The Game Awards 2024 review: 10 years of announcements and showcases

Twice a year, a man named Geoff Keighly graces the public with new games with two unique events. The summer has the appropriately named Summer Game Fest, while the winter has the Game Awards. It’s basically the Oscars mixed with E3 with some Western bias. For example, in 2020, Geoff could not stop praising The Last of Us 2, a game that was infamous for cheap story elements, tons of character assassination, and more. He had gotten both better and worse since then, like 2021 has a ton of games winning at least one award each, to last year’s infamous “please wrap it up” tagline that booted winners offstage after 30 seconds of speaking.  But let’s see how 2024 compares to the show’s tenth anniversary. And long story short, this year’s showcase has been better than expected.

 

Throughout the night, it’s clear, like the past few years, that the awards are put on the backburner of the event in favor for new game reveals, and this year had its fair share of amazing games mixed with some stinkers of games nobody asked for. Some of the best reveals of the night is the Okami sequel being announced with a melodious live performance of music from the original game, with the bonus reveal that the game’s original director Hideki Kamiya returning at the helm with the resurrection of Studio Clover, who created the game 18 years ago. Other grand reveals they included were a Pac-Man Metroidvania called Shadow Labyrinth, based on its level from Amazon Prime’s Secret Level series, Project Century from SEGA’s RGG Studios (With the people theorizing that it could be a Yakuza prequel that showcases the origin of the Tojo Clan), and Final Fantasy VII Rebirth (Which was nominated for 7 awards for the night) coming to PC in January 2025 for both Steam and Epic Game Stores. 

 

Other major reveal’s that caught this reviewer’s eye were the fact that Clive Rosfield from Final Fantasy XVI is coming to Tekken 8 as the final character of the first season, channeling his Eikonic abilities into the king of Iron Fist tournament. There was also the reveal of Virtua Fighter 6 being revealed from SEGA’s RGG studios. The reveal of a new Ninja Gaiden game was also showcased by Koei Tecmo and was met with praise. The Witcher 4 finally got revealed, And while brief, showcased a new Sonic Racing game that’s coming out in the future.

 

While there are incredible games revealed, there are some projects that were met with criticism, like The Last of Us part 2 coming to PC because the game’s story made no sense whatsoever, and NaughtyDog’s newest IP: Intergalactic, due to its confusing story and themes and the fact that despite it being a space age game, is trapped on only one planet, similar to that of Star Fox Adventures. This has been in development since 2020, and I will talk more about it at a later date. There was also a cat game that was very suspicious in its use of AI and NFT’s called Catly, and given the general public’s opinion of them, was not met well. 

 

Now the awards are split between 2 different categories. Those with a presenter to showcase the award, and those that were just rapid-fired one after another. Some of these awards were done with a rapid-fire presence so the awards could focus more on game announcements rather than showcase the best of the best that came out for the year. But those that did showcase awards through a grand meaning always had unique guests showing up, including Harrison Ford presenting an award alongside Troy Baker, and Statler and Waldorf from the Muppets made various appearances over the night, criticizing and outright mocking Geoff and his show as a whole, which admittingly got a few laughs out of me. 

 

Tying for most nominations of the night were Final Fantasy 7 Rebirth and Astro Bot with 7 nominations each, including them being nominated for best Soundtrack and Game of the Year. While there were a few other games that did do really well over the year, like the rogue poker-like game Balatro (which won best indie and best debut indie), and the adventurous tale of Black Myth: Wukong (Which won Player’s voice), they were sadly bested when Game of the Year was granted towards Astro Bot, a game that’s fun on every possible level. Astro Bot was a gentle reminder of how fun games could actually be without the stress of battle passes, online competition, and always online games for single-player games. It won because of it’s incredible way to have fun while playing a video game. With unique levels, incredible gameplay, and tons of references to discover, there’s no secret on how Astro Bot won GOTY. 

 

While wrapping this up, it has been clear that The Game Awards has always had its fair share of issues while learning from these at the same time. It has consistently been both long and eventful, while also being boring at times. Mainly, this is just an excuse to do Summer Game Fest in the winter with an award show theme, but I will admit, some of the announcements they do present interest me.

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7.5/10