The Game Awards: The Nominees Are...

Image courtesy of VentureBeat

Gamers everywhere have been clamoring for a real award show to honor their favorite games each year, and though the Spike VGAs did a somewhat decent job, there has never truly been a large-scale show dedicated to honoring the best the gaming industry has to offer every year. That's all hoping to change with the premiere of The Game Awards on December 5th, brought to you by producer Geoff Keighley. It's being held in the AXIS Theater in Las Vegas and will feature a much more professional atmosphere than the VGAs. Each winner will be chosen by a jury of well-respected industry individuals, all of which you can see here. Though it's not being broadcast on television, you can stream the show live online or on any device you can think of.

The VGAs were OK for what they were, but they had a really over-the-top, "dude-bro" attitude that really pushed me and many other gamers away. Last year's show got a complete rebranding and tried to change things up a bit, but failed miserably (I quit watching after about 15 minutes). The only real draw to the VGAs were the game reveals, but The Game Awards is (rightfully) putting more focus on the accomplishments of games that came out this year and the developers behind them. 2014 hasn't been the greatest year for gaming (especially compared to last year), but there have been a handful of great titles released that deserve recognition.

After the jump, you can see the nominees and who I personally think should win.

Enough with the Broken Games Already!

Image courtesy of brightsideofnews.com

Now that we're getting into the holiday season and the gaming release schedule is reaching its apex, there are a huge number of AAA games that are all battling for the cash in gamers' wallets. This past Tuesday (November 11th) saw the release of two of this fall's biggest games: Assassin's Creed Unity and Halo: The Master Chief Collection. Both games had considerable hype behind them; Unity promised to be the biggest and most engrossing Assassin's Creed game yet, and The Master Chief Collection, a huge exclusive for the Xbox One that boasts all four Halo games on one disc, complete with every multiplayer map and mode ever released for the series.

Sounds great, right? Now that the current generation of consoles has had a full year to become assured of itself, we should finally be able to see what these powerful new machines can do!

Except, that's not happening. Assassin's Creed Unity is littered with glitches, bugs, frame rate stuttering, and a litany of other problems that are basically rendering the game unplayable (though I must admit, the glitches are pretty hilarious). Matchmaking for the online portion of The Master Chief Collection, arguably the most anticipated aspect of that game, simply doesn't work.

And those aren't the only two games that have been crippled with problems. One of the PlayStation 4's few exclusives this fall was the much-delayed racing simulator Driveclub. Even after a full year of delay to improve performance, Driveclub has been facing serious server problems which have been plaguing it ever since its release in October; it is essentially unplayable. Sony was even going to release a free version of the game for PS Plus subscribers, but the game's ongoing problems have forced them to put it on hold "indefinitely". Last year's Battlefield 4 faced similar problems, as both the single player and multiplayer modes were crippled by problems for months and months after release.

Sure, a game being released with problems is nothing new, but my issue lies with the fact that companies are essentially releasing unfinished games, more so now that ever. Developers are rushing their games to meet release dates, caring more about sales than quality. Assassin's Creed is a perfect example of this, as it's an annualized series (as it has been for some time), causing UbiSoft to put itself under pressure to release a new Assassin's Creed game every year. Unity had been in development for four years, and despite that time, it was released as a buggy, broken mess. UbiSoft does have a number of studios developing Assassin's Creed games all the time, which helps to ease the load of development so that no one studio is cranking out a game every year. But somehow, even with a long development cycle and an extra team on hand to help, Unity released unfinished; it's obvious now that it game needed some more time in development to iron out its problems.

To be perfectly honest, I could have been just fine with waiting an extra year for Unity in order to ensure that it turned out as the game it was meant to be. In fact, I am fine with games delays in general, even if that means having to wait a much longer time for a game that I am feverishly anticipating (I'm looking at you, Bloodbourne). As Shigeru Miyamoto once said, "A delayed game is eventually good, while a rushed game is forever bad."

Speaking of Nintendo, a lot of people give flack to the Wii U due to its lack of games. While that may be true, I can't remember the last time that I played a game from Nintendo that had major problems. They may not release games that often, but when they do, they perform and play perfectly, free of any major technical issues.

Now I know that server problems are not tied directly to a game itself, but it shouldn't take a long time to iron out performance issues on that side of things. What's going on with Driveclub is insane, as I have never seen a game suffer from such a massive problem for so long. I feel the worst for the game's developer, Evolution Studios, as they worked for years on this game, only to have it face multiple delays and a disastrous launch. The Master Chief Collection is a bit baffling to me, however, as this marks the first time that I have had any sort of connection issues in regards to Halo multiplayer. I understand that there are thousands upon thousands of Halo fans eagerly trying to play online, but the fact that matchmaking is just flat broken is a mystery to me. Every other aspect of the game works fine (though there are a few minor issues, nothing to take away from the experience) but Halo has always been about multiplayer, and to have that part of the game essentially shut down is a massive disappointment.

As far as I'm concerned, 2014 has been the year of disappointments and broken promises. Too many games this year have either failed to meet expectations or failed to even work at all. To a certain extent, this can be forgiven, as the new console generation is still in its infancy, but problems like this can't continue for much longer. Games cost, on average, $60, and those who pay that amount of money for something rightfully expect and deserve to get a working product. Developers need to take notice now, and realize that if they want gamers to still play their games, they need to be able to at least deliver one that works, even if that means delaying it.

Sunset Overdrive Review: Awesomepocalypse Now

Image Courtesy of Insomniac Games

From the minute I started playing, I knew that Sunset Overdrive was going to be one of those games. You know the kind: one so delightfully insane and boundlessly entertaining that you just sit there with a big, stupid grin on your face.

During the countless hours I spent in the game's fictional Sunset City, one thought continuously raced through my mind: "My 10 year-old self would have absolutely LOVED this". Sunset Overdrive's got everything a 90s kid on a sugar-high could possibly want:

Bright colors.
A punk rock aesthetic.
Millions of mutant monsters.
Rapid-fire humor.
A gun that shoots teddy bears.
Oh, and explosions. Lots and lots of explosions.

Coming from Ratchet and Clank developer Insomniac Games, Sunset Overdrive is something that the Xbox One and the new gaming generation desperately needed: a fresh new idea. Video games have been bogged down by realistic shooters and HD remasters so much lately that gamers needed a reminder of just how much fun a video game could be. Sunset Overdrive does exactly that.

The plot is one of the wackiest I've seen in a game in years. It's 2027, and mega-corporation FizzCo has released its new energy drink - OverCharge Delirium XL -  to huge success. Problem is, OverCharge has a nasty habit of turning everyone who drinks it into a bloodthirsty mutant. As a result, Sunset City is thrown into chaos, and it's up to your (fully customizable) hero to save the day and the city! Armed with the kind of insane arsenal you'd come to expect from an Insomniac title, you grind, bounce, and wall-ride around Sunset City, obliterating everything that gets in your way.

It would be fair to call Sunset Overdrive the "anti-apocalypse" game, as it offers a wackier, more cartoonish version of the end of the world. Even in the face of certain death, all of the characters constantly crack jokes and break the fourth wall, and have a deep love for murdering countless mutants, human ravagers, and FizzCo robots. Sunset City itself is bursting with color, so much so that it literally pops off of the screen. The design of everything in the game, from the characters to the world itself, is like a Saturday morning cartoon come to life. The animation is superb (especially the hilarious respawn animations) and everything moves along at a smooth clip. When enemies explode (and they almost always do), a giant onomatopoeia bursts onto the screen; "POP" and "SQUISH" and "BOOM" cover the screen constantly. Everything is moving so quickly that it's hard to keep up at times; your eyes are going to get a serious workout.

Sunset Overdrive's sense of humor is completely off-the-wall, and I found myself laughing out loud on more than one occasion. It takes a "throw everything at the wall and see what sticks" mentality when it comes to its jokes, and though not all of them hit, it's still one of the funniest games I've played in a while. There's also a ton of fourth-wall breaking; Sunset Overdrive isn't afraid to poke fun at itself and the video game industry in general. Humor is incredibly hard to pull off, especially in a video game, but the game strikes a nice balance corny and genuinely hilarious. I can see how Sunset Overdrive's loud aesthetic could turn some people off, but it never got on my nerves. I enjoyed the humor in Insomniac's other games, and their goofy charm carries over here effortlessly.

Sunset Overdrive's gameplay borrows from a lot of different games, namely Dead Rising, inFamous, and, strangely enough, the Tony Hawk series. In true Insomniac Games fashion, you are outfitted with a ton of over-the-top weapons, as well as a few defensive traps to keep the mutants at bay. In order to stay alive, you need to constantly be on the move, whether that be by grinding on rooftops and power lines, bouncing off of cars, wall running, or, if you're really good, chaining them all together into once awesome display of parkour. While you can move and shoot on the ground, you move incredibly slow and probably won't last very long; this is done intentionally to encourage constant movement. If you chain together different traversal moves with kills, you build up your style meter, which in turn makes you more powerful. You can also assign "amps" (the game's equivalent of power-ups) to your character that alter the power of your weapons and the way you traverse the world.

Missions are structured like most open-world games, meaning you go from point A to point B, shooting things along the way. There are a wealth of side quests, but they mostly involve finding a bunch of hidden items, though some of them deviate from the norm and offer some cool ideas. There's also a ton of collectables scattered around the map for you to find, which all go towards the creation of new amps for you to use. In addition to the single player story, there's an online 8-player co-op mode called Chaos Squad, which tasks you and up to seven friends to complete various missions, all culminating in a horde/tower defense sequence at the end of the night. On paper, the game structure sounds like every other open-world shooter you can think of, but Sunset Overdrive's shooting and traversal mechanics, as well as its crazy humor and colorful aesthetic, make it stand out. Everything about Sunset Overdrive's gameplay - control, shooting, and traversal - gel perfectly, creating a very cohesive, smooth, and insanely addictive gaming experience.

When it comes down to it, Sunset Overdrive is not only the best game available on the Xbox One right now, it's also one of the best games I've played all year. From start to finish, there was not a single thing in it that I didn't enjoy. I can't remember the last time I played a game as rewarding and entertaining as this. I commend Insomniac Games for making the game that they wanted; it has a style and humor that is uniquely its own.

My adoration for Sunset Overdrive comes from the fact that it that reminds me of my days playing games as a kid. It brought me back to a time when games weren't about gritty realism or deep storytelling or innovative gameplay mechanics. Not that those things are bad, but every once in a while, it's nice to give your brain a little vacation and just have fun. And that's what Sunset Overdrive is all about: pure, unadulterated fun. And that's what video games should be all about, right?