The Game Awards at the Microsoft Theater. 2018. Photo courtesy thegameawards.com
This year’s Game Awards were bigger than ever, with a nearly four hour run time chock full of awards, speeches, reveals, and tons of other awesome little surprises. In fact, just mentioning every tease, world premiere or interesting moment would be next to impossible. Instead, I've narrowed it down to some of the portions of the show I found the most interesting. Take a look, and if there's anything that you were really excited about from the Game Awards we missed, feel free to let us know in the comments.
Awards
As anyone who's been following gaming at all this year knows, 2018 has been full of juggernauts of the gaming industry giving their A-game and releasing some truly amazing experiences, with
God of War and
Red Dead Redemption 2 being contenders for the prestigious Game Of The Year award. Both games won several awards over the course of the evening, but it was
God of War who ran away with this year’s top award, as well as Best Game Direction.
Red Dead Redemption, meanwhile, won Best Narrative as well as Best Score/Music. As for everyone else--
Fortnite won Best Ongoing Game
, Forza Horizon 4 took top honors in the Best Sports/Racing Game category, and
Celeste won Best Independent Game. Individual content creators and Twitch streamers were recognized too, for the part they play in the industry, from Ninja's win as Best Content Creator to SonicFox's award for Best Esports Player, which led to a rather interesting acceptance speech.
https://youtu.be/U_ZM-9T88hU
Reveals
Mortal Kombat 11
We got some pretty great reveal trailers at the Game Awards this year, and I’ll go over some of the bigger ones.
Mortal Kombat 11 was revealed, with a suitably violent and gory trailer. Reminiscent of the reveal trailer for
Mortal Kombat X, which featured Scorpion and Sub-Zero, this new trailer features Raiden and Scorpion duking it out in an arena populated with corpses. It was also revealed that those who pre-order the game will gain access to Shao Khan, which will mark the OutWorld despot's first appearance as a playable character in a
Mortal Kombat game since 2008’s
Mortal Kombat Vs. DC Universe.
https://youtu.be/dyMoUBsfKME
The Outer Worlds
Obsidian Entertainment finally revealed their new game,
The Outer Worlds, which is looking like it’ll be an RPG set in a western-inspired sci-fi universe, which, as you can probably guess, has gotten a lot of people really excited. Obsidian is probably best known for the development of
Fallout: New Vegas, and fans of the
Fallout series' rich worlds and deep RPG elements will likely be excited for the new environments, story and adventure
The Outer Worlds looks to bring players.
https://youtu.be/GNKxTT39YJ8
Joker Coming To Super Smash Bros.
Super Smash Bros. is known for being a menagerie of colorful characters, originally just from Nintendo’s own IPs, but recently branching out to include third-party characters like Solid Snake, Sonic The Hedgehog, Pac-Man, Cloud Strife, and even Mega-Man. Well now it seems that Nintendo has snagged another third-party character, with the reveal that Joker, the protagonist of
Persona 5, will be appearing in
Super Smash Bros. Ultimate’s first character DLC pack, which to me at least means that Nintendo now has a better PlayStation All Stars fighting game than Sony does.
https://youtu.be/m7d146mieqI
Psychonauts 2
We got our first trailer for
Psychonauts 2 at the The Game Awards, and it did not disappoint. The highly stylized art from the original is back, and looks better than ever, as well as some mind bending platforming segments, and that trademark Tim Schafer sense of humor. Set to release in 2019, this will make it 14 years since the original release of
Psychonauts. Here’s to hoping that
Psychonauts 2 sells better than its predecessor.
https://youtu.be/DIRKYPel5mQ
Marvel Ultimate Alliance 3
Rejoice, because we are finally getting
Marvel: Ultimate Alliance 3: The Black Order. Releasing exclusively for the Nintendo Switch, developed by Team Ninja, and set to release in 2019, this will be the first new
Ultimate Alliance game in ten years. As for what to expect, it looks like we’ll be getting gameplay similar to the original Ultimate Alliance games, although it seems it will focus more on characters from the Marvel Cinematic Universe, as most games with Marvel characters have in recent years.
https://youtu.be/o4VHf0jc2Xo
Crash Team Racing Nitro-Fueled
Also revealed at The Game Awards was
Crash Team Racing: Nitro-Fueled, a remaster of 1999 Naughty Dog developed
Crash Team Racing. Developed by Beenox, the remaster is set to be released on June 21, 2019. Like the previously released
Crash Bandicoot N. Same Trilogy, it looks to feature the same level of polish and graphical fidelity that I look for in a remaster. while hopefully holding on to the fun of the original.
https://youtu.be/e8wEHTqtNxo
Far Cry New Dawn
Editors Note: Spoilers for Far Cry 5 follow.
We also got a look at the new
Far Cry game releasing next year, which is
Far Cry’s take on the post-apocalypse. Set 17 years after
Far Cry 5, which ended with a nuclear bomb being dropped , it will be set in the same area as
Far Cry 5--Hope County--but will also give you the ability to go on Expeditions to other places in the country, which seems like a neat concept. It also seems like we’ll be getting some goofier weapons, including one which appears to be a crossbow that shoots sawblades. Lets just hope that the main character actually has some, well, character, unlike
Far Cry 5’s voiceless, personality-void protagonist.
https://youtu.be/JeEd55rYtG4
Memorable Moment
In a moment that might provide reason to end the console wars, the heads of gaming for Microsoft, Sony, and Nintendo shared the stage at the same time and talked about their desire to create great things for gamers everywhere.
https://youtu.be/Mw5nd200Sb4
If you want to view the Game Awards 2018 livestream in its entirety and catch every one of the reveals, trailers and speeches, you can view it below.
https://youtu.be/SHt3FyE-VIQ
