Either the game holds up really well or the new release spruced up in a major way that made us love the same game all over again
The nominees for the GOTY Award 2020 for Best Remake/Remaster are:
- Command & Conquer Remastered Collection
- Final Fantasy VII Remake
- Resident Evil 3 Remake
- Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater 1+2
- Trials Of Mana
Deliberation Summary
Our bias is clearly showing with the list being populated by remakes/remasters of games from the ’90s. But 2020 has been a great year for remakes and remasters, there’s more that obviously not on our radar.
Trials Of Mana manages to hang on the cliff of the nomination list here, but at least one person on the crew is championing this (compared to another game that was cut- which was put on and removed by the same person). The SNES original never got an English until a recent port, but this remake, despite its low-budget nature compared to another Square Enix title, delivers what was a remarkable SNES game into a competent indie-scale video game.
Command & Conquer Remastered Collection is EA’s best remaster yet now that have finally bit the bullet, and the best remaster from them this year. It has upscaled graphics that remains true to the original art design. And very important quality of life updates making it more playable by modern standards.
Resident Evil 3 follows last year’s excellent (and previous GM GOTY Award Winner) Resident Evil 2. The campaign is less survival horror but more action-packed, which is why the general consensus is less hot on this. But the short-and-sweet single-player mode gives off Resident Evil Revelations vibes and is something we rate highly, enough to make it stay on the list.
Which leaves us to the two big contenders. Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater 1+2 returns the Birdman to form in proper HD glory, and continues Activision’s surprisingly impressive track records in faithful remakes. Muscle memory of balancing manuals and pulling triple kickflips will kick in if you’ve played the original two games, and it’s been a long time since we had a good arcade skateboarding game.
Meanwhile, Final Fantasy VII Remake has the near-impossible task of remaking the 1997 classic JRPG fans been clamouring for years that caused fans to stand on a chair from excitement just from its first announcement alone. Yet somehow, the developers managed to pull it off in almost perfect form. The point of contention is the slight twist of the story- the “remake” in the title isn’t for show- they really are remaking the game and story into potentially something else. But this first of how many parts faithfully tickles the nostalgia bones of many- and rendered more beautifully and treated so well than we expected.
The turning point then was whether we value FF VII R’s more ambitious remake more than Tony Hawk- an outstanding remake we’ve come to expect given the publisher and developer’s track record. In the end, the vote favours the bold.
Cue the victory theme, congratulations to Final Fantasy VII Remake, the GM GOTY Award 2020 for Best Remake/Remaster!
Tomorrow’s award will be a fun one, as we reveal the winner for Best Game We Didn’t Play, which by nature, something you’ll hear us talk more about next year when we finally get around playing these.