After announcing the nominees a few weeks ago, The Game Awards 2017 revealed the winners last night during the star-studded industry event. With 102 games and individuals nominated for this year’s awards, there was a lot of competition leading up to the coveted Game of the Year award.
Before getting to the big winner, there are other awards that deserve recognition. For outstanding storytelling in a game, Best Narrative went to Buy Now . Best Art Direction went was unsurprisingly awarded to Buy Now , which also earned Best Independent Game. It also won Best Debut Indie Game for Studio MDHR.
Video games aren’t limited to a PC or console experience. Monument Valley 2 won Best Mobile Game while Buy Now earned Best Handheld Game.This was a bigger year for VR as well, with Resident Evil 7: Biohazard winning Best VR/AR Game.
Gameplay and visuals aren’t the only important parts of a video game. Best Audio Design went to Hellblade: Senua’s Sacrifice, which also earned Games for Impact for its thought-provoking message. The game also earned rookie voice actress Melina Juergens the award for Best Performance. Best Score/Music went to Nier: Automata.
With so many great games this year, genre awards give games a second chance to earn the recognition they deserve. Buy Now earned Best Action Game, Persona 5 won Best Role Playing Game, Injustice 2 was awarded Best Fighting Game, Super Mario Odyssey won Best Family Game, Mario + Rabbids Kingdom Battle earned Best Strategy Game, and Buy Now walked away with Best Sports/Racing Game.
While there were many other awards to win last night, the one fans were waiting for was 2017’s Game of the Year. This award is for the game that delivers the greatest experience both creatively and technically. This year has been an amazing year full of amazing games, but Buy Now stood out among the rest by reinventing the open-world structure. It also walked away with Best Game Direction and Best Action/Adventure Game.
Despite having different nominees, we agreed that Breath of the Wild was the best game of 2017. It brought back the feeling of exploration that has been missing since the first game in the series. It also came out on the innovative Nintendo Switch, a system that won our overall Product of the Year.
Acer’s Predator Atlas 8 finally has a US release date and price, several months after the company first showed off the handheld in May. The highlight is the Intel Arc G3 Extreme chip inside, which has been adopted by only a couple of other consoles besides the Atlas 8. This version will go on sale exclusively at Best Buy on November 1 for $1,299.99.
Acer originally said the Atlas 8 would arrive in North America in October, but left pricing open at the time. The launch came amid the ongoing DRAM crunch, which has made memory more expensive across the PC industry and complicated pricing for hardware makers.
Gaming laptops and I have a complicated relationship. One of my first gaming rigs was an Acer Predator that was already outdated when I bought it. I was a broke college kid, and that was the best I could afford. So trying out high-end gaming laptops is always fun. But ASUS' ROG Zephyrus G14 is a lot more than a laptop that can run AAA games. It is portable, so you're not lugging around a 2.5kg machine everywhere you go. It is built well, none of that plastic chassis, and can even function as a normal laptop outside of just gaming.
Google Play is borrowing one of the Nintendo Switch’s most useful little tricks. A new Sidekick tool called Playbacks captures a short clip after something interesting has already happened, sparing players from running a screen recorder throughout an entire game.
Playbacks is part of Google Play Store v53.8 and keeps saved clips on the phone. Google first announced it earlier this month, but the new Play Store update marks its arrival for players. Anyone who has watched a perfect win vanish because the record button came too late already understands the appeal.