2025 Dpademy Awards Pt. 1

Hello, and welcome to the first annual Dpademy Awards. This is part one of a four part series that will be released every Sunday of the month of December. Over the course of the year, I've played over 52 games, and while I've written separate articles for each game, this is where I get to take a closer look at things, big and small, that either I didn't cover or that I wanted to gush more about. The categories are a bit unconventional, but that's part of the fun. For this, I'll only be looking at the 52 games that I covered between June and the end of November. Any games covered in December will be eligible for next year's ceremony. So, without further ado, let's get into it.

• Best use of license

To what should come as no surprise to anyone at all, the award goes to Robocop: Rogue City. The first time I saw this game available, I assumed it would would be nothing more than a soulless, nostalgia bating cash grab. However, the reality is that this is not only a massive love letter to the property, perfectly recreating the look and feel of the films, but in a lot of ways it outshines the source material. It's a good game in its own right, which is just as surprising, but it uses the Robocop license to brilliant effect. Everything from the voice acting to the music, the way the police department is lovingly detailed, down to the absolutely ridiculous things you can issue tickets for in the open world sections show not just a love for the source material, but a deeper understanding of why it works and resonates the way it does. I'm absolutely serious when I say that this is the gold standard to which all other licensed games should be held to.

• Best concept

  

I've always had trouble really getting into the rougelike genre. Part of it is how ingrained in me the sense of memorizing levels to the point of mastery became growing up playing old school platformers. Part of the appeal of Mega Man games is that sense of anticipating every enemy and obstacle. It doesn't help that I oftentimes struggle with whatever explanation is given for the ever changing design. Cult of the Lamb circumvents this with the use of eldritch gods and the fully customizable home camp. It makes exploration fun by virtue of gathering resources for a crafting system that also directly impacts how you proceed through the game. All of this is buoyed by the smoothness and variety offered in the combat as well as the super cute facade that masks some deeply unsettling cult activity. Whether it be ritualistically sacrificing our animal followers or simply having them eat a bowl of poop, the cutesy way they all seem to happily follow your command is hilarious.

• Funniest moment

  

There's actually a tie for the funniest moment I got to experience this year. The first is an absolutely scripted event that caught me off guard in the best way possible. In Promise Mascot Agency, we're tasked with managing a mascot agency full of the weirdest mascots that, for one reason or another, are down on their luck. To do so, we make a former love motel into our base of operations, so already the game flirts with the bizarre concept of these weird creatures having sex. Hell, a handful of them have that as pretty much their whole thing. Over the course of the game, we acquire Hero Cards, which allow us to summon different characters to help when things go awry at mascot competitions, and there are a lot of these things. So, believe me when I say that one in particular caught me so off guard, that I nearly died laughing.

Pinky is an anthropomorphic pinkie finger that serves as our partner, spending most of her time in the bed of our truck. While she makes a number of lewd and suggestive comments, going so far as openly discussing her sex life, I was not prepared for this image of her thoroughly enjoying some good old-fashioned rope play.

Then there's Far Cry Primal. While lighter on the humor compared to other Far Cry games I've since played, the devs did manage to sneak in a few jokes. Over the course of the game, we interact with a variety of different characters that we recruit to our tribe. Some of these are humorous in their own right, such as a one armed man who pees on us. They rarely go into the realm of true comedic relief. That is, until I noticed a marker on my map for a character that isn't actually recruitable, but nonetheless has a series of quests for us to do.

This is Urki, a man who lives on his own, isolated from the three tribes, though he does claim to be of the Wenja tribe, just like our character. Having never played a Far Cry game before, it was quite a surprise to meet this man who, despite speaking the same language as everyone else, somehow had a southern accent. While I've come to know since that he's a prehistoric take on a recurring character in the Far Cry series, he seemed wholly out of place, and since he had quests for me to do, I was intrigued. Urki fancies himself an inventor, and over the course of his quests, we see him thinking of all the advantages that animals have over humans. His plans generally boil down to noticing an animal's trait and trying to find a way to replicate it, which on its own is actually brilliant. His execution of these ideas leaves a bit to be desired, such as having us gather feathers to fashion makeshift wings that he tests by jumping off a cliff. All of his attempts end with him unconscious, but that's not why he's here. Instead, there was one interaction that blew me away. After yet another one of his plans backfires, he was once again rendered unconscious, passed out and muttering to himself next to a lake. Realizing his entire shtick, I decided to smack his body around a bit. You know, for fun. I smacked him around, pushing his body into the lake, and to my surprise and delight, the developers had actually accounted for this and recorded audio of him muttering as though he was submerged in water. This level of detail, for an optional moment in an optional quest, is hilarious and endearing.

• Most gut wrenching moment

Without going into spoilers, something I genuinely try to do for this game in particular, there are a number of moments that hit hard. The entire premise of the story is going through a dying man's life in reverse. Seeing his relationships, particularly the one with his wife, is already enough to win this award. However, it's the moment that we access his earliest memories, which had been inaccessible earlier, that really punches you in the gut. Once we get there, it actually becomes somewhat easy to predict what happens, with plenty of small clues leading up to it. I remember even thinking about certain details that the story addresses here and realizing how brilliant they were leading up to the reveal. Even if you see it coming, it still hits you like a ton of bricks and recontextualizes so many other, smaller elements of the story. To the Moon is truly a masterstroke of emotional story telling, and I cannot recommend experiencing it for yourself more highly.

• Best fourth wall break

Fourth wall breaks are a tricky tool to use, and more often than not if a character uses one, it becomes their whole thing. Deadpool and She-Hulk are both guilty of this, using the trope to mixed effect depending on the writer. However, when used sparingly, the fourth wall break can be a fun wink and nod to the audience. The Witcher 3 spends the vast majority of its 100ish hour runtime being mostly serious and existing in its own world. The DLCs add a few nods from the developers, usually in the form of Gwent cards such as Roach being on top of a building or the cow card that is used to summon a powerful creature the devs added to dissuade players from killing cows. The standout moment to me, and the moment I feel the Witcher 3 earned, comes at the end of the Blood and Wine DLC, which already serves as the final end to the game. After completing the final quest, Geralt sits with his vampire friend, Regis, and speaks of what's to come. As their chat winds down, Regis mentions that they "deserve a bit of rest." Geralt responds, "That we do," then turns and looks directly into the camera. Fade to black, then credits. While there is a bit more after the credits, this stood out as an amazing sendoff to a character I'd grown very attached to. A lot of tings in the Blood and Wine DLC come off as a victory lap for both the player and the development team, and this moment stands as one final inside joke that we the players get to share with them.