Latest news with #Metaphor:ReFantazio
Yahoo
20-03-2025
- Entertainment
- Yahoo
Game Developers Choice Awards 2025 Names ‘Balatro' Game Of The Year — Complete Winners List
LocalThunk's Balatro, developed by Playstack, was deemed a royal flush as it was crowned Game of the Year at the 25th Game Developers Choice Awards. Handed out on Wednesday at the Moscone Center in San Francisco, Balatro also snagged wins for Best Design, Best Debut and the Innovation Award. Other winners included Astro Bot, which won Best Audio and Best Technology. Final Fantasy VII Rebirth garnered a win for the Audience Award while the Best Narrative went to Metaphor: ReFantazio. Black Myth: Wukong and Astro Bot came into the ceremony with a leading seven nominations apiece. Baldur's Gate 3 dominated last year's GDC Awards, taking three awards, including Game of the Year. More from Deadline Game Awards Names 'Astro Bot' Game Of The Year - Complete Winners List The Game Award Nominations: 'Final Fantasy VII Rebirth' Slices Its Way To Leading Seven Nominations Harvey Fierstein Says He's "Banned" From Kennedy Center Amid Trump Takeover: "How Freedom Ends" This year's Game Developers Choice Awards honored indie developer Lucas Pope known for cult hit puzzle games Papers, Please and Return of the Obra Dinn, with the Pioneer Award. Another honoree also included Remedy Entertainment's creative director Sam Lake, fresh off of numerous industry wins for the critically praised Alan Wake II, with the Lifetime Achievement Award. Reflecting on his three decades in the industry, he offered advice to his fellow gaming peers and developers in training. 'It's important to find your team, your unique voice to stand out and go where your passion takes you. Trust your vision. Be patient with this, but stay true to it and keep pushing forward, but also always be a team player. Always listen to the good ideas from the talented people around you and find ways to incorporate those ideas in a way that compliments your ideas. Hide in as much art as you can get away with. This is your vital secret mission,' the Finnish director continued. 'Art is what makes you excited, what gives you joy and what makes you proud. Roll with the punches when you face an obstacle and you have to change your ideas, take it to mean you've been now given an opportunity to come up with something even cooler and better. I feel that we are easily laced with our initial ideas. Obstacles force us to be creative and something creative can come out of that and often does.' Here are the winners of the 2025 GDC Awards: Best Audio Astro Bot (Team ASOBI / Sony Interactive Entertainment) Honorable Mentions: Balatro (LocalThunk / Playstack), Lorelei and the Laser Eyes (Simogo / Annapurna Interactive), Metaphor: ReFantazio (ATLUS / SEGA / Studio Zero), Neva (Nomada Studio / Devolver Digital), Silent Hill 2 (Bloober Teams SA / KONAMI) Best Debut Balatro (LocalThunk / Playstack) Honorable Mentions: Manor Lords (Slavic Magic / Hooded Horse), Mullet Madjack (HAMMER95 / Epopeia Games), The Plucky Squire (All Possible Futures / Devolver Digital), Tiny Glade (Pounce Light) Best Design Balatro (LocalThunk / Playstack) Honorable Mentions: Final Fantasy VII Rebirth (Square Enix), Helldivers 2 (Arrowhead Game Studios / PlayStation Publishing LLC), Satisfactory (Coffee Stain Studios / Coffee Stain Publishing), The Legend of Zelda: Echoes of Wisdom (Grezzo, Nintendo Entertainment Planning & Development / Nintendo), UFO 50 (Mossmouth) Innovation Award Balatro (LocalThunk / Playstack) Honorable Mentions: Helldivers 2 (Arrowhead Game Studios / PlayStation Publishing LLC), Lorelei and the Laser Eyes (Simogo / Annapurna Interactive), Thank Goodness You're Here! (Coal Supper /Panic), The Plucky Squire (All Possible Futures / Devolver Digital), Tiny Glade (Pounce Light) Best Narrative Metaphor: ReFantazio (ATLUS / SEGA / Studio Zero) Honorable Mentions: Final Fantasy VII Rebirth (Square Enix), Frostpunk 2 (11 bit studios), Life is Strange: Double Exposure (Deck Nine Games / Square Enix), Neva (Nomada Studio / Devolver Digital), Senua's Saga: Hellblade II (Ninja Theory / Xbox Game Studios) Best Technology Astro Bot (Team ASOBI / Sony Interactive Entertainment) Honorable Mentions: Animal Well (Billy Basso/ Bigmode), Call of Duty: Black Ops 6 (Threyarch, Raven Software, Beenox, High Moon Studios, Activision Shanghai, Sledgehammer Games, Infinity Ward, Demonware /Activision), Dragon Age: The Veilguard (BioWare / Electronic Arts), Satisfactory (Coffee Stain Studios / Coffee Stain Publishing), Tekken 8 (Bandai Namco Studios Inc / Bandai Namco Entertainment) Best Visual Art Black Myth: Wukong (Game Science) Honorable Mentions: Balatro (LocalThunk / Playstack), Elden Ring Shadow of the Erdtree (FromSoftware Inc. / Bandai Namco Entertainment), Senua's Saga: Hellblade II (Ninja Theory / Xbox Game Studios), Tiny Glade (Pounce Light), Ultros (Hadoque / Kepler Interactive) Social Impact Life is Strange: Double Exposure (Deck Nine Games / Square Enix) Honorable Mentions: Closer the Distance (Osmotic Studios / Skybound Games), Distant Bloom (Ember Trail / Kina Brave), Dragon Age: The Veilguard (BioWare / Electronic Arts), Tales of Kenzera: Zau (Surgent Studios / Electronic Arts) Game of the Year Balatro (LocalThunk / Playstack) Honorable Mentions: Animal Well (Billy Basso / Bigmode), Helldivers 2 (Arrowhead Game Studios / PlayStation Publishing LLC), Like a Dragon: Infinite Wealth (Ryu Ga Gotoku Studio / SEGA), Satisfactory (Coffee Stain Studios / Coffee Stain Publishing), UFO 50 (Mossmouth) Best of Deadline 'The Last Of Us' Season 2 New Cast: Who Is Joining The Next Installment?
The Guardian
13-02-2025
- Entertainment
- The Guardian
Avowed review – Annihilation meets Oblivion in a vast, intricate fantasy
Every time I have to switch between fantasy realms I feel a little like the workers in Severance. Who am I again? What am I here to do? Who are all these people? It's been a golden time for fantasy lately and having inhaled Dragon's Dogma 2, Metaphor: ReFantazio, both seasons of House of the Dragon and all of Rebecca Yarros's Fourth Wing novels in less than a year, I'm starting to blur the finer details of one kingdom with another. Avowed's fantasy universe comes ready-made, from developer Obsidian's other Pillars of Eternity games. The lore is dense, the in-game text plentiful and characters verbose, but thankfully The Lands Between is fascinating to look at and the realm of Eora full of political tension and cool monsters. I remember precious few names or historical details, but I will remember several of my experiences in this game – the view from the rickety path hugging the walls of an underground cavern big enough for a mad priest to have built as gigantic automaton inside, and the skin-crawling secret I discovered in the basement of a companion's family home. The look is Annihilation-meets-Oblivion, with fungal and floral detail embroidering the structures and peoples you encounter, and and ever-present tension between the organic and the corruptive. The Lands Between is being ravaged by a disturbing plague that sends people mad, before they are consumed by mushroom-like growths. You, an envoy from a distant centre of empire, have been sent to investigate. You are a godlike, touched by the immortals, and you are guided through this strange place by a divine voice in your head and a range of native companions, whose chatter I found genuinely edifying. There's a lot of choice and self-direction in Avowed, and it's a game that always respects your intelligence. Characters are interestingly (if densely) written and there are plenty of ways to respond to them. It's a lot less patronising than the cringeworthily Whedon-esque good guy/bad guy/joker responses that other games force out of you. I expected a brisk 20-hour adventure in the vein of Obsidian's sci-fi comedy The Outer Worlds, but reader, this is not that. This game is immense. I took my time in the opening area of Dawnshore, having a fine old time probing into spider-webbed caverns (there are lots of those, this is not a game for the arachnophobic) and combing through ornate, abandoned ruins and climbing lighthouses looking for loot. (This was partly because I stalled on the main quest, having forgotten a vital piece of information that popped up once in a text tutorial for about five seconds.) Only after 15 hours in this pleasant coastal land did I meet one of the central antagonists, an impressively frightening warlord in intricate armour and a mask with smouldering eyes. I then found myself in a dense and rotting jungle-swamp full of surprisingly cheerful necromancers, and it was even bigger than Dawnshore. When I arrived at a third new location after around 30 hours I realised that I very much did not have the measure of this world at all. Unfortunately Avowed would be better if it were 20 hours long. I always had fun striking out from town and getting lost, coming across interesting things to do exactly as you would in Skyrim or Fallout. But there are two sticky problems that suck the fun out of it over time. The first is common to a lot of open-world games: when you arrive in a new place, all the quests and fights are a little too hard. After a few hours' questing, exploring and upgrading your weapons and armour, it hits a brief sweet spot where everything feels challenging but conquerable. Then you empower yourself to such an extent everything gets too easy, and it starts to feel like a box-ticking exercise. This pattern repeated itself over my time with the game, eroding my patience. The second issue is that Avowed's combat just isn't as fun as it thinks it is, and there's so much of it. There are an impressive number of weapons and techniques available to you – grimoires and wands for spells, giant two-handed axes, bows and pistols, maces and shields. No matter what you choose, though, it feels imprecise and tedious, and your chances of success are determined by invisible numbers rather than skill. Try to take on enemies above your level and it will barely matter how well you dodge out of the path of a greatsword or how cleverly you combine your magic effects to freeze and shatter undead skeletons. What matters is the quality of your gear, which must be continually and laboriously upgraded with a warehouse's worth of random materials that you find in every chest and lockbox. I got very sick of smashing R2 to fire magic projectiles or hack away at tree-monsters with my sword, chipping away determinedly at their hit points. My companions never felt especially helpful in battles, either. All the variety and texture that can be found in the fiction here is lacking in the combat and the loot. There are unique swords and trinkets at the ends of the most interesting quests, but the fun of exploring is tempered by the realisation that outside of the views and the characters, you'll rarely find anything that interesting. If you come across a powerful enemy, you may well be underpowered for the fight. If you find a tantalising glowing chest in a cavern, there's a strong chance it'll be full of pennies, chunks of iron and a few pelts. Avowed started out as Obsidian's answer to Bethesda's Elder Scrolls series, and it did remind me a lot of Oblivion and Skyrim in the exciting moments where I stumbled across something unexpected in the wilds. But it also shares those games' tendency towards repetition, and the weightless feel of their fighting. My first 15 or so hours in The Lands Between felt rich with potential, but I got fed up with it long before the end. Sign up to Pushing Buttons Keza MacDonald's weekly look at the world of gaming after newsletter promotion Avowed is released on 18 February; £59.99
The Guardian
12-02-2025
- Entertainment
- The Guardian
Top of the flops: just what does the games industry deem ‘success' any more?
Back in 2013, having bought the series from Eidos, Square Enix released a reboot of the hit 1990s action game Tomb Raider starring a significantly less objectified Lara Croft. I loved that game, despite a quasi-assault scene near the beginning that I would later come to view as a bit icky, and I wasn't the only one – it was extremely well received, selling 3.4m copies in its first month alone. Then Square Enix came out and called it a disappointment. Sales did not meet the publisher's expectations, apparently, which raises the question: what were the expectations? Was it supposed to sell 5m in one month? If a book sells 10,000 copies in a week it's considered a bestseller. Even at the height of its popularity in the 90s, no Tomb Raider game ever sold more than a few million. Square Enix's expectations were clearly unrealistic. It wouldn't be the last time; in a 2016 interview with Hajime Tabata, Final Fantasy XV's director, he told me that game needed to sell 10m to succeed. Last week in an earnings call, EA's executives had to explain a shortfall in profits. It was driven mostly by EA FC, the ubiquitous football series whose revenue was down on the previous year, but CEO Andrew Wilson also singled out the long-awaited RPG Dragon Age: The Veilguard, which came out last October. 'Dragon Age had a high-quality launch and was well reviewed by critics and those who played. However, it did not resonate with a broad enough audience in this highly competitive market,' he said. Dragon Age has 'reached 1.5 million players' in the months since launch, which presumably includes people paying via subscription services as well as direct sales. If 3.4m was a disappointment for Square Enix in 2013, you can only imagine that 1.5m was a disaster for EA in 2024, when games cost multiples more to make. However, as Polygon's Maddy Myers points out in a detailed analysis of comparable games, 1.5m is more than Metaphor: ReFantazio (1m), and not much less than the second part of the Final Fantasy VII remake (2m) over comparable time periods. Dragon's Dogma, the genre's breakout hit last year, sold 3.3m over six months. In those terms, Dragon Age was certainly not a flop. I can only come to the same conclusion as Myers: EA's expectations were unrealistic. The company was expecting an instant mega-hit from a game in a series that had sat dormant for 10 years. The Veilguard had been rebooted and reworked several times over a tortuous development period, during which time BioWare struggled enormously. Having previously made standard-setting role-playing games in Mass Effect, Dragon Age and Star Wars: The Old Republic, its only releases since 2014 were Mass Effect: Andromeda (disappointing) and mech shooter Anthem (broken). Meanwhile, a different developer had an enormous hit with a series that BioWare itself established: Baldur's Gate, which sold 15m. The developers at BioWare have suffered the fallout from this. The studio is now down to a relatively bare bones staff of 100, and it seems EA will not be giving it the chance to build on what it achieved with The Veilguard. It's a miracle that game exists at all. I've written a lot in this newsletter about the ridiculously high stakes of modern video game development; it's clear that a more sustainable path needs to be forged. But in 2025 as in 2013, short-termism and unrealistic expectations on a corporate level stand in the way. That Tomb Raider reboot ended up selling more than 14m over time, more than any other game in the series. First-quarter sales cannot be used as the first and final measure of a game's success. Nintendo's principle of selling the same games for literally decades has meant that plenty of mid-selling titles have become million-sellers over time. There was also a point in EA's history – indeed in most publishers' history – where the portfolio was more important than each individual game's profitability. The likes of EA FC and Call of Duty were the bankable successes that could fund the rest of the slate, allowing those publishers to make room for the next surprise success. Not every game released in a year by a given company was expected to be a mega-hit. As long as the overall slate was profitable, there was space for the critically acclaimed or fan-pleasing games that didn't break out of their niche. The space for those games now appears to be confined to independent developers and the smaller publishers that overtly support them. Mike Laidlaw, the director of the first three Dragon Age games, left BioWare in 2017 and formed a new studio in 2020; its first game, Eternal Strands, came out last month and is picking up great word-of-mouth buzz. By all accounts it's a banger – and its team haven't had to labour under the expectation of instant success. While Waiting came out a few days ago, an unusual game that feels like a playable version of those slice-of-life newspaper cartoons. You play through the life of an incredibly regular guy, from birth through waiting for exam results through all the banal moments of his existence at the doctor's surgery, crossing the road, waiting for new software updates to finally finish their endless install cycles. You can do absolutely nothing, or mess around in each scene to amuse yourself. It's an interactive version of the adage that life is what happens when you're busy making other plans, a small celebration of embracing the mundane. Available on: PC, Nintendo Switch Estimated playtime: 5 hours Sign up to Pushing Buttons Keza MacDonald's weekly look at the world of gaming after newsletter promotion PlayStation Network went down for almost a whole day at the weekend, prompting an tsunami of complaints from disappointed gamers looking forward to their weekend multiplayer sessions. Sony called it an 'operational issue' and apologised by giving PlayStation Plus subscribers five extra days of play. A Bloomberg report (£) digs into the absolute state of things at Warner Bros' game division, whose CEO recently departed after a string of underperforming titles, culminating in last year's Suicide Squad. Even ongoing sales of mega-hit Hogwarts Legacy couldn't save it from a $300m loss last year. Two pieces of consumer-rights-related news: Steam has quietly added warning labels to early access games that have been 'abandoned' by their developers (ie, they've had no updates for many months); and the UK government has responded to a petition urging it to prohibit game developers from shutting down their live games, thus rendering them unplayable. Wait! The Sims is a lot bleaker than I remember Football Manager 25 video game cancelled after series of delays Loads of you recommended your favourite video game stories for last week's questioner, Natalie. There are so many banger recommendations that I've been shouting 'YES!' at my inbox all week. Thanks to Lawal, Emma, Jude, Toby and Phill for these picks: The Forgotten City (branching narrative indie mystery game), Mass Effect 2 (perilous science-fiction), 80 Days (globetrotting illustrated text adventure), Her Story (wonderfully clever detective game), Kathy Rain: A Detective is Born (well acted 90s-style point-and-click adventure), We Happy Few (dodgy gameplay but characters that really stay in your head), Warhammer 40K: Rogue Trader (nails its worldbuilding), Xenogears (a weird and iconic classic), Breath of Fire III (poignant retro RPG), Red Dead Redemption II (long-winded but peerless western), Eliza (sparsely written and well acted), The Witcher trilogy (grimy dark fantasy, 3 is my fave), Half-Life and its sequel (the ultimate first-person story), What Remains of Edith Finch (anthology style magical realist tragedy), and Everybody's Gone to the Rapture (uneasy pastoral English supernatural mystery). I'll tackle a fresh question next week. If you've one to send in – or anything else to say about the newsletter – hit reply or email us on pushingbuttons@
