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It’s not December without the Game Awards, Geoff Keighley’s annual showcase of trailers and occasional awards ceremony celebrating the biggest games of the year. More so than in previous years, this year’s nominees for the top Game of the Year award were a diverse mix of heavyweights like Final Fantasy VII Rebirth and Metaphor: ReFantasia and surprise my loved ones Balatro and Black Myth Wukong. And the winner turned out to be…astro robot, the exclusive platform game for PlayStation 5 from the Asobi team.
We’ve had the Game Awards for a decade, and it’s a bit of a type when it comes to its GOTY options: previous games like witcher 3, god of war 2018 reboot, and Baldur’s Gate 3 Were these titles fantasy or mature, and Astrobot is a family-oriented game about a cute robot with a big head who explores worlds and befriends cute Funko-sized versions of PlayStation characters. It’s a very good game, but his victory was definitely surprising, especially when Balatro had taken over the world for months and Metaphor It was also taking off in its own way. Now that the dust has settled, the question on people’s minds is what it means for a platform game to win a major award at what is a huge awards ceremony for the medium.
The immediate next step will almost certainly be a sequel of some kind; The Asobi team is currently releasing free post-launch levels for astro robot, that has sold 1.5 million copies starting last November. Sony will no doubt let Asobi do the cooking, and when the next game is revealed, I hope Star The series takes its first step towards forging its own identity. Both Bot and his predecessor Astro’s game room (which came pre-installed on the launch PS5) have been tours through PlayStation’s past. It’s a lot of fun to see tiny, big-headed versions of children’s pets, but the constant wink can wear thin pretty quickly and highlights how the series has nothing else to offer beyond references and its incredible gameplay mechanics. You can argue that nothing more is needed, but having a unique personality is what has helped other platform games endure. Of the big three publishers, Nintendo is really the only one that realizes that, and that’s why Mario is able to maintain such overall consistency, even when the character (and Luigi) are platforming while jumping between a dozen other genres in a given moment. So if Sony wants a Mario of its own, that will mean finding out who Astro is beyond a blank slate of the look and feel of his old series.
Speaking of franchises, one of the other big surprises at the Game Awards came from Capcom, which revealed that it was developing new games for the Eyes and Onimusha franchises. He resident Evil The studio has had a very good run of releases lately and recently stated that the two projects are part of a larger effort to revitalize the series It was previously archived. You have to imagine Sony is looking at that along with AstrobotAlso: Many PlayStation franchises get some love for that game, and fans have been waiting for years for some of them to be dusted off. Many have also hoped that collapse of Concord next to stars The success has been a wake-up call for Sony to focus on making smaller, more compact products. more diverse games instead of putting their eggs in the triple A film basket. It has been a problem within the industry for years, particularly for PlayStation own equipmentand not recognizing that problem sooner is the reason you ended up getting fired more than 1,000 developers this year and canceling several projects.
It’s a shame that PlayStation’s devotion to blockbusters led to the erosion of the gender double Abecause it’s where many of their older franchises would probably do best today. (See also: Ubisoft is pretty good Prince of Persia: Lost Crown from earlier this year.) Lately, I’ve been repeating Sly 2: Gang of Thieves after it was ported to the PS5 and doing a first time Resistance 2 playback via cloud streaming. Both feel perfect for their individual eras, and it’s easy to imagine that their respective series could have a place in the current PlayStation pantheon if they were allowed to simply be without high expectations being imposed on them. Cunning could easily fill the niche for stylish, personality-packed games in the wake of last year hifi fever, and Endurance either killing zone could be a good system-exclusive shooter: last year, Sony tried to stop Microsoft from buying Activision Blizzard by arguing Obligations It was too valuable, and that no other shooter I could hope to get over it. Ideally, neither would have to aim for such lofty heights, but serving as PlayStation’s answer to Halo, which in turn is about to undergo a second or third renovation. As things stand, any hope for mid-sized non-Nintendo games with brand recognition now falls squarely on Astro’s delicate little shoulders.
The Asobi team is not expected to use Astrobot Fixing everything that’s wrong with triple-A gaming overnight simply has the unfortunate luck of arriving when the industry is factoring in several years of calculated risks that don’t pay off as expected. Making an industry healthier will take time, and its impact will be felt sooner or later, even if it’s just in its own sequel or a standalone game that hopes to capture some of its unbridled, non-corporate spirit.
Or failing that, PlayStation could dial back the remasters and remakes and simply please put more of its older first-party titles on PC or natively on PlayStation 5.
Want more io9 news? See when to expect the latest releases from Marvel, Star Wars and Star Trek, what’s next for the DC Universe in film and television, and everything you need to know about the future of Doctor Who.
