Talking Point: Did The Game Awards 2021 Live Up to the Hype?

It takes two? Uh…. No.

~20 minutes of actual games lost in over 2 and a half hours of absolute w*nk. Bordered on a total waste of time, unless you REALLY like adverts.

No. Chuffed to bits with It Takes Two winning but deary me it’s past 4AM. Not worth it but I knew that going in.

It Takes Two… so glad!

@ShogunRok The best bit was Geoff’s speech immediately followed by Ubisoft and Quantic Dream.

It Takes Two deserves it. Congrats

Not Really Got Bored And Stopped Watching.

It was on for way too long and all the trailers started to look like the same game. Has it always had a 3 hour run time?

I've also literally forgot 90% of what was shown.

Congrats to It Takes Two!! Also, the show was about what I expected it to be.

It Takes Two DESERVES. So glad it got recognised.

I liked it better when Keighley's shows were smaller and clumsy. It feels way too corporate now seeing everything sponsored by Chevrolet or Amazon or whatever. Seems more like a 3 hour long advertisement marathon now.

Star wars, the expanse, space marine II, arc raiders, splitterhead, suicide squad, this is all

Think Psychonauts 2 should have received more love.

No NetherRealm news was the biggest surprise of the show for me.

Was there even one big announcement? Is wonder Woman being made by insomniac...No? Then who cares.

Maybe I’m getting old but it felt like a bunch of advertisements and mostly meh games. Kinda mad I wasted my time.

@Subsided Hellblade - That was a pretty jaw-dropping trailer.

When I was in my early 20s, announcements at shows like e3 were the most exciting time of the year, now all I see is corporate interference, safe copy cats and 30 second announcements for games 3 years away. Maybe I'm jaded, maybe I expect too much but it's probably just games are about the bottom line now days and very little to do with new and exciting experiences.

@Stragen8 I'm 33 and feel exactly the same

It was alright. The matrix demo was the highlight for me and unreal engine 5 is a beast. That city is Crisp!

+Space Marine 2 amazing announcement. If you are not hyped then you never played the first game. Other than that is was okay, some cool gameplay shown but nothing mind blowing.

Wow, reading the comments I really wonder what people are expecting of these shows….

In think it was a good celebration of the video game industry. It could have been better… for sure, but come on. It was entertaining, not ground breaking but that is more than enough to me and I kinda agree with all the winners I cared about.

I expected nothing so I was surprised to find a decent amount of stuff I actually cared about. I didn’t watch the event but going through all of the announcements and trailers… I’m pretty impressed. Looking forward to 2022!

@DeathByLasagna Ya they didn't have tons of new crazy announcements, but they showed a bunch of updates on some really good games.

I thought it was actually pretty alright. More personal highlights than I expected: Slitterhead, Hellblade II, Horizon: Forbidden West, Have a Nice Death, Cuphead DLC, and Alan Wake 2. It Takes Two winning GOTY was a nice surprise too.

@Coltaine22

Yeah, negativity these days…

My only complaint is that I want to play a lot of Bethesda’s Studios next games… Arkane, Machine Games, iD, etc…. and HellBlade2… grrrr…. This generation exclusivity finally bites us, but this drives competition!

I came for the trailers, they were good🤷‍♂️

Dreadful, as usual.

A few cool announcements (REALLY happy the Cuphead DLC is finally releasing next year, in particular) drowning in a three-hour slog of a show.

I think the Best part was Maggie robertson

Some trailers I'm really looking forward to watching tomorrow (Forspoken, Alan Wake 2, Hellblade 2, Suicide Squad, Horizon Forbidden West, A Plague Tale 2) along with the Star Wars Eclipse and Wonder Woman announcements made it at least decent for me.

It was also nice to see a complete surprise win GOTY instead of the usual expected ones, but people are never satisfied with that.

@AgentGuapo I wish this wasn't top comment cuz It Takes Two was an incredible W for the gaming industry. It's an incredible experience

Definitely underwhelming. Glad it takes two and tmreturnal won something. Considering the ridiculously selected goty nominations this was better than the other options.

Other than that it was basically a few trailers spread among a ton of ads from big corporate entities literally ruining gaming and the human condition

I was quite surprised at the actual winner but I'm glad that a game that deviated somewhat from the usual GOTY template has won this time. Shame about Ratchet though but I'm a girl on Team Colt and I've glad that Deathloop has racked up some heavy awards.

@nessisonett hope you managed some sleep because i'm pretty much resigned to being awake all morning now.

The reveals were good, the orchestral parts excellent and it was certainly less cringe worthy compared to last years show. Saying that, the number of adverts was a bit concerning. I know he's got a show to pay for but it was like a constant barrage of selling something be it pizzas, graphics cards, amazon etc . I was disappointed with Sony not turning up with something other than a new trailer for Horizon and the odd console exclusive deal like the Vampire game.

Pot Boy will be made into a meme no doubt

The best announcement was Hellblade 2...wow that looked amazing. Thats what a next gen game should look like. They showed the new Horizon trailer not long afterwards and it made it look bad. You can clearly tell its a cross gen game.

I would recommend people here to either play or watch the matrix awaken thingy on youtube. It gives you a small open world to explore and the BEST PART was not shown! IT IS THE SINGLE BEST LOOKING "GAME" I HAVE SEEN YET! Watch it to believe it.

It looks like there are cool trailers. I’ll watch later on while eating expecting a cringe goofy show. Good stuff 👍

(Fast forward button is the way)

Yea the show was too long ... but the reveals were pretty good.
I dont know what massive expectations some people were having, but it was a micro-E3.
We got announcements and sneek-peaks from Arc Raiders, Star Wars Eclipse, Monolith's Wonder Woman, Aaryn Flynn's Nightingale, Alan Wake 2, Space Marine 2, Plague Tale Requiem, Suicide Squad, Slitterhead, Senua II, Horizon Forbidden West, Evil West and Sonic Frontiers.
And that's not including Steelrising and many more ...

It was a fine show but I every year I keep asking myself ‘why do I deprive myself of sleep for this?’ … last year of watching it live…. Wait!!! HFW and GoW2 will be up for game of the year next year! … here I go again…

I hope you all learned your lesson, wasting your time watching that rubbish!
Geoff Keighley puts on a whoopee cushion of a show every time. I spent the time weeding my garden.

Didn't watch it live and would probably have been more disappointed if I had. Tchia look really charming and fun and I'm even more hyped for A Plague Tale: Requiem after seeing that gameplay trailer.

@Daveuppercut I still get excited by these events but I rarely watch them live. I find it much more pleasurable to wait until the next day when Push Square has ordered all the trailers neatly for me in one article

Watched the trailers fast forwarded everything else. It takes two is my game of the year so very happy for hazelight to win it

@Ken_Kaniff this is such a BS statement…. Hellblade 2 didn’t look better than HFW. For matter fact, most seem to be way more impressed by the trailer of HFW than Hellblade 2 in terms of art design, combat, and graphically/visually.

Hellblade 2 trailer was boring as heck too… that combat they showcased could put anyone to sleep.

@Ken_Kaniff you are on every article dissing Horizon FW. Do you have an agenda? Are you payed by M$?
I see the this tactic all the time, people inserting Game Pass comments in every PS related news. We don't care for M$, at least I don't, please go to your XBOX news site.

Was an okay presentation, nothing really mindblowing or anything. Del Toro trolling about Silent Hill caught me by surprise and was hoping for "something" throughout the show but nothing. FFXIV and Arise winning was good enough for me and that Slitterhead reveal looks interesting. Still no FFXVI announcement tho. Honestly didn't expected the GoTY winner but if people loved it and happy that the game won then good enough.

@rpg2000 Totally agree with you. That guy is just under Microsoft paycheck to spread bs. He's on every article, dissing Horizon FW.

Hellblade 2 looked genuinely stunning and a proper next gen game. There were some other good trailers bit nothing Earth shattering.

Had zero expectations going in and it ended up being a more decent show for it. The first half was great. The second continued its problem with being over bloated and self indulgent. And non stop advertising and virtue signalling. They really need to cut the fat and get this show down to under two hours. They probably don't have alot of choice with the sponsors, but the constant videos about 'content creators'...make a separate show dedicated to them.

On the plus side some good reveals and exclusives. Hellblade 2 looked awesome and reason why we need to move on from last gen sooner rather than later.
Suicide squad was graphically great but gameplay was pretty meh tbh...'super hero's' mashing buttons to fight countless non descript enemy...sounds familiar. Hopefully there's more to it. Also reminded me a lot of sunset overdrive.
Star wars game looked intriguing.
And horizon looks like it's going to offer a nice full varied pretty world. Which I could have gotten into the first one.

And called it, take two was always going to win goty.

@Sil_Am Well thankfully anyone is free to visit this site. I have Xbox, Nintendo and PlayStation consoles and I too am free to comment from a more neutral point than you.

Give up the fanboy stuff and just enjoy games.

Imagining the lawyers (at Take-Two Interactive) eyes twitching every time someone mentions It Takes Two winning GOTY 🤣

@__jamiie That guy is on every push square article saying how bad Horizon is compared to Hellblade. If that is not an agenda, i don't know what is.
Check for yourself if you don't believe me.

@Sil_Am I'm not going to waste my time by looking but, if that's the case, then he really needs to grow up. Although I do wish that Horizon FW was PS5 only rather than cross gen.

@Sil_Am you guys still running with the MS paycheck paranoia? I remember when that was the go-to cry-out during the early PS3 days when games like uncharted didn't get perfect scores from IGN. You know Xbox is doing something right when arguements of 'paychecks' make a come back. Keep fighting the good fight friend.

We saw Elden Ring, got a new Star Wars game announced and Josef Fares said "F**k the Oscars". Couldn't have been better.
10/10.

@Bleachedsmiles How can you compare a reviewer with random guys in comment sections? It is not the same thing.
Also, show me the article where push square talks about Hellblade. There is none, but you guys still feel the need to bring it up. It's called influencing, and many people fall for it, and say PS is bad cause no HB.

No, yet again it didn't. And its woke now joys. Won't be watching next year

@Sil_Am I'm comparing the paranoia...but take note what you just wrote 'a random guy in the comments section'... you see him as this YET still use those faithful words that offered you the same comfort they offered those playstation faithful back during uncharteds ign review... pretty ridiculous isn't it. But you do you if it helps you out.

This is about what people thought of the show as a whole. This wasn't a Sony show. Hellblade was shown at the show. And you're sat there wondering why people are bringing it up?
'I'm against influencing but actively suggesting to people what they should and shouldn't talk about'. Like I said, you do you.

Didn't watch it, but there seemed to be some cool stuff announced in wonder woman, slitterhead and especially space marine. Ss game play was OK but that's not necessarily enough.

I thought it was a pretty good show actually. Good mix of Playstation, Xbox, and 3rd party stuff. Hellblade, Horizon, and Plague Tale all looked great. Hopeful for Sonic Frontiers but obviously will tread carefully with that one.

Barely any of the games I like even got nominated but I was happy to see Halo win Players choice and It Takes Two win GOTY. Sure maybe Geoff hyped it a bit much with the Elden Ring announcement comparison but overall I thought it was good.

I don’t think I’ve ever watched one of these things straight through, but I tried to watch this one and just couldn’t stay with it. There was some really cool trailers and a few hype moments, but there was too many musical numbers, advertisements, and awkward acceptance speeches. Even though they tried to keep it flowing, my time is just too valuable to be watching for 3 hours in order to see the 45 minutes worth of good content, so I drifted in and out of it while I did other things.

I thought it was pretty great in the first half and really went downhill for the last 90 minutes. Hellblade 2, Cuphead, Horizon, Space Marine 2, and Plague Take 2 all look really good to me. I’m excited to see what Quantic Dream does with Star Wars, and I’m interested to see if Crossfire X ends up being any good. I also love Monolith games, so I’m curious to see how Wonder Woman is. Pretty solid show, imo. Not a lot of PS exclusive stuff if that’s what people were looking for, though.

I thought it was great only because I watched about 20 minutes and left to do other things knowing that all I needed to know would be right here waiting for me the next morning summarized and so it is.

Thanks PushSquare!

I feel there could have been one or two more date announcements to go along with these upcoming games, but I guess one's better than nothing.... Forespoken looks sick and I can't wait to get my hands on that one. Was really hoping for Suicide Squid announcement date TBH.

Cheers!

It was fine. But NEEDLESSLY long. Waaaaaay to long.

@KorsaRaph I agree. I enjoyed the show apart from the ads but I don't expect this to be done for free. You can't please people on the internet, though. Most just want to see the game they imagine should be there or they're jaded and cynical. I'm 40 years old, thought the show was the best one yet, the earlier ones were pretty bad but it's getting better. People's comments never fail to depress me, though.

As a huge NFL fan I decided to skip Thursday Night Football for this ... This will be the last time I watch the game awards , I will just keep tabs on the live updates on pushsquare . Total waste of 3 hours smh .

It's somehow arresting that Maggie Robertson (Lady Dimitrescu) is only 6' tall

Just more and more games looking and feeling the same (dark environments/themes, ultra-violence, and generic antagonists/enemies) anymore. These shows and ones like E3 haven't been "celebrations" of the industry for some time now; they;ve become indictments of its proclivity to mimic others' successes and to play it safe. As a Japanese developer remarked at E3 2010, "You Americans must really enjoy war" with regard to the glut of FPSes at the show). Now such developers (along with smaller ones from overseas) rarely even bother attending E3 anymore because the media focuses on the same big-budget cookie-cutter IPs from the mega-publisher every single year. And that creative laziness has spread into outright greed and sloppiness (examples: Switch Online's "expansion" price and 343's handling of Halo Infinite, with no local splitscreen, campaign co-op, or Forge even after a year's delay...although they had time to build a F2P model with thousands of $$$ worth of skins).

All in all, three hours I really wish I had back.

Not going to lie, the last major reveal being The Matrix Awakens which everyone already knew about was super underwhelming.

Also the fact that Carrie Ann Moss looked totally disinterested in The Game Awards and Keanu was a little much even though that's how he always is.

I only hoped for Chrono Cross remaster, and i was disappointed.
But, the show itself was fine. It had some announcements such as Alan Wake 2, Sonic frontier and Space marine 2. Those are big announcements. There was also that Dune game. I am worried cause it's an uproven dev.

There were way too many FPS games. But, that is an industry issue.

@Sil_Am I'm a PS fan guy. Im just a human being with an opinion. HFW is a disappointment because its being held back by being cross gen, and the Hellblade trailer proved it. Same goes with GOW, it and Horizon look just like there PS4 prequels because Sony lied about "believing in generations" and then making the PS5s two biggest titles cross gen.

Can we get some love for Tchia in the comments at least. That game looks better and better everytime they show it and I hope it will be amazing. Sony is really pushing that game.

Horizon looked good, they were basically showing off the different locales, costumes, and enemies in the trailer. They just made it seem like Ratchet and Clank to show the different zones.

@Ken_Kaniff Don't judge from youtube trailers mate..even the original HZD is looking great running at 60fps on ps5..we can expect a much improved game with HFW with better resolution, more foliage better shadows etc with a stable 60fps..Sometimes can look a bit cartoony but that's their artstyle..I bet will look glorious with an oled tv.

@rumple1980 Honestly, I’d be more excited about an announcement for a Suicide Squid game than one for the Kill the Justice League game we got. 😜 It could be a whole expansion on the squid looking enemies in Returnal.
(Sorry, friend, I couldn’t resist. I make plenty of typos too, but that one make me chuckle. 😅. All in good fun. 🍻)

It was ok, I fell asleep half way through (I live in the UK) and glad I didn't miss too much in the games I was interested in.

I had a temperature of 38.7 so I decided to go to bed. Looks like whatever I have, not COVID according to tests, did me a bit of a favour. No real surprises and nothing really exciting.

@zebric21 Thats not it, these games are built on the PS4s architecture, so they will run on the older consoles and you can tell. Yes the PS5 has higher resolution and better frame rate, but these at there core are PS4 games, and you can really tell when you see games like Hellblade 2.

The first 30-60 minutes were entertaining for me, but I agree that this went on far too long and the pacing + mandatory ad mentions were weird. I'm also disappointed at no BioShock 4 or Chrono Cross Remake announcement, although I had a suspicion that'd be the case

Here's the trick to watching the game awards. Start watching the live stream an hour and a half late and then rewind to the beginning. That way you can skip any ad or announcement you don't care about. I did this and had a fantastic time. Haha!

It was way too long for me, and too short thrift to the nominees GK can't even be bothered to show snippets of the games or even read their names out loud. This isn't an awards show, it's 3 1/2 hours of GK telling us how he is the world's greatest social media influencer bought and paid for by the industry.

Skipping it going forward until they announce it's an actual 90 minute awards show.

Damn... so many generic online co-op shooters, how can anybody keep them apart, let alone give a crap!
Nevertheless, kudos to Geoff for putting this together, he surely does not deserve to be compared to Molyneux, that man's a quak.

@Th3solution lol good one haha I didn't even notice that. Cheers!

I only caught bits and pieces so I don't remember the full context, but it was pretty cringe when Keighley was hitting on the woman who was in the US for the first time, performing for the first time.

nope. it was a dumpster fire as usual. they forgot about the "celebration of video games" part the way they rush through the award winners is an embarassment and flat out disrepectful to the creators. but beyond that, there was a larger "hype" build up this year and there wasn't a single new game announcment worth a damn outside of star wars exclipse. so much for all the promises (lies) that we would be treated to some huge announcements...

It was too long. I don't remember being so exhausted watching a event. And I waited until the end in hope for a big reveal.. that ended up being that matrix thing.

Only watched for the game releases and not the awards.