The 15th BAFTA Game Awards are almost upon us, and I can barely contain my excitement! To keep me from eating my own hands in anticipation, I’ve written a run-down of my favourite nominees in each category. Here’s who I’ll be cheering for on the night.
Last year for most of the categories I literally just sat chanting “Hellblade” at my TV. It was a good strategy: Hellblade was one of my favourite games of 2017 and, pleasingly, walked away with the most awards. Highly satisfying. I don’t have such a clear favourite this year, though I’d be happy to see Return of the Obra Dinn clean up the most: it’s my pick for three of the six categories it’s been nominated in, namely Artistic Achievement, Narrative, and Original Property. It’s a beautiful, unusual, mysterious game, and along with Florence and Celeste is this year’s main indie contender up against all those AAA offerings; I wish it godspeed and good luck.
Onto Best Game, and despite the fact that it’s now surprisingly playing second fiddle to God of War - though it’s hardly an underdog, with six nominations to GoW’s ten-nominations-but-only-in-seven-categories - I’m still backing Red Dead Redemption 2. A game so overhyped had no right to come out and meet everybody’s expectations in the way that it did; and dammit, for all my occasional scepticism around the dominance of the AAA market, it deserves some recognition for that.
For Audio Achievement, I’m backing Detroit: Become Human. This is mainly because I desperately wanted Bryan Dechart to win Best Performer, and he didn’t even get nominated; in fact the game as a whole has only been nominated twice, for Audio and Artistic Achievements. Since I’m already backing Return of the Obra Dinn for Artistic Achievement, Audio Achievement is my last best hope of seeing Detroit get some love. That and, well, voice acting is undeniably part of a game’s audio, so it’ll be sort of like Bryan Dechart is getting the recognition he deserves if Detroit wins this one.
Forza Horizon 4 was my pre-nominations pick for Best British Game, and I’m sticking with it for all the reasons I named before: showcasing not only the best of British game design in terms of studios located in Britain, but the best of Britain as a setting for a game as well.
I’m split on the Debut Game category between Donut County - a funny and cute one-man passion project from one of the devs on The Unfinished Swan - and Gris - a visually compelling, colourful platformer that has definite shades of Journey and… um… The Unfinished Swan. Basically, something channeling The Unfinished Swan, please!
Another category I’m undecided on is Mobile Game. I only played two new games on mobile devices in 2018; neither of them were nominated, and frankly I don’t think either of them deserved to be, so I’m somewhat at the mercy of prevailing opinion here. As mentioned above, I’d like to see Donut County receive some appreciation; but since it was released on PC and consoles too, I’m not sure how meaningful it is to celebrate this one’s qualities as a mobile game specifically. The Room: Old Sins is another contender I’d be happy to throw my lot in with: it’s a mobile-only release, which pleases the letter-of-the-law purist in me; plus I love me some room escape games, and The Room is generally a well-respected series in this genre.
When it comes to the Evolving Game category, I’m backing Fortnite. Even though I personally prefer a couple of the other nominees (namely Overwatch and Sea of Thieves), you can’t deny that Fortnite massively dominated the cultural conversation surrounding video games well into 2018, with only Red Dead Redemption 2 really touching it for overall watercooler/playground chatter coverage. I’m a firm believer that the BAFTAs should recognise that sort of achievement.
Super Mario Party was another game I highlighted pre-nomination, this time in the Family Game category. This ended up being a strong category, and I’m not just saying that because I called the nominees pretty accurately: with Pokémon Let’s Go and Overcooked 2 earning nominations, and LEGO also being represented (albeit by LEGO Disney Pixar’s The Incredibles rather than LEGO DC Super-Villains like I predicted, d’oh). Despite a very strong line-up, I still really like Super Mario Party for this one because of its focus on multiplayer and its board game inspired gameplay: I feel like these exemplify the family video game experience in terms of gaming as a social activity, rather than just being a kid-appropriate but otherwise fairly standard gaming experience.
The Games Beyond Entertainment category was introduced only last year, seemingly specifically designed to recognise what Hellblade brought to the table in terms of its sensitive and well-researched portrayal of mental illness. This year’s nominees have mostly followed that pattern, focusing overwhelmingly on themes of mental health struggles, the realities of war, the fragility of childhood innocence, or some combination of all three. There is one nominee that breaks this mold, and it’s Nintendo Labo, the toys-to-life peripheral for the Switch; but instead of selling tie-in action figures, the Labo is designed to teach kids the basics of physics, engineering, and computer programming. I’d love to see this one win, if only to demonstrate the versatility of the category a little bit; though if the judges choose to cement the standard for “Games Beyond Entertainment” as synonymous with “in-story explorations of serious themes”, I would like to see the much-celebrated Celeste win out.
Speaking of Nintendo Labo, I can’t think of a more appropriate game to win in the Game Innovation category. Nintendo literally marketed DIY cardboard cutout kits to the most tech-savvy young generation ever and made them love it, and gave them a leg-up in their STEM education along the way. However good last year’s crop of VR and card-based games were, not one was as unorthodox, as creative, or as surprisingly inventive as Labo.
In the Game Design category, I’ll confess to a strong fondness for Minit. It takes the concept of a time limit in gaming to the extreme, and yet in sixty-second bursts it manages to be a far more charming and rewarding narrative experience than many games that give you ten minutes or an hour to achieve a goal. It’s good game design plus a little extra something, a twist of the unique: exactly the sort of thing I always hope will triumph at the BAFTAs.
I know it was an unrealistic expectation, but nevertheless, if I had been given my druthers A Way Out would have been this year’s big winner across multiple categories. In the event, it’s only been nominated in one, but it’s a good one: Multiplayer. I have already on a number of occasions given chapter and verse on why I think A Way Out was such an excellent multiplayer experience, so I’ll keep this short and sweet: in a category that’s been absolutely dominated by MMOs and party games for years, a two-player story-driven adventure game like A Way Out managed to snag a nomination. That’s awesome. Now I’d love to see it win.
So many video games are accompanied by beautiful soundtracks - original scores and licensed songs both - that it can be difficult to keep count of them all. But not many manage to incorporate their Music (ooh, see what I did there?!) into the gameplay quite as integrally as Tetris Effect. It’s no surprise that the two categories this game is nominated under are Music and Audio Achievement: every rave review makes extensive mention of how beautiful and fittingly hypnotic the soundtrack is, and how it made what might have been just another take on Tetris stand out as a relaxing experience in a medium that’s often regarded as synonymous with pulse-pounding action (and controller-throwing frustration).
Finally, I still maintain that the shortlist for this year’s Best Performer award is hugely flawed. Four of the six nominees are from God of War, and while I’m sure that game had a stellar ensemble cast, I take issue with the fact that: (1) there were a ton of games in 2018 with great performances which didn’t get a look-in because of this decision, and (2) because they can’t all win, the two God of War actors who have been nominated for playing supporting characters are basically not really nominated at all. The little boy who played Atreus might just beat Kratos to the punch if the judges are feeling sentimental, but does anyone really believe that Baldur or Freya stand a chance of pipping the beloved title character to the win? Despite my reservations, I’m backing Christopher Judge for this one. This is mainly because I do actually think Kratos is badass; I promise it’s not just because I want to see Teal’c get a BAFTA.
So, do I think I've correctly called all the winners? Absolutely not, and probably for the best too - for one thing, you'll notice that my dream list of winners here has Red Dead Redemption 2 and God of War winning only one award each, which is laughably unlikely. My love of indie games shines through here, as does the fact that I recently, finally got a Switch, and so am absolutely in love with Nintendo right now.
But for me it's really more about the celebration than who comes away with the prizes. It's lovely to see a showcase of what came out last year, maybe get interested in a few games I'd missed or overlooked, and get a feeling for the general preferences within the industry. There will always be limits on how much can be covered, and some will miss out - whether deservedly or not (seriously, hard luck, Bryan Dechart and Yuri Lowenthal). Even putting my personal prejudices aside, some baffling decisions will doubtlessly be made too (did anyone, before or after last year's ceremony, have any idea what Golf Clash was and why it won Best Mobile Game? Maybe I'm being a tad harsh here but I seem to remember the general reaction to that one being a hearty "WTF?"). But it's the only award ceremony in any industry I will just sit and watch for the fun of it, and that's what I intend to do tomorrow evening.
