Welcome once again to the annual TheSixthAxis Alternative Game of the Year Awards, in which we recognise some of the more obscure achievements of gaming in 2024. Join us as we look back at a year that was, with more remasters and remakes than you can shake a stick at – how long before we get some remasters of remakes? – companies deciding to burn their business model to the ground, and our yearly hunt for the most ridiculous video game title.
Most Obvious Backtrack Award
It might have looked like Microsoft were building a games industry Death Star with last year’s acquisition of Activision Blizzard, but unlike the fantasy of Star Wars’ evil Empire, Xbox now has to face up to reality. They’ve spent an awful lot of money building this thing, but now they want to make that back, and PlayStation has been absolutely thrashing them in terms of console sales. So, after years of saying this was all about Xbox exclusives, they’ve started releasing those games on the “rival” platform.
But wait, it’s only going to be for small indie games and absolutely not Indy games, said Phil Spencer. Fast forward six months and Microsoft cheerfully announce that Indiana Jones and the Great Circle is coming to PlayStation 5.
That’s opened the floodgates and now Doom: The Dark Ages, The Outer Worlds 2 and more are coming to PS5. We’re still waiting for Starfield and Hellblade 2 to be announced, but there’s apparently no “red lines” for what will come to PlayStation in future.
Most Persistent Refusal To Announce Something Obvious
This was a pretty close run thing this year, a two horse race between Sony and Nintendo, but with the reveal and release of the PlayStation 5 Pro, there can only be one winner here. Nintendo… why won’t you just announce the Nintendo Switch 2 already?
You basically have already, with every single Nintendo Direct since the middle of the year also coming with a disclaimer that there definitely wouldn’t be a new console announcement.
The Why Didn’t It Do That in the First Place Award
The PlayStation Portal was released at the start of this year to a collective “meh”. Sure, it’s a nice device, but you had to stream games from your own PS5, even if you have Sony’s PlayStation Plus streaming subscription – not so useful if you want to game while on holiday and have not-so-great internet.
In November this year Sony announced an update and at last you can stream over 120 PS5 games from the PS Plus Game Catalogue, but for some reason not older PlayStation games. Your guess is as good as ours…
Best Xbox Game on PlayStation
Yep, we’re doing this one to death this year because even two years ago this would be unthinkable. Rare’s Sea of Thieves has been selling by the bucketload on the PlayStation Store and is a very welcome addition to the family. Yo ho ho!
Best Video Game Delay
Delays are a pretty much inevitable part of video game development, but only Devolver Digital would be so bold as to weaponise them as part of the marketing plan, making an annual “awards” show as they bump a bunch of games back to next year.
Most Pointless PS4 Remaster
The Last of Us Part 2 had already been enhanced with a free update to run on PS5 and looked great, it really didn’t need a remaster, even if it did throw in a roguelike mode and some documentary stuff.
Most Ridiculous Video Game Title
While there’s occasionally some Western developers challenging for this category, this almost always comes down to Japense devs who are happy to make up words, shove colons in places they shouldn’t go, leave the caps lock on and throw around square brackets.
Under Night In-Birth II [Sys:Celes] is pretty strong in all those counts, and then there’s Yeah! You Want “Those Games,” Right? So Here You Go! Now, Let’s See You Clear Them! 2, but we’re going to ding those for being sequels. No, you need a bit of originality round here, so we’re going with a deckbuilder roguelite spin-off to Love Live! Sunshine with『Yohane the Parhelion – NUMAZU in the MIRAGE -』.
Congrats, BeXide Inc., on the exquisite use of corner brackets, hyphens and capitalisation.
The Most Surprising Thing That Is an Xbox Award
Talking of Microsoft’s change of direction it’s become very clear that if you can play games on it, Microsoft want it to be an Xbox. Your TV’s an Xbox, your PC, your phone, your PlayStation, and probably even your smart fridge or toaster, which can probably play that popular Microsoft game Doom.
Microsoft are completely focused on Game Pass and streaming from now on, it seems, so Xbox is no longer about the console under your TV. Microsoft Gaming CEO Phil Spencer revealed Xbox spends over $1 billion a year on third-party content for Xbox Game Pass and the service itself is profitable. However, the service has 34 million subscribers as of February this year and MS are targeting 100 million by 2030 which seems.. a lot. Will the gamble work? Only time – and the ability to play Skyrim via Game Pass on your Smart Toilet – will tell.
The Saddest Use of $200 Million Award
We have Overwatch, Destiny 2, Fortnite, and COD: Warzone, if you are going to enter the hero shooter arena you had better have something special up your sleeves and more importantly, make it free to play. Ladies and gentlemen, welcome to the stage Concord, a generic slightly cartoony looking shooter than you have *gasp* pay money for!
The game was dead in the water before it even launched as your Average Joe took one look at and thought “Well yeah, but The Rivals and Splitgate and Overwatch are all free, I’m not paying for that”. The Concord team did have a plan, with weekly episodes telling a story to keep players interested but that only works if you players in the first place, and I don’t know where that $200 million went but it certainly was not on marketing. this game needed to by hyped to the heavens and beyond to have a fighting chance when it launched and it just.. arrived.
The horrible thing is Concord was actually quite good, we gave it 8/10 and the recent episode of Amazon’s Secret Level based on the game was a lot of fun, it gave us a tantalising peek at the characters and how they would interact in the weekly episodes they had planned.
Most Baffling Reason Not To Do a Sequel
Prince of Persia: The Lost Crown was a critical hit when it launched right at the start of the year, and a modestly successful game, even if Ubisoft chose not to put it on Steam more than half a year later. A good jumping off point for a sequel, then? And especially when Ubisoft has partnered with Dead Cells co-devs Evil Empire for The Rogue Prince of Persia.
But no, Ubisoft’s bean counters apparently didn’t want a sequel because it might “cannibalize” long term sales of The Lost Crown.
Those same money-men probably thought that Assassin’s Creed 2 was a terrible idea, and aghast at what has become of Far Cry in the past 15 years. Strangely they’d be pro-Rainbow Six (completely misunderstanding the title), and Star Wars being re-branded as Episode IV. Can’t cannibalise an original’s sales if you start off with a sequel, can you?
Most Improved Awards Ceremony
After ten years, and somehow by making it 50% longer than last year, Geoff Keighley actually got The Game Awards right. It was well paced with musical breaks that were actually interesting, it had a sense of humour with Statler and Waldorf seemingly reading my tweets from last years show (“It’s more like the Game Adverts with some awards”), and this time Geoff actually read the room.
The Game Changer Award went Amir Satvat for setting up a community to help those affected by the mass layoffs and it was genuinely touching and a brought a tear to the eye. You can check it out below, and just watch when he takes to the stage and all the developers at the back immediately give him a standing ovation and the suits at the front look very uncomfortable and eventually join in.
Best Simulation of USA for the Next Four Years
It’s a tie this year, we couldn’t decide between the “managed democracy” of Helldivers 2 or the clearly massively xenophobic totalitarian regime of Warhammer 40,000: Space Marine 2. But don’t decide for yourselves, that would be undemocratic, just do as you are told by your leader, he’s there for you, he has your best interests in mind, do not question anything, do not look for facts, facts are lies. All hail the glorious leader!
The Half-Life 3 Award
This year is the first year I can remember since I started doing this back in 2012 in which two thousand “tipsters” on Twitter have not claimed that Half Life 3 is on the way. It will probably turn up next year.
Those are our picks for these quite specific categories. Do you agree? Let us know in the comments below!
