A legend has passed away. RIP Kevin Conroy, you will be sorely missed.

This year's has been by far the hardest to vote on The Game Awards. God of War: Ragnarök, Elden Ring, Tunic, Stray, Sifu, Vampire Survivors... The diversity and quality of this past year games is testament of how far the industry has evolved and matured, telling great stories, presenting memorable characters, introducing fun and engaging gameplay mechanics, creating immersive and detailed worlds and overall, giving us players plenty of choice to escape from a moment, and that's a good sign. But, among the nominees, they're still predatory and anti-consumer entries, most notably Diablo Immortal, which are profitable just because they take advantage of the underlying mechanics that make video games fun to play. But as long as we continue to steadfastly highlight and award those games that are truly worthwhile, the predators that drive the abuse of people's mental well-being will disappear sooner rather than later.

I have finally dusted my Mastodon account, you know, just in case.

Upper Echelon beat me to it, reporting on what I had been writing a response for a while, about the comment shared by The Dot.

I finally did it! It took me about a week. What a game!

Continuing with the end of year season, I have made my nominations for the Steam Awards. Here I'll summarize my reasoning, considering that you can only nominate a game released on Steam, for just one category:

Game of The Year: Elden Ring. As I mentioned before, this year it's particularly difficult to choose the ultimate gaming experience. That's ultimately great, because everybody wins, no matter what. But, in my opinion, the best overall experience, the one that has the greatest bang for our buck, is this one. Also, God of War: Ragnarök is not out on PC yet.

VR Game of The Year: Among Us VR. Having experienced VR fairly sparingly, my opinion may not be entirely reliable. That being said, I think this game is superior to what a virtual world experience should be: having a good time immersed in a place where you can interact effortlessly. The other contender was Bonelab, and I must say that despite being a substantial improvement on its predecessor Boneworks, unfortunately it falls somewhere between functionality and accessibility.

Labor of Love: No Man's Sky. The most epic comeback on video game history. This game has far exceeded its initial promises and continues to deliver. It's not the most perfect (or stable) experience, but its now 7 years of continuous support, with constant new free expansions, makes it truly a labor of love.

Better with Friends: Stray. I prefer to play my games alone, but if I had to share my time playing one, this would be it. A game so simple and yet so rich in detail that it's perfect for starting meaningful/less conversations. Also, I had to nominate this game somewhere. And Goat Simulator 3 is EGS exclusive for now.

Outstanding Visual Style: Tunic. My first choice was going to be Scorn, but then I remembered how this game integrates its incredibly well-crafted visuals and styles into the rest of the experience, amalgamating story and gameplay, and sending a coded message to a generation that has grown and matured with the technology we are a part of today.

Most Innovative Gameplay: Trombone Champ. With recent games being a clusterclownfest at launch the norm (for publishers at least), creating a game that feels like you're playing it wrong and still having the most fun ever takes some mastery of gameplay design.

Best Game You Suck At: HYPER DEMON. I have already featured this, and I still think it deserves praise for being able to create such a difficult game that takes effort to master and finally admire it for what it is: a Zen Mode activator.

Best Soundtrack: Final Fantasy VII Remake Intergrade. This game's PC release has truly been a sad affair, but two years later, there is still no worthy competitor on the matter. The closest one is Sonic Frontiers, but unfortunately the rest of the game does not achieve the same level of craft.

Outstanding Story-Rich Game: God of War. There's no other greatest flex on writing, storytelling and character development than what Cory Barlog and his team at Santa Monica Studio have achieved. On top of that, their casting is impeccable, their worldbuilding is massive, and the other aspects of this game complement the overall experience in a way that sets the bar so high, the only ones who can dare to exceed it are themselves, because if you think this game is good, Ragnarök is far beyondad.

Sit Back and Relax: Placid Plastic Duck Simulator. I discovered this game thanks to variety streamer, corrupter of worlds, local pizza pasta man, and duck enjoyer Mr. Vinny Vinesauce. The best title to run unattended while you blow off steam by looking out the window, having a beer on a summer day after work. Just sit back and relax.

Best Game on The Go: Vampire Survivors. This is a strange choice, considering that the developers themselves proposed to nominate the game in this category. But if you think about the efforts to make it run on the Steam Deck, it makes a lot more sense. But beyond that, this is the perfect occasion to celebrate a very italian and nice developer team that have created a title that is pure domapine and nothing else.

After 5+ years of grueling development, Pizza Tower has finally a release date. An unlikely combination between the Wario Land and the Sonic series, featuring a distinctive high-energy, 90's-cartoons-inspired, heavily-stylized, Earthworm-Jim-esque pixel art, a breakneck gameplay, and a matching soundtrack, this extremely niche indie videogame will stand by itself as one of the weirdest releases of 2023. I cannot wait to become the Pizza Tower.

F*cking finally.

It's Death Stranding 2.

And From Software's next game is Armored Core VI.

It's clear that Final Fantasy XVI will try their best to match gameplay with story.

So, TGAs 2022 in a nutshell:
- Chris Judge is a great actor, but he's bad with words.
- Show was not shorter as promised.
- A lot of World Premieres, a lot expected or rumored, none was leaked, the biggest ones were a new Armored Core and Supergiant doing a sequel.
- Bill Clinton.

You can always count on VaatiVidya to untangle Miyazaki's skein.

By this point, you should now that I love music. You should also have noticed that I enjoy videogames. So, I'd like to close 2022 with a list of my personal Top 10 videogame soundtracks, I'll not only highlight the excellence and quality, but also how the music, when done well and with care, helps elevate the experience so much more. I will count down as comments to this post, to avoid spamming you with notifications. Mild spoilers ahead. Here we go.

I'm not normally an anime person but I think this deserves to be highlighted. Chainsaw Man is the best anime of recent times, and one of the best anime adaptations in history, period. It's irreverent, it breaks the mold, it does not care. It loves to drop references here and there. And it goes all out, hard. For the few who complain about its bad animation, it only shows their ignorance about the original source. I'm glad there are still some breaths of fresh air in the industry, as Bocchi the Rock! has also shown. May they never end.

It seems that development in whatever Mason Lindroth's next game is, is going pretty well. From Lindroth discovering the unlimited potential of Blender's Geometry Nodes, to Salamone introducing lyrics to its soundtrack, I can already tell this is going to be another genre-defining indie title. I cannot wait for more info about it, probably next year.

Hi-Fi Rush is just fantastic. A feel-good experience from beginning to the very end, and beyond. Every element of the game complements each other perfectly. Its five-ish years of development are noticeable, quality is top notch, I personally highlight art direction and audio design. Gameplay feels especially good and rewards accordingly, regardless of the difficulty or accessibility options selected. This game was planned to work with licensed music, but the original soundtrack is equally, and in some cases, better, although it can be boring or repetitive for people not used to the style of rock that it shreds. This shadow drop is already an early candidate for Game of the Year.