The Winners Are...
E103: Weekly Recon Video Game Awards 2022 winners revealed.
Good morning gamers! After two weeks of intense voting the results are in. We’d like to thank everyone who participated in our second annual Weekly Recon Video Game Awards helping us recognize your favourite games of 2022. This year was filled with exciting games and major milestones so we’d like to congratulate every studio who released a game this year, not just the winners or the nominees.
🥇Without further ado, Congratulations to your 2022 winners!
Game of the Year: God of War Ragnarök
Best Narrative: God of War Ragnarök
Best Multiplayer: Call of Duty: Modern Warfare II
Best DLC: Cuphead: The Delicious Last Course
Best Indie: Stray
Best Soundtrack: Elden Ring
Best Visuals: God of War Ragnarök
Best Mobile Games: Marvel SNAP
Most Anticipated Game 2023: Marvel’s Spider-Man 2
Fun fact: The “Game of The Year” category had a 5% voting difference between the winner (God of War Ragnarök) and the runner-up (Elden Ring). Tight race between two amazing games!
Todd Howard Interview
Last week, Todd Howard, the director and executive producer at Bethesda Game Studios was interviewed on the Lex Fridman podcast. Known for leading the development of the Elder Scrolls and Fallout series, Howard shared some interesting details.
Starfield being delayed was tough but Howard says it was the right thing to do. The team wanted to get it done on time but there was too much risk involved for the development team and the end product. Howard says the game will have a lot of customization and that players won’t be stranded out in space with no fuel.
Indiana Jones is currently in development by Machine Games. When asked about the game genre, Howard said: "I will just say it's a mash-up. It's unique. It isn't one thing, intentionally, so it does a lot of different things that myself and the folks at Machine Games have wanted to do in a game. So it's a unique thing”. Indiana Jones was announced in January 2021 and is confirmed to be an original story.
Pressure is mounting for Howard as he says Starfield is supposed to be “the game” to sell the Xbox Series X|S. They’ve never faced that level of pressure before but not having the game on the PS5 allowed them to make Xbox their primary focus. Howard says Xbox has their top engineers working on the development for the Xbox Series X|S.
Esports Corner
TSM have officially announced that they’re hosting a $100,000 Apex Legends tournament. The TSM Winter Royale is set to take place on December 12th and will feature 20 Apex Legends teams but no further details have been announced yet. This will be the second $100k Apex Legends event (the first being the 2022 TSM Invitational) that TSM hosts outside of the official ALGS ecosystem.
The 2022 Smash World Tour Championships organized by VGBootCamp were supposed to take place on December 9th but the event is now forced to cancel due to an official Nintendo cease and desist. This sudden turn of events came as a shock to the organizing team because they’ve been operating in direct communication with Nintendo, and they’ve generally been receptive to the idea of it running alongside the officially licensed Panda Cup until Nintendo started to ghost them. Third-party tournament organizers have now started to speak up against the Panda Cup’s CEO Alan Bunney who has reportedly been threatening events in an attempt to coerce them into joining the Panda Cup.
The 2022 Halo Championship Series has come to a close and despite a decently successful first full official competitive season, Cloud9 has decided to leave Halo esports. They’re now the 4th partnered organization to leave the Halo Championship Series including eUnited, Fnatic and Spacestation Gaming. Cloud9 won the first two events of the season (Raleigh and Anaheim) and were then runner ups at HCS Kansas City and HCS Orlando before ultimately falling in the Grand Finals of the Halo World Championships to OpTic Gaming. The team earned a cumulative prize pool of $582,000 in 2022.
Gaming Roundup
James Gunn, head of the DC Universe says they plan to directly connect video games to the movies and TV shows in their new 10-year plan.
CD Projekt Red has confirmed that The Witcher Remake will be a “story-driven, single player open world RPG” instead of a copy of the original 2007 game.
Ubisoft’s “Beyond Good and Evil 2” (prequel to its predecessor) is reportedly still considered to be in “early development” despite being teased in 2008.
Assassin’s Creed Mirage is set to be released in August 2023. It was supposed to be released earlier in the year but reportedly faced two internal delays.
Monster Hunter Rise is coming to PS5, PS4, Xbox Series X|S and Xbox One on January 20th, 2023. The game will launch on Xbox Game Pass day one.
Gravity Well released concept artwork from their new AAA IP. The developer consists of industry veterans from Call of Duty, Titanfall and Apex Legends.
Marvel’s Wolverine reportedly won’t be released by Insomniac Games until 2024 (or potentially 2025) since their main focus is currently Marvel’s Spider-Man 2.
Elden Ring director Hidetaka Miyazaki says he’s honoured by the awards the game is receiving but he’s trying not to get distracted by all the success.
Game Review - The Callisto Protocol
Survival horror games are making a much needed comeback and leading the charge is The Callisto Protocol… or so we thought. The game is gruesomely beautiful and highly detailed when it comes to audiovisuals, but aside from that, it fails to lift the genre above some of its iconic predecessors. As a spiritual successor to the Dead Space series The Callisto Protocol expectedly borrows, and sometimes improves on some of the game's best elements, but does little to elevate them to new heights. It has horror but lacks survival - offering little more than the typical zombies and mutant creatures you’d expect from a horror game. There’s no denying that the game nailed its beautiful elements and haunting atmosphere but making your way through the story doesn’t really offer any major challenges or give players anything to be afraid of.
The Callisto Protocol was expected to be a genre-defining IP that would rewrite the horror game playbook. Striking Distance Studios definitely delivered a terrifyingly beautiful game with some pretty intense moments and gruesome combat, but the frustratingly short eight-hour storyline and a lack of gameplay innovation leaves players begging for more. For these reasons we give The Callisto Protocol a score of C+.
If you enjoyed this week’s edition of the Weekly Recon, please send it to some friends and share it on social media. We strive to be your best source of gaming news.
Follow us on Instagram, Twitter, TikTok and YouTube for more gaming news. To contact us directly email us at gaming@weeklyrecon.com.