The best game to use a style,a combination of artstyle and sound design, that makes it stand out from the beige of normality
The nominees for the GM GOTY Award 2020 for Best a e s t h e t i c are:
- Cyberpunk 2077
- Ghost Of Tsushima
- Hotshot Racing
- No Straight Roads
- Streets Of Rage 4
Deliberation Summary
The past years see the Best a e s t h e t i c award dominated by indie games. Understandably so, as the indie scene do serves some distinct style you don’t see in AAA games with realistic graphics.
But 2020 do have some outstanding AAA games with realistic graphics but still has a specific aesthetic they are going for.
Back to the indie games, it’s hard to dismiss the low-poly, high fidelity artstyle of Hotshot Racing. It captures the aesthetic of 90’s arcade racers it sets out to emulate with its own flair. The music is good, just not anything too wild.
Made-In-Malaysia indie title No Straight Roads is a game all about music. And boy the music slaps. Fun local references that are probably only for Malaysians aside, the music beats are fantastically well-made, and the bright art style also stands out- a firm contender for this award.
Streets Of Rage 4 keeps the arcane art of beautifully animated sprite art alive, with a striking comic-book-ish look and phenomenal music. In particular, the elavator music. That’s rad.
On the AAA side, we highly rate Ghost Of Tsushima for nailing the aesthetic they were going for. The action parts evoke the tense feel from a samurai film, but it’s the quiet parts- where you just bask in the majesty of natural beauty- is where it delivers. Places like the Golden Temple, where autumnal leaves cover the area with wind blowing them out is just breathtaking.
But the most breathtaking of all aesthetic for 2020, according to us, is cyberpunk. Cyberpunk 2077 is pure cyberpunk. It has the gritty megacities that are both impressive as it is oppressive. The slums that glows neon bright in the rain. The original soundtrack has dark and brooding synths, as you’d expect from a game with that title. And also, Cyberpunk 2077 remembers the “punk” in cyberpunk as well with its portrayal of rock, metal and punk themes.
Cyberpunk 2077’s launch is a mess and may not leave up to most of its hype, but you cannot argue that one thing the developers at CD Projekt Red got right, is that it understands cyberpunk, and Cyberpunk the tabletop RPG. Cyberpunk the RPG is all about style over substance (which they may have followed too closely now that we think about it) and Cyberpunk 2077 realises the dark future world we all dreamed of.
As most of us are fans of the cyberpunk aesthetic, it goes to no surprise that the GM GOTY Award 2020 for Best a e s t h e t i c goes to Cyberpunk 2077!
Tomorrow’s award reveal will be for the David Cage Award for Best Story. Given the shortlist of games nominated, this will be a very different winner than you might expect.