The Jimquisition Game Of The Year Awards 2020

the gym position awards start now firework display [Music] now [Music] my gosh welcome one and welcome all to the gym position awards where we give awards to games on the gym inquisition five of them because it should be harder to get a a good award than it is to get a shitty award like we do with the top 10 [ __ ] games should be a more exclusive club 2020 was a [ __ ] year and 2021 will also be pretty [ __ ] i could very easily say that 2020 for me was the year i finally lost to the tiniest last sliver of patience i have with the abuses of the so called so-called triple-a video game industry to be honest after the year we've just had i'm not really all that inclined to shower the game industry with praises but it is an annual tradition and far be it from me to fly in the face of tradition so here we go the top five games that to me represented some enjoyment in 2020 starting with [Music] i can't remember what the first one i did was oh ghost of tsushima that was the one sony usually knocks at least one big exclusive out of the park per annum and with the highly anticipated sequel to the last of us releasing in 2020 you can bet your ass that the high quality playstation exclusive of the year was ghost of tsushima sucker punches open world samurai adventure is an absolute thing of beauty perhaps the best looking console game of the generation when you combine the top-notch graphics with the fantastic use of color tsushima island is an absolutely beautiful place to explore full of flowery fields rich forests and mountains overlooking the ocean the story is forgettable featuring not so much characters as archetypes with dialogue but it's made up for with the everything else there are two ways to play which can be mixed and matched and both are terrific upfront honorable combat is quick and chaotic and involves switching battle stances to take on different enemies with a swiftness and elegance that always feels incredible even the fact that camera struggles to keep up at times never really bothered me because combat has such an exquisite rhythm and flow i still always had a good sense of where i was and what was going on which is really saying something i mean that's an achievement for a game with a camera that struggles to follow you oh and this is also that game where you can honorably challenge idiots to single combat and then cut them up in front of their friends for a laugh brilliant the stealthy approach is just as viable and involves all the usual sneaking and distraction and poisoning and arrowing and while none of it's massively innovative it's some of the tightest most polished open world action there is with tons of stuff to unlock and play with a gorgeous world and skillful sound design that provides brilliant audio cues to the player ghost of sushima is very much one of the finest examples of open world game design on the market and easily the best in the genre this year plus butts yeah well dear do you like pizza streets of rage four rare is the game so good i want to play it immediately after finishing it rare is the game so good that i want to play it multiple times in a row with increased difficulty settings i'm a love it and dump it kind of gal when it comes to the majority of video games having neither the time nor patience to do anything longer than i strictly have to even if it's something i like so many abandoned wanks it should be considered a point of no small notability then that i completed streets of rage 4 on every single difficulty level in like a week some may criticize the game's rigid utterance to retro gameplay and they're not wrong streets of rage 4 plays are like a streets of rage game from the genesis days and i mean it does so exactly it also recreates a number of boss battles from the series and in general feels somewhat more like a redo than a sequel however i [ __ ] love it i still go back to the old rage games now and then when i can't think of anything to do but want to play something an old brawler is a perfect way to pass the time and streets of rage 4 is all the old brawling action i like plus absolutely bloody wonderful cartoon visuals yes it's nostalgic to a fault but after waiting literal decades for a new streets of rage more of the same is perfectly fine by me to get me wearing my fingers down to bloody boneshards along into the night playing on the highest difficulty is an achievement only a handful of games have ever accomplished i don't know if i've ever been this thorough with any game so it's got to be doing something right and the thing it does right is be streets of rage 4 pretty much exactly the game i wanted it's brawl i ever wanted because because of brawler [Music] yeah yeah [Music] from [Applause] what's next why it's final fantasy vii remake has won an award final fantasy 7 remake a work of subversive genius i truly mean that i think it's a [ __ ] master stroke to take one of the safest bets in gaming a game everyone had already accepted would be a critically acclaimed people pleaser and make it into an uproarious controversy by turning the entire concept on its head is simply delicious though cyberpunk 2077 did it far more brutally final fantasy 7 remake was another fine example of why other gamers need to stop deciding to fall in love with and standing for video games they haven't played yet because those who marched into the remake with an idealized version in their heads got sorely disappointed as for me the fact final fantasy vii remake throws a curveball and starts going off the course of the original game is exactly the kind of meta screw job i appreciate at least when it's done right see it starts as a straightforward modern retelling of final fantasy vii but over time it becomes apparent there's a new narrative thread rewriting aspect of the original both as a product and an in-universe adventure final fantasy 7 is being literally remade more importantly the game handles it well the twist not only surprised but actively pleased me not least for the fact i'm a sucker for reboots that still include the original as some form of canon anyway the controversy surrounding this game has actually lessened since the shock value was worn off which is pretty amazing for a triple a video game where fandoms can hold grudges for decades part of this is thanks to the fact seven remake is a [ __ ] fantastic video game in its own right the actionized atb combat is by far square enix's best attempt to the more direct and real-time rpg combat system and near perfecting of the battles found in such titles as final fantasy xv cloud barrett aerith and especially tifa are all wildly varied fun to play with their classic attacks weapons and limit breaks recreated gorgeously parts of the story are expanded both old and brand new characters are given some great focus with vibrant and amusingly handy vocal performances there are fun little side games it looks real pretty and the level of polish is some of the finest of this year plus it's very very [ __ ] horny one caveat though if this is just an excuse for tetsuya nomura and his team to start going on some wild kingdom hearts [ __ ] then i will retroactively take this award away i really like the idea of following the general beats of final fantasy vii with diversions let's please not get into the heart darkness heart darkness heart darkness crap this guy wants to [ __ ] his bike though right what's that you've got another video game that we're going to give a gym position awards to boggling puppet whispering in my ear yes i can fell is one it is i can fell now for us to talk about [Music] in all honesty i've not played as much of i can fell as i'd like to yet and i was only going to give it an honorable mention rather than a full award but then i look at what else i played this year in the so-called aaa industry doesn't really deserve more credit than i've begrudgingly given it this year and some of the big critical indie darlings like cloud punk i've just a couple too many issues with from a design and structure standpoint more importantly if there's one thing i've learned about entertainment in 2020 it's the importance of representation and yes i know some of the hardcore gamers right now are rolling their eyes and ready to scream politics at me but [ __ ] it suck on my big gay bias i can fail is full of queer representation oh yes i said it including trans and non-binary characters which as you might expect is quite validating for someone who just this year came out as a trans nb in coming to terms with my own identity it became apparent just how much a lack of representation a lack of seeing people like me and media held back my ability to be happy for the entirety of my life so far growing up in a country that had only just started to begrudgingly and cynically admit bisexuals existed i had no idea a spectrum of identity was even possible and made myself miserable trying to live up to unfair and unattainable expectations it took seeing and talking to and learning from people like me to find out who i was games like i can feel are more important than ever especially as entire countries like the uk have been taken over by a transphobic cult bent on a raising first trans people and then everyone else on the spectrum but don't go crying into your mountain dew gamer fuel folks i wouldn't have put eichenfel on this list if it wasn't also a bloody good game which it is by the way a simple classic style tactical rpg with a turn-based combat system that adds timed button presses a la then mario ones eichenfeld tells the story of a group of magical students trying to solve a mystery a bit like harry potter except not written by a [ __ ] up turf the characters are affable the plot is cute the dialogue witty and the music is really quite lovely especially when you start getting to the battle music with the lyrics i love that [ __ ] [Music] it also features some nice accessibility options for those who aren't great at timing buttons or indeed just playing the game or you know people who get bored of too many turn-based combat stuff going on all i'm saying is i'm glad they had fast [ __ ] forward to the re-releases of seven and nine and eight and all that eichenville isn't groundbreaking doesn't have to be it's made with pure love and that much shines throughout [Music] during a kick around you can work up a real appetite [Music] so we usually end up in the clubhouse and grill some burgers burgers are tasty alternatives burgers are meat and very healthy they're low in fat and a good source of fat some meat [Music] hades hades game of the year actual game of the year i always say every jump question award winner is equal standing but not this year supergiant games is hades is not just the studio's finest work it's one of the very best video games i have ever played essentially a hack and slash dungeon crawler roguelike this endless trek through the greek underworld is like a layer cake of storytelling gameplay systems and greek gods being way too bloody sexy way too bloody sexy actually that's a lie they're not they're not too sexy at all they're just just the right sexy zegrius son of hades you must fight your way through the layers of the afterlife taking on mythological figures such as the furies and the hydra in a bid to reach the surface and join the rest of the family on olympus to do this you'll need to select from a variety of different weapons and go through the random dungeons familiar to any seasoned roguelike player however the sheer avalanche of content in this game is ridiculous and it's all backed up by some of the finest writing and acting you could ever hope to see and hear in a game with supergiant doing all the development the writing and most of the [ __ ] performances including achingly delightful songs i think the developer has cemented its place as one of the best ever the flex of pure [ __ ] talent in this game is overwhelming and on top of that it never ends the combat is fast diverse and intensely gratifying with one of several weapons in hand that all look and play completely differently you're done around the environment wailing on the colorful armies of the dead meeting up with the gods to earn powerful new abilities in the form of boons modeled after the gods to which they pertain can you guess the kind of powers poseidon gives you that's right mashed potatoes the boss battles are massive and unforgettable there are new things to find every bloody run and as you fight and die and sometimes win you'll constantly unlock things that carry over for future runs and like i said it never ends the amount of dialogue in the game is ridiculous after weeks of intense playing characters were still saying new things either remarking on my loadout or things i'd done or just offering brand new bits of character development i hadn't seen yet the story is long and deep and truly alters the way you view the game every weapon has multiple forms with different play styles to acquire you can customize the starting area build friendships with npcs by giving them treats access a skill tree access another skill tree hidden behind the skill tree you can fish you can pair the cerberus it's visually amazing with hand-drawn artwork and 2d modelling that doesn't [ __ ] look it and what's more for all its content for all its tightly perfected combat for all its voice work and music and years of development supergiant didn't crunch it didn't force its developers to work overtime in fact it was strict policy to not crunch on hades instead using early access the way it's [ __ ] meant to be used supergiant worked smarter rather than harder taking its time utilizing community feedback along the way and adding to the game as it went rather than trying to stuff everything in all at once i'm not saying it's easy work of course game development is always hard but the point is it was no more harder than it had to be that's why there's a [ __ ] fishing game in here on top of everything else by the way taking time saves time time you can spend on putting fishing in your game the result is not just a game made more ethically than any so-called two-year play game but one of the very best games ever made you can tell this game was made with passion imagination and energy and all the other things that crunch kills the things this industry needs but doesn't get enough of because it sucks all the life out of its talent by obscene design the difference in quality between hades and a game made with coercion abuse and rampant corporate cynicism is embarrassingly clear hades is just as good just as pretty just as fun just as detailed complex deep and content rich as any video game in fact it's superior on all fronts to the majority of them and it's achieved to this without teams of 500 working themselves to nervous breakdowns and a desperate cloying need for additional monetization and it proved you can get really great voice actors that aren't just the five the video game industry uses studios of super giant size and scale and notability are prime targets for publisher predation i pray supergiant is never snapped up by a microsoft or heaven forbid and electronic arts for those indie studios with the clout to do so making games the haiti's way is something i desperately want more of after seeing the results i believe it's the way to make a truly magnificent game when you take your time stick within your funding and treat your developers with respect you get hades who the [ __ ] doesn't want hades mitch mcconnell that's [ __ ] who i just lost my rag completely and i'll be a nipple off but i'll steal you bastards continues tomorrow at 10 45 channel 5. no fall guys by the way fee to pay my transaction isn't it projectiles on the killer crab alien are over there can't be bothered to go pick them up anyway that was the jim quisition awards for 2020 posted actually in 2021 because the day they were going to be posted last year was the day we just had to do the the cyberpunk video so that was good here we are first inquisition of 2021 young position awards done a nice positive way to start the year i'm sure that will continue thank god for me no birth no further dance to

Channel: Jim Sterling

Views: 349,708

Rating: 4.7642388 out of 5

Keywords:

Id: PKFZiOkr3eQ

Length: 19min 17sec (1157 seconds)

Published: Mon Jan 04 2021

Reddit Comments

[u/Part_time_waffles]

Praawwwwwwwwwwwwwwwn

[u/DrCaesars_Palace_MD]

I'm glad Ikenfell got on the list this year. i haven't played it but I've followed it closely and I'm just glad a good game with lots of positive queer representation of all types exists and deserves to be recognized.

[u/your_mind_aches]

Don't get me wrong, I'm LOVING Hades so far (14 hours in) but I'm still not quite getting what's amazing or GOTY-worthy about it compared to a Doom Eternal or Half-Life Alyx, or even Supergiant's Transistor, which Hades has objectively improved on a lot.

Many of my favourite games are indies, like aforementioned Transistor, Undertale, Downwell, and VVVVVV but I think my tastes are a bit more for the 3D action side of things, which indie dev is not really suited to. :/

[u/[deleted]]

🎶I got a pocket full of FUN🎶

Someday, Jim. Someday you're gonna use my fave track from that Drill Queen EP in a video—and on that day I will explode in happiness 'cause it's a stone cold killer.

[u/Proto_Drew]

I mean I feel like just listing elder scrolls online 5 times and doing the todd howard dance was a bit disappointing for people who wanted a real list.

[u/RedShirtKing]

Curious if Jim considered Spiritfarer for a spot on this list. I had it tied with Hades for my personal GotY; I think it does a great job of capturing the complex nature of death and dying, and I know quite a few friends who say it really helped them process things this year.

Overall, I think Jim did a great job with his list. Just wish the FF7 remake was on PC so I could try it myself.

[u/GuybrushThreepwood99]

No Bugsnax? That's surprising.

[u/RyanWilliams11111]

What is that music used in the intro

[u/LiBrez]

I’ve actually been meaning to get Ikenfell for a few weeks now. Perhaps our dear critic has given me more incentive for when I get paid Thursday