A good day to all you duders, and a hearty welcome to the sixth and penultimate part of My End of 2017 Awards. Every year I put together these awards as a tribute to the games I've played over the last twelve months, honouring the good and the bad with a series of novelty individual accolades before revealing my top ten. If you're new to these awards, if you've missed any of the previous instalments, or if you're joining us from the future and want to navigate the ceremony out of sequence, you can find links to every single part thus far in the table below:

As I said, today brings the last round of individual awards - my effort to recognise the unique aspects of every game I played this year, and the experiences that I had with them. These final seven gongs take us through my game-playing in November and December, right up to the present moment, beginning with:

Save Me Award for Most Saves In A Game With No Saving

Super Mario Bros.

I really enjoy playing Super Mario Bros. I’m also rather terrible at playing Super Mario Bros. Maybe it’s because I grew up playing Sonic games on Sega consoles, but I’ve never been able to commit the feel of Mario’s jump to muscle memory despite repeated attempts. This November I decided to mitigate my shortcomings by playing the Virtual Console release of Super Mario Bros. on 3DS and making liberal use of save states, allowing me to finally move beyond the first couple of worlds and see every one of its thirty-two levels on my quest to defeat Bowser and save the princess. Is that cheating? That’s a question I’ve since attempted to address in this blog post. Whatever your thoughts on the matter, there’s no doubt that it felt good to cross this gaming classic off my Pile of Shame.

Learn To Fly Award for Longest Tutorial

The Legend of Zelda: Skyward Sword

It’s weird to think that in all my time on Giant Bomb, I’ve beaten no fewer than six top-down Legend of Zelda games, but I hadn’t played a 3D game to completion until this year. Skyward Sword was my first 3D Zelda experience for over a decade, and overall it was one that I really enjoyed. It’s just kind of a shame that in order to get into the game proper, I had to force myself through no less than three hours of painfully slow tutorials. It doesn’t stop there either – from the exploration-killing beeline-generator that is dowsing, to the item descriptions that reset at the start of every play session, Skyward Sword is always eager to make sure the player never gets lost or confused within its world. As a series veteran, that’s a level of hand-holding I just don’t need.

You’re Crazy Award for Weirdest Game

Deadly Premonition

In all my years of playing video games, I don’t think I’ve ever experienced anything quite as weird as Deadly Premonition. It’s a baffling mix of mediocre third-person shooting and open-world social simulation, putting players in the shoes of Francis York Morgan and his imaginary friend Zach as they attempt to make sense of a series of grisly murders in small-town America. While the gameplay is clunky and the graphics incredibly sub-par, there’s no denying the game has a great deal of heart, with memorable characters and a story that goes to some really interesting places before it reaches its totally bat-shit conclusion. I didn’t always enjoy playing Deadly Premonition, but I always enjoyed experiencing it.

Shallow Award for Lack Of Depth

Battletoads Arcade

Battletoads has a reputation for being a fiendishly difficult side-scrolling brawler, but the arcade version included as part of the Rare Replay collection on Xbox One doesn’t do much to reinforce that. The combat lacks any depth or finesse, with every fight reduced to a button mashing exercise since all attacks are mapped to a single face button. There’s no penalty for death in this version either – since the home console lacks the same trappings as the arcade, Rare Replay essentially puts the game in ‘infinite credits’ mode, allowing you to respawn over and over again with no real penalty for death. I mashed my way through Battletoads Arcade in a little under two hours, and while I enjoyed the spectacle and art direction, I didn’t really feel like I’d accomplished anything by the end.

Alive Award for Most Near-Death Escapes

Uncharted: The Nathan Drake Collection

Is there any video game protagonist out there who’s cheated death more times than Nathan Drake? From abandoning a ship beset by pirates before it explodes at the start of Drake’s Fortune, through to escaping from an ancient city as it sinks into the desert sand at the end of Drake’s Deception, Nate narrowly avoids the Grim Reaper’s clutches so many times, and with such regularity, that it makes any modern disaster movie seem reasonable by comparison. My personal favourite examples are the rooftop and train sequences from Uncharted 2, while the most unbelievable near-death escape has to be his two days of aimless wandering in the desert with no water near the end of Uncharted 3. I look forward to steering Drake away from the jaws of oblivion once again in Uncharted 4: A Thief’s End next year.

Good Times, Bad Times Award for Best And Worst Licensed Soundtrack

Forza Horizon

Forza Horizon was an unexpected surprise through the last weeks of 2017 for me. It surprised me with its huge open world, it surprised me with its huge variety of engaging events and side distractions, and it surprised me with its soundtrack. As a rock fan, I kept my dial tunes to the Horizon Rocks station, and was thrilled to hear artists like White Lies, The Duke Spirit, The Black Keys, and two tracks from the incredible debut album by The Enemy. Less thrilling was the inclusion of two tracks by Welsh band Lostprophets, though, whose singer Ian Watkins was arrested and convicted of child sex offences in the months following the game’s release. I’m kind of surprised they weren’t scrubbed from the game in a subsequent patch, since they mar what is otherwise a pretty stellar list of modern driving rock songs.

You Better You Bet Award for Most Improved Sequel

Pokémon Ultra Sun

Pokémon Ultra Sun wasn’t marketed very well by Nintendo and The Pokémon Company. I, along with a lot of other players, were led to believe that it was a sequel to last year’s Pokémon Sun in the same vein as Pokémon Black 2 and White 2 from the fifth generation. It isn’t a sequel at all, but rather an enhanced and expanded retelling of Sun and Moon’s story in the style of Pokémon Yellow, Crystal, Emerald and Platinum. It addresses a lot of the problems I had with Sun, such as its slow start, its disappointing native Pokémon distribution, and its rushed narrative, delivering a game that’s better paced, more feature-packed, and perhaps most importantly, legitimately challenging in places. Ultra Sun is the game that we should have got last year, and a fitting swansong for the series on the Nintendo 3DS. It may not get it hooks into me quite as much as Pokémon Y did, but I’ll definitely be exploring its post-game content well into the new year.

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And with that, the individual awards section of My End of 2017 Awards comes to a close. It's been a lot of fun coming up with unique ways to honour the fifty games I spent time with this year, and hopefully these forty-two awards have given you all a good idea of how 2017 was for me in terms of what I played. All that remains is to reveal which of these games have elevated themselves above the others to earn a spot on my top ten list for the year, but I'm afraid you'll have to wait until tomorrow to find out. Until then, thanks very much for reading. Take care, and I'll see you around.

Daniel

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Currently playing - Pokémon Ultra Sun (3DS)