Saturday Morning Gaming: Game Awards Game of the Year Nominees are in

Okay. Here are the Game Awards Game of the Year nominees in alphabetical order:

Astro Bot
Balatro
Black Myth Wukong
Elden Ring: Shadow of the Erdtree
Final Fantasy VII Rebirth
Metaphor: Refantazio

Now, The Game Awards are Geoff Keighley’s baby (dating all the way back to Spike TV) and as easy as it is to make fun of the famous Doritos/Red Alert Halo picture, he’s done a somewhat okay job of being somewhat independent.

There’s *SOME* politics involved but it’s more-or-less within acceptable tolerances. I mean, some years there are games that get included that arguably shouldn’t, games that get awards when better games are on the table, and, of course, the games that don’t get mentioned at all… but, hey. Same thing happens with the Oscars.

The big drama this year is that the Elden Ring DLC Shadow of the Erdtree is on the list when, you guessed it, it’s a DLC.

Now, is it an absolutely amazing DLC that recaptures the agony and ecstasy of Elden Ring even for people who beat the game the first time? Yes.

If it was in a category of “DLC of the Year”, should it be a shoo-in to win? Absolutely.

But is it a problem that the DLC is nominated for GOTY? Well… yeah. It’s not a GOTY. It’s an add-on. And it’s an add-on that requires that you play through quite a bit of the original Elden Ring to get to. You can’t boot it up and pick Shadow from the main menu. You have to play through and get through the (spoiler) and kill (spoiler).

But that’s a minor complaint, really. It’s not like when Last of Us II beat Hades.

The main thing that I notice about that list is Balatro. Balatro? It’s shown up on the Steam home screen for me a couple of times but I just saw that it was a poker roguelike and I didn’t think that it was that compelling.

It’s a GOTY contender? Maybe I should check it out…

I’ve also never heard of “Metaphor: Refantazio” and… oh. It’s a Personaesque game. Okay. I can go back to not thinking about it. Everything else on there is either pretty good or unsurprising and I guess I’m surprised at some of the games that didn’t show up on the list but, hey, I can absolutely understand why they might not have.

And I’m going to put my money on the DLC. And then we can argue about that some more.

So… what are you playing?

(Featured image is The Game Awards Promotional Art.)