Welcome one and all to the second 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 missed the first part 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:

Yesterday we opened the festive gong-giving with the first seven individual awards, my all-encompassing take on the more specific categories employed by others which ensures that every game I played over the course of the year is given at least a little recognition. Today brings another seven of these mini-celebrations, including my first multi-game award honouring multiple games from the same franchise with a single accolade. Let's begin with...

Beautifully Broken Award for Best Damage Modelling

Burnout Paradise

Racing games have arguably gotten closer to true photo-realism this generation than any other genre, but one area in which they’re sorely lacking is believable damage modelling. High speed collisions in games like Forza and Gran Turismo often leave cars with little more than scratched paintwork and the occasional loose bumper, presumably due to stipulations in the many licences they have no negotiate to get real-world cars into their games. Burnout Paradise hasn’t been beaten since it set the gold standard for crumpled cars nearly a decade ago, and even now it remains oddly satisfying to watch its non-licensed vehicles reduce to useless chunks of twisted metal, wheels escaping from their arches in super-slow motion. These beautiful disasters make Paradise City one of the few places in video games where failure can feel almost as rewarding as success.

This Is Why We Fight Award for Most Epic Combat Encounters

Horizon Zero Dawn

There were a lot of aspects of Horizon Zero Dawn that I could have honoured in these individual awards – its peerless visuals, its gripping story, and its original setting were all strong contenders. But ultimately, what has stuck with me more than anything else are the epic fights I had with the game’s larger robots. Playing on the hardest difficulty made every encounter incredibly intense, and forced me to use every tool and technique at my disposal to level the playing field. Developing strategies, crafting the relevant ammo types on the fly and putting my plans into action led to some of my personal gaming highlights of the entire year, and forged memories that will stay with me for many years to come.

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

Halo: Combat Evolved Anniversary and Halo 2 Anniversary

One of my mainstay comedic categories makes its triumphant return for 2017. I played two Halo games this year – specifically the Anniversary releases of Halo: Combat Evolved and Halo 2 included within the Master Chief Collection on Xbox One. The former was a quick solo “refresher” playthrough to accommodate a co-op playthrough of the latter with my buddy Duncan, and I enjoyed my time with both games. I particularly appreciated the improvements that the Master Chief Collection brings, such as a flawlessly crisp sixty frames-per-second and seamless switching between Anniversary and Classic graphics modes, all of which add up to make these the definitive versions of some of the most important and beloved games in console FPS history.

Shape Of Things To Come Award for Best Tech Demo

Metal Gear Solid V: Ground Zeroes

This is the second time that Ground Zeroes has earned this specific award, mainly because I’m not sure how else to acknowledge it. This year marked my first time playing the current-generation version of the game, opting for the PlayStation 4 version after two playthroughs on PlayStation 3 in 2014 and 2015. The benefits of the PS4 release were immediately apparent, with a much smoother frame rate and better lighting effects unsurprisingly making it the superior version. Ground Zeroes remains a very impressive vertical slice of the gameplay that would eventually follow in The Phantom Pain, and playing this version has confirmed that if I ever do revisit MGSV in full, I’ll definitely be doing so on PS4.

I Know What I Am Award for Most Self-Aware Game

Yooka-Laylee

I don’t think I’ve ever played a game that knows it’s a game quite as much as Yooka-Laylee does. It’s certainly not the first game to break the fourth wall, but I can’t think of another that has done it as consistently or as successfully as this spiritual successor to Banjo-Kazooie from Playtonic. Every corner of every world is dripping with self-referential humour on subjects ranging from collectibles to boss battles, and the sardonic tone of it all echoes that of Banjo’s most recent outing on Xbox 360, Nuts & Bolts. My personal favourite example is Rextro, the low-poly holographic dinosaur that guards the arcade machines in each world and has such a low built-in memory that he can’t even remember Yooka’s name half the time. Yooka-Laylee knows it’s a throwback 3D platformer, and it revels in and celebrates that fact at every opportunity.

One Hot Minute Award for Least Time Spent With A Game

Spyro 2: Gateway to Glimmer

Usually an award like this would go to a game that I’d beaten in entirety in a single sitting, something that I achieved a couple of times this year with games like Oxenfree and Super Mario Bros. Spyro 2, however, holds the honour of being the game I spent the least amount of time with in 2017, clocking in at a little less than half an hour. The reason for this? While illustrating the franchise to my girlfriend Alice, I noticed that my most recent playthrough of Spyro 2 had stalled at 91%. So I got comfortable, played through the two remaining worlds in Winter Tundra, took down Ripto, and made my way to Dragon Shores to reach the full 100%. It was an enjoyable half-hour, and a pleasant reminder of just how great the first three Spyro games are.

The Sun And Moon Roll Around Too Soon Award for Game Most Obviously Rushed For Release

Pokémon Sun

I enjoyed Pokémon Sun for what it was. I loved the visual style of the Alola region and a lot of the new Pokémon designs, and I appreciated the changes it made in an attempt to breathe new life into the series, like replacing Gym Challenges with the more varied Island Trials. It’s a real shame that so many of those changes, including the Pokémon Snap-esque Poké Finder, the disappointing roster of available Pokémon in the Alola Pokédex, and all the stuff surrounding the sixth-gen legendary Pokémon Zygarde, ended up feeling half-baked - an unfortunate effect of what I suspect was a rush to get the seventh generation of Pokémon games out of development and into stores in time to mark the series’ twentieth anniversary. As I said, it’s enjoyable for what it is, but it’s very difficult to look past that ever-present feeling that there should have been a lot more to this package.

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That puts us at one third of the way through these awards, with fourteen distributed and a whopping twenty-eight still to go. I'll be back tomorrow with more celebrations of individuality, including gongs for the games that spilled more virtual blood and made me feel more like a superhero than any other this year. Until then, thanks very much for reading folks. Take care, and I'll see you around.

Daniel

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Currently playing - Pokémon Ultra Sun (3DS)