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The Insomnia December 2019 Game of the Month Award

Moderator: JC Denton

What's your December 2019 Game of the Month?

Phoenix Point
0
No votes
Darksiders Genesis
1
100%
Boneworks
0
No votes
 
Total votes : 1

The Insomnia December 2019 Game of the Month Award

Unread postby icycalm » 06 Mar 2020 06:25

So here we are, Insomnia's first Game of the Month award. I've been working on this project for a long time, and I'll explain my goals for it at length on Patreon soon, so let's just cut straight to the chase here and figure out which game should snag the award for our inaugural month of December 2019.

As you can see on the frontpage, all the major releases for this month have been reviewed on the site. And here are all the minor releases I am aware of, that haven't been reviewed yet:

https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/p/weakless/9pkmkqdccn35
https://www.epicgames.com/store/en-US/p ... story/home
https://store.steampowered.com/app/1096 ... rld_War_I/
https://store.steampowered.com/app/9369 ... ctitioner/
https://store.steampowered.com/app/8635 ... com_Nexus/
https://store.steampowered.com/app/1092 ... nsolvency/
https://store.steampowered.com/app/1193 ... ttlefield/
https://store.steampowered.com/app/1188930/Chrono_Ark/
https://store.steampowered.com/app/827610/Dead_End_Job/
https://store.steampowered.com/app/1016 ... _deceived/

As you can see, it's mostly crap. Feel free to dive into this stuff and let me know if any of it is worthwhile, and also feel free to let me know if I missed something. Some of the stuff above will be reviewed eventually, but none of it is urgent compared to the work remaining for all the other months, so I am not in a hurry to cover any of it anytime soon, unless someone makes the case why some of these games are notable.

So from this exhaustive search, three games have so far come on top (click on the images for the full reviews):

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GTFO almost made the cut too, but not quite. Very promising game (we played the beta with a full team for a few hours just a few days before release [ > ]), that disappointed me in the end, and a lot of other people. It certainly deserves an honorable mention, and after you're done with our top three choices, and if you're still looking for more games from this month to play, I'd say GTFO should be your fourth.

Now, out of the three contenders, I have so far played, and streamed, a bit of two of them: Phoenix Point a while back [ > ] and Darksiders Genesis just a few hours ago [ > ]. Boneworks I haven't played because I don't have my VR setup right now, otherwise I would have played it. But my understanding of this game is that it's more like a tech demo than a proper game, so until I play it myself and change my mind about it, I am ruling it out for the award. Which leaves us two choices.

It's a tough choice, and from my limited time with the games I'd call them about equal. However, I will be finishing Genesis with Sergei in the next few days, so I will have an in-depth opinion on it soon. Phoenix Point, on the other hand, I am not planning to dive into anytime soon, because my short session with it was disappointing. It's not that it's a bad game, it's that it's clearly not the masterpiece I'd been expecting. And what's worse, it might even be inferior to the Firaxis XCOMs we were all hoping it would beat. So there's no sense in me playing PP before I've played the Firaxis games. And that's why I won't be playing it anytime soon.

In the end, regardless of how good Genesis ends up being, it will still probably be a close call with Phoenix Point, and it'll be ages before I've finished both and be in a position to deliver a final verdict on the contest. Until then, however, I need to give the award to one of them, and because I am having quite a bit more fun in the opening hours of Genesis than I had in the opening hours of PP, with its asinine mission design and other issues (see my stream for more details), I will give the award to Genesis.

Darksiders Genesis then is Insomnia's December 2019 Game of the Month until I change my mind about it, or someone posts here with a convincing argument to the contrary. You can also vote in the attached poll (visible only in the forum, not on the frontpage) for your personal favorite among the three finalists. The result of the poll will have no bearing on the award, it's just there so we can have a record of the popular vote among Insomnia's readers.

And with that done, I am off to work on January and then February 2020, so I can catch up with the latest releases. I hope you enjoyed this feature, and please look forward to the upcoming ones, as well as my Patreon post on my vision for this award.

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icycalm
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Joined: 28 Mar 2006 00:08
Location: Tenerife, Canary Islands

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