Gaming Award Season
Good morning gamers. Time to snap out of your turkey coma for this week’s edition.
With the holidays quickly approaching, the gaming industry is starting to tuck in for a silent, silent night. With that said, we’re cranking up the volume for this edition with the launch of our first Weekly Recon Video Game Awards. We’ve also got some new information on Horizon Forbidden West, so keep scrolling (and don’t forget to place your votes!).
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Weekly Recon - Video Game Awards 2021
Weekly Recon is holding its first ever annual Video Game Awards. The goal is to engage with our community by recognizing some of the best achievements across gaming and esports in 2021. We’ve got a total of 9 unique categories filled with incredible nominees so please make sure to cast your votes here before December 5th.
Video Game Of The Year recognizes the game that delivers the best overall experience.
Ratchet and Clank: Rift Apart, Psychonauts 2, Metroid Dread, Returnal, Resident Evil Village, Forza Horizon 5
Best Story recognizes the game that immerses the player in an exceptional story.
It Takes Two, Life Is Strange: True Colours, Kena: Bridge of Spirits, Deathloop, Far Cry 6, Guardians of the Galaxy
Best Multiplayer recognizes the game that offers players the best online experience.
Call of Duty: Vanguard, Battlefield 2042, Pokemon Unite, Halo Infinite, Valheim, New World
Best Post-Launch Content recognizes the best continued support for an already released game.
Ghost of Tsushima: Iki Island, Death Stranding Director's Cut, Hitman 3: Deadly Sins, Doom Eternal: The Ancient Gods Part Two, The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim Anniversary Edition, Marvel’s Avengers: War for Wakanda
Guilty Pleasure recognizes the games that are from years past that we just keep going back to.
Minecraft, Grand Theft Auto V, Fortnite, Call of Duty: Warzone, Rocket League, Apex Legends
Most Anticipated Game of 2022 recognizes the game that players just can’t wait to get their hands on.
The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild 2, Elden Ring, God of War Ragnarok, Horizon Forbidden West, Gotham Knights, Starfield
Esports Team Of The Year recognizes the best performing team.
Atlanta FaZe, Sentinels, Edward Gaming, Team Spirit, Natus Vincere, Shanghai Dragons
Esports Player Of The Year recognizes the player who had an outstanding performance.
Heo “ShowMaker” Su, Oleksandr “s1mple” Kostyliev, Magomed “Collapse” Khalilov, Tyson “TenZ” Ngo, Jae-won “LIP” Lee, Emmalee “EMUHLEET” Garrido
Streamer Of The Year recognizes the most entertaining streamer.
xQc, Nickmercs, TimTheTatman, Dr Disrespect, Valkyrae, Ludwig
Horizon Forbidden West - An Authentic World
Horizon Forbidden West is just a few months away and PlayStation fans cannot be anymore excited. The return of Aloy will see her adventure into the mysterious American frontier known as Forbidden West, a post-apocalyptic open world filled with ancient ruins and dangerous machines. In preparation, Guerilla Games has launched an official Horizon podcast dedicated to the Horizon Universe (episode 1 is out now). The development team has also dropped a detailed blog post highlighting the game’s living world, and everything that brings it to life. Here’s the TLDR but be warned that the below may include some spoilers.
Authenticity through behavior is the idea that everything in the world has to feel normal, from the environment to the people. Guerilla developed a crowd system that allows them to use reactions, walking paths and animations, in addition to an attitude system, to help determine an NPCs personality. This essentially means that they’re able to create unique people who behave like unique individuals throughout the world.
Settlements of the Forbidden West are designed to feel like bustling hubs within the Forbidden West. They’re important places for players to find weapons, outfits and the upgrades needed to progress through the game - but they must convey that level of importance and liveliness. Every character in each settlement acts differently, making them feel like they’re part of a unique culture.
Customize to survive highlights the level of importance put upon weapons and outfits in Forbidden West. There’s an extra level of customization in the game that allows players to make their tools more specialized. Aloy can carry up to 6 weapons this time around and outfits provide more than just damage resistance; allowing for the right outfits to boost the right skills.
Esports Corner
🌟 We’d like to highlight the amazing partnership between the American Video Game League (AVGL) and content creator Imane “Pokemane” Anys who have come together to launch a $100,000 scholarship for students involved in gaming and esports.
Valorant Champions
The Valorant competitive season is coming to a close but not before the biggest event of them all, the Valorant Champions 2021. Only 16 teams across North America, Latin America, Europe, Brazil, Southeast Asia, Korea and Japan have accumulated enough points to qualify for the world championship event taking place in early December. The event will use a double-elimination format with group stages and playoffs to help determine the grand finals matchup where one team will win the lion's share of the $1m guaranteed prize pool. In addition, Riot Games is crowdfunding extra prize money through the sale of an in-game Valorant Champions collection which includes weapon skins, a card, spray and weapon buddy. Riot has confirmed that 50% of the sales will go towards the participating teams who have qualified for the Valorant Champions tournament rather than to the overall prize pool.
Another Win for Enthusiast Gaming
Enthusiast Gaming is a Canadian-based digital media company best known in the esports industry for owning and operating the Vancouver Titans (Overwatch), the Seattle Surge (Call of Duty), and Luminosity Gaming (Valorant/Fortnite). Last week the organization made a big move and acquired U.GG, a League of Legends stats website for $45m in cash and shares. The stats platform was founded in 2017 and aimed to become a global resource for League of Legend players looking to analyze and improve their gameplay through competitor data and character builds. This is Enthusiast Gaming's first impactful array into the League of Legends community.
Game Review - Battlefield 2042
Battlefield 2042 is a game that had high expectations but unfortunately did not live up to them. It is the worst entry in the series and it doesn’t even have the saving grace of a fun campaign. The gameplay is disappointing, from the poor frame rate to the terrible movement - it is not smooth at all. Unfortunately, the game only has 13 maps, 7 for multiplayer and 6 for the Portal Mode. Hazard Zone is a fun game mode but the extraction aspect gets repetitive and you can find a similar experience on other games. BF 2042 doesn’t do themselves any favors as the huge map size has players running for minutes at a time before they can find any sort of engagement with objectives or enemy players. Despite the unfavourable review, there is hope that after some updates the game can be seriously improved but until then, we can’t advise anyone to purchase the game. We give Battlefield 2042 a score of C-.
Gaming Roundup
In an interview with Esquire, Keanu Reeves said he doesn’t want to see Neo or John Wick added to Mortal Kombat. Ed Boon the creator of the Injustice franchise says NetherRealm was close to adding Neo in Injustice 2.
Amazon Studios is reportedly close to finalizing a deal to develop a TV series based on the Mass Effect franchise. Head of Amazon Studios Jennifer Salke said “you will see us continuing to invest in fantasy genres of all kinds”.
Hitman 3 developer IO Interactive has announced their plans for another year of content, called Hitman 3: Year Two. This roadmap will begin in March 2022 and the major update will include new maps, storylines and modes.
Two of EAs biggest video game studios, BioWare and DICE, lost major talent last week. DICE’s Head of Design Fawzi Mesmar and Dragon Age Creative Director Matt Goldamn have left the EA subsidiaries.
Kojima Productions have launched a new division based in Los Angeles dedicated to TV, film and music. Their goal is to take the studio’s games and IPs to other areas of the entertainment industry.
Riot Games is all in with League of Legends. Their Netflix original series “Arcane” is now the highest streamed english TV-show on Netflix and they’ve recently released a brand-new gameplay deep-dive for their upcoming “assist-based fighter” Project L.
WETA, the New Zealand-based special effects and props studio behind Peter Jackson’s The Lord of the Rings has confirmed that their gaming division is developing a new game based on a “major worldwide IP”.
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