Best Game - Guacamelee! Gold Edition
1st Runner Up - Mass Effect
2nd Runner Up - Sam and Max Season Three: The Devil's Playhouse
Yes, Guacamelee gets the edge over Mass Effect because nothing in Mass Effect got me as giddy as finally getting that orb in the tree area. And Sam and Max is just a good, well-rounded comedy that got bogged down a bit by a sea of tools that obscured each other.
Worst Game - Lunar 2: Eternal Blue
1st Runner Up - Garfield: Caught in the Act
2nd Runner Up - 140
I might be being a bit hard on 140, but when a game leaves me with a killer headache after just an hour of play I'm not inclined to be nice to it. Lunar 2 and Garfield are vapid tech demos that can go fuck themselves.
Prettiest Game - Guacamelee! Gold Edition
1st Runner Up - Lilly Looking Through
2nd Runner Up - Brothers: A Tale of Two Sons
Because let's praise something besides Adventures of Lomax.
Biggest Headache - 140
1st Runner Up - Gone Home
I blame 140's psychedelic graphics, but I don't know what it was about Gone Home that gave me a migraine halfway through.
Best Soundtrack - Escape Goat
1st Runner Up - Shovel Knight
Sadly, not very many notable soundtracks this year, and nothing impressed me as much as Super Meat Boy and Binding of Isaac last year.
Most Pleasant Surprise (Games) - Scribblenauts Unlimited
1st Runner Up - Octodad: Dadliest Catch
2nd Runner Up - Brothers: A Tale of Two Sons
As with Haze last year, I have to put a disclaimer on Brothers since "pleased" isn't how I'd descibe how I felt when the game was done. Still, it was nice for an "Oscar Bait" game to make me feel more than cynicism and loathing for once.
Biggest Disappointment (Games) - Ys V: Kefin, Lost Kingdom of Sand
1st Runner Up - Evoland
Two mediocre RPGs, but Ys V was particularly disappointing. I admit I don't remember much about Ys IV, but I know it was not as stupidly easy as V, and the whole "Black Pearl gets broken three times for some reason" thing has nothing on the clusterfuck that's Ys V's story.
Most Satisfying to Finally Finish After Tormenting Me For Years - Mass Effect
Normally this is for games I started ages ago and never finished, but since I didn't have any such games this year I'm giving it to something that'd still been gnawing at me for years.
Funniest Game - Sam and Max Season Three: The Devil's Playhouse
1st Runner Up - Guacamelee!
2nd Runner Up - Shovel Knight
Regarding Octodad and Thomas Was Alone, they were both cute and colorful, but I wouldn't call the writing in either of them "funny", exactly.
Best Title - Guacamelee!
Again, not enough replays to merit handing out awards. So let's also award Guacamelee for having a name that I just love the sound of.
Game That I Put A Decent Amount of Effort Into, But Never Got Around to Finishing of the Year - Pokemon White
I actually did finish this in early January 2015 so I'll hold off on really bagging it out for that batch of quickies. Although it's certainly a relief to finally get it out of my side, it's still the most painful Pokemon game I've ever played, and the most fun I had was finding out "POOPBUTT" passes the nickname censor.
I did not have a "Fuck this game" moment in 2014, but Pokemon White came really close... again.
Best Movie - The LEGO Movie
1st Runner Up - Short Circuit
2nd Runner Up - Pacific Rim
So there's been a lot of complaining about The LEGO Movie not being nominated for Best Animated Film of 2014. It makes sense to me since the movie's a criticism of Hollywood and the MPAA being stupid with copyright laws.
Worst Movie - Sharknado
1st Runner Up - Fire With Fire
2nd Runner Up - Prometheus
Am I the only person who just found Sharknado to be really tedious rather than hilariously bad? Since I watched it RiffTrax has gone to town on it, so maybe once it becomes available on the site there'll be a chance to get something out of it.
Best Book - Mogworld
1st Runner Up - A Wrinkle in Time
2nd Runner Up - Interesting Times
I know it's an audiobook, but since I only listened to three of them I figured I'd lump them in with the print books. I guess Mogworld doesn't have as important a message as Wrinkle in Time's "Being hiveminded is evil", but it stuck with me better and I didn't find any of the characters as obnoxious as the kid brother. And of course, Interesting Times has a Lemmings reference, how could I say no to it?
Worst Book - The Strange Case of Origami Yoda
1st Runner Up - There's An Owl in the Shower
2nd Runner Up - Collinsfort Village
To be fair, Collinsfort Village wasn't bad, just massively underwhelming for a book about a fiction-writing griffin and an artist dragon. Conversely, There's An Owl in the Shower is both poorly written and kind of hypocritical, and Origami Yoda left me wanting all characters to get Force choked by Darth Vader.
Best RiffTrax - Super Mario Bros.
1st Runner Up - Supersonic Man
2nd Runner Up - The Avengers
The only thing that filled me with more glee than seeing Super Mario Bros. available at RiffTrax was....
Most Pleasant Surprise (Everything Else) - Finding out there was an episode of Game Center CX for Blaster Master/Meta Fight
1st Runner Up - Seeing Super Mario Bros. on RiffTrax
2nd Runner Up - The LEGO Movie
(Yes, I know this episode isn't on the DVD pictured, but I didn't take a screencap when I was watching the episode and it's since been taken down and I needed SOME picture to break up the monotony, so shut up)
I love me some Blaster Master and some Retro Game Challenge, so just try to imagine my ecstasy when I found out there was an episode of Game Center CX where Arino played Meta Fight. Now imagine me when I fired it up and learned...
Biggest Disappointment (Everything Else) - Watching Arino fail miserably at Blaster Master/Meta Fight
1st Runner Up - Cheez Waffies
2nd Runner Up - Collinsfort Village
... how painful it is to watch somebody who doesn't know about grenades and strafing play Blaster Master and being powerless to tell them. And while he eventually found out about those things, I'm pretty sure he never figured out how to fire the tank's subweapons. But mostly I was in awe at how long it took him to beat the Area 3 boss. Then after failing a bunch of times, one of his assistants gives him the hint to "dodge the lasers." Better hint: Pick a clone, keep grenading it even while it's dormant, and you'll wipe it out as soon as it wakes up.
And if you happen to follow me on Twitter, you might be aware of my recently-founded hatred for Cheez Waffies. I bought a bag thinking the idea of a Ritz Bitz-type thing made with two pieces of waffle cone was interesting, and wound up with one of the nastiest snacks I've ever put in my mouth. There's always a full stock of them at the school bookstore. I wonder why.
Wow, I did not watch a single TV DVD set this year. I'll have to remedy that in 2015. This is also the first year I did not award anything 0 Skitties. Maybe suffering through That-Game-Which-Must-Not-Be-Named made me more tolerant of other games' shit, as if my brain stops to think "Yeah, this sucks, but is it as bad as that game?"
This year the two biggest things to hit the site are a revamp (which I intend to still tweak and polish) and a large writeup on the Hulk. I also finally caved in and started fucking around with Twitter, and met some nice chaps on there (shoutouts to JunkyBiggs, Freelancer Josiah, and Gamer Logic). I keep vowing to clean up Lemmings Forever and started on it by redoing the Music page and playing through Adventures of Lomax, then it got kicked in the head by my own laziness.
I also got a couple more Cracked articles, and one of them made it to #1 on the "Viral on Cracked" list for its week. I also finally got an Elgato and my own digital camera, so I can flood my Twitter account with pictures of my cats!
My New Year's Resolution for 2015 has been to play/read/watch more games/books/movies than I actually buy, and as of writing this I'm making good on it. Maybe I'll also finally make good on some of the other stuff I've been planning for the place, including a video I've been sitting on since 2010. See you next year!