If you have not already listened to the podcast of this category, this is the final results, so this will spoil the course of the discussion on that podcast! Be warned!
The Winner
Under Night In-Birth Exe:Late [cl-r]
Our Kyrie is all grown up T.T she’s competing in tournaments consistently, she’s improving, she’s labbing, she’s training. And it’s all because UNICLR caught her heart. Listen, I love Under Night. I played the hell out of UNIEL, and I have enjoyed every subsequent version. But this award isn’t from me, though I support the decision. This is Kyrie’s, to award to the game that gave her a horizon to run towards.
No game in my life can match what UNICLR did for Kyrie in 2021. Maybe Dota, before I soured on it so hard. Back when I was captain of a competitive Dota team. A long time ago. I’d be lucky to have a game like this in my life again.
The Runners-Up
Disco Elysium
I really can’t keep writing about Disco Elysium. What do I say? Amazing writing? Fascinating world? Great dialogue, great skill system? Far better politics than it shows at first blush? It’s a great game. It’s an all-timer. Play Disco.
Sekiro: Shadows Die Twice
My fear for Elden Ring, coming in just a few weeks now, isn’t that it won’t live up to Dark Souls. It’s that it won’t live up to Sekiro. And if I’m being perfectly blunt how could it? Sekiro’s focus leads to the most incredibly precisely tuned combat in all of video games. Like. Difficulty conversation aside, Sekiro feels perfect. NOTHING does it better.
All those twitter videos of “hitbox porn?” The untouchable runs, the incredible flow of the combat? Echoes of the perfection of Sekiro’s tuning. From Software will probably never match this again. But we can just go play more Sekiro, so that’s ok.
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Over here at Scanline, we feel a duty to play newer games. We have to be part of the “conversation,” we have to be ready to talk about and judge, for good or for ill, these games at year’s end. Sometimes new games truly capture our hearts. But I think it’s the older games that show what we’re really about. What we fall back into, what we discover from the past, these games are the ones that make the biggest impact on us.
And that’s a wrap for today’s Gimmick Awards! Please come back tomorrow for two more, and then two more the day after that!
A big thank you to daanboii (@daanboii on Twitter) for our Game of the Year art!
