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It’s not December without the Game Awards, Jeff Kaley’s annual awards show trailer showcase and the occasional awards ceremony celebrating the biggest games of the year.More than previous years, this year’s Game of the Year nominees included a variety of heavy hitters such as; Final Fantasy VII Rebirth! and: Metaphor: ReFantasia and surprise favorites Balatron and: Black Myth Wukong. And the winner turned out to be…Astro Bot, The exclusive PlayStation 5 platformer from the Asobi team.
We’ve had the Game Awards for a decade now, and it’s a little different when it comes to its GOTY picks; previous games such as witcher 3, The god of war 2018 reboot, and Baldur’s Gate 3 were these fantasy or mature titles, and Astro Bot: is a game aimed at families about a cute robot with a big head that explores worlds and befriends cute Funko-sized versions of PlayStation characters.It’s a very good game, but its win was definitely surprising, especially when Balatron had taken the world by storm for months and Metaphor he also flew in his own way. Now that the dust has settled, the question on people’s minds is what it means to win the top prize for a platformer, which is a big, major awards show for the medium.
The immediate next step will almost certainly be a sequel of some sort; The Asobi team is currently releasing free post-launch levels Astro Bot, which has been sold 1.5 million copies as of November. No doubt Sony will let Asobi make it and when the next game is revealed I hope it will be ready Astro the series takes its first step towards forming its own identity.Both Bot: and his predecessor Astro’s playroom (which was pre-installed on the PS5 launch) have been sightseeing tours of the PlayStation’s past constant winking can wear quickly, and highlights how the series can do nothing more than make references and great game mechanics. The argument could be made that it doesn’t need much more, but having a unique personality is what helps other platforms. Of the big three publishers, Nintendo is really the only one that fully realizes this, and that’s why Mario can maintain such overall consistency even when the character (and Luigi) platformer, jumping between dozens of other genres at any given time, so if Sony wants to have its own Mario, it’s going to mean figuring out who Astro is outside of his old line’s skin.
Speaking of franchises, one of the other big surprises at the Game Awards came from Capcom, which revealed it’s developing new games for the company. Eyes and: Onimusha privileges. It Resident Evil: The studio has had a really good run of releases recently and recently announced that the two projects are part of a larger effort revive the series it used to be put in. You have to imagine how Sony views it Astro Bot:too — a lot of PlayStation franchises get some love in that game, and fans have been hoping for some of them for years collapse of Concord next to of Astro success has given Sony a wake-up call to focus on shrinking more variety of games instead of putting their eggs in the cinematic, triple-A basket.That’s been a problem in the industry years especially for the PlayStation first party teamsand not recognizing that problem early is how it ended up being fired more than 1000 developers this year and canceling several projects.
Sadly, PlayStation’s commitment to blockbusters has eroded double-A genrebecause that’s where most of their older franchises would probably work best these days (See also: Ubisoft is pretty good Prince of Persia. the lost crown since the beginning of this year.) Lately I’ve been playing again Trick 2: Band of Thieves after it was ported to PS5 and performed for the first time Resistance 2 playthrough via cloud streaming. Both feel right for their respective eras, and it’s easy to imagine their respective series could have a place in the current PlayStation pantheon if they were just allowed to. to be without huge expectations placed on them. Cunning could easily fill the niche of trendy, personality-filled games in the background of yesteryear hi-fi rush and: Resistance or Killzone: can be a system exclusive shooter. Last year, Sony tried to stop Microsoft from buying Activision Blizzard by arguing. Call of Duty: was extremely valuable and that no other shooter can hope to soar. Ideally, neither should aspire to such lofty heights, but serve as PlayStation’s answer. Hello!, which itself is about to undergo a second or third overhaul.As of today, all hopes for mid-sized, non-Nintendo games that have brand recognition now kind of fall on Astro’s tiny, delicate shoulders.
The Asobi team is not expected to use Astro Bot: to get things wrong overnight with the triple-A games, it’s just unfortunate to arrive as the industry takes several years of calculated risks that don’t pay off as expected. It will take time to build a healthier industry, and it the impact will be felt sooner or later, even if it’s in a sequel or an indie game hoping to capture its unbridled, non-corporate spirit.
Or, failing that, PlayStation could pull back the remasters and remakes and just please put more of its older first-party titles on PC or the native PlayStation 5.
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