G'day mates, and welcome to the third part of My End of 2017 Awards, my personal answer to the Game of the Year-oriented questions that Giant Bomb and other gaming communities find themselves asking at this time of year. If you're just joining us and missed the previous two parts of these awards, or you're joining this party after the fact and want to peruse any other part of this monstrous ceremony, then I'll be updating the table below with links to every section as it progresses:

Today we bring the individual awards portion of this little celebration towards its halfway point, with seven more accolades that recognise the specific merits of all the games I've played over the last twelve months. We'll kick things off with the appropriately named:

If You Want Blood (You’ve Got It) Award for Most Gratuitous Use Of Violence And Gore

DOOM

When a significant portion of a game’s marketing is centred on the phrase “rip and tear”, you’d be a fool to go into the experience expecting a minimal amount of bloodshed. 2016’s DOOM is one of the most hyper-violent games I’ve ever played, but that violence is a core part of what makes it so memorable and engaging. The stellar gunplay is supported by a fantastic ‘Glory Kill’ melee mechanic, maintaining the flow of the action while giving the player a front-row seat to some shockingly visceral context-sensitive fatalities. That applies to the player’s own deaths too, each one accompanied by the kinds of bloody dismemberment animations that I last remember witnessing in Dead Space. It’s so over-the-top and almost cartoonish in its execution that it’s impossible not to get caught up in it all. Rip and tear indeed.

Wasted Time Award for Squandered Potential

Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater HD

I’m not sure what possessed me to spend a week of my summer playing Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater HD on my Xbox 360. Probably blind nostalgia. In a year when games like Yooka-Laylee and Crash Bandicoot N. Sane Trilogy got the whole “paying tribute to the games of yesteryear” thing so right, THPS HD stands as a shining example of how to get it totally wrong. The wonky physics model punishes any attempt to rely on muscle memory built up from its inspiration, resulting in frequent bails and making the whole thing feel uncomfortable to play. What should have been a fun time revisiting some classic THPS levels turned into an exercise in frustration and boredom. I’ll definitely be steering well clear of Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater 5.

Bigger Cages (Longer Chains) Award for Best Console Port Of A Handheld Game

God of War: Chains of Olympus

I used to own Chains of Olympus on PSP, but this year marked my first time playing it on a home console as part of the God of War: Origins Collection on PlayStation 3. For the most part its conversion to the big screen is a successful one, with the greater number of available inputs on the PS3 controller providing some much-needed control fidelity (roll being back where it belongs on the right stick was a Zeus-send). Its low-resolution textures still betray its origins as a portable game, but the core gameplay and the series’ trademark sense of scale ensure that it holds its own against its PS2 counterparts, undoubtedly making this the definitive version of Chains of Olympus.

How Animal Are You? Award for Most Anthropomorphism

Breath of Fire

Looking back on Breath of Fire, there wasn’t really anything remarkable about it that made it stand out. The turn-based combat was enjoyable but pretty basic, the overworld was big but a pain to navigate due to the lack of a decent map, and the story was interesting but tough to follow due to the iffy translation. What I remember most was how varied the playable characters were, and how almost every single one was half-animal, ranging from dragons (Ryu) and birds (Nina) to wolves (Bo), snakes (Bleu) and moles (Mogu). This wasn’t purely aesthetic either, as each character had unique abilities that often played into traversing the overworld or solving dungeon puzzles. I’m hoping Breath of Fire II does something similar, as I plan to play through it in 2018.

Still And Always Will Award for Awakening Latent Muscle Memory

Spyro the Dragon

One of the most incredible and baffling things about video games as a medium is how they can tap into physical manifestations of nostalgia as well as emotional ones. I picked the original Spyro the Dragon back up on a whim after watching one of my friends attempting to Let’s Play it on YouTube, and was surprised by how much of the experience came flooding back to me. And not just the mental side of things, like remembering where to find hidden collectibles, but the physical side as well – nailing the timing on difficult supercharge jumps in Tree Tops first time and flawlessly navigating the obstacles in Gnorc Cove being just two examples. I was able to blitz through the whole game in around five hours across just two sittings, a surefire sign that the game has stayed with me in more ways than one.

Hero Management Award for Best Superhero Game

inFamous

2017 was a year in which I got around to playing quite a few recommendations from both friends and the wider gaming community. inFamous was one of the former, a game that my buddy Tom has been telling me to play more or less ever since I bought my PlayStation 3 back in 2013. It’s a really solid open-world action game that does a great job of making the player feel like a superhero thanks to the wide array of powers at protagonist Cole’s disposal. I also appreciated the morality system, which brought to mind the subversive superhero movie Hancock, although I did find it a little restrictive since it actively encourages you to go all-in on the good or bad end of the spectrum for the sake of maximising your potential for growth. It’s a game that hasn’t aged brilliantly visually, but I had a lot of fun playing it, and I look forward to checking out its more polished sequel in the near future.

Sittin’ On My Sofa Award for Best Couch Co-operative Experience

Telltale’s The Walking Dead (Seasons One and Two, Michonne and A New Frontier)

I know what you're probably thinking - it's hardly Super Smash Bros. - but just hear me out. My girlfriend Alice doesn’t play video games, but she does like watching The Walking Dead on TV, so I suspected that she might be on board to check out Telltale’s critically acclaimed video game adaptation. Over the last year we’ve played through every single morsel of TWD content that Telltale have put out, starting with the original series and working our way through Season Two, the Michonne mini-series, and most recently A New Frontier. I’m on controller duty, but it’s Alice who calls the shots when it comes to dialogue choices. It’s been a fantastic way to share some quality time together, and we’re both stoked for the impending start of the fourth and final season, announced this year and scheduled for a mid-2018 release.

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We're halfway there guys. Twenty-one awards have been distributed, and twenty-one more remain. Join me again tomorrow when I'll be handing out seven more gongs to the games that made my 2017, including individual awards for the hottest mess I played this year, and the game I really should have played sooner. Until then, thanks very much to all of you for reading. Take care, and I'll see you around.

Daniel

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Currently playing - Pokémon Ultra Sun (3DS)