What's the point of GOTY?
Plus defending Gotham Knights, Magic Transformers and forgotten Final Fantasy.
Hello there! This week we’re pondering if there’s a deeper meaning to pointing out the biggest and best very recent games at the end of each year, sticking up for a game that probably won’t feature too heavily in game of the year discussions, and once again tackling those most nefarious of criminals in the retro gaming scene; Americans who poison our memories by making us think stuff happened all over the world when it really only happened in the US.
Here at PAB HQ we’re planning a couple more issues before a short Christmas break, and we’re already looking ahead to expanding the newsletter in the new year, so please let us know if there’s anything you really want us to double down on!
No awards for guessing the Game of the Year results
By Tim
I always enjoy Game of the Year season. But, as someone who’s written about video games for half my life, that’s more than a little self-serving; the part I enjoy most is telling other people about my favourite games of the year to prove how clever and cultivated I am. For anyone who is not at all a games media person (and that’s the large majority of games players), is there any point to GOTY?
I've always found "X of the year" discussions to be somewhat dumb and arbitrary in general, being that there's no particular reason to compare and contrast things that released within a calendar year; it would be just as useful to compare something from September 2020 with something from April 2021. And video games are so particularly broad and nebulous as a form that it’s tough to figure out the benefit. It can sometimes feel like comparing a specific novel to a new set of house rules your auntie came up with for Uno.
GOTY talk is inexorably tied to corporate hype cycles, fierce brand loyalty and the kind of desire for validation that comes with spending a huge chunk of your time and money on a hobby with so many options. The Game Awards are this Friday, and in a sense they reflect this discussion. The most played and most talked about games aren’t guaranteed to win, but the biggest games from the richest studios have a massive advantage.
I’m not saying Elden Ring and God of War Ragnarok aren’t worthy of recognition — they’re the result of incredible effort from hundreds of very talented people — I’m merely questioning the utility of pointing out their excellence at an Oscars-style showcase, beyond benefitting the biggest companies, and fans who’ve made a brand or product a key part of their identity.
Yet while GOTY talk might not have a great purpose, it does have some benefits. It’s a great excuse to revisit and re-evaluate recent games through the experiences of people who have spent a long time thinking about them. And it can also be a good opportunity to spread the word about the excellence of smaller games that might have flown under the radar for many people, by placing them alongside giants like God of War.
What to play
Even though it’s been more than half a year since Microsoft had anything exciting on its monthly Games with Gold lineup, it continues to bring the goods on Game Pass. (So I know where I’d put my $11 if I could only choose one, sorry online multiplayer.) Last week Game Pass added lovely pixel RPG Eastward, interactive comic The Walking Dead: The Final Season and (if you have Ultimate) Battlefield 2042. This week sees Lego Star Wars: The Skywalker Saga (which I'm excited to play but could not bring myself to pay for), stealth horror Hello Neighbor 2, and another pixel RPG in Chained Echoes. Ultimate subscribers can also get a 10 hour trial of Need for Speed Unbound, which is exactly what I (Tim) did, and it's real good!
If you’ve never played Mass Effect, grab the Legendary Edition which just arrived on PlayStation Plus yesterday. It’s got something for everyone, and it’s one of the great science fiction worlds of the 21st century.
Six new tracks have been added to Mario Kart 8 Deluxe for those who bought the expansion (or are subscribed to the fancy tier of Switch Online), and it’s the best update yet with really only one lame track. My (Tim) personal favourite is Maple Treeway from Wii because I’m a sucker for wigglers, but the 3DS Rainbow Road is also a banger.
This week on Apple Arcade you can dive into JellyCar Worlds, which is supposedly a classic car-based platforming game. It looks like it has a crude, hand drawn aesthetic (in a way that was probably challenging to animate), and has the potential to be as fun as it is charming.
Right now in the Epic Games Store you can claim Fort Triumph and RPG in a Box for free, so that’s nice, if you’re into that sort of thing.
Assassin’s Creed Valhalla is 67% off on Steam right now, taking your viking-themed stealth murder down to $29.68, which is pretty good.
Gotham Knights is good, actually
By Alice
As a critic, you’re supposed to mostly just love things that are objectively good. Well made, well written, well acted, excellent gameplay, etc. But, here’s the thing: I also love stuff that’s imperfect, as long as it’s fun. Spider-Man Shattered Dimensions was one of my favourite games of 2010, which wasn’t exactly good, but it was interesting. I also love trashy, mockable romance movies, which are neither interesting nor good, but are fun.
I’m having the same experience now with Gotham Knights. After reviews on release beat it up into a fine pulp, I gave it a little bit of time for updates before jumping in, and while I’m still not all that far through it, I’m having a great time.
Modern Batman stories have been ruined by this Christian Bale concept of the caped crusader as the world’s broodiest emo. Gotham Knights fixes this by killing him and then letting his more interesting children run the show. Do I wish this game went more down the 52 Weeks storyline and brought Renee Montoya in as the question? Yes. Should I let go of a comic book series from 2007 and stop comparing everything to how Greg Rucka wrote my favourite characters? Also yes.
Knights echoes of the vibe of the Arkham series, but with less nuanced combat and fewer limitations because this isn’t a Batman Story. I like the linear path with segmented quests, feeling free but not aimless as you so often can in some other superhero games.
It doesn’t stand up to comparisons to our remastered memories of the original Arkham Asylum game, or the more recent Spider-Man games, but it’s better than Arkham Knight and most other superhero games I’ve played.
In my (so far incomplete) time with the game it honours characters and story in a way I find more appealing than most of the recent blockbuster superhero movies.
Gotham Knights might objectively have a few problems, but subjectively it’s much closer to the Gotham-set video games I want, and that’s more than enough to make it worth trying.
Bricks, Boards and Beginnings
by Alice
If you’ve been in the trading card game scene for a while, you might have heard about the mysterious Magic The Gathering Secret Lair drops. These are special edition Magic cards, outside the usual set releases, themed around concepts or existing media, and are super expensive. This year has seen releases of a Post Malone collaboration, Street Fighter crossover and a really cute pride set that I’m still disappointed I missed out on ordering.
Next week sees the release of the latest drop, which is all about Transformers. Yes, those Transformers (Hasbro must do that vertical integration thing wherever possible).
I’ve been lucky enough to get my hands on the cards early, and they’re pretty nifty. Cards like True Conviction, which is a white enchantment card that gives creatures you control double strike and lifelink at a cost of 7 mana, will go perfectly in my white/green Hydra commander deck. By Force, a sorcery with a XR cost, can destroy X artifacts, which is pretty powerful in the context of the current Brother’s War set which is very artifact heavy.
My one issue with the Secret Lair drops is that they are very expensive. $29.99USD isn’t wholly unreasonable for a special-edition booster, given it has the usual 15 cards. But $30USD for just 5 cards starts to raise some eyebrows, especially when some of those packs, like the One Shall Stand, One Shall Fall pack is just five full art lands, one of each colour. That’s not even foil, that’s just non-foil. Foil is $40USD.
I also have a love/hate relationship with the packaging. It comes in a beautiful, nicely presented box that’s about 10-20x larger than it needs to be to hold the 5 cards. Yes, this does make it look more premium, but it also seems like a waste of cardboard and would have a higher carbon footprint to ship. But goodness does it look pretty.
Transformers fans who also love Magic will be really impressed with this Secret Lair drop. Non-Transformers fans will be better off waiting for the next collection.
Retro Esoterica
by Tim
This week Final Fantasy V turns 30, and that's as good an excuse as any to talk about a series which, for many of us, only exists as retro ephemera and was never actually present in our childhoods.
If you've heard American retro fans talk about Final Fantasy, you probably know that by the time Japan had six games in the series, only three had been released in English. The second, third and fifth games remained Japan-only, so it's common to hear stories about being surprised to find your beloved Final Fantasy II is actually Final Fantasy IV, or discovering that there's a secret third Super Nintendo game that's totally the best one. (It's true, Final Fantasy V is incredible.)
But while Americans tend to talk as though their experience was shared by everyone in the English speaking world, territories outside of Japan and North America actually never got any Final Fantasy on NES or SNES at all. Our official introduction to the series was in 1997, with Final Fantasy VII.
I didn't have a PS1 in the late 90s, but I did have a copy of the NES emulator NESticle, and a whole folder of ROMs, so serendipitously I was also discovering Final Fantasy at that exact same time. The American version of the original, as well as a scrappy and swear-filled English translation of Final Fantasy III, were briefly my absolute favourite thing. The music, the enemy design, the job system, it was all incredible, and I was actually disappointed when I eventually got access to FFVII and found out how different it was. (Though I adored VIII.)
Since then I've gone back and discovered them all, thanks to re-releases on Game Boy Advance and the Wii Virtual Console, and am still smitten enough with the series that I've tracked down the originals and their incredible box art for my shelf. But it continues to be weird that such an influential and well-known franchise didn't exist at all, for most of the world, for its first (and best) decade.