SXSW Gaming Awards - Vote and vote well

I am all about gaming awards. For some reason I get really excited by them and really frustrated when my favorites do not win. Last year, DAI pretty much won everything and I was really happy with that, in my opinion, they deserved it. 2015 was a much more diluted year for gaming in terms of quality and style that it's a lot trickier to find a clear champion.


I loved that the categories started with the Excellence in Art because I had a clear and easy winner in mind. Who would give this to anything other than Bloodborne? Even though I kept dying like a loser and got frustrated, as I usually do, the art and design were absolutely beautiful and most of all, striking. Just Cause 3 was only nominated for Technical Achievement award but I couldn't give it to them because Fallout 4, Metal Gear and Until Dawn were in the same category. The only award I would give Just Cause 3 is the "Physics Don't Matter" Achievement. Visual Achievement was also an easy pick for me because Battlefront totally slayed the visuals. The fact that the locations and the visuals used were all well-known  and close to everybody's heart made the feat harder in my opinion. Funnily enough, with all the shit that I gave Life is Strange, it was nominated a fair bit for the SXSW Gaming Awards. I really played this wrong, I apologize!!! Anyway, I would be a hypocrite if I chose this game for the narrative award so I went with The Witcher because it was a pretty damn good storyline and the dialogue didn't include sexting (I am not letting this go). Sound Effects went to Battlefront for me, again, because of the familiarity and their ability to stay true to their source.

I suppose the most debated one will be the gameplay award but to me Metal Gear Sold V had to take this. There was no other game this year that made complex mechanics feel fun and exciting. When I saw the Online Personality award, I was just looking for PewDiePie because, who else! Luckily, he was nominated and I chose him without even looking at the other people. For some odd reason, I love his personality and he makes me laugh every single time, so it goes to him! He totally needs it too. Then came the Game of The Year award with four very strong games in the running: Fallout 4, MGSV, The Witcher III and Bloodborne. I have to take Bloodborne out just because its universe was too niche and its gameplay far from accessible. My heart will always favor RPGs, that's just a fact. However, this year, I felt like one game did everything right, and it was Metal Gear Solid V. In short, it gave me character development, awesome customization, a puppy, complex missions, fultoning and many other quirks that made this game replayable, challenging and entertaining. I missed the soul of MGSV in Fallout 4 (mostly because I cannot click with Bethesda's style of storytelling, it's very dry to me) and I missed the quirkiness of MGSV in the excellent Witcher.

Who are you going to give your vote to?