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!
Every year, Jen convinces herself this is going to be a bigger fight than it is. She gears up for a multi-hour discussion, an out-and-out slugfest. Maybe that was true at the beginning. But we’ve done this a lot, we know what each other are serious about. And so despite the gravity, Game of the Year was actually one of the shortest discussions.
The Winner
Granblue Fantasy Versus: Rising
Games rarely get a second chance. While there have been games that have been either made whole by updates or complete re-tools, it can be so hard to shake off that initial reception and break free of those confines. Granblue Fantasy Versus was a game that had a decently warm reception when it first came out, but there were things holding it back. It launched with a small roster, limited modes, and delay-based netcode. But those are all things that can be fixed with time. But the timing of its release couldn’t have been worse. It was released right as the COVID-19 pandemic caused lock-downs worldwide, a pandemic we are still experiencing the ramifications of, and this was devastating for the game itself. The poor netcode meant that players couldn’t find matches with decent connections reliably. This problem could be mitigated by a strong community of offline players, but the lack of locals and big name tournaments meant that the game couldn’t build up a scene like others of its ilk had already done. And even within the audience it did find, many in the fighting game community found its systems a little too simple and stripped down to have any real exploration of what it had to offer. While the game was fun and approachable, this would be a problem core to the game that even the new characters and systems patched in never really fixed.
We liked this game when it first came out, with Six being enraptured with it from the beginning. But the netcode really struggled when we would try to play together, with us being separated by the entire length of the United States. This really shuttered our collective enthusiasm for the game, despite really liking its characters and mechanics. 2020 came and went, and the game seemed to quietly fall off our radars. For a long time, it felt like Granblue Fantasy Versus would be an unfortunate victim of circumstance and planning. For years, the game lay dormant, kept alive by a dwindling community who cared for the game. It felt like its fate had been relegated to countless other fighting games that would be propped by only a few people, a footnote of fighting game history.
Then, in 2023, it struck like a bolt of lightning on a clear day.
From the ashes, it emerged as Granblue Fantasy Versus: Rising. And everything had changed. The roster size built up by DLC for the base game had doubled its roster, and ArcSys added four additional characters- totalling nearly 30 characters at launch. The netcode had been completely reworked to not only include rollback, they went the extra mile and made cross-platform play between all versions. The game mechanics, while in the beta seemed worrying, had been redone to include simple to understand but dynamic systems that provided a sort of depth that the original had been missing. Bravery Points, Dash Attacks, reworked Auto-Combos, and new ways to use the Skybound Art meter that enabled interesting decision making while making those complex decisions available at all levels of play. People in our lives who had little interest in playing fighting games at all got swept up in this game’s spell, and it just keeps going.
Cygames and ArcSys haven’t stopped from just making an updated and improved version of an old game- they just keep adding new things with each passing month. Patches to the game’s systems, new play modes, stages, costumes, the works. But while that is good for the health of the game, all that hardly matters. Because the true joy of Granblue Fantasy Versus: Rising is how the game touched so many aspects of our lives here at Scanline. I had friends who had zero interest in fighting games suddenly understand why this genre means so much to me. Jennifer did what she has admittedly never done, and took the time to study this game and her characters of choice and found a competitive drive. And Six… they finally got the chance to play their beloved Charlotta in a game that would be supported and played by an ever growing community. We joined character discords, had stick art commissioned, and logged hundreds- nay thousands of games between the three of us. This game gripped our hearts and minds this year, and very few games have ever done that for us.
We will be playing together at Combo Breaker 2025 and we can’t wait to see this community in person- to play this game the three of us adore together. That is why Granblue Fantasy Versus: Rising was easily our Game of the Year.
-Kyrie
The Runners-Up
1000xRESIST
To describe a game like 1000xRESIST feels like it will, inevitably, fail to state why it works as a piece of art. To describe any one scene would either come off as the blabbering of sophomoric playwrights who have a weird obsessive beef with their mother or a concept simply too weird or vast to simplify. But I can try. 1000xRESIST is a game set in a far flung future where a mysterious disease wipes out most of humanity, where a society of clones who worship the All-Mother and chant cryptic poetry at each other is what remains. It is torn asunder when, in the very first moments of the game, the All-Mother is stabbed to death by one of her most loyal followers. The game then routinely thrusts the player through timelines that present the invasion of earth by unknowable aliens and the very present reality of Hong Kong fighting for its independence as companions in a shared history that is a distorted look at the world we live in. Many of the game’s events play out in chopped up sequences and shifting landscapes that you must decipher to progress. It’s often a clunky experience of trying to manage timelines and puzzles, a game not entirely clear in what it expects out of the one playing it.
But in this first time outing by developer Sunset Visitor, it’s a shocking and commanding statement of intent. 1000xRESIST is a game about the messiness of navigating a world that grinds you into dust by societal forces much too large and entrenched to shift. It’s a game about the monumental task of forgiveness for people who have wronged you. It’s a game about identity and purpose and the complex ways those things intersect with friends, family, and even one’s own self-concept. All of these things have been explored in great detail by games for decades, but very few are this emotionally raw and achingly present. 1000xRESIST is a work that feels like the heart of its authors are screaming at the top of their lungs in the ways people at their most vulnerable are. A game screaming about the injustices of this world we live in- a world torn apart by disease, class disparity, genocide, and all of the horrors we are witness to in the 21st century. It’s a story that doesn’t provide clean answers to the problems we face.
But the game asks us to remember this moment in time we are in. The past may be an inescapable gravity of events we had no say in and the future will arrive with or without our permission, 1000xRESIST states we must live in our present moment and do what we can. All of us will inevitably become the remnants of the past, our times fleeting and lost within the vast infinity of existence that constantly folds in on itself- but we can be present in this moment and do what we can to fight it.
-Kyrie
Dragon’s Dogma 2
It’s funny to think how utterly I just didn’t GET the original Dragon’s Dogma. It felt… clunky, mean, obtuse. A bad map caused me to spend an hour trying to pass from one area to another only to eventually realize they simply did not connect. I heard the stories people told, and admired those: running out of lamp fuel and fighting in the dark. Being ambushed by monsters. A fantasy game where you never step out of it- the world is all around you, and though it may loosen its grip from time to time, it never lets go.
Cool idea. Wish I’d gotten that game, rather than the one I played.
I did desperately want to like Dragon’s Dogma. I criticize it for being mean and obtuse, but when done properly, I like that. I like having to hike through dangerous woods, with no easy to bypass the journey. I like running out of resources. I like realizing I’m in over my head. That’s what an adventure is- not a series of written plot beats, but an air of danger and surprise with teeth to enforce the vibes. And so as Dragon’s Dogma 2‘s release loomed ever closer, I dared to dream that this time, it would click with me.
Obvious by me sitting here writing this right now: it did. There’s nothing quite like being halfway between two very distant towns when things go wrong. Encountering a monster you have no business fighting. Cutting down a bridge to drown a foe. Dragon’s Dogma 2 is about ADVENTURE in a way that most fantasy games only pretend at. An adventure is the space between a goal and an outcome. And blessedly enough, DD2 has almost no fast travel. Start walking, and be ready for the journey to spirit you away.
-Six
That is IT for Scanline Media’s Gimmick Awards 2024! Thank you so much for reading, listening, and going on this journey with us. Sunday starts another week; the cycle of pods, streams, and writing continues unabated. But just for a moment, let’s look back, and say… 2024 was a year. Good or bad, it’s hard to say.
no it’s not. it was bad. but nevertheless, we persist.
Our art is a commission from Sarracenian on Bluesky.
