Winners and Trailers

As noted last week, The Game Awards happened on Thursday.

It was a nice celebration of the game industry and it was great seeing deserving developers get recognition for all their hard work.

But mostly though, like The Super Bowl, The Game Awards are mostly there as a vehicle for commercials. Or, in this case, trailers and announcements for new games coming down the line.

So let's go over some of the standout announcements of the evening.

Star Wars Eclipse

Star Wars games have been having a bit of a renaissance since the Battlefront II fiasco. "Star Wars Jedi: Fallen Order" proved that there was still space in the galaxy for a solid single player experience. Now we have developer Quantic Dream getting a chance at their take on a Star Wars story.

Quantic Dream, developer of games like "Beyond: Two Souls" and "Detroit: Become Human," specializes in projects that blur the line between video game and movie. Essentially, they make virtual "Choose Your Own Adventure" books with high production values.

This is the first time they've done work on a licensed product, but seeing what they have in store for Star Wars is definitely something to keep an eye on.

Alan Wake II

The long awaited sequel to Remedy Entertainment's horror shooter was officially announced at The Game Awards.

The first "Alan Wake" game is like if somebody turned a Stephen King mini-series into a third-person shooter, complete with levels segmented into "episodes" (back when "episodic" releases was all the rage for video games).

Being totally honest, I've always felt the first game was alright at best. It drags on a little long, the environments are repetitive, and the combat isn't that engaging. I wouldn't have any interest in a sequel except Creative Director Sam Lake has said that the upcoming sequel will be a different game entirely. Specifically, increasing the focus on survival horror elements rather than third-person shooting.

I've long been dismayed at the Resident Evil series for transitioning away from survival horror in favor of action packed gunplay. Seeing the Alan Wake franchise make the opposite transition has me interested.

Sonic the Hedgehog 2

Back in April of 2019, Paramount released the first trailer for their CGI/Live Action "Sonic the Hedgehog" movie. To say it was poorly received would be an understatement.

Backlash from the trailer was so universally negative that Paramount delayed the movie and spent millions redesigning the CGI hedgehog for his theatrical debut.

The result was a movie that generated largely positive reception among fans and general audiences. Not only that, due to the delay, it also ended up being one of the most successful movies of the year by virtue of the fact that it was one of the last movies to hit theaters before COVID shut everything down in 2020.

People love a good comeback story so when Paramount debuted their trailer for "Sonic the Hedgehog 2" they had a lot of people rooting for it. And, by and large, I'd say they delivered. The trailer shows off more of Ben Schwartz's Sonic and Jim Carrey's Robotnik. Eagle eyed fans will find a ton of game lore references in just the trailer, showing that director Jeff Fowler has a firm grip of the source material.

It also introduces us to the movie versions of Tails, voiced by Colleen O'Shaughnessey. Her casting is notable as she has been voicing Tails in the video games since 2014. It's exceptionally rare that a video game voice actor is allowed the opportunity to reprise their role in movie adaptations, but not impossible.

But, most notably, we also got the first look and sound of Idris Elba as Knuckles the Echidna. Elba said he wasn't going to try to make Knuckles sound sexy but, if the internet reaction to the trailer is any indication, he didn't try hard enough.

The contrast between the reaction of this trailer to the first one is pretty incredible and it goes to show how much good will you can generate just by being attuned to what audiences actually want to see.

Google Play on PC

As weird as it sounds to say, there are a lot of interesting things happening on mobile devices. The mobile platform may still be a dumping ground for money sucking gachas, but there's a fair amount of quality experiences to be found on your phone.

But I don't want to play games on my phone.

I have a big beefy gaming PC. That's where I want to play my games, even my mobile ones.

For years I've been using the BlueStacks emulator to run my Android games on my PC. It's sufficient, but not always compatible. Google themselves though have announced Windows support for Google Play games coming in 2022. There aren't a lot of details known yet, but one would hope that official PC support will produce a better experience than emulation.

Of course, as soon as I typed that sentence I remembered how often that hasn't been the case in the past (Nintendo Switch Online) but it's still worth looking into.

Cuphead DLC

"Cuphead" was among the standout games of 2017 that made waves with its tight run-and-gun gameplay and 1930's cartoon style graphics.

The only thing I wanted after beating "Cuphead" was to have more of it to beat.

A DLC expansion was announced way back in 2018, but the developers have since gone silent. Until last week when we finally got a trailer for "The Delicious Last Course" and a release date of June 30, 2022.

I can't wait for an excuse to play the game all over again.

Sonic Frontiers

For as much goodwill as the Sonic movie franchise has generated, Sonic Team themselves have precious little to spare.

It's been ten years since Sega's premiere Sonic the Hedgehog developer has made a game in the franchise that's received better than "mixed" reviews. For all intents and purposes, the series has been quiet since 2017, until now.

"Sonic Frontiers" will bring the blue blur to an open world game that looks to be more than a little inspired by "The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild." Will this finally be the formula that makes Sonic click in 3D?

Probably not, but it looks pretty so far. So it has that going for it.

Star Trek: Resurgence

Not to be outdone by Star Wars, the Star Trek franchise also announced an upcoming narrative heavy adventure game at The Game Awards.

"Star Trek: Resurgence" will be a story driven Star Trek game made by Dramatic Labs, a new studio made from veterans from the now defunct Telltale Games.

Once upon a time, Telltale games was the standard barer of the genre, raising to fame with their video game adaptations of "The Walking Dead," "Game of Thrones," and other hugely popular franchises.

Dramatic Labs looks to be continuing that legacy with a new Star Trek story.

I'm interested in this not just for the Star Trek adventure, but I'm curious to see what the newly reborn studio can do now that it has risen from Telltale's ashes.

Travis Fischer is a news writer for Mid-America Publishing and was actually pretty satisfied with how all the rewards turned out as well.