The First Annual startmenu Awards | Winter Spectacular 2021

Hi.

Ollie here, I edit most of the stuff that goes up on this site and generally run most startmenu. This site has been around for coming up on three years now and I have been running it for a bit over two. Every year we continue to grow and help new, exciting voices in this industry find their footing. In 2019 we tried to rally a handful of our writers together at the end of the year to write Top Ten lists, retrospectives or “look ahead” pieces for the next year, and it was a pretty good success. So, much so that in 2020, I decided to start The Winter Spectacular event - not only would startmenu contributors and community members write pieces that in some way encapsulated the year (whether it was a list or feature or anything else) but we also began reaching out to a bunch of friends of the site and names in the industry to contributor something (lists, advice for new writers, etc.).

The idea of all this was to encourage folks to put themselves, their opinions, their feelings on games and the industry out there. It turned out fierce good and I should be proud of it (at least that’s what my mom says after I explained it to her for the third time), so we decided to do it again this year. We got move friends of the site onboard and a wider variety of voices and perspectives from the industry. Even as I was planning this year and could see the Winter Spectacular become something bigger… Well, I felt like there was still something missing.

Writing something personal might be fun but you want to know what is even more fun? Awards which we assign a higher value to because they are given out by an outlet instead of an individual!

This year I wanted something that the whole startmenu community could rally behind and that is where The First Annual startmenu Awards came from. So here is how this thing works; everyone in our Discord that wanted to celebrate a game or even just “honour” something notable from this year could hand out up to two awards. They wrote a little bit about said game, gave shoutouts honourable mentions/runner-ups and I compiled it all together into one thing. However, like all good award shows we have time to fill so among the awards decided by individuals are smaller site awards decided by the royal we of startmenu (by which I mean they were decided by me when I was meant to be doing college work). So without further adieu please enjoy The First Annual startmenu Awards.

Ollie Luddy,
Editor-in-Chief at starmenu

Best DLC (Decided by Joshua Jarrett)

Honourable Mentions: Doom Eternal: The Ancient Gods - Part 2 and all the cool stuff they added to Genshin
WINNER: Outer Wilds - Echoes of the Eye

Echoes of the Eye brings to the Outer Wilds experience a perilous and forlorn journey of truly beguiling heartbreak. Echoes is the kind of DLC game players may remember from the old days of full expansions before Team Fortress-hats, when the creators would carve out a space to generously craft a new angle on their worlds and play.  It’s imperative that no portion of this experience be spoiled for the prospective player so it must suffice for me to say that the shadow cast by the world, events, and peoples of the base game is wide and dark and much can happen in the fringe of the last solar system in twenty-two minutes.

Best Game That is Never Actually Being Released - Presented by The Tech Demo of Beyond Good and Evil 2 We Are Never Seeing Again (Decided by Eloise Evans)

Honourable Mentions: Overwatch 2, Dead Island 2, Skull & Bones and Mass Effect 4
WINNER: The Elder Scrolls VI

It may have been a decade since The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim was released, but don’t make the mistake of thinking that means we’ll be able to play its successor anytime soon, after all, we don’t even have a name for it yet. 

The first time we were given any information about The Elder Scrolls VI was in a short CGI trailer at E3 2018 which spawned hundreds of fan theories about the game’s setting and plot based solely on the topography of fictional mountains. It’s genuinely impressive how many theories came from a 37-second video of some hills and rocks. However, in terms of official information, we’ve learnt, well, nothing about the game other than that it probably won’t be released before the eventual heat death of the universe. 

But it’s fine! I guess I’ll just start another playthrough of Skyrim on my microwave. They’ve added fishing you know!

RTX ON!

The Annual SimCity Award for Most Broken Multiplayer

Honourable Mentions: eFootball 2022 and Dungeons and Dragons: Dark Alliance
WINNER: Battlefield 2042

This is purely because of the XP farming method in Battlefield Portal where unsuspecting players were the produce being farmed.

Best Final Boss Battle (Decided by Michael Beckwith)

Honourable Mention: Lost Judgment, Nier Replicant ver.1.22474487139...
WINNER: Persona 5 Strikers

Real talk: every RPG final boss should be like Persona 5 Strikers’, and I say this for one very simple reason: it lets the whole party fight the boss. Usually, your 7- or 8-man group is trimmed down to only 3 or 4 members being able to fight at a time for gameplay balance reasons. But for P5: Strikers, Atlus and Omega Force designed its final boss in such a way that allows all 9 playable characters to contribute. After a standard first form fight, the Demiurge enters its second form by summoning spheres that make it invulnerable. So, the Phantom Thieves agree to split up so two teams can destroy the spheres, while another focuses on the Demiurge.

It would have been so easy to have the sphere team be strictly AI-controlled; something that happens off-screen to create the illusion of everyone participating. Instead, only main man Joker is limited in any way, being forced to lead the Demiurge team, however, you have the freedom to form the rest of the teams’ however you’d like. What’s more, is all of the characters are playable. You do only control one team at a time, but the fight is framed in such a way that their respective fights are happening simultaneously. Combined with the fantastic music and the Thieves’ war cries of determination, the whole thing becomes a spectacle just through gameplay rather than flashy cinematics. It is a fantastic Crescendo and I genuinely want this example to become the standard with future action-RPGs.

Character Most in Need of a Hug (Decided by Michael Beckwith)

Honourable Mentions: Gina Lestrade (The Great Ace Attorney Chronicles), Chicory (Chicory: A Colorful Tale)
WINNER: Alex Chen (Life is Strange: True Colors)

This game should be called Life is Rough because Alex’s was pretty awful long before True Colors even starts. After her mother dies and her father abandons her, she’s ripped away from her brother and thrown into the foster system for about a decade, drifting from family to family whenever she isn’t passed over for being ‘broken’ or a ‘problem child.’ She faces racism, is implied to have been date raped, gets into nasty fights, witnesses suicide, and all the while she’s dealing with her empath superpower that causes her to feel the extreme emotions of the people around her, opening her mind up to the absolute worst humanity can offer. And this is before finally reuniting with her brother and losing him in a tragic accident the very same day.

Granted, Alex is guaranteed a happy ending no matter your choices, getting justice for her brother and either forming a new life in Haven or setting out on the open road, potentially with a loving romantic partner by her side. And the community she befriends do her wonders, welcoming her into their lives without a second thought, but she still has to contend with her own and others’ emotional trauma. She is lied to, betrayed, even shot and left for dead in a mine by her potential father figure. And if you don’t play your cards right, that same community can completely abandon her in the game’s final moments. Alex is the kind of person you want to give the world to, someone who tries so desperately to do the right thing to the point that you want her to be rewarded just for that. Thank god she is ok by the end, but I still think she could really do a good hug.

I've seen things you people wouldn't believe. Attack ships on fire off the shoulder of Orion. I watched C-beams glitter in the dark near the Tannhauser gate. All those moments will be lost in time... like tears in rain...

Game That Reminded Us Why We Loved The PS2 So Much - Presented by Astro Bot

Honourable Mentions: Psychonauts 2, It Takes Two, Kena: Bridge of Spirits, The Gunk, Cruis’n Blast, Stubbs the Zombie in Rebel Without a Pulse and Lost in Random
WINNER: Balan Wonderworld

Don’t get us wrong, Balan Wonderworld is a terrible game… B-b-b-but it really does encapsulate a bygone era of platforms and just video game design in general better than anything else this year.

Most Soul-Destroying Re-release of an Older Title (Decided by Mark Warren)

Honourable Mentions: Too many to name
WINNERS: The Elder Scrolls V Skyrim: Anniversary Edition and The Grand Theft Auto Remastered Trilogy

A car full of Rockstar Games executives pulls into the drive-through of a fast-food restaurant. They pull up to the window. Three of them order a nostalgic cash-in each. The fourth, a literal fat-cat, does not. Instead, his order consists of three nostalgic cash-ins, to be sold as one large nostalgic cash-in package, a rapid release with extra bugs, a desperate attempt to fix these issues, two helpings of audience dissatisfaction, one with extra mockery and a large soda. The overworked employee at the window writes the order down and tells the executives to wait for it in the car park. The Rockstar executives arrive in the car park. They notice that one of the spaces is occupied by a short man dressed in iron armour and a horned helmet, mercilessly whipping a horse that lies on the ground next to him.

The chubby feline executive winds down his window and asks what is going on. Turning to face him, the armoured man says, in a distinctly nasal voice, that his prize horse has collapsed. He goes on to tell the Rockstar executive that he’s owned the horse for a decade and that, in its youth, it was one of the most valuable horses in the world. He reminisces that he used to be able to ride it straight up vertical rock faces and over mountains. Now, however, the ravages of time are beginning to take their toll. As he finishes, the Rockstar executives’ orders arrive. Taking their cash-ins, they watch as the armoured man receives one too, along with some paid mods and a fishing mini-game, which he begins to force the horse to eat.

‘This should keep it going for another decade.’ mutters the armoured man.

Best Fashion Game (Decided by Mark Warren)

Honourable Mentions: The Grand Theft Auto Series and Most JRPGs
WINNER: The Hitman Series

Good afternoon, Agent 47. Welcome to another mind bogglingly exotic location. Your mission today is not to kill anyone. Yes, that’s right 47, there’s no target. Don’t worry though, I do still have a task for you to complete. Your task, should you choose to accept it, is to infiltrate the highly guarded base filled with armed guards and security cameras. Then, once you’re in, you’re to try on as many different outfits as possible. Yes, you heard me right 47. A bodyguard’s suit, a tourist’s polo shirt, a gardener's cargo shorts, a chicken costume, the backwards cap of a paparazzi, the stetson of a Texan businessman, a racing driver’s coveralls, a scientist’s lab coat, a doctor’s scrubs, a cult member’s mask, the gaudy getup of a fast food salesman nicknamed ‘The Florida Man’ and, if you’re feeling adventurous, maybe a dress?

How you acquire these outfits, I leave up to you. Choke people out and hide them in cupboards, knock them out by throwing fruit at their heads or kill them with a samurai sword, but make sure you get those clothes. Then, walk around in them for a bit. Show them off, rock them in public, strut around with reckless abandon, like you’re Helmut Kruger on a catwalk. You go, 47. You fashion icon. You go, girl.

BTW this game also literally has a credit sequence with hard J-rock music.

Most Anime 

Honourable Mentions: Tales of Arise, Persona 5 Strikers, NEO: The World Ends With You and Gensou Skydrift
WINNER: Scarlet Nexus

I mean… they literally did the “these young-looking people aren’t underage, they are actually way older and it is all ok because magic/science/they’re a vampire makes them look young” thing.

Best Catboy Experience (Decided by Jamie Alexander)

Honourable Mentions: League of Legends (Sett specifically) and NEKOPARA - Catboys Paradise
WINNER: Final Fantasy XIV

There comes a time in everyone's life when they have to stand up for something they have literally no stake in. In a climate of cringe culture, the winds of shame blow too often on the things we enjoy. You may be asking yourself “what does this have to do with the best catboy experience in a video game?” Well, allow me to explain. I have played barely two hours of Final Fantasy XIV. I do not enjoy it. This is not an indictment of the game because, like a sultana in a salad, I am clearly the problem. However, those long two hours taught me one key thing about Final Fantasy, and the developers behind it; 

By god, they know how to make a catboy. 

The Miqo’te, as they are known in-game, are one of the playable races in Final Fantasy XIV and I’ll be honest, at least 3/4ths of my time in the game was spent in a character creation menu tweaking my twink feline. As someone that considers themself startmenu’s resident expert on catboy culture, I highly recommend Final Fantasy XIV for all your catboy needs. They have also recently added bunny boys to the MMO too, which is, you know, cool. But let's be serious, cats are where it's at. And despite my inability to actually play the game, it has a wonderful art style, flexible classes and mass amounts of customisation options. The game includes a free trial up to level sixty (I barely got close) so you have plenty of time to fully explore everything it has to offer - that's also plenty of time to take at least a few hundred Discord profile pics with the anthropomorphic ears of your dreams. 

Wait… What? The Miqo’te are in FFXII also?

I gotta go...

Unfinished Game of the Year (Decided by Will Sawyer)

Honourable Mentions: Battlefield 2042 and eFootball 2022
WINNER: Halo Infinite

Halo Infinite launched to critical praise, but I can’t shake the feeling that the game is lacking some core features that ought to be standard for Halo titles. Recently revisiting Halo 3 in The Master Chief Collection with friends only highlighted the painful lack of co-op campaign options and level selection in Halo Infinite. Meanwhile, multiplayer is severely let down by its lack of varied playlists (although that is already improving), no optional cross-play, and no Forge mode. The absence of Forge is especially annoying, given that Halo Infinite has such a fantastic sandbox for players to mess around with and get creative.  

But even with all these missing features, Halo Infinite is still a great game. It’s just that it can be even better. The campaign is one of the best in years that is carried by tight gameplay, interesting characters, and a surprisingly innovative open world. Similarly, multiplayer is a return to form that uses the same superb gameplay framework. Despite the inescapable feeling that Halo Infinite is lacking, it is hugely successful in the core campaign and multiplayer experiences. When those highly requested features and changes do arrive, the complete Halo Infinite package will be a standout entry for the franchise. 

Bringing someone in to watch at all the graphics is basically the gamer version of Milhouse’s dad showing off his racecar bed.

Well, This Justifies My Expensive New Console Award

Honourable Mentions: Halo Infinite, Ratchet and Clank: Rift Apart
WINNER: Returnal

All those particle effects flying at my face really helped fill that €500 void in my soul.

Sorry, quick ad break.

Most Overlooked Game (Decided by Alex Green)

Honourable Mentions: Omno and Scarlet Nexus
WINNER: Cyber Shadow

Plenty of great games have come and gone in 2021 meaning many fantastic titles were shoved to the background and were quietly forgotten soon after release. Given that end of year awards are about, I said I would honour some of those forgotten gems.

I was expecting to see plenty of outlets hand out nominations to Scarlet Nexus, one of the single most relentlessly fun experiences all year. This game sets up an intriguing world with a beautifully blended urban artstyle all paired with frenetic and satisfying gameplay mechanics.

Omno by Jonas Manke was an elegant and tranquil game that demonstrated the ability for gaming to be a wordless yet powerful medium. Alluring in its simplicity, it was an excellent feat for a solo developer.

But the king of The Best of The Rest has to be Cyber Shadow, released early in the year to little fanfare. It is a fantastic indie platformer with tremendous polish and a great speed, the title was backed up with intuitive controls, a beautiful sci-fi colour palette and well-honed Metroidvania mechanics. Truly a delight with imaginative boss battles to boot, Cyber Shadow was grossly underappreciated.

Award For Excellence in Excessively Long Boss Intros (Decided by Alex Green)

Runners-up: Karen Travers (Scarlet Nexus) and the entire castle level before Lady Dimitrescu takes her final form (Resident Evil: Village)
WINNER: The Frog King (Death’s Door)

To quote Syndrome in The Incredibles, “You got me monologuing!”. Villains do deserve a great intro, but some games this year indulged in that option. Take Scarlet Nexus. Before you can finish your quest of red strings and discussions on flower arranging with Tsugumi, the game throws another of its 50 twists, explaining that Karen Travers travelled back in time to assassinate and take the place of the legendary ancestor of protagonist Yuito, Yakumo Sumeragi. From there, a lengthy scene plays out detailing Karen’s plan to obtain the Red Strings, the connection of Karen’s other version into the central brain-connecting Arahabaki and ties up the various plot strands. It’s lengthy, and as you can gather, confusing from a game that has a truly ridiculous story.

While Resident Evil Village is at its best for the entire sequence leading up to a showdown with everyone’s favourite tall lady.

While both of these do a great job at building anticipation. Nothing is more excellent in its decadence than the introduction of Frog King in Death’s Door. An intro so long and gloriously comedic that it instantly becomes a highlight of an already stellar game.

Just a lil dude, taking pictures of some lil dudes!

Best Photography

Honourable Mentions: Chicory, Lost Judgement, Pokémon Snap, Fatal Frame: Maiden of Blackwater, Umurangi Generation (Switch) and Hitman 3
WINNER: TOEM

Honestly, TOEM is just a really neat game that was never going to win any other awards at any other outlets and we kind of just wanted to give it something for being neat.

Best Fighting Game (Decided by Jamal Munir)

Honourable Mentions: Guilty Gear -Strive-, Under Night In-Birth Exe:Late[cl-r], Street Fighter V: Champion Edition and Fight Crab 
WINNER: Melty Blood: Type Lumina

Living rooms. Tournaments. The toilet. Melty Blood is a fighting game series famous for both its obscure roots, and for having a  technical barrier that it could be played on any device, anywhere (yes, the bathroom really was a mainstay venue of choice for Melty fans at one point, due to the series tournament representation being so lacking otherwise). 

A complex web of fandom for its parent series and the game itself has allowed Melty Blood to remain an underdog within the scene for many years, even as the years dragged on between releases. However, Type Lumina bursts back onto the FGC with a sharp updating of the art direction and a streamlined perspective of the game for fans new and old to enjoy and dig into. There truly is nothing like Melty Blood all these years later.

“I don’t know but it is probably worthless since all our game’s players got bored and purposefully tanked the economy.

Game We Feel Least Bad About Saying Mean Things About

Honourable Mentions: eFootball 2022 and 12 Minutes
Winner: Amazon’s New World

Amazon letting me fulfil my lifelong dream of… Colonisation…?

Best Super Smash Bros. Reveal of 2021 (Decided by Oisín Kuhnke):

Honourable Mentions: Kazuya Mishima, Sora
Dishonourable Mention: Warner Brothers. calling its platform fighter “MultiVersus”
WINNER: Nickelodeon All-Star Brawl

To start this off, I don’t want to get any lip from anyone about this pick. Surely Sora in Smash was the best reveal regarding any platform fighting thing… well, ever? I know! You won’t find a bigger Kingdom Hearts fan than me, so shut up because the actual best Smash Bros. reveal goes to the announcement and release of Nickelodeon All-Star Brawl. 

Why? Because who the fuck was expecting a Super Smash Bros. Melee-like using characters from various Nickelodeon properties? Who was expecting it to be competitive, with a high skill ceiling? Who was expecting it to have rollback netcode?! Does Smash? No. It does not - - it has a terrible delay-based system. I’m still struggling to even say the sentence, “Nickelodeon All-Star Brawl has better online than one of Nintendo’s biggest properties.” It might not be a perfect platform fighter, but hot dog is it wild that it exists.

An NFT bro seen here in 2045 celebrating the sale of one of his shitty ape profile pictures for two bottlecaps and some cat-meat.

Dumbest NFT Bullshit

Honourable Mentions: Peter Mynolunex announces he is working on a video game with NFTs, you know… Because of course he is… and Ubisoft mints thousands of NFTs to add to Breakpoint and a week later they made a grand total of 15 sales.
WINNER: That time the S.T.A.L.K.E.R. team announced S.T.A.L.K.E.R. 2 would have NFTs, everyone got mad, a day later they tweeted saying that they “heard” the community but would be keeping the NFTs then 25 minutes later announced they would not, in fact, be NFTs in S.T.A.L.K.E.R. 2.

Just burn everything down and let’s start again.

Best Apple Arcade Game (Decided by Kate Robinson)

Honourable Mentions: Monster Hunter Stories+ and Crossy Road Castle
WINNER: Fantasian

Recently the notion of multi-game subscription service has been realised with the success of Microsoft’s Game Pass bringing major exclusive and third party games to Xbox and PC. While Game Pass is accessible on mobile, bringing the large scale games to small screens requires cloud streaming which while handy for those of us living in major cities with lightning-fast wifi, isn’t the most accessible option and if Google Stadia is anything to go by, isn’t doing so hot with gamers right now. 

To fill this gap, Apple is providing a smaller scale service with a surprising amount of exclusive titles from a Crossy Road sequel to a HD remaster of the original Monster Hunter Stories, but my favourite, and one of the best-overlooked RPGs of the year, is called Fantasian. This stunning indie effort is a spiritual successor to Final Fantasy IV created by legacy Square developers that have more recently worked on Blue Dragon, Lost Odyssey and The Last Story.

Fantasian expands upon the foundation FF4 (a game notable for map design which emphasises exploration within linear areas) with unique and defined protagonists that wouldn’t feel out of place amongst the One-Piece crew. If you’re a fan of turn-based combat, Fantasian also has a compelling stacked encounter system that allows players to fight up to 30 randomly encountered enemies in a single fight which alleviates some of the most annoying aspects of the JRPG genre.

However, Fantasian cannot be mentioned without talking about the handcrafted miniatures which are used to create an artstyle like no other. Just…

Most Disappointed Fanbase (Decided by Kate Robinson)

Honourable Mentions: Battlefield fans, GTA fans, game preservationists/collectors, anyone that ever attend Blizzcon
Disqualified: Pokémon fans (they say they were mad and disappointed but they always say that)
WINNER: Gamers (…like all of us)

Many thought 2021 would be a great year for games with the number of delays to major 2020 releases caused by COVID, but gamers were instead treated to endless controversies, even more delays and every suit in the industry telling us how much we actually really want NFTs. Picking the winner this year has been harder than ever, Balan Wonderworld proved that nostalgia doesn’t always sell, Battlefield 2049 highlighted the importance of a consistent tone (and good balance) while the GTA: The Trilogy: The Definitive Edition didn’t live up to its namesake.

Alongside the releases themselves, Ubisoft failed to change their abusive leadership while contributing to global warming and through NFT distribution; Roblox was revealed to be exploiting child labour loopholes to create one of the largest gaming franchises; self-proclaimed arbiters of grading, WataGames, have been artificially raising the prices of the retro game market; and, against all odds, Bobby Kotick continues to be America’s slimiest CEO.

2021 has been hard for everyone even remotely interested in the medium so the most disappointed fanbase this year has to go to gamers. That’s right, just all the people that dedicate any part of their personality or free time to the art of interactive media and especially those trying to make a livelihood just to get their passion exploited. 2021 has been one hell of a rough year, and being reminded of this news may feel like a depressing way to end a silly awards show, but it’s important to talk about these issues as often as possible to pressure change that will significantly help the lives of real people. Hopefully, we can force companies to learn from their mistakes so we can all look forward to a happier new year.

…neat.

“Wait, That Came Out This Year?” of The Year (+ Bowser’s Fury)

Honourable Mentions: Hitman 3, Outriders, Biomutant, Far Cry 6 and Diablo II: Resurrected
WINNER: Call of Duty: Vanguard

Right? RIGHT?!

A new Call of Duty came out… like two months ago… RIGHT!?

Game That I Was Surprised Was Really Good Even Though People Have Been Praising It For a Long Time (Decided by Louise Chase)

Honourable Mention: Immortals Fenyx Rising
WINNER: Pathologic 2

The famous “walking pain simulator” was not on my radar for this year, but here it is sitting pretty at the top of my list. As a game based in a pandemic, it taught me more about kindness and self-reflection than games such as The Last of Us. 

It began as a recommendation from an online friend in January, then I  watched someone stream it. A binge-watch of video essay after video essay ensued. 

Having now played the game, it is fair to say Pathologic 2 isn’t perfect, and there are some parts of the even more janky Pathologic 1 that I love better, but Pathologic 2 is overall more refined with its translations. I can’t help but sink myself into the lore, try and dissect where every path could go, and how to help everyone. 

Best Gay-Ass Mythology As Portrayed By a Game … That I Played This Year (Decided by Louise Chase)

Honourable Mention: Greek Pantheon (Assassin’s Creed: Odyssey) and Norse Mythology (Assassin Creed: Valhalla)
WINNER: HADES

Greek mythology is very gay, and games such as Hades have taken good care in displaying that to us. Especially Hades. 

The game even lets you reunite beloved greek boyfriends Achilles and Patroclus, having Megara and Thanatos both romance the player character Zagreus, and hinting at Artemis having romantic feelings for her huntress Callisto. The entire game is littered with subtle references to the millennia-old myths, and the queer readings now thriving in the academic sphere.

It’s a shame other titles such as Immortals Fenyx Rising didn’t include even the smallest hint to whether Ancient Greece was as queer as we perceive it to be. Having seemingly all of Greece fall in love with Kassandra in AC Odyssey kind of makes up for it though. 

Best JRPG That Represents Teen Spirit (Decided by Jess Reyes)

Honourable Mentions: Scarlet Nexus and Persona 5 Strikers
WINNER: NEO: The World Ends With You

NEO: The World Ends With You makes the list for many publications’ top 10 games of the year for its storytelling, soundtrack, and so on. However, it also deserves an award as a time capsule for today’s teenage urban culture. Many JRPGs feature teenagers in urban settings like Scarlet Nexus and Persona 5 Strikers. However, NEO actively integrates social media, fashion trends, and instaworthy foods into its story and gameplay in a way that mirrors how young adults navigate city life. Localisation is especially on point, like the “love that for yous”’s and whatnot. 

Essentially, it effectively characterises the young adults of our time through its story and game, grounding them even as they venture through a fantastical situation. 

Best in Game Cosmetics (Decided by Jess Reyes)

Honourable Mentions: Scarlet Nexus, Tales of Arise and Fortnite and every other multiplayer free to play game
WINNER: Pokémon Unite

Many games have fashionable and funny equipable accessories like Scarlet Nexus and Tales of Arise. Many others even sell zany and whacky cat ears, Santa outfits or the likeness of your favourite Naruto boy. However, no number of pastel gun skins or head sprouts can top the creative costumes of Pokemon Unite. Blastoise can dress like a country club regular, Charizard can dress like a Victorian age pirate, Lucario can dress like historical legend Sir Aaron – the list goes on. My personal favourite is Snorlax dressed like a Sitrus Berry. These aren’t exactly catwalk-worthy outfits, but they are tempting by the pure virtue of their novelty and I’m here for it. 

“Huh? What?… Sorry, who’s this?

Best Mario Movie Casting

Honourable Mentions: Charlie Day as Luigi, Anya Taylor-Joy as Princess Peach, Seth Rogan as Donkey Kong, Jack Black as Bowser, Keegan-Michael Key as Toad, Fred Armisen as Cranky Kong,  Sebastian Maniscalco as Foreman Spike, Kevin Michael Richardson as Kamek, Charles Martinet as various unannounced cameo roles
WINNER: …

Huh, that’s weird. No one else was cast. Huh… Who woulda thunk it?

The startmenu Game of The Year (which was totally unanimously decided by everyone after a vigorous debating process and not just Ollie as they put this into the CMS but shut up I will do what I want) Award

WINNER: Chircory: A Colorful Tale

Heya, Ollie here again.

I know this is unfair and defeats the purpose of a site Game of The Year if it was only chosen by me, but I really wanted to give Chicory the site’s Game of The Year Award. Why? Well, it has been a really fucking tough year, for me, for a lot of people that have contributed to the site, for everyone. But Chicory was a real grounding experience for me and in inturn startmenu.

At a time when my passion for writing and video games and this whole thing was really waning if I am honest, along came this little indie Zelda-like about bringing a bit of colour back to the world.

I don’t want to write too much about this because a lot more talented writers have put similar ideas a lot more eloquently but during that time and for that headspace I was in, playing a game where a main character spoke a line of dialogue describing their mental health and how the viewed themself and the world with (nearly) the exact same words I once said to my doctor while in tears in their office?… And for that character to be greeted with a hug from a friend and the reassurance that they and their feelings were valid? Well, I needed that. So did this site. And now I need to give Chicory: Colorful Tale this award.

Thank you Chicory.