Hello! Welcome to the latest Geeky Brummie Gaming Roundup!

This week, the Game Awards!

The Game Awards – The Awards

It was The Game Awards last night, which means a bunch of games got celebrated while a bunch of new reveals also caught everyone’s attention. Here’s a summary of everything that went down.

In awards, it’s clear that God of War Ragnarok and Elden Ring were the inevitable winners overall. God of War took Best Narrative, Best Score/Music, Best Audio Design, Innovation in Accessibility and Best Action/Adventure, and Christopher Judge won Best Performance for his portrayal of Kratos, giving the world’s longest speech in award show history. Elden Ring meanwhile took Best RPG, Best Art Direction, Best Game Direction and, of course, the coveted Game of the Year award.

Other awards were a bit of a larger spread. Stray won Best Indie and Best Debut Indie, while Final Fantasy XIV remained unstoppable by winning Best Ongoing Game and Best Community Support, but that was the end of games winning multiple awards.

Nintendo had a good night, with Kirby and the Forgotten Land winning Best Family Game, Mario & Rabbids: Sparks of Hope winning Best Sim/Strategy, Bayonetta 3 winning Best Action Game, The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom winning Most Anticipated Game and Splatoon 3 CORRECTLY winning Best Multiplayer.

Elsewhere, Gran Turismo 7 won Best Sports/Racing, Multiversus won Best Fighting Game, Marvel Snap won Best Mobile Game, Moss Book II won Best VR/AR Game and As Dusk Falls won Games for Impact. For the new Best Adaptation category, it wasn’t much of a surprise to see Arcane win, as it was almost certainly between that and Cyberpunk Edgerunners (and Uncharted had no business being there at all). Controversially, Genshin Impact won the Players’ Voice award after a controversial voting run over the past couple of weeks.

In awards I know nothing about, Ludwig won Best Content Creator, Valorant won Best Esports Game, Yay won Best Esports Athlete, Loud won Best Esports Team, BZKA won Esports Coach, the 2022 League of Legends World Championship won Best Esports Event. Well done whoever you are.

The Game Awards – The Reveals

As always, The Game Awards isn’t just about awards, bafflingly. It’s also effectively a winter E3, so here’s a quick roundup of the most important announcements.

Several highly anticipated games got release date trailers, including Street Fighter 6 (2nd June), Suicide Squad: Kill the Justice League (26th May) and Final Fantasy XVI (22nd June). There was also a full reveal of Jedi Survivor, the sequel to the beloved Fallen Order, which came with a release date of 17th March.

Hideo Kojima was dragged out of hiding to show off Death Stranding 2, a game that’s exciting only to people who didn’t find the first game tedious. In game sequels I find more exciting, Tekken 8 got a big flashy trailer that revealed the return of Jun Kazama, a character who hasn’t been seen in a canon main series game since Tekken 2…in 1995. Activision also revealed a new Crash Bandicoot game, which is a team-based battle game called Crash Team Rumble. And the big sequel reveal was the return of Armored Core, proving that FromSoftware aren’t just Dark Souls.

In games we’re not likely to see for years, we got a peek at Ken Levine’s new game, Judas, which looks like Bioshock in space, and a game called Immortals of Aevum from EA Originals, which showed a flashy trailer that told us exactly nothing about what kind of game it was.

In surprise announcements, Bayonetta is getting another game in March, this one being a top down adventure game with a storybook art style that’s a wild departure from the rest of the series. Indie breakout hit Hades is getting a surprise sequel, this one starring a new female protagonist. Celeste developers Extremely OK Games gave the world the first glimpse at their new game, Earthblade, although we won’t be seeing it until 2024. There was a Hellboy game – Web of Wyrd – announced that showed an absolutely stunning cel-shaded art style. And finally, Life is Strange devs Dontnot revealed an action RPG about fighting ghosts called Banishers which looks intriguing.

Elsewhere, some games got major DLC announcements, with Destiny 2’s next expansion, Lightfall, given a first look, while Horizon Forbidden West is getting a DLC called Burning Shores set in the ruins of Los Angeles, if Aloy flying over an overgrown Hollywood sign is any indication. Meanwhile, Cyberpunk 2077 is getting an expansion called Phantom Liberty, which features a new character played by Idris Elba in his next video game related project since playing Knuckles in Sonic 2.

Also there was a short clip from the Mario movie. Chris Pratt still drags that whole project down. That’s all that can be said about that.

New Releases

Swordship (PC, PlayStation, Switch, Xbox) is an arcade shooter where you can’t shoot, only dodge, and must use enemy shots against each other. Togges (PC, PlayStation, Switch, Xbox) is a block-stacking puzzle game crossed with a 3D platformer, set in a Mario Galaxy style world. Divine Knockout (PC, PlayStation, Xbox) is what happens when you set Super Smash Bros in world of gods and heroes and move the camera into full 3D. And Ixion (PC) is a space station management simulator, where the objective is to survive in the harsh vacuum of space and open new frontiers for humanity.

Hello Neighbor 2 (PC, PlayStation, Switch, Xbox) is the sequel to the YouTube favourite horror game Hello Neighbor, where the goal is to uncover spooky secrets in your neighbour’s home without alerting them to your presence.

Knights of Honor II: Sovereign (PC) is a real-time strategy game set in medieval Europe, where a combination of military strategy and diplomacy is key to building your empire. It’s the sequel to a game from 2004, which is somewhat out of leftfield but there we go.

Dragon Quest Treasures (Switch) is a spinoff set inside the Dragon Quest universe, where two siblings live on a Viking longship, heading out in search of treasure. A game all about exploration and taming monsters to aid in your hunt, it’s a bit of a change of pace from the main series, but should be a fun little experience.

Game of the Week

Game of the Week this week is Choo-Choo Charles (PC), which is quite possibly the most ridiculous concept I’ve ever seen for a horror game.

Set on a mysterious island, your objective is to build up an old train into a rolling death machine by scavenging parts from around the island and assisting settlers. Why are you doing this? Because there’s an evil spider train that’s menacing the land that needs to be taken down. Yes, you read that right.

Charles is what might happen if Junji Ito was asked to design a new Thomas the Tank Engine character, and he will hunt you down on his horrifying spider legs at every turn.

It’s such an odd concept that I have to make it Game of the Week.

That’s all for now. Come back next for the final normal Gaming Roundup of 2022!