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All the non-Cover Game articles and features in one place.

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Merry Christmas! And a preemptive Happy New Year! We’re into the final days of 2018 as I type this, so I hope you are all wrapping the year up in suitably festive fashion.

We’re almost at the end of this year’s MoeGamer Awards for 2018, with just my personal Game of the Year 2018 left to declare before the new year gets underway. You may well be able to predict what it is, but I’ll leave it as a surprise for Monday just in case anyway.

For now, though, let’s take a look at what you might have missed this week.

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Features, MoeGamer Awards 2018

The MoeGamer Awards 2018: The Old Flame Award

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The MoeGamer Awards are a series of “alternative” awards that I’ve devised in collaboration with the community as an excuse to celebrate the games, experiences and fanbases that have left a particular impression on me in 2018. Find out more here, but you’re out of time to leave suggestions, I’m afraid!

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One’s first love is a powerful thing. Often it influences the way you feel about all sorts of things for the rest of your life — sometimes without you realising it.

Rediscovering one’s first love can go in one of a few ways. You can find yourself wondering what on Earth you were thinking. You can recall exactly what caused you to fall in love in the first place. Or you can be delighted to find that your first love has actually been making something of themselves, and is ready to provide you with some all-new entertainment that is simultaneously fresh and familiar.

This metaphor is getting slightly tortured, but regardless, this latter option is what today’s award is all about.

And the winner is…

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The MoeGamer Awards 2018: The Shutterbug Award

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The MoeGamer Awards are a series of “alternative” awards that I’ve devised in collaboration with the community as an excuse to celebrate the games, experiences and fanbases that have left a particular impression on me in 2018. Find out more here, but you’re out of time to leave suggestions, I’m afraid!

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Any time you have experience with an entire series of something and people are aware of your experience with said series, someone, somewhere is going to ask you the dreaded question: “which [insert series name here] is best?”

Given my recent coverage of Tecmo’s consistently excellent survival horror series Project Zero (not to mention the presently ongoing video series playing through its postgame!), I thought I’d pre-empt that question and attempt to give a definitive answer.

Well, definitive insofar as “this one was my favourite” anyway. You do not have to agree. But this was my favourite Project Zero game this year.

And the winner is…

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The MoeGamer Awards 2018: The Evergreen Award

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The MoeGamer Awards are a series of “alternative” awards that I’ve devised in collaboration with the community as an excuse to celebrate the games, experiences and fanbases that have left a particular impression on me in 2018. Find out more and leave a suggestion here!

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If you’re a gamer on a budget or simply going through a lean month or two, it’s always a good idea to have one or two “evergreen” games on your shelf.

The concept of an “evergreen” game is simple: it’s a game that you can always return to at any time and have an enjoyable experience with. It’s a game you can set aside for weeks or months at a time before returning to when you feel like it, able to pick right back up where you left off.

Evergreen games can involve narrative, but the best ones place a strong focus on mechanics, providing them a pick-up-and play quality coupled with extensive — potentially infinite — longevity. One game that I covered in 2018 definitely fits that bill more than pretty much any other.

And the winner is…

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Merry Christmas!

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Hello! I’m away from easy access to a computer on Christmas Day, so I thought I’d post an early Christmas message today.

I just wanted to say a brief thank you to everyone who has supported MoeGamer since its inception in 2014, whether it’s through liking, commenting on and sharing my work, or through financially supporting it via Patreon or Ko-Fi.

It’s been a great year for the site, with the best annual viewing figures ever, and some of my favourite work I’ve created to date. I’ve had great fun getting a format for YouTube videos established (though I still have some ideas I want to explore in the new year!) and I’ve been delighted to collaborate with my closest friend on a podcast I’m both proud of and continually excited to be a part of.

2019 is going to be an even better year, and I can’t wait to continue sharing my passion and enthusiasm for gaming with you all. A sincere, heartfelt thank you for all your support, and I hope you have a wonderfully restful festive season.

Love, Pete xx

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Hello! It’s nearly Christmas!

Yes, that most wonderful (and/or stressful, and/or depressing, depending on your own personal life situation) time of the year is just around the corner, many of you reading this will have broken up from work or school, and there’s just a general air of anticipation in the… um… air.

I’ll be taking a brief break from MoeGamer on Monday and Tuesday to enjoy the festivities, but will be back with the rest of the MoeGamer Awards from Wednesday onwards. In the meantime, hit the jump to see what you might have missed this week.

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Features, MoeGamer Awards 2018

The MoeGamer Awards 2018: Best H-Scene

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The MoeGamer Awards are a series of “alternative” awards that I’ve devised in collaboration with the community as an excuse to celebrate the games, experiences and fanbases that have left a particular impression on me in 2018. Find out more and leave a suggestion here!

This award was suggested by… well, me, but AK thought it was a good idea so I’m giving him credit.

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We’ve explored a number of visual novels together here on MoeGamer, many of which include explicit sexual scenes.

This is not an aspect of these games that tends to get talked about all that much by gaming culture at large; some critics, outlets and even players sometimes seemingly go so far as to regard the H-scenes of a game as something of a “dirty little secret”, or simply outright ignore them altogether.

While there’s no denying that nukige exist purely to be mildly interactive pornography, true eroge make good use of their sexual scenes to further their narratives and show us another side of the main characters. Today’s award celebrates an excellent use of an H-scene for exactly these purposes. With that in mind, please be aware that there is extremely explicit text and images ahead. You have been warned!

And the winner is… no, seriously, there really is all manner of extremely NSFW filth ahead, are you ready? Okay. The winner is…

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The MoeGamer Awards 2018: Best Romantic Comedy

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The MoeGamer Awards are a series of “alternative” awards that I’ve devised in collaboration with the community as an excuse to celebrate the games, experiences and fanbases that have left a particular impression on me in 2018. Find out more and leave a suggestion here!

This award was suggested by Toon Vandendries.

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This is a topic Chris and I very much want to discuss on the podcast at some point in the near future, but I’ve also written about it in the past, too.

I’m talking about the idea of genre. And not genre as it is typically used when talking about games — to describe purely mechanical elements — but rather genre as it relates to the core subject matter in a game; its central themes, style and overall feel. In the early days of gaming, this was not really something we could discuss with much confidence, but as games have become more ambitious in terms of their storytelling and overall sense of worldbuilding, we most certainly can now.

So with that in mind, what was the best romantic comedy game I enjoyed over the course of the last year?

And the winner is…

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The MoeGamer Awards 2018: The Traffic Magnet

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The MoeGamer Awards are a series of “alternative” awards that I’ve devised in collaboration with the community as an excuse to celebrate the games, experiences and fanbases that have left a particular impression on me in 2018. Find out more and leave a suggestion here!

Last year, there was one game more than any other that consistently brought people to MoeGamer; I was seemingly one of the few people on the Internet who had actually written anything about it. I chose to celebrate this game with The Traffic Magnet award.

This year I encountered a similar situation with a different game — last year’s winner still regularly appears in my top search results, but the posts about this year’s winner still appear in my top posts pretty much every day.

And the winner is… somewhat NSFW, so consider this before continuing!

Ahem. As I was saying, the winner is…

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Features, MoeGamer Awards 2018

The MoeGamer Awards 2018: Best Lightning and Storm Effects

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The MoeGamer Awards are a series of “alternative” awards that I’ve devised in collaboration with the community as an excuse to celebrate the games, experiences and fanbases that have left a particular impression on me in 2018. Find out more and leave a suggestion here!

This award was suggested by LightningEllen.

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I’m old enough to remember when weather effects in games were new and exciting.

I have vivid memories of desperately wanting to play Toyota Celica GT Rally on the Atari ST, for example, purely because it had rain, snow and sandstorm effects — and working windscreen wipers!

Nowadays, weather effects are something we just take for granted for the most part… but sometimes, a game comes along and impresses you with its representation of a particular environmental condition. Today’s award celebrates my favourite virtual thunderstorm from the year just passed.

And the winner is…

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