Post by Cervantes on Dec 24, 2022 8:52:55 GMT
More glamorous than the Oscars, more snobbish than the Palm d'Or, more respected than the Game Awards (that was easy), here are our own...
2022 WIND SQUID PUB AWARDS
These are our individual, personal, not sponsored picks for games, movies, music, food, boobs, german transcendental idealist philosophers, whatever the hell you like to give a prize.
Remember Classic Game Room's moto: it's a never-ending mission to review everything. Did you enjoy something this year and want to give a special shout-out? This is your chance!
My personal choices for 2022 are...
Best word: Jambalaya. It was unmatched, the word that best represented our current struggles. Here's how to most elegantly use it:
Best game: It was a hard choice this year. There was Okami, Valkyria Chronicles 4, Vagrant Story, multiple Castlevania games... And yet, the game that I felt was the most accomplished, perfect for its genre, generation and console was Dead or Alive 1&2 Ultimate (XBOX). Even if we just count DOA 2U, it alone has so much content to unlock, such a refined and fun fighting system, such beautiful graphics, both technically and artistically, that I just can't think of a single flaw in it. The package also comes with DOA 1U, which is an awesome extra on top of everything. Here is my review:
Best game series: Castlevania, all the way. Every single game (except Mirror of Fate) was a blast. Aria of Sorrow very nearly got the "Best game" award, but I thought the series was better represented as a whole, so here it is.
Best movie: Nope (2022). Imagine Jaws, but Neon Genesis Evangelion. It also has an Akira slide. Jordan Peele is such a nerd, 10/10.
Best adaptation of a game that didn't pay the rights to use its name: As Above, So Below (2014). It's about an english, adventurous arqueologist woman that raids tombs and ends up fighting against supernatural forces. It's found-footage Tomb Raider and leagues better than the real TR adaptations.
Most unhinged acting in a movie: Mia Goth in Pearl (2022). She dances, she screams, she kills, she humps a scarecrow, SHE'S A STAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAR!
Best tv show: Nathan Fielder's The Rehearsal is such a mindfuck. There's nothing even comparable to it. Amazon can keep pouring all those billions of dollars in Rings of Power, but nothing beats creativity and a very deranged mind.
Best webshow: This is a hard one because previous winners have upped their game this year and produced even better videos, especially KBash, but also minimme, Sega Lord X and others (Arcus did some thrilling speedruns this year, especially while trying to get back at the top of Ninja Gaiden NES). However, as I'm trying to give this award to different creators every year, the one that impressed me the most in 2022 was ThorHighHeels. His videos are these long, stream of consciousness-like videos with visuals inspired by PS1/Saturn japanese CG renders that discuss extremely niche games (not the usual "hidden gems", but stuff like japanese Macintosh games) and random, but very interesting topics (liminal spaces, PS360 sophistifuture aesthetics, fashion in Final Fantasy etc.):
Now, more games:
Best game despite its huge, obvious flaws - Vagrant Story. The art and story hold up so well that the needlessly convoluted mechanics are forgiven, maybe even praised for their ambition.
Best Zelda clone: it's a dispute between Okami and Crusader of Centy, so let's go with... Okami. It has many boring sections, the developers had to cut some corners for 2/3rds of the game, the combat system can be very repetitive but it's still one of the most competent Zelda clones, to the point that I think it exhausted the Ocarina of Time formula itself and made later Zelda games compare unfavorably to it.
Most embarrassing playthrough: My playthrough of Knuckles' campaign in Sonic 3 & Knuckles was atrocious, I wouldn't want anyone seeing how badly I butchered that game. Multiple Game Overs, an abysmal display of my skills. Sorry, my bad.
Strangest game: Darius Gaiden. I don't know what the hell is that music or why every spaceship must look like marine life, so I just go with it. When I was playing it I felt like, at that moment, I was a marine biologist.
Best character's butt in a game: Kai from Valkyria Chronicles 4. But consider that I didn't play any Metal Gear games in 2022.
Most disappointing overrated game: I didn't even mention that I've beaten Celeste. It begins really well, has great controls, but quickly turns into the standard "spikes everywhere, remember how much everyone loves Mega Man X6?" indie game, the kind that doesn't let you to play it as you want - you have to "solve" every screen the way that they were intended by the developers, with a very strict sequence of jumps. I find the repeated deaths until solving every single screen really grating.
So these are my picks. It was a great year for games and horror movies; sadly, I didn't watch any animated series nor have seen many animated movies, so I didn't create categories for them this year (Guillermo del Toro's Pinocchio was really good, though).
2022 WIND SQUID PUB AWARDS
These are our individual, personal, not sponsored picks for games, movies, music, food, boobs, german transcendental idealist philosophers, whatever the hell you like to give a prize.
Remember Classic Game Room's moto: it's a never-ending mission to review everything. Did you enjoy something this year and want to give a special shout-out? This is your chance!
My personal choices for 2022 are...
Best word: Jambalaya. It was unmatched, the word that best represented our current struggles. Here's how to most elegantly use it:
Best game: It was a hard choice this year. There was Okami, Valkyria Chronicles 4, Vagrant Story, multiple Castlevania games... And yet, the game that I felt was the most accomplished, perfect for its genre, generation and console was Dead or Alive 1&2 Ultimate (XBOX). Even if we just count DOA 2U, it alone has so much content to unlock, such a refined and fun fighting system, such beautiful graphics, both technically and artistically, that I just can't think of a single flaw in it. The package also comes with DOA 1U, which is an awesome extra on top of everything. Here is my review:
Dead or Alive (SAT/XBOX version) is a very fun game that looks to be, at first, just a Virtua Fighter 2 clone with bouncing boobs (no problem with that!), but it has an essential difference: instead of a block button, it has a "hold" button made to parry enemy attacks. So the defensive play in the game feels immediatelly more dynamic: you can't just hold block, you have to prevent an attack and do a reversal; also, you can't throw punches and kicks without thinking, as they will be parried and counter-attacked. Some Virtua Fighter 2 characters had reversal-based gameplay (Akira and Pai), but in DOA these are both easier to do and available to every character. So the game feels different enough and a great complement to VF2 (more so than Fighting Vipers). The Saturn version (ported to XBOX on DOA Ultimate) has, as an incentive to keep playing, an extra character and clothes received by beating the game with each character, besides a few extra options (ring size, fighting order etc.) that are opened by doing tasks like finishing Time Attack in less than 5 minutes or using DOA as your initials at the end of Arcade Mode. Just as VF2, there's no story or any kind of cutscenes, though, and any background details are restricted to the manual.
Dead or Alive 2 Ultimate (XBOX) is where the series got its own identity. The "hold" button became a mix of block and hold (depending on the direction pressed), so while parrying is still a huge part of the game, it's not as easily done as before and you need better reflexes to use it at the right time. The graphics are astonishingly beautiful and maybe the best for any fighting game in that generation: they were already on the top tier in the original Dreamcast release, but the Xbox "Ultimate" version was redone on an updated engine and looks as good as a 360/PS3 game (just on a slightly lower resolution). One of the biggest changes are the arenas: instead of being simple rings with danger zones and ring-outs like in the previous entry, this time they are scenic places (the Great Wall, a wooden bridge in a ninja village, a clock tower, an island by the sea etc.) with multi-tiered arenas; instead of losing the round when a character is pushed besides the bounds of the arena, the character may fall to another level, lose some health, and then continue fighting. It was a very creative way to turn the scenery more interactive and I don't remember other games doing it when DOA2 was released; that's also the reason why characters can now move up and down, so you can try to position yourself more favourably in the arena. The story mode has cutscenes, albeit very short ones, and the game has various modes (Time Attack, Survival, Team Battle), with the most important addition being a Tag Mode, in which pairs fight together and can do some special tag attacks. It's a seriously great 3d fighting game, besides all the jokes about the pretty girls and their bouncing boobs.
Dead or Alive 2 Ultimate (XBOX) is where the series got its own identity. The "hold" button became a mix of block and hold (depending on the direction pressed), so while parrying is still a huge part of the game, it's not as easily done as before and you need better reflexes to use it at the right time. The graphics are astonishingly beautiful and maybe the best for any fighting game in that generation: they were already on the top tier in the original Dreamcast release, but the Xbox "Ultimate" version was redone on an updated engine and looks as good as a 360/PS3 game (just on a slightly lower resolution). One of the biggest changes are the arenas: instead of being simple rings with danger zones and ring-outs like in the previous entry, this time they are scenic places (the Great Wall, a wooden bridge in a ninja village, a clock tower, an island by the sea etc.) with multi-tiered arenas; instead of losing the round when a character is pushed besides the bounds of the arena, the character may fall to another level, lose some health, and then continue fighting. It was a very creative way to turn the scenery more interactive and I don't remember other games doing it when DOA2 was released; that's also the reason why characters can now move up and down, so you can try to position yourself more favourably in the arena. The story mode has cutscenes, albeit very short ones, and the game has various modes (Time Attack, Survival, Team Battle), with the most important addition being a Tag Mode, in which pairs fight together and can do some special tag attacks. It's a seriously great 3d fighting game, besides all the jokes about the pretty girls and their bouncing boobs.
Best game series: Castlevania, all the way. Every single game (except Mirror of Fate) was a blast. Aria of Sorrow very nearly got the "Best game" award, but I thought the series was better represented as a whole, so here it is.
Best movie: Nope (2022). Imagine Jaws, but Neon Genesis Evangelion. It also has an Akira slide. Jordan Peele is such a nerd, 10/10.
Best adaptation of a game that didn't pay the rights to use its name: As Above, So Below (2014). It's about an english, adventurous arqueologist woman that raids tombs and ends up fighting against supernatural forces. It's found-footage Tomb Raider and leagues better than the real TR adaptations.
Most unhinged acting in a movie: Mia Goth in Pearl (2022). She dances, she screams, she kills, she humps a scarecrow, SHE'S A STAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAR!
Best tv show: Nathan Fielder's The Rehearsal is such a mindfuck. There's nothing even comparable to it. Amazon can keep pouring all those billions of dollars in Rings of Power, but nothing beats creativity and a very deranged mind.
Best webshow: This is a hard one because previous winners have upped their game this year and produced even better videos, especially KBash, but also minimme, Sega Lord X and others (Arcus did some thrilling speedruns this year, especially while trying to get back at the top of Ninja Gaiden NES). However, as I'm trying to give this award to different creators every year, the one that impressed me the most in 2022 was ThorHighHeels. His videos are these long, stream of consciousness-like videos with visuals inspired by PS1/Saturn japanese CG renders that discuss extremely niche games (not the usual "hidden gems", but stuff like japanese Macintosh games) and random, but very interesting topics (liminal spaces, PS360 sophistifuture aesthetics, fashion in Final Fantasy etc.):
Now, more games:
Best game despite its huge, obvious flaws - Vagrant Story. The art and story hold up so well that the needlessly convoluted mechanics are forgiven, maybe even praised for their ambition.
Best Zelda clone: it's a dispute between Okami and Crusader of Centy, so let's go with... Okami. It has many boring sections, the developers had to cut some corners for 2/3rds of the game, the combat system can be very repetitive but it's still one of the most competent Zelda clones, to the point that I think it exhausted the Ocarina of Time formula itself and made later Zelda games compare unfavorably to it.
Most embarrassing playthrough: My playthrough of Knuckles' campaign in Sonic 3 & Knuckles was atrocious, I wouldn't want anyone seeing how badly I butchered that game. Multiple Game Overs, an abysmal display of my skills. Sorry, my bad.
Strangest game: Darius Gaiden. I don't know what the hell is that music or why every spaceship must look like marine life, so I just go with it. When I was playing it I felt like, at that moment, I was a marine biologist.
Best character's butt in a game: Kai from Valkyria Chronicles 4. But consider that I didn't play any Metal Gear games in 2022.
Most disappointing overrated game: I didn't even mention that I've beaten Celeste. It begins really well, has great controls, but quickly turns into the standard "spikes everywhere, remember how much everyone loves Mega Man X6?" indie game, the kind that doesn't let you to play it as you want - you have to "solve" every screen the way that they were intended by the developers, with a very strict sequence of jumps. I find the repeated deaths until solving every single screen really grating.
So these are my picks. It was a great year for games and horror movies; sadly, I didn't watch any animated series nor have seen many animated movies, so I didn't create categories for them this year (Guillermo del Toro's Pinocchio was really good, though).
