The Game Awards have happened, and there were some fun performances (including a 63-year-old flutist from Venezuela, Pedro Eustache, who stole the show), and other great moments (Christopher Judge getting an award for Best Performance presented by Al Pacino – something that you usually don’t get outside of the Oscars or Emmys). Also, as always, there were a whole bunch of trailers and new game announcements. So, rather than picking apart the winners and who did or did not get robbed, I figure I can talk about some of the new games we got to see, and was excited about. As always, these are in no particular order.

Armored Core VI

The Armored Core series is the kind of crunchy mech sim that, even if I never beat the game, I deeply enjoy playing. There’s tons of room to customize your mech, and the movement in combat feels much faster than in the Mechwarrior or Earthsiege series. Even if your mechs can be kinda fragile, it fits in a way feels like it’s in the spirit of mech series from Ry?suke Takahashi, like VOTOMS. It’s been 10 years since the last Armored Core game, and I’m interested to see what From Software brings to the table.

Death Stranding 2

I will admit… I haven’t played Death Stranding. It is a game I’ve appreciated a lot from afar, though I should probably get around to partaking in it from up close (particularly with it now feeling like it’s hitting a bit less close to home as things are shifting from Pandemic to Endemic – though not enough that I’m ready to start reading The Stand again). However, the whole visual of Death Stranding kind of grabs me, and I really appreciate what Kojima is willing to do when he just steps away from the concept of the conventional action story.

Hellboy: Web of Wyrd

There have been multiple Hellboy games in the past, but none of them have never quite grabbed Mike Mignola’s art style – the tech hasn’t been quite been there to pull off the look, and the graphics haven’t been able to hit the level of contrast and use of dark in Mignola’s work in a way that was playable. However, it feels like now we’re in a world where you can hit the levels of black that is in Mignola’s work in general and in Hellboy in particular. Now, the actual gameplay could still stink, but the style of this game excites me a lot.

Valiant Hearts: Coming Home

I feel like Peter Jackson’s work on They Will Not Grow Old, along with 1917, has done wonders to restoring interest in World War I, particularly in terms of personal narratives around the people caught in that horrific war. Ubisoft’s Valiant Hearts was a good game that was before its time in terms of crafting a narrative around The War Everyone Really Wished Ended All Wars. That said, there was also some legit criticism over the narrative potentially getting a little too… pulpy towards the end and losing track of what it was trying to do. This game may avoid that by being published on mobile.

Star Wars: Jedi – Survivor

Star Wars: Jedi – Survivor‘s trailer didn’t give away a lot of where the plot was going after the end of Fallen Order, but it did give something of a sense of some of the returning characters and the new antagonists – a Dark Jedi outside of the Inquisition, along with a group of alien bounty hunters. Also, I did get a bit of a sense that this game might stick to one planet, instead of the interplanetary galaxy-hopping that the first game had. In all, I really enjoyed Fallen Order’s mix of Star Wars, Metroid, and Dark Souls, and I’m really interested in seeing where Jedi – Survivor goes from there.

What games caught your interest in the various announcement and reveal trailers?

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