The BzG Awards are only a month away, so here are the categories and nominees for Movies and Video Games. The nominees are subject to change (mainly just Star Wars and Hateful 8, in case they suck), but hopefully we don’t have to change it at all. If we do, you’ll know at the time of the awards.
We know there might be some omissions, but here’s the thing…we’re only three guys. We can’t see and play everything, so hopefully we still have an exciting list of nominees for you!
So, without further ado, here are the nominees for The BzG Awards!
Movies
Best Script The Martian Ant Man Straight Outta Compton Star Wars: The Force Awakens The Hateful 8 Inside Out Ex Machina
Best Director Quentin Tarantino (The Hateful 8) J. J. Abrams (Star Wars: The Force Awakens) Ridley Scott (The Martian) F. Gary Gray (Straight Outta Compton) George Miller (Mad Max) Alex Garland (Ex Machina)
Best Actress Daisy Ridley as Rey in Star Wars: The Force Awakens Charlize Theron as Furiosa in Mad Max: Fury Road Alicia Vikander as Ava in Ex Machina Jennifer Jason Leigh as Daisy in The Hateful 8
Best Actor Tom Hardy as Max in Mad Max: Fury Road Jason Mitchell as Eazy-E in Straight Outta Compton Oscar Isaac as Nathan Bateman in Ex Machina Matt Damon as Mark Watney in The Martian John Boyega as Finn in Star Wars: The Force Awakens
Most Anticipated Film for 2016 Deadpool Suicide Squad Batman V. Superman Ratchet & Clank Captain America: Civil War X-Men: Apocalypse Finding Dory Doctor Strange Fantastic Beasts and Where To Find Them Rogue One Assassin’s Creed Worst Film of the Year Mortdecai Fifty Shades of Grey Hot Tub Time Machine 2 Paul Blart: Mall Cop 2 Pixels Fantastic Four
Film of the Year Inside Out The Hateful Eight Star Wars: The Force Awakens The Martian Straight Outta Compton Mad Max: Fury Road Ex Machina
Video Games
Most Unexpected Hit Until Dawn Rocket League Bloodborne
Best Moment Joker’s Song in Batman: Arkham Knight Max Going Mad Again in Mad Max Last Cabin Scene in Until Dawn Creating World 1-1 in Super Mario Maker Taking Down an AT-AT in Star Wars: Battlefront Killing Your First Deathclaw in Fallout 4
Best Remake/Remaster Deadpool Uncharted: The Nathan Drake Collection The Mega Man Legacy Collection Rare Replay God of War 3 Grim Fandango The Legend of Zelda: Majora’s Mask Journey
Best Family Game Guitar Hero Live Rock Band 4 Lego Dimensions Mario Maker The Mega Man Legacy Collection Rocket League Lego Batman 3
Developer of the Year Rocksteady for Batman: Arkham Knight CD Projekt Red for The Witcher 3: The Wild Hunt FromSoftware for Bloodborne Psyonix for Rocket League Nintendo for Super Mario Maker Most Anticipated Game for 2016 Mirror’s Edge: Catalyst Uncharted 4: A Thief’s End Yooka-Laylee Cuphead Horizon: Zero Dawn The Legend of Zelda The Last Guardian Ratchet & Clank Mafia 3 Doom
Worst Game of the Year Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater 5 MLB 15: The Show Evolve The Order: 1886 Mario Party 10
Game of the Year Star Wars: Battlefront Bloodborne The Witcher 3: The Wild Hunt Batman: Arkham Knight Rocket League Until Dawn Mad Max Super Mario Maker Fallout 4 Undertale
So there you have it, folks! Those are our nominees for The 2015 BzG Awards! We hope you’re excited for the awards to begin January 12th on youtube.com/baiazonagamers and soundcloud.com/baia-zona-gamers! Until then, keep playing them video games and watching them movies!
Believe your eyes! It’s a Barrett Contemplates that is not on a Saturday! Last week, we recorded an episode of Talking Shit where we discussed our VGA Predictions. But, as some of you may know, the audio got super messed up which resulted in us not uploading the video. So I decided to share with you guys my predictions today before the VGAs tomorrow.
I’m only sharing my predictions for the main awards, not the community votes. But I do wanna share my support for Greg Miller for Trending Gamer of 2015. That dude is super awesome. He’s an inspiration of mine and it’s really cool to see him be acknowledged for all of his hard work.
But now for my predictions…the bolded nominees are the ones that I think will win (which won’t always mean I want it to win).
Best Art Direction Batman: Arkham Knight Bloodborne Metal Gear Solid V Ori and the Blind Forest The Witcher 3
Best Multiplayer Call of Duty: Black Ops III Destiny: The Taken King Halo 5: Guardians Rocket League Splatoon
Best Sports Game FIFA 16 Forza 16 NBA 2K16 Pro Evolution Soccer 16 Rocket League
Best Family Game Disney Infinity 3.0 Lego Dimensions Skylanders: Superchargers Splatoon Super Mario Maker
Best Fighting Game Guilty Gear XRD Mortal Kombat X Rise Of Incarnates Rising Thunder
Best RPG Bloodborne Fallout 4 Pillars Of Eternity The Witcher 3 Undertale
Best Action Adventure Assassin’s Creed: Syndicate Batman: Arkham Knight Metal Gear Solid V Ori and the Blind Forest Rise of the Tomb Raider
Best Shooter Call of Duty: Black Ops III Destiny: The Taken King Halo 5: Guardians Splatoon Star Wars: Battlefront
Games For Impact Cibele Her Story Life Is Strange Sunset Undertale
Best Performance Ashly Burch as Chloe Price in Life Is Strange Camilla Luddington as Lara Croft in Rise of the Tomb Raider Doug Cockle as Geralt in The Witcher 3 Mark Hammil as The Joker in Batman: Arkham Knight Viva Seifert in Her Story
Best Score/Soundtrack Fallout 4 Halo 5: Guardians Metal Gear Solid V Ori and the Blind Forest The Witcher 3
Best Narrative Her Story Life Is Strange Tales Of The Borderlands The Witcher 3 Until Dawn
Best Mobile Game Downwell Fallout Shelter Lara Croft Go Monster Hunter 4 Pacman 256
Best Indie Game Axiom Verge Her Story Ori and the Blind Forest Rocket League Undertale
Developer of the Year Bethesda CD Projekt Red FromSoftware Kojima Studios Nintendo
Game of the Year Bloodborne Fallout 4 Metal Gear Solid V Super Mario Maker The Witcher 3
So those are my predictions! I’ll be hanging out with Alex O’Neill from IrrationalPassions.com tomorrow, watching it live and checking off my predictions as we go. We’ll probably have a fun time and I hope you do too!
2015 has been a big year for me in a lot of different ways. I changed my career path, moved back to San Francisco, and met a ton of great people. And since it was recently Thanksgiving, I want to use today’s Contemplation to thank all of the people who have made this year great.
First I want to thank my girlfriend, Alyssa, who has kept me sane, grounded, and true to myself throughout this year. We moved in together earlier this year and our relationship has been growing stronger every day since. She’s been supporting me a lot ever since I decided to take the jump into gaming coverage and I couldn’t be more grateful to have someone who loves me and supports my aspirations.
Next, I want to thank my two great co-hosts and even better friends….Henry and Ricky, who have been humoring me this last year with BZG. I know they have a lot going on in their own lives and they still take the time that they have to come and sit down every week with me and act like idiots. They’re also supporting this jump that I’ve decided to make and I couldn’t be happier to share these moments with those two goofballs.
I also want to thank the quiet 4th member of BZG, Seven, for taking a lot of his valuable time for helping us out, teaching us a lot, and sharing a lot of laughs with us. BZG would probably look very different without him and I couldn’t imagine it any other way. Seven let’s us raid his place every week with our craziness and dirty mouths, he couldn’t be any more welcoming to us.
I also want to thank the guys of Kinda Funny. I’m constantly teased for referencing them a lot, but they are the reason I decided to change careers and go headfirst into gaming coverage. They are really good at what they do. The quality they have constantly pushes me to improve my skills as a video editor and a host. I thank them for making me strive for something more. I’ve never been so determined to make something greater of myself..
Finally, I want to thank some of the people who I’ve met in the gaming coverage industry. The first two I have to address is Sean and Tom from Knerds Online. They taught me to be confident in myself. This is a new world for me and I feel like I haven’t made up enough ground yet to really feel comfortable in my own skin. I also want to thank Andrew and Alex from Comics & Joysticks and Irrational Passions, respectively. I’ve only met them for a little bit earlier this year, but podcasting with them every once and awhile has always been a treat. I’m super excited to be hosting them here in SF for PSX.
That’s my contemplation for today. Of course, if you have supported me at all this year, I thank you as well. I’m having a hell of a time this year and everyone of you who enjoys any of the dumb things I do…you make this crazy hard work worth it. And I couldn’t be any more grateful for that.
Sorry for the late post today. I originally had something pre-written for Contemplates but decided to submit it somewhere else (I’ll keep you all updated if/when that submission goes through).
Today’s contemplation is about the IGN House Party that I went to today with Sean Pitts and Tom Hawkins. It was a great first experience for a nerdy live show. The guys for Fire Team Chat and Game Scoop fucking killed it today. They are all really great guys who have great passions. It was definitely inspiring to see how much they enjoy what they do.
Before going into my thoughts any further, I want to thank Sean and Tom for coming to San Francisco (If you don’t know who they are, check out their website knerdsonline.com). When Sean hit me up to ask if they could stay with me for the weekend, I was really excited. Sean is the fucking guy when it comes to the Kinda Funny Community and I was taken aback when he thought of me when it came to staying in San Francisco. I’m very new at networking and have never given myself the opportunity to really promote myself and BZG. Sean and Tom gave me that opportunity. They taught me a lot when they first arrived in the city by sharing what lessons they have experienced throughout this last year. And being able to hang out with them at IGN’s House Party was quite a treat. I talked to people I might have never even met because I usually stay inside and do nothing. But they pushed me to finally be confident in myself. I’m finally comfortable with selling myself to people. No one in the Theater Arts scene ever gave me that.
So, moving on, to the people I got to chat with…they were all really kind, down to earth, and, straight up, just fun to talk to. I won’t name anyone specifically but most of the people, that I was discussing BZG with, were really supportive and were encouraging me to keep doing what I do. Two specific people stand out because they were just the coolest people just to hang out with and talk about stuff we love.
So after today, I don’t think I’ve ever been more inspired to get my foot in the door of the “professional gaming journalism” industry. I only got into IGN a couple of years ago and I never would have imagined I would be giving some of these people, who I really enjoy, my business card. There was one person specifically who, when I handed him my card, I could not believe was genuinely interested in what I do. Today couldn’t have meant more to me. And that’s all thanks to Sean and Tom.
Back to those two before I wrap up…the drive they have for what they want is crazy. They work to no end to pop out from the rest of the media out there and they do it so well. They are two of the most caring guys in the industry right now and they deserve everything that’s heading their way. It was so cool to get one on one time with them and I look forward to our friendship in the future.
So that was my contemplation for the day. And the advice I give to you (and took away from this experience) is to trust in yourself and what you believe in. As long as you never sell yourself short, you will find what you are looking for. And hopefully I find what I’m looking for one day. We’ll see…
-Barrett C.
By the way, Sean and Tom will be tomorrow’s special guests on The Shitcast (which you can find on https://soundcloud.com/baia-zona-gamers). They also do their own thing on knerdsonline.com, which I highly recommend checking out. Support them and their aspirations, because they’re fucking good at it.
Due to recent events, I want to talk about hype and how it can blindside us. If you are not familiar with the word, Urban Dictionary defines the word “hype” as “when someone gets excited about something.”
A friend of mine recently told me a story about someone ridiculing him for not pre-ordering Fallout 4. This person exclaimed that the new installment is going to be one of the best games of all time and couldn’t believe that my friend was stupid enough not to pre-order. I voice that people should vote with their wallets. No exceptions. If you want to pre-order Fallout, bully for you. If not, same thing. Everyone is allowed to spend their money however they want. My friend and I have the same feeling when it comes to Fallout 4. Yes, it’s exciting. It probably will be really fun. But no game, no matter how big the hype is, should be unquestioned before purchase.
My experience with Fallout 3 hasn’t been great. I played it way too late (about a week ago, to be exact) and I honestly didn’t get the same fulfillment plenty of other people had. Even for it’s time, the game did not look good. Not graphics wise, but color wise. Every environment had a nice shade of poop green. Nothing popped. Professional reviewers said Mad Max made desert wastelands look dull. At least Mad Max had more than three colors. Maybe I’m spending too much time on this aspect, but what I’m trying to say is that the game just didn’t pop visually for me.
The controls were also a bit of a problem. Maybe they just didn’t age well, but they definitely felt stiff. Gunplay was watered down to focus on VATS. I understand the appeal of VATS, but that isn’t my preference when it comes to fighting. I know from what I’ve seen so far from 4, it looks to have been improved on. But I’m building up to a point here.
My last point (that hasn’t personally affected me) is that Fallout 3 was basically unplayable on the Playstation 3. Players were desperate for it to be fixed and it took a while for that to happen. What if my friends and I pre-ordered 4 for the PS4 and it had the same exact problems as 3? We would either wait a long time for a fix, or just sell the game because our excitement for it has completely dwindled.
I’m bringing these things up because Fallout 3 wasn’t a perfect game by a long shot. It definitely appealed to people in some major ways, but fan-boys and hype make people forget the possible problems there could be for the upcoming game. So far, the improvements I have seen in imagery and moment-to-moment gameplay definitely have me far more interested in 4 than I ever was with 3. If it is well received, I will buy it day one to review and record Let’s Plays for it. There is a chance (however small) that it could be not well received or at least not critically-acclaimed like most people believe it will be. I will read other reviews first before purchasing it though. If there are points brought up that fighting mechanics (non-vat related) haven’t been improved…I might think twice about buying it. Do I really want to spend a good amount of money on a game that doesn’t speak to me mechanically? Is it worth $60 just to review and consider for our Video Game Awards and not enjoy the full extent of it?
Now, don’t confuse my questioning of Fallout with blatant hate for the series. I just don’t think that because it’s Bethesda….because it’s Fallout….that it should be excused from critical thinking. Bethesda isn’t a terrible developer. What they do well, they do really well. Even though there was a lot that fell short for me in Fallout 3, I was still impressed by the extent of choices you can make. But Bethesda can improve on a lot. They aren’t perfect.
My closing thought on hype is this….as someone who recently experienced some post-hype-stress with Batman: Arkham Knight, I can understand the excitement people have for this game. I really enjoyed Arkham Knight, but I hyped it up to myself so much that it fell short in a couple of ways. I just don’t want that to happen to you. I want you to love Fallout 4. I want to love Fallout 4. So maybe temper your hype, don’t expect everything golden to happen in this game…and you might save yourself from that post-hype-stress.
Stay safe in the wasteland,
Barrett C.
P.S.
If you have some of the same concerns as myself with Fallout 4, feel free to check out our Let’s Play on it this coming Friday. You can experience it along with me as I test out how the gameplay feels and talk about what improvements have been made.For full thoughts on the game, I imagine I will either review the game here or on my youtube channel at youtube.com/BaiaZonaGamers
The leaves are turning brown, people of all ages are writing their Christmas lists, and football has returned. Like every year, Fall is upon us. So is the new Assassin’s Creed game. Ubisoft has made some changes for Syndicate in hopes to give the series a breathe of fresh air. Combat, climbing, and world building have all been given touch ups to make everyone forget about Assassin’s Creed Unity.
The Story
Syndicate follows twin assassins, Jacob and Evie Frye, during the Industrial Revolution. They have recently come to London to track down a piece of Eden and take back the city from the Templars. Like every Assassin’s Creed game, the era and the idea surrounding the overall story sounds cool. But you soon find out that that’s all there is in the story. Jacob is using his recently acquired gang to beat up another gang (who I can’t tell if they’re actually Templars or not) and Evie is trying to find some object that none of us really care about.
The Pieces of Eden were highly relevant in the earlier Assassin’s Creed games because characters in the present needed to find out where those pieces were left. It all tied into what was currently going on with characters we cared about. Ever since the death of Desmond Miles, these parts of the games feel less relevant with each release. The shoe-horning of side-characters, that we forgot about years ago, throws off the pacing of the game. One minute, I’ve been in London for 10 hours with no thought about Abstergo. The next, I’m thrown into an irrelevant cut-scene that makes me think “Oh, yea…there used to be a Sci-Fi element to this game.” It’s just another reason why Ubisoft should really think about hacking out that part of the series for good and just focus on the narrative that we care about.
Jacob and Evie’s journey feels short and underwhelming. There are a few twists, here and there, but rarely did it catch me off guard. The focus on gameplay really took a toll on the story they could have told. And the story that IS told is all thrown away at the end. The main portion of the game is taking over London with Jacob’s gang, so you start to feel like that’s the important part of the story. But in the end, Ubisoft slaps you and says “No…Evie’s mission to get the Piece of Eden is more important because…(list dumb reasons about Sci-Fi story here).” I recently had problems with another Open World RPG, Mad Max, for almost the same thing. You have to take over this whole map just to be able to progress through the story (making the takeover basically a part of the story) but then all of it is for nothing in the end.
Not all of the story was bad. Jacob and Evie are fun characters that play off of each other well. The Templar Grand Master had some pretty powerful scenes. And the names from history you get to meet are, as always, fascinating. But those parts could have felt even better if the overall story meant anything.
Assassin’s Creed: Batman
It’s weird to think that Syndicate is the first installment with just hand-to-hand combat, taking out swords. Ubisoft obviously had to re-think the pacing and mechanics for this new approach. They took some major queues from Rocksteady’s Batman fighting, but Syndicate is not nearly as responsive. Group fights can feel cluttered with too many things going on at once. Every once and awhile, too many pings come up at once with not enough time to be able to react to all of them. I’ve played every Assassin’s Creed since 2 and never felt this problem. It’s not that it’s meant to be difficult, it’s just poor design.
Traversing around London can be fun for the most part, excluding the usual Assassin’s Creed glitches. The downward parkour feels clunkier than Unity. A lot of the times when I wanted to crawl down a wall like a spider-monkey, I ended up just jumping way down to the street level. I often questioned if the downward parkour was still part of the game, but was validated when it would actually work.
The parkour is frustrating as usual, but the main problem is the new gadget available to skip all of that. The Grappling Hook is introduced, so all of your parkour troubles can go away! Just by adding this feature, Ubisoft is acknowledging that their parkour mechanic can no longer be disguised as “fun.” It works fine. It’s useful to get out of sticky situations. But I feel like I should be able to parkour my way out of sticky situations and not have to rely on cheap tricks that make me forget about the core mechanic of the game. But don’t worry; you can beat up some thugs, solve some crimes, and grapple away just like Batman!
Open World vs. Linear
Assassin’s Creed started out as a pretty linear game, but over the years it slowly gained more and more open world elements. Syndicate is very much an open-world-RPG. A huge map to take over segment by segment, a gang you have to help upgrade, and repetitive missions that can sometimes be fun.
Taking London back from The Blighters is pretty straightforward. Each small area has a side-mission. Complete that mission and the area is yours. These challenges would be more fun if there were more unique layouts for each one. While liberating children from a factory (to just have them come work for me) I noticed that this factory had the same exact layout as another one I took over earlier that day. The only difference was where the children and the boss were. That could change up the way you approach it, I guess.
This wouldn’t be that big of a complaint if you weren’t basically forced to do these over and over again just to have a chance to progress through the story. This is where it gets pointlessly convoluted. Each mission has a suggested level for you to be at to complete it. To level up, you have to acquire upgrades such as more health or better stealth (can I purchase better parkour mechanics?). To be able to purchase those, you need Assassin Points. “Do you get an Assassin Point with each mission you complete?” you may ask. No. With each mission, you get a certain amount of XP. Each time you hit 1000 XP, you get just one Assassin Point. I feel like whoever came up with this system also wrote Ocean’s 12. They think they’re being smart and clever, but they’re really just dumb and not good at their job.
The numbness of the gameplay shows how poorly an open world game can be executed. It reminds me a lot of Mad Max in a way, but at least Mad Max’s core gameplay was constantly fun. Granted, it wasn’t all bad. The Charles Dickens mysteries were fun and solving murders with a creepy kid were always enjoyable. And that’s because they never had anything to do with running around and finding dumb magical cloaks (*cough*main story*cough*). They always had some fun twists and turns that might have felt cheesy from time to time, but still better than the rest of the game.
Closing Thoughts
Assassin’s Creed Syndicate is sometimes a decent game and a lot of times annoying. It’s not nearly as broken on day one as Unity and the rendering of London can be breathtaking. Evie and Jacob are two fun characters to play as but it’s hard to connect with them when their story feels pointless. Even though Ubisoft has changed a lot, gameplay wise, with Syndicate…the change to a more open-world-RPG format just doesn’t fit with the Assassin’s Creed series. Unoriginal and hollow changes, like the Batman: Arkham fighting mechanics and the grappling gun, show that Ubisoft may just be out of ideas for the series. Syndicate may not be the worst entry for Assassin’s Creed, but it’s more proof that the series should probably walk into it’s own hidden blade.
