Welcome to the penultimate day of my 2016 Game of the Year awards. Today, we celebrate "interesting" writing, the biggest trainwrecks of the year, things that need to stop, and finally, the games that are the most fun to watch. Let's get down to business.

Day 1

Day 2

Day 3

Day 5

HITMAN presents

Best Line(s):

Every game has a line or multiple lines of dialogue make me laugh uncontrollably because of how ridiculous they are. Here are the ones that stood out the most.

• "Somebody's up to something they shouldn't be."- guard in Hitman
• Sully's vegan joke-Uncharted 4
• Sam's pirate joke- Uncharted 4
• Sully's response to joke-Uncharted 4
• "Hey, what's cooking? (Bud-um-dis)"- a waiter to player dressed as a chef in Hitman
• Guard talking to her stomach- Dishonored 2
• Steve Gaynor joke- HITMAN
• Doctor getting emotional- HITMAN
• "This man is possessed by the devil..."- HITMAN

Runners Up:

"That man is possessed by the devil..."- HITMAN: The thing that absolutely makes this line is how the guy stares me down for a good 10 seconds before dropping one of the most out of nowhere lines of the year.

Guard talking to her stomach- Dishonored 2: As you can see in the video, I was busy stealthing around in Dishonored 2 when I had to stop and take in this silly conversation a guard was having with her stomach.

Winner:

Doctor getting emotional- HITMAN: Yesterday I talked about the payoff of the Helmut Krueger running joke. This is that payoff. There are so many lines I could have chosen from HITMAN but this one wins by being more over the top than any other line of the year.

Biggest Trainwreck:

• Call of Duty: Infinite Warfare reveal trailer reaction
• Oculus Rift Launch
• CSGO skin gambling
• No Man's Sky PC port/ Fan response to NMS
• Fallout 4 PS4 mods
• Aug lives matter marketing campaign
• CSGO graffiti sprays.

Runners Up:

CSGO graffiti sprays: Counter Strike: Global Offensive did not have a great year. The graffiti sprays were a prime example of a how Valve seems to be alienating its own community at an alarming rate. Here is the short of this issue: Valve reintroduces previously free sprays as a paid commodity but gives every player a free one, sprays only have 50 uses, once those are used the spray is gone, players can get sprays from drops after games but can only sell unopened sprays. The real crux of this issue is the fact that the limited use sprays are a paid commodity. The reaction to this from the community was as you would expect, but the whole thing reeks of a company putting profits above its fan base.

Fan response to No Man's Sky: This is an issue that I take a controversial stance on. Instead of blaming the marketing machine behind this game, I have to blame gamers themselves. It goes without saying that publishers and developers are going to hype the ever loving hell out of their games, and that includes the countless games that have utilized "bull-shots" and misleading trailers since marketing games became a thing. This is not new. What makes this situation downright embarrassing, is how gamers whipped themselves and each other into a frothing frenzy without ever questioning what they were being shown. Yes, Sony and Hello Games shoulder part of the blame, but at some point, the people who play games have to take responsibility for buying into hype. There should be two rules plastered all over every game related thing in existence: Don't buy into hype and Don't preorder games. These pieces of advice would have made this situation just another reaction to a bad game, as opposed to the trainwreck it became and still is.

"Winner":

CSGO Skin Gambling: Where do I even begin with this one? In Counter-Strike: Global Offensive, skins are cosmetic items for weapons and knives and some of them can cost almost $500 on the Steam Marketplace. Skin gambling is something that started as betting on the e-sports aspect of the game, but many third party websites simplified that to a mere coin flip that anyone could access. This is an issue because anyone who has played CSGO will tell you there are a TON of kids even as young as 7 years old playing the game. It goes without saying why children gambling is a bad thing, but this gets even worse. On these third party sites, betting was done by putting both players steam inventory items into the inventory of a neutral bot account. The winner would then get a trade request from the bot and collect their winnings. There are the obvious ways of scamming people through this process, but the way it was done by two rather well-known YouTubers, may take the cake. Two Youtubers, one of whom I was subscribed to a long time ago, secretly ran one of the most popular betting sites, and this meant they also had control of the trade bots. What gets even stranger is how they were caught. One of them was streaming some skin gambling, as a ton of YouTubers were doing, when some viewers noticed that the streamer was logged in under a trade bot account. Here's where most people may ask what the big deal is about something you can only sell on the steam marketplace is, but there are many shady as fuck sites out there that will exchange items in your Steam inventory for real world currency. This whole thing blew up seemingly overnight and in the aftermath, Valve was actually forced to do something, and the Youtubers in question are under federal investigation for running an illegal betting site. Sometimes the biggest train wrecks in gaming barely involve the actual games, and this whole fiasco was certainly worthy of this award.

The "Shipping Broke-Ass Games" award for things that should Please Stop

• Call of Duty
• Yearly sports games
• Reboots (even if they are good)
• Dan Ryckert
• Tutorialising 2/3 of the way through the game or further. ME:Catalyst/Far Cry/Mafia/ pretty much every game ever
• Valve

"Honorable" Mention:

Dan Ryckert- This man must be stopped before he actually decides to run for president while double fisting beers in a Waluigi costume. The corruption has already begun.

Runners Up:

Call of Duty: I didn't play Infinite Warfare despite having the beta installed for a few days as well as being able to play the game during the free weekend Activision had a few weeks ago. Judging by critical and fan reception, it may be time for Activision to either take a few years off or start taking steps to replace COD as their marquee title.

Tutorialising 2/3 of the way through the game: One of the most annoying things modern games do is telling you how to play them even after you've already put a dozen hours into them. I hope this trend is on the way out.

"Winner":

Valve: If you're aware of Valve, then you must be aware of their customer service reputation. On top of that, the general way they handle everything is terrible. The way it took federal action to get them to do something about skin gambling, the way they keep ruining CS:GO with every update (one of the last updates seriously added gloves for your player character that you can only get from cases), how their sales are a shell of what they used to be, and their refusal to just be on top of things anymore. Seriously Valve, knock it off and just be cool again.

Most Fun to Watch:

(Aka the let's play award)

• Hover Junkers
• Any VR game Jeff plays
• Move or die
• Gears of War 4
• Hitman
• Dead By Daylight
• Pokémon Go
• Overcooked
• Space Trucker

Runners Up:

Pokémon Go: Observing the social phenomenon this thing became (no matter how short) is one of the craziest things I’ve seen in my 3 years of writing about games.

Any VR game Jeff plays: Watching Jeff play any VR game is the sole reason why I won't be getting VR for a long time. Not that I don't want to, but the way he is able to just shatter any experience seems like a better and more fun representation virtual reality than I will ever be able to experience on my own. Until VR gets to a good place, I will continue watching Jeff test the limits of shooting himself in the face with every game that allows him to do so.

Winner:

Hitman: Watching Dan teach Brad the ways of master stealthery lead to some of the most entertaining content here on Nuke.com. The entire reason I checked HITMAN out was because of this video series and watching duo react to all the ways the game could break was a joy every time a new video was posted. Their joy was infectious and I will spend a few days rewatching the entire Hitdan saga. They also brought Vinny in on the fun, leading to quite possibly the best video on the entire site.

And with that, we prepare for the final day. Tomorrow, I look back on the games of 2015 that I played again this year and see how they hold up, then I get to the top 10 games of 2016. Until then, feel free to check out Day 1, Day 2, and Day 3. Thanks for reading.