Hey folks, Dan Kempster here, bringing you the third part of My End of 2015 Awards, my own take on the Game of the Year proceedings currently underway here on Giant Bomb. If you're not aware of the specifics of these awards, or you've missed any of the last sixteen individual acknowledgements, you can find Part One here and Part Two here. Today we reach the midway point of the ceremony, and give out another set of gongs to eight more of the games I played this year, starting with...

'Shape of Things to Come' Award for Best Tech Demo

Metal Gear Solid V: Ground Zeroes

I revisited Ground Zeroes just before the release of The Phantom Pain, mainly to re-familiarise myself with the new gameplay mechanics and feel of the controls so I'd have an easier time getting started with Big Boss' latest mission. Playing through the Ground Zeroes mission on Hard difficulty in a single sitting was a great refresher in that respect, but it also highlighted what an impressive technical feat the Fox engine is. The lighting, the animation, the enemies' behavioural AI – everything within Ground Zeroes' self-contained ecosystem is phenomenally advanced, light-years ahead of anything that Metal Gear Solid 4 achieved seven years ago. As someone who played both Ground Zeroes and The Phantom Pain on last-generation hardware, to see such a huge leap within the lifespan of a single console almost defied belief. Ground Zeroes is a captivating vertical slice of the gameplay, engine and systems that appear in The Phantom Pain, and a stunning reminder of what the PS3 and Xbox 360 are still capable of.

'The Hardest Button to Button' Award for Innovative Implementation of Controls

Brothers: A Tale of Two Sons

I don't talk about it much, but I'm a big champion of games that do something out of the ordinary with their control scheme. In this modern world of homogeneously controlling shooters where all the same functions are mapped to the same buttons, it's sometimes refreshing to see a game go against the grain and try something new. This is part of the reason why I loved Brothers so much, because it attempts something novel by mapping each brother to an opposite side of the controller. It's a simple conceit that establishes a sense of co-operative teamwork within a single-player game. It worked well for the most part too, only causing problems when the brothers ended up on the opposite side of the screen to their side of the control pad and my capacity for lateral thinking couldn't keep up. Without a doubt the best moment associated with this unique control scheme comes near the end of the game, when the player effectively controls the spirit of the dead older brother in order to encourage the living younger brother to keep going. It's a poignant moment that drives home a touching message through mechanics alone, and that's why it will stay with me more than any other moment from Brothers.

'Old Train' Award for Best On-Rails Experience

Pokémon Snap

I don't play a lot of 'on-rails' games. I find the lack of avatar agency restricting, and quickly tire of the typically limited options they present to the player (shoot, duck, reload and shoot some more being the standard repertoire). Going into Pokémon Snap, I knew this was going to be a very different on-rails experience, if for no other reason than the fact you're equipped with a camera rather than a gun. What I wasn't expecting was how Pokémon Snap subverts the perceived handicap of its on-rails premise, encouraging the player to use their limited agency to solve puzzles within its environments, thereby facilitating better photo opportunities and more points from Professor Oak. It's a little thing that goes a long way, nurturing an exploratory approach within the player rather than simply asking them to point and shoot. I ended up enjoying Pokémon Snap a lot more than I was expecting it to, and found myself longing to see its design philosophies applied to a potential sequel somewhere down the line.

'Halo/Halo/Halo/Halo' Award for Being More Halo

Halo 4

When I gave Halo 3 a similarly-named award for an identical accolade back in 2012, I stressed that it wasn't intended in a derogatory or condescending manner. The same is true for Halo 4 this year, but it's not an overtly positive proclamation either. I think a big part of that comes from the different expectations associated with each game. Halo 3 was the concluding chapter in an established trilogy, and as such there were preconceived notions of what that game would be – notions that it ultimately delivered on, at least in my opinion. Halo 4 may well be part of the same franchise, but it's also the beginning of a whole new story arc, with a new developer at the helm. That's why I went into it expecting something a little different, and why I was slightly disappointed when it failed to deliver on that front. Yes, the shooting still feels great, the enemy AI still puts up a challenging fight, and solving each 'combat puzzle' is still damn rewarding. But by sticking to those established conventions, Halo 4 comes off as a little too safe. Even the new Promethean enemies and weapons feel like re-skins of existing archetypes rather than bona fide new additions to the Halo universe. Halo 4 looks, plays and feels like a Halo game, and that's about all I can say of it. No more, no less. And for the first time in my history with the franchise, that's not a wholly good thing.

'Falling to Pieces' Award for Most Gravity-Induced Deaths

And Yet It Moves

Out of all the games I played this year, And Yet It Moves stands out as one of the very few that I downright didn't enjoy. While that's partly due to its annoying ambient soundtrack and one-note mechanics, my lasting memory of the few hours I spent with the game is of countless unwarranted deaths due to the seemingly arbitrary behaviour of its physics model. Sometimes the hand-drawn avatar will land unscathed from what seems like a great height, while at others an apparently minor drop will be enough to dash him to pieces on the sketchbook ground below. Matters aren't helped by the bizarre way And Yet It Moves handles momentum, which shifts with the orientation of the world rather than remaining constant relative to the position of the player character. Oh, and to top it all off, while the world is in rotation, the player character freezes while the environment and all its moving pieces and temporary platforms continue to animate. All this makes some of the game's more acrobatic feats of platforming almost impossible to judge, and in turn results in even more frustrating deaths at the bottom of an unexpectedly lengthy descent.

'Going Mobile' Award for Best Game Played on a Cellphone

Lara Croft Go

I don't do much gaming on my mobile phone. Partly because it's a Windows Phone and there's very little worth playing on the app store, and partly because I'm not a big fan of endless runners or match-three puzzle games. But when my entire collection of video games was held hostage by a rogue spider back in the middle of October, I found myself turning to my mobile in the hopes of scratching my gaming itch. The much needed salve came in the form of Lara Croft Go, a game that caught my attention due to Giant Bomb's then-recent Quick Look and my interrupted progress through Lara Croft and the Guardian of Light. What was supposed to be a temporary distraction ended up being a really fun experience in its own right, its devious turn-based puzzles taxing my brain just enough to keep me stimulated until I could reclaim my gaming corner from the arachnid menace.

'Happy Alone' Award for Best Single-Player Experience in a Co-Operative Game

Lara Croft and the Guardian of Light

When Crystal Dynamics released Lara Croft and the Guardian of Light back in 2010, I remember being surprised that they were reluctant to put the Tomb Raider name on it. Now, having played it some five years after the fact, I can understand why they made that decision. I associate the Tomb Raider series with a foreboding sense of solitude and isolation that Guardian of Light just doesn't have. Instead, it embraces the novel concept of co-operative tomb raiding, encouraging players to work together to overcome its many devious traps while at the same time pitting them against one another with a smorgasbord of challenges to complete, high scores to beat and online leaderboards to climb. I feel like I missed out on some of what Guardian of Light has to offer by playing it alone, because although it's still a perfectly serviceable single-player experience, I didn't get caught up in that thrill of solving puzzles together while simultaneously competing for that new high score. If I ever pick up Lara Croft and the Temple of Osiris on PS4, I'll make sure to seek out a friend or two to play it with.

'Decapitation Blues' Award for Best Video Game With Zombies In It

The Walking Dead: Season Two

I feel very conflicted about the second season of Telltale's The Walking Dead. It has some truly great moments scattered throughout its five-episode run, and the very best of those moments might even be better than anything that happened in Season One. Clementine is a brilliantly characterised protagonist, ostensibly still a child but forced to grow up far too soon in the horrific circumstances around her. But for every great thing I say about TWD2, there's something not-so-great that holds it back. Its supporting cast isn't as strong as the first season's, and feels far too expendable, with many of them becoming zombie-fodder before the player gets a proper chance to empathise with them. The season's overarching story peaks in the third episode and has nowhere to go from there but down, although it recovers spectacularly at the very end. The first season of The Walking Dead was the epitome of bottled lightning, and while Telltale have tried valiantly to match it, that was always going to be a big ask, and TWD2 was inevitably going to fall short. The one thing I can say with absolute certainty is that there are zombies in this game. Lots and lots of zombies. Nobody's going to argue with me about that.

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Twenty-four individual awards have now been presented, leaving just eight more to hand out in tomorrow's fourth part of My End of 2015 Awards. I hope you'll join me to find out what those awards are, and which games they'll be awarded to. Until then, thanks very much for reading guys. Take care, and I'll see you around.

Dan

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Currently playing – Pokémon Omega Ruby (3DS)