TheSixthAxis’ Alternative Game of the Year Awards 2021

Time Stamp: December 26, 2021 7:00 AM

Welcome to the annual TheSixthAxis Alternative Game of the Year Awards, in which we recognise the more obscure achievements of gaming in 2021. Join us as we look back at a year that was meant to be so much better than the crap shoot that was 2020, but didn’t really try that hard.

WARNING: The following article includes swearing. If you do no want to read sweary words, look at some kittens instead.

Still reading? Excellent, then lets delve in to this years awards!

Best Gaming Nominative Determinism

The promotion for Blue Box Studio’s Abandoned has been like watching a car crash in slow motion. The game was revealed in April during one of Sony’s showcases and immediately got people excited as it looked a bit like Silent Hill with many thinking it could be a secret Hideo Kojima project. The studio stupidly played into that idea, set the internet on fire, and then had to spend the rest of the year constantly denying they had anything to do with Konami, Kojima or Silent Hill.

Because of reasons that no-one knows or can explain,Abandoned has a real-time app to show the trailers as they run on the console, rather than just put videos on YouTube. The launch date for this much hyped trailer app arrived and flew past. It did eventually arrive, but had no content. Then, after months of hype, the first trailer launched in-app in August.

The same five second trailer the developers had tweeted earlier that day.

Reveal trailers and more have been promised, but as of the time of writing (December 19th) the app still only has the five second video above, the last tweet about the game was in September, and a blog about the game on the Blue Box Website has no content. It appears Abandoned has been… abandoned.

Most Inevitable Port Award

Oh good, Skyrim has been re-released again with a free upgrade for PS5 or Xbox Series X|S which makes the ten year old game run at 60fps in 4K. How very, very exciting.

Best Character That Unexpectedly Revealed A Lot Of People’s Sexual Desires

“Many generations can point to certain defining moments in pop culture as having triggered a sexual awakening, whether it’s Elvis Presley’s dancing in the 60s or David Bowie’s rather tight costume in Labyrinth,” wrote Stefan in February. “I don’t think anyone expected it to be very tall vampire ladies in Resident Evil Village revealing giantess fetishists for the 2020s, but here we are.”

Yes indeed. Lady Dimitrescu, the 2.9m vampire from Resident Evil Village certainly had a lot of people fantasising about being spanked, fondled and fucked by a giant vampire with a strap-on. As soon as the character was revealed the internet was flooded with lustful comments and explicit fan art.

Inevitably this lead to Maggie Robertson, who plays Lady Dimitrescu, reading horny tweets about the character’s “giant mommy milkers”.

Talking of sexy beasts, the next award is for…

The Chonkiest Thor Award

Just moments after they revealed a new trailer for God of War: Ragnarok, Sony Santa Monica tweeted artwork of the game’s Thor, immediately dividing the internet between those that were annoyed that he looks nothing like chiselled hunk Chris Hemsworth and those that appreciated a Thicc Boy getting a starring role.

We quickly settled that argument by talking to a world record holding power lifter who eloquently explained why God of War’s Thor is the perfect representation of the character.

Best System Software Update

A strong category with support for the Xbox November Update which brought colour blindness filters, low latency Xbox One controller firmware & improved system stability, and also plenty of votes for a genuine surprise, PS3 firmware update 4.88. However, after much deliberation our panel have decided that the PS5 September Update takes the crown as it added the much needed support for M.2 NVMe expansion SSDs!

The Cyberpunk 2077 Award

Congratulations to Rockstar who, just a year after CD Projeckt Red conned thousands of gamers by deliberately not showing footage of Cyberpunk 2077, then pulled exactly the same stunt! The heavily rumoured Grand Theft Auto: The Trilogy – The Definitive Edition was announced on October 10th and would be out just a few shorts weeks later. The announcement came with no gameplay, just some logos, before it was eventually followed by a tech trailer that showed improvements to lighting and the like, but again lacked gameplay and had no indication of what system the game was running on.

Things began to look shady when review copies of the game were nowhere to be found, and then the night before release we found out why.

Too late! Rockstar already had everyone’s pre-order cash and was laughing all the way to their Christmas Bonus bank. Of course the internet exploded and Rockstar were forced to issue an apology.

The Grand Theft Auto series — and the games that make up this iconic trilogy — are as special to us as we know they are to fans around the world. The updated versions of these classic games did not launch in a state that meets our own standards of quality, or the standards our fans have come to expect.

Best Presenter

Absolute carnage in this category with many big names fighting for the win. Would it be Geoff Keighley for The Game Awards 2021? Perhaps it would be Geoff Keighley for Gamescom Opening Night Live 2021? Outsiders were betting on Geoff Keighley for Summer Game Fest 2021, but the award has been awarded to OH FOR FUCK’s SAKE PLEASE LET SOMEONE ELSE PRESENT A SODDING SHOW!

Enter the Geofftrix

Look, Geoff is lovely, he’s done great things for video games, but he does have a monopoly on presenting, and more importantly, producing the biggest gaming shows on the planet. That’s not a good thing. With hundreds of millions of viewers each year across numerous shows, Geoff gets to tell the mainstream audience which games to be hyped about, and indeed those which can be ignored. That is a lot of power for one person, so it’s no wonder every developer under the sun wants to be his best friend.

Most Obvious Rip Off

Everyone knows that Fortnite is a rip off of PUBG – it started life as a base building defence game, but tacked on a battle royale just as PUBG exploded in popularity and rocketed to popularity – but this year Epic added an Imposters mode which was clearly a massive rip off of indie hit Among Us. Creators Inner Sloth were “bummed”, and programmer Adriel Wallick commented “this was just another fun reminder of how tiny we all really are.”

Epic eventually admitted the game mode was “inspired” by Among Us and offered a collaboration with Inner Sloth which added a Space Suit to Fortnite’s cosmetic DLC. How very magnanimous of them.

Well this looks familiar…

Most Incomprehensible Video Game Name

Plenty of contenders here for one of our most popular categories. Re:ZERO -Starting Life in Another World- The Prophecy of the Throne, Nier Replicant ver.1.22474487139…, Neptunia x Senran Kagura: Ninja Wars, and Demon Slayer: Kimetsu no Yaiba – The Hinokami Chronicles were all in contention.

However, our panel had to defer to our resident Japanese video game expert Miguel who campaigned for Ys IX -Monstrum Nox,  “Four ‘words’ in a row and I don’t know how to pronounce any of them,” said Miguel.

Best Video Game Delay

The fiercest fought category we have ever seen. Pragamata, Playdate, Saints Row, everything from Nacon, PGA Tour, Overwatch 2, Midnight Suns, Shadow Warrior 3, Elden Ring, the Cyberpunk 2077 and Witcher 3 upgrades, GTA V for next gen, Evil Dead: The Game, Horizon Forbidden West, Crimson Desert, Ghostwire Tokyo, Resident Evil Re:Verse, God of War: Ragnarok, The King of Fighters XV, Fall Guys on Xbox/Switch, Gotham Knights, Destiny 2: The Witch Queen, Need For Speed, Gran Turismo 7, Prince of Persia remake, The Uncharted Movie, Hogwarts Legacy and many, many more games were delayed this year.

Our winner has to be Techland and Dying Light 2 which was meant to be out in Spring 2020, then announced for a “We really need to ship this year” 7th December 2021, and is now meant to be hitting the shelves in February 2022. That’s two years later than originally planned, and four years after it was officially announced.

Will the game actually show up in February? Who knows…

Special Recognition Head Nod

There used to be a time when all video game sites wrote about was plumbers bouncing on blocks, commandos killing nazis and space marines fighting aliens. This year that changed. There were weeks of reports of sexual harassment, suicides, homophobia, rape, and racism at every level at the biggest developers. Journalists and writers have been uncovering horrific details which have then been reported on across the internet by thousands of other writers, highlighting the issues and informing their readers.

Therefore we offer a quiet nod of appreciation to those every video game writer and site across the world who has, and continues to highlight this awful events and help to put pressure on those developers and publishers to sort their shit out.

Best Use Of NFT’s In Gaming

There are none. No one wants them and they don’t make games better to play in any way, shape or form. Get in the fucking bin you money grabbing whores.

Those are our picks for these categories. Do you agree? Let us know in the comments below!

Source: https://www.thesixthaxis.com/2021/12/26/goty-2021-alternative-awards/

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