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All winners and biggest reveals : NPR

Published

1 week ago

December 14, 2024

The titular Astro Bot looms over an orchestra enjoying a medley from the soundtracks to the six Sport of the 12 months nominees.

The Sport Awards

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The Sport Awards

For a spherical up of our favorites of 2024, try NPR’s Video games We Love.

Astro Bot claimed 4 wins, together with Sport of the 12 months, on the 2024 Sport Awards.

The PlayStation 5 unique has gamers run, hover-jump, and rocket-blast to gather stranded robots throughout a cartoony galaxy. Whereas the sport celebrates three many years of Sony’s console historical past, Studio Director Nicolas Doucet credited Nintendo in a misty-eyed acceptance speech (although he prevented mentioning the competitor by title):

“I used to be a child in 1989, I bought a grey field and there was a recreation packed in — it was known as Tremendous Mario Brothers and it was actually, actually nice,” stated Doucet. “I need to pay tribute to the corporate who actually confirmed us innovation and high quality persistently, and impressed us to make the sport that we made.”

Nintendo, in the meantime, went residence empty-handed after an evening outlined by sweeps, shock reveals, fourth-wall breaks and celeb appearances from the likes of Harrison Ford and Snoop Dogg.

Just a sampling of the many Jokers of Balatro, winner of three prizes at The Game Awards.

Only a sampling of the various Jokers of Balatro, winner of three prizes at The Sport Awards.

Playstack

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Playstack

Balatro, a poker-style recreation from solo-developer LocalThunk, gained “Finest Debut Indie,” “Finest Unbiased Sport” and “Finest Cellular Sport.” Regardless of this dominance, the consultant who accepted awards on LocalThunk’s behalf tried to shout out the indie scene extra broadly, calling out pixel western Arco by title.

Huge-budget video games in any other case stole the highlight. The ceremony started with an official reveal trailer for The Witcher 4 and the shock announcement of Elden Ring: Nightreign, a co-op spinoff to the 2022 hit. The studio head behind 2021 Sport of the 12 months winner It Takes Two additionally unveiled the two-player journey Cut up Fiction, out subsequent March.

Breaking Dangerous‘s Aaron Paul and famend voice actor Laura Bailey confirmed off the subsequent recreation they carried out in: a tongue-in-cheek superhero story named Dispatch. And simply when the present appeared recent out of revelations, The Final of Us developer Naughty Canine dropped a cinematic trailer for a wholly new franchise, Intergalactic: The Heretic Prophet.

Host Geoff Keighley additionally acknowledged mass layoffs within the business — one thing critics lambasted him for ignoring in 2023’s ceremony. He even introduced a brand new “Gamechanger Award,” which went to Amir Satvat, an worker of gaming tycoon Tencent who additionally runs a pro-bono assist web site for builders in search of work.

Muppet critics Statler and Waldorf mock the proceedings at The Game Awards.

Muppet critics Statler and Waldorf mock the proceedings at The Sport Awards.

The Sport Awards

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The Sport Awards

However it would not be The Sport Awards with out the Muppets. Garrulous grumps Statler and Waldorf co-opted frequent criticisms of the awards in a collection of operating gags. After one rapid-fire battery of bulletins, they jabbed that “it was like the sport commercials with award interruptions!”. However as the published stretched towards its fourth hour, additionally they expressed the exhaustion many within the viewers appeared to be feeling, “my Closing Fantasy is for this present to be over.”

Most embellished video games

Astro Bot — 4 wins (together with Sport of the 12 months), 7 nominations

Metaphor: ReFantazio — 3 wins, 6 nominations

Balatro — 3 wins, 5 nominations

Black Fable: Wukong — 2 wins, 5 nominations

Helldivers 2 — 2 wins, 4 nominations

Senua’s Sage: Hellblade 2 — 2 wins (together with lead actor Melina Juergens’ win for Finest Efficiency), 4 nominations

A screenshot from Elden Ring: Nightreign — surprise announced at The Game Awards.

A screenshot from Elden Ring: Nightreign — shock introduced at The Sport Awards.

Bandai Namco

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Bandai Namco

A fast observe earlier than itemizing the total winners: NPR is likely one of the greater than 130 retailers that contributed ballots to The Sport Awards, which picked winners primarily based on these tallies and an open on-line voting system.