder got that one. They won that one over Disney illusion Island, party animals, pikmin 4 and Sonic Superstars.

Speaker 0: 10:02

Best multiplayer game Bowlers gate 3 got that one over Diablo 4, party animals, street Fighter 6 and Mario Bros Wonder. That's. It's actually, that's cool. I like that. I mean it's. I haven't played it with friends. I know a lot of people do play it together. I've actually played Diablo 4 more with some friends, but not Bowlers gate. I really kind of I really kind of want to. It just looks like a fun game. All right, it is a fun game, so I can imagine playing with friends and so I'm gonna Skip over the e-sports stuff.

Speaker 0: 10:36

There's a lot of categories that I'm just I'm not gonna go through all them. They're just kind of just cover all the bases and I'm not trying to cover every single basis of the video game awards, just the, I guess, the more game specific ones, not like e-sports or sports, e-sports, athlete and stuff. So we got most anticipated game. There was Final Fantasy 7, rebirth, hades 2, like a dragon, infinite wealth, star Wars outlaws and Tekken 8, and I can tell you that Final Fantasy 7, rebirths, hades 2 and like a dragon are probably like higher above the other two. Look, I'm excited for Star Wars outlaws and I'm pretty sure there's a lot of people that are excited about Tekken 8, but I am definitely with them on Final Fantasy 7 rebirth, which is the second part to Final Fantasy 7 remake, and that's the winner and I agree with that because I'm absolutely Just excited to see what they do. Oh, we got best adaptation. This is like TV slash movies gets animation also for Video games, and the nominees were Castlevania, nocturne, gran Turismo the last of us Super Mario Bros movie and Twisted Metal the last of us was the winner of that. I agree with that. I think they did a fantastic Job in the adaptation for that. Even with the liberties that they took, I think that they got the heart of the story and Really what the mood and the theme was for that game and and so, yeah, that's really mostly the Categories that I wanted to cover for that.

Speaker 0: 12:13

I'm going to talk about some of the announcements. So Bowlers gate 3 it finally got released onto Xbox. It wasn't on Xbox for a while. One of the biggest excitements that came out of this for me was Monster Hunter Wilds. We got another Monster Hunter game and it looks really cool, looks amazing. I can't wait to see what they do with this game. You know I'm a huge Monster Hunter fan. I did a whole episode with a good friend of mine in our experiences with Monster Hunter and we also got the game, the finals it finally released. It was in beta before we did at some point I don't know if it was before or during the game awards but we did actually get a trailer for GTA 6, which is going to be out in 2025, along with this new Monster Hunter game.

Speaker 0: 13:03

We got Twist and Metal Season 2 coming out in 2024. We also got a Blade game that's coming out. I'm definitely interested in that. We've got Arcane and Bethesda that is developing that, and for those of you that don't know who Bethesda is, bethesda they develop games like Fallout, the Elder Scroll games and amongst other games, but those are the two most notable from this studio, and so I think that that's interesting that they're developing a Marvel game and, yes, we got a bunch of different game announcements one called Rise of the Ronin and oh, yes, yes.

Speaker 0: 13:47

So something that was absolutely insane Like I mean, this blew everybody's mind and the fact that it was pretty decent for being free is God of War. Ragnarok got some DLC called Vaahalla and it's absolutely insane that it was free, like, no DLC is ever free. Really, at least on that scale it's not. So I was actually pretty surprised when I saw that, and I know a lot of people were surprised, like really, like this is free, free. Like what are the strings, you know? Oh yeah, we got a little bit more on Persona 3 Reload, which is a remake of Persona 3, which I'm super stoked about. I mean, I love the Persona series. I played a little bit of 3, not when it came out, but kind of after the fact. So I'm pretty excited to see how they reimagine this Persona 3 game. I mean, the story is going to pretty much be, I believe, the same. The characters are going to be the same. It's just obviously going to be updated. So I'm pretty excited about that.

Speaker 0: 14:51

And yeah, there's tons of different awards that were given out, but that's definitely the ones that I wanted to cover. I think that those were the most important, at least to me personally. The other ones were just as important to you. I'm sorry, it's opinion. I hope you all have a great rest of your year.

Speaker 0: 15:10

This is a quick little episode to get you your fill of Project Ecology and to give you a little bit of an update. I definitely want to revamp this podcast as much as I can. I'm working on getting better audio equipment so that we sound better. I'm running on a Blue Yeti, which I love my Blue Yeti. Blue Yeti is a fantastic microphone, especially when you're starting off as a streamer or you're starting off as a podcast. But I definitely want to tweak the audio of this podcast. I want it to sound a lot better and my Yeti is getting old, so it's definitely starting to show its age. But thank you so much for listening to this mini episode of Project Ecology, where we cover the game awards 2023.

Speaker 0: 15:54

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