The Teacup Awards B-Side (2018)

Not every game fits neatly into an awards category. Think of these B-sides as the participation awards. They are something worth talking about but only when all of the hard hitters are out of the way. I played a real mixed bag of games last year and didn’t play too many of my usual sort. Very light on survival games, for one, and there weren’t as many stand-out indie games as the year before.

Still, some interesting stuff did come out of the year so I don’t just want to disregard ninety percent of it. It was a year of catch-up really, playing through some of 2017’s biggest hits. So now let’s make up a bunch of different awards and give to games from last year that I think are worth a mention.

Two Point Hospital

The ‘Fly in the Cup’ Award for Killer Problem

I liked Two Point Hospital quite a lot when I first started playing it. It felt like a return to form; back to Theme Hospital, which I enjoyed a lot. It was refreshingly similar but with new diseases and additions that kept me excited. I recorded myself playing it and then created a different save to play in the downtime, something I didn’t do often. So I was obviously enjoying myself. Yet as I got through the game, something started to nag at me. It took me quite a while to find out what it was.

The difficulty obviously increases as you go on, but getting the two and three star ratings started feeling like a huge slog. My reputation would be decent and tons of people were visiting but the money wasn’t coming in, so I couldn’t properly expand to meet the demand. As a result, a lot of people were being sent home and things hit a stalemate. This is down to one big problem - the GP offices. They stall everything, making sure that everything is backed up and nothing can get done.

See, patients need to visit GPs after every diagnostic test - even if they’re one hundred percent diagnosed. That means all your patients are funneling through to one place, making for giant queue times and holding everything up. The simple addition of a ‘straight to treatment’ slider would have solved this. At the very least make patients prioritise appointments over hitting up the vending machines. It’s possible that this has been patched (or will be) but it totally killed my enthusiasm at the time.

Stories Untold

The ‘What Just Happened’ Award for Strangest Game

I originally considered Stories Untold for a spot in the scariest game award but it didn’t get there for one reason: it’s not very scary. Interesting, certainly, and it does create quite the atmosphere. But it’s more quiet and thoughtful than outright scary. Much like the Twilight Zone, where a lot of inspiration seems to have been drawn. No bad thing that, as I quite like The Twilight Zone. It shares the right amount of weirdness while also being grounded, somewhere, in reality.

Playing Stories Untold is a strange beast as well. The bulk of it is done via text adventure, a medium that has been all but abandoned by modern game developers, unless it’s being used as a joke. Stories Untold uses its text adventure format to interact with the world around it, making it able to tell a story and spook the player at the same time. Again, not entirely scary but it’s an interesting subversion of the medium.

It all culminates in a final chapter that brings all of the madness together to some sort of conclusion. It’s quite a satisfying blend, as it takes us back through all the previous chapters but with new information under our belts. Stories Untold isn’t a perfect game, I had issues with the third chapter, but it is by far the strangest game I played last year.

Mario Odyssey

The ‘Boing’ Award For Best Platformer

Mario games never really seen to fit into the awards ceremonies. They are epitome of good but not overly memorable. Mario Odyssey broke the mold somewhat because it did a lot of things different from the other games in the series. It wasn’t content to use the old Mario roster for its NPCs, but instead brought in new faces. From round, bouncing seals to sentient forks, Mario Odyssey was channeling the kind of creativity not usually found outside of the RPGs.

It pays off in dividends as it’s good, honest fun. It makes the best use of the Switch’s fairly reserved controls and delivers up a pile of interesting worlds to explore. While the moon placement is a bit bizarre - as some can be as simple as looking under a rock - it gives you all the more incentive to explore every corner of the fairly expansive worlds. Plus you get to go to the actual moon and jump around on the surface and you can’t really fault that.

I didn’t really have much of a problem with it, but Mario games of that type tend to be kind of one note. There were very memorable moments, such as the festival in New Donk City, but a lot kind of glided past in that Mario way. It was fun but you’re not really going to think about it after it’s done. I didn’t want Mario Odyssey to slide out of here without a mention though as it really is a good game and a definite step in the right direction for Mario.

Ultimate Chicken Horse

The ‘Tandem Teapot’ Award For Best Multiplayer Game

I don’t often talk about multiplayer games here as I’m generally a singleplayer gamer. However last year I was slightly less of a loner and played a few more couch co-op games. I’ve been getting into the Jackbox Party Pack games of late but it was Ultimate Chicken Horse that I enjoyed the most. It’s a platforming game that understands what developers feel when they build their levels: the joy of killing their players.

Trying to build a level that you can complete but your enemies can’t is a difficult science. It usually involves a lot of badly thought out sawblades everywhere and more often than not makes the level impossible. So you all change a few things around until one sneaky person manages to break through. That’s one reason why I like Ultimate Chicken Horse so much, it doesn’t matter if you’re amazing at platforming. All that means is your friends are going to work harder to screw you over.

It’s a game to play in short bursts but it has a decent range of levels, all with differing challenges. When I hosted a game night, it was definitely one of the highlights. A decent game all round I’d say.