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thepixelresponse · 6 years

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The Burning Barrel Awards 2017: Gaming Edition

Welcome to the Burning Barrel Awards for 2017!

This year, Hank and I decided to do something a bit collaborative for the site in which we came up with a list of categories, chose some personal winners for each category and then decided what compromises we could make to do an official site list up.

So below is the list of winners. Yes, some things are spoilers and yes, the VERY LAST CATEGORY is nothing but a spoiler category so beware.

I highly suggest listening to our deliberations here first:

Burning Barrel Awards 2017 Gaming Deliberations

So without further ado please enjoy our official list:

The "Irrationally Angry Because of Video Games" Award

Gaming has a certain culture about it. Sometimes it's annoying. This is the award for the most annoying thing in gaming culture, not so much a "game".

"Cuphead tutorial stage hijinx" - Paul

"Motherfuckers who knock away the ball in Destiny 2's Tower" - Hank

Grossest Industry Practice

The "death of single-player"? Loot boxes? Konami? What was the worst instance of business getting in the way of hobby this year?

Loot boxes. Seriously, stop it.

SHOUT-OUTS:

WB exploiting DLC sales over executive producer death

EA (just in general)

Worst Level/Sequence

You know those awesome set-pieces that get you in the mood to never stop playing? Yeah, this is the opposite of that.

Resident Evil 7's Tanker Level

SHOUT-OUTS:

The Leviathan Raid's Pleasure Gardens [Destiny 2]

Darker Side of the Moon [Super Mario Odyssey]

Flying Battery Zone [Sonic Mania]

Mirage Saloon Zone Act 1 [Sonic Mania]

Grey Prince Zote Boss Fight [Hollow Knight]

2B infected and trying to walk across the city ruins [NieR: Automata]

Worst Game

The game that not only didn't meet expectations but is barely a product. The exact opposite of what we want. Fuck that thing.

Mass Effect: Andromeda

SHOUT-OUTS:

RAID: World War II

Friday the 13th

Sundered

The Awards

The Glitchy Award

For excellence in being broken as fuck on a technical level.

Wolfenstein II: The New Colossus

SHOUT-OUTS:

PLAYERUNKNOWN's BattleGrounds

Destiny 2

The "Asura’s Wrath" Award

For excellence in spectacle action with emotional impact.

Tekken 7

SHOUT-OUTS:

Persona 5

NieR: Automata

The "Mass Effect" Award

For being the best Mass Effect in lieu of the trash-fire that was Andromeda.

Horizon: Zero Dawn

SHOUT-OUTS:

Persona 5

Night in the Woods

Pyre

The "MetroidVania" Award

For excellence in backtracking and drip-feeding abilities.

Hollow Knight

SHOUT-OUTS:

Metroid: Samus Returns

SteamWorld Dig 2

Mummy Demastered

Most Hateable Character Award

For perhaps single-handedly ruining any sort of good experience.

The Narrator from Tekken 7

SHOUT-OUTS:

Rip Blazkowicz [Wolfenstein II: The New Colossus]

Everyone in Ghost Recon Wildlands

Game You Would Hate to Play With Your Parents Award

For being "that" game...

NieR: Automata

SHOUT-OUTS:

PLAYERUNKNOWN's BattleGrounds

Tom Clancy's Ghost Recon: Wildlands

Besties

Best Music

Best Transition to 8-Bit

You know that moment. It's like waiting for the bass drop... only the exact opposite!

NieR: Automata

SHOUT-OUTS:

Super Mario Odyssey

Persona 5

Best Track

Single song/track.

Paul: https://burningbarrel.co/year-in-gaming-2017-mixtape/

Hank: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLQ5c76q9b0yHqFkshQhfMmSZLd8jd8TvR

Best Soundtrack

Full soundtrack from a video game.

Pyre

SHOUT-OUTS:

NieR: Automata

Persona 5

Cuphead

Shovel Knight: Spectre of Torment

Oldies But Besties

Best Game That Isn’t Actually New (Best This Shit Again)

Remakes, remasters or a game finally getting an international releases, the best game that was released this year officially but isn't actually new and people have been playing, possibly for years, before now.

StarCraft Remastered

SHOUT-OUTS:

Puyo Puyo Tetris

Mario Kart 8 Deluxe

Parappa the Rapper Remastered

Disney Afternoon Collection

Best Additional Content (Best More Shit)

Best content that expanded on the original game.

Shovel Knight: Spectre of Torment

SHOUT-OUTS:

XCOM 2: War of the Chosen

Resident Evil 7

Best Updated/Supported Game (Best Same Old Shit)

Best game that continues to hold an audience by updating consistently enough to remind people it exists.

Tabletop Simulator

SHOUT-OUTS:

Warframe

Killing Floor 2

Battlerite

20XX

Path of Exile

Rainbow Six: Siege

Heroes of the Storm

DOTA 2

Player Experience

Best Girl

The most controversial debate on the internet!

Cala Maria

SHOUT-OUTS:

Senua [Hellblade: Senua's Sacrifice]

Makoto [Persona 5]

Tae Takemi [Persona 5]

Sandra [Pyre]

Aloy [Horizon: Zero Dawn]

Kazumi Mishima [Tekken 7]

Bea [Night in the Woods]

Best Mount

Because running on your own two legs is for chumps! Unless your legs are a mount?

The Moose [NieR: Automata]

SHOUT-OUTS:

Link’s Motorcycle [Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild]

The T-Rex [Super Mario Odyssey]

Bowser [Super Mario Odyssey]

Broadhead [Horizon: Zero Dawn]

Lord of the Mountain [Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild]

Jaxi [Super Mario Odyssey]

Camels [Assassin's Creed: Origins]

Panzerhund [Wolfenstein II: The New Colossus]

Mona [Persona 5]

Goblin Throne [Battlerite]

Golden Lunar Rooster [Heroes of the Storm]

Best Menu/UI

There's nothing quite like a nice menu.

NieR: Automata

SHOUT-OUTS:

Persona 5

Destiny 2

Best Skybox

Sometimes you just stop and look at the sky... this is the prettiest one this year.

Star Wars: BattleFront II

SHOUT-OUTS:

Horizon: Zero Dawn

Destiny 2

Best Photo Mode

A picture is worth a thousand words. This was the best in-game way to take them!

Super Mario Odyssey

SHOUT-OUTS:

Final Fantasy XV / No Man's Sky

Uncharted: The Lost Legacy

Horizon: Zero Dawn

XCOM 2: War of the Chosen

Best Level/Sequence Design

That part that was just so satisfying in how it was put together, it was a stand-out.

Ending E [NieR: Automata]

SHOUT-OUTS:

The Gauntlet in the Leviathan Raid [Destiny 2]

The White Palace [Hollow Knight]

The Epilogue [Pyre]

The first Chosen encounter [XCOM 2: War of the Chosen]

The audition [Wolfenstein II: The New Colossus]

Dr. Kahl's Robot fight [Cuphead]

King Dice encounter [Cuphead ]

The cannery story [What Remains of Edith Finch]

Best Level/Sequence Aesthetic

That part that was just breathtakingly beautiful or cool looking.

The Almighty mission in Destiny 2

SHOUT-OUTS:

Jacking into people’s brains in Observer

Fenrir boss fight in Hellblade: Senua’s Sacrifice

Cauldron Sigma from Horizon: Zero Dawn

Cala Maria in Cuphead

Best Extra Shit to Read

Whether it be loose collectibles, an in-game book or weapon descriptions, the best supplemental reading material within a game.

Pyre

SHOUT-OUTS:

Wolfenstein II: The New Colossus' Alternate history

NieR: Automata's weapon stories and email messages

Horizon: Zero Dawn logs

Observer tenant notes and computer documents/emails

Best Use of a Slime as a Main Protagonist in a 2D Platformer

This whole category just exists to give Slime-San a platform for recognition. Because we can do that.

Slime-san

Social

Games I Didnt Play Myself

We all have that one or two games that we experienced solely through someone else. Whether it be watching a YouTube series or livestream, this is the best game you didn't play yourself.

Nidhogg 2

SHOUT-OUTS:

Night in the Woods (Paul)

Little Nightmares (Hank)

What Remains of Edith Finch (Hank)

Get Even (Hank)

Better With Friends

Most things are better with friends, right? Well, this is the one game this year that was made better by being multiplayer.

Divinity Original Sin 2

SHOUT-OUTS:

PLAYERUNKNOWN's BattleGrounds

Destiny 2

Tom Clancy's Ghost Recon: Wildlands

Fan Art Community of the Year

All popular things received fan art. This is the game that inspired the most and best fan art of the year!

NieR: Automata

SHOUT-OUTS:

Super Mario Odyssey

Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild

Cuphead

Hollow Knight

SPOILERS: The "I Probably Could Have Just Told You About This" Award

The best moment in gaming this year that would NOT have lost any impact hearing it from someone else first.

You fight Ganon [Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild]

SHOUT-OUTS:

Cappy controls Bowser [Super Mario Odyssey]

Mario fights a dragon [Super Mario Odyssey]

Mushroom Kingdom [Super Mario Odyssey]

Peach w/ shotgun [Mario+Rabbids Kingdom Battle]

Opera singer boss [Mario+Rabbids Kingdom Battle]

The horror comic-book part [What Remains of Edith Finch]

Chris Redfield is back [Resident Evil 7]

SPOILERS: The "I Can't Tell You About This" Award

The best moment in gaming this year that would have legitimately been better if you didn't read about it from some asshole on Twitter.

B.J. gets his head cut oFF [Wolfenstein II: The New Colossus]

SHOUT-OUTS:

The audition with Hitler [Wolfenstein II: The New Colossus]

2B is actually 2E [NieR: Automata]

Path C & D [NieR: Automata]

What the Zero Dawn is [Horizon: Zero Dawn]

The Narrator [Pyre]

Who the Hollow Knight is [Hollow Knight]

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twh-news · 7 years

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Skull Island' Review: King Kong Kicks Butt In This Gorgeous Pulp Adventure | Forbes

Kong: Skull Island opens in North America on March 10, 2017 courtesy of (among others) Legendary and distributor Warner Bros./Time Warner Inc. The film, budgeted at around $185 million, is both the start of a would-be franchise and something of a backdoor pilot for what the Dream Factory hopes will be a cinematic universe involving the likes of King Kong, Godzilla and other famous beasties. We’re getting Godzilla: King of the Monsters (a sequel to the 2014 Godzilla) in 2019 and Kong vs. Godzilla in 2020. So as you can see, there is more at stake than a single movie.

That’s the inherent risk of this whole expanded universe game. Under normal circumstances, Kong would merely be responsible for making enough money and audience approval to justify its expenses further installments. But since it’s the backbone of an expanded universe, a responsibility that Godzilla did not share, it has the extra burden of justifying and creating excitement for what comes next. Once again, Mr. Kong, we ask too much of you.

The good news is that, should this film do well and get decent reviews, it will go that much further in dispelling the conventional wisdom that Warner Bros. is a house of horrors due to the ups and downs of DC Comics movies. Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them earned $811 million worldwide and mostly positive reviews while The LEGO Batman Movie scored raves and solid box office. If the Skull Island is a well-received hit and King Arthur: Legend of the Sword avoids utter embarrassment, there is frankly only so much grief we can give the studio no matter how good or bad Wonder Woman and Justice League turn out to be.

The Review:

Kong: Skull Island is high-quality pulp fiction. The picture is a briskly paced and character-driven adventure that just happens to be a big-budget monster mash and part of a would-be cinematic universe. The film has a game cast amid stunning visuals and gorgeous cinematic sights. It may not be the eighth wonder of the world, but this King Kong revamp is often quite beautiful.

While the film is technically a prequel to the Gareth Edwards’ Godzilla, it stands entirely on its own in terms of content and visual style. The 2014 monster mash was a grim and foreboding affair, shrouded in darkness and mystery while offering the barest hint of humanity amid its jaw-dropping visuals. Skull Island goes almost the opposite route, plunging us immediately into the world of its quirky human characters and wasting little time giving us what we came to see and delivering most of its thrills in broad daylight.

Regarding cinematic foreplay, this is less Jaws and more The Host. While both styles have their merits, Dan Gilroy, Max Borenstein and John Gatins’ witty screenplay keeps us entertained and intrigued during the exposition and earns our investment in those who will soon fight for their lives. While I wouldn’t argue that this is a course correction, as Godzilla (which I didn't care for beyond the visuals) certainly had its merits and its fans, it is encouraging that the second film in this continuity can be so different regarding tone, focus and style. This is a possible signal that Legendary and Warner Bros.’ monster universe might well be filmmaker-driven.

While Godzilla was called “the first post-human blockbuster,” Kong: Skull Island is as much about watching the likes of John Goodman, Tom Hiddleston, Brie Larson and Samuel L. Jackson chew scenery as it is about King Kong and the various monsters of Skull Island. But fear not sports fans, you get a whole heaping of monster mash action throughout the 118 minutes. If you’ve managed to go this far without knowing too much, especially if you’ve avoided the most recent trailer (note: do not watch the final spoiler-filled trailer), I’ll try to be as vague as I can.

Set in 1973 as the Vietnam War winds to a close, the film follows a group of motley outsiders, including a discredited scientists (Goodman), a professional soldier (Hiddleston), a cynical war photographer (Larson), a geologist (Corey Hawkins), a biologist (Jing Tian) and the head of the chopper unit tasked with flying these folks into uncharted peril (Jackson). Goodman and friends are heading to Skull Island to conduct a land survey. Things almost immediately go to hell.

Shot by Larry Fong, the guy who almost had me giving Batman v Superman a positive review, this is an utterly beautiful motion picture. The naturalistic visuals, imbued with a particular hot orange vividness, gives the film an absolute authenticity of time and place and at least the appearance of realism even when we are clearly watching special effects. I saw this in glorious 2D, but I imagine it’s worth the IMAX 3D upgrade as the broad daylight action will probably survive any 3D glasses-related dimness.

And the title creature is a marvel, standing 100 feet tall and exuding animalistic menace no matter which side he’s fighting on at any given moment. His major introductory beat is a superb action sequence, even if it’s structured more for action-adventure thrills than horror or intensity. The film manages to humanize its main monster without being overly patronizing. This Kong is a protector of Skull Island. But if you get into his turf, he will bat you out of the sky without thinking twice.

Even after the monstrous stakes are established, there is still a relative focus on the humans attempting to survive and make it to a planned pick-up spot. Along the way, they stumble onto World War II soldier who has been living on the island for 30 years. Said MIA (John C. Reilly) provides comic relief, a surprising poignancy and plenty of exposition. Reilly quickly becomes Skull Island’s MVP.

Most of the survivors are focused on not dying, while Jackson allows his grief over first act casualties to turn him into a Captain Ahab figure. It’s an expected turn, but one which allows the survivors to have a conflict more potent than merely running away from scary monsters. The rest of his soldiers are slice-of-life characters, drawn just vividly enough so that you’ll briefly mourn when one of them cashes out.

Hiddleston is in full brooding rogue mode, even if he gets one moment of almost comical heroism. Goodman is superb, as always, although Booker and Tian fall back a bit once Reilly’s starts scene-stealing. Larson is fine, even if she is somewhat hobbled by being the only major female character. There are refreshingly few “beauty and the beast” interactions between the great ape and the empathetic photojournalist, which is a good thing since we're getting an actual Beauty and the Beast a week after this movie, but she doesn’t get much else to play in the film’s latter half.

The picture loses some of its character focus in the second act as certain characters split off from other characters, which leaves some of the more interesting folks out of sight and out of mind for a while. But the finale comes together in an exciting and satisfying fashion, delivering a climax that pays off the film’s Apocalypse Now and Moby Dick themes while providing the required monster mash action. And while there is less of a sense of awe to be found than Peter Jackson’s more overtly romantic take on this story, there are any number of gorgeous moments of vivid cinematic beauty and iconic imagery.

Kong: Skull Island is an action spectacular that offers large-scale monster mayhem, moments of cinematic poetry (like the grand moments of Kong standing tall amid the sun-drenched carnage) and memorable character work by a cast of overqualified thespians giving it their all. Skull Island is the very definition of a complete package. While the movie exists due to its IP and hopes for a larger cinematic universe, it justifies itself as high-quality popcorn entertainment and works as a piece of pop art unto itself.

While I admit will admit that the overall effect is less wondrous than the Naomi Watts/Adrien Brody/Jack Black fantasy, that’s also because movies like King Kong are a lot more commonplace than they were in 2005. Whether you prefer Peter Jackson’s epic romantic adventure or Jordan Vogt-Roberts’ lean and mean war story, they exist side by side along with the 1976 remake as artistically valid interpretations of the 1933 classic. Kong: Skull Island is a confident, pulpy, character-focused, big-scale adventure story that just happens to be a backdoor pilot for an expanded universe. That’s how it’s supposed to work.

P.S. Yes, there is a post-credits sequence, but it is terrible. It feels like it was shot during a lunch break and is not required viewing to understand Godzilla: King of the Monsters or the untitled Kong versus Godzilla movies. If you have to leave when the film ends, don’t feel too badly about it.

#kong skull island #kong: skull island #film review

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