The 2026 BigNerdGaming Mid-Year Game Awards

There are many reasons why I started this blog, but one of the biggest was that I desperately needed a place to showcase the insane amount of ranking I was doing purely for myself.

Posting the BigNerdGaming awards for the past several years has been great, but it wasn’t enough for me. I needed more. So last year I went ahead and posted a mid-year update to the awards. And sure enough, it was a great decision.

For anyone new to the blog, the BigNerdGaming Awards are probably the biggest proof of my madness. As I play and complete games throughout the year, I am constantly updating a notepad file where I have ranks for various categories.

I do this for many reasons. Most of it is because I’m sick in the head, but I also genuinely love doing this as a way to showcase many different games in many different ways. I like acknowledging the things that games do well, even if I didn’t always enjoy the entire package on the same level, and this gives me a great avenue to do that.

With that, here are the mid-year BigNerdGaming Awards. At the end of the year, I will have 10 games ranked in each category instead of the 5 here, so stay tuned for more!

Best Story

1. Paranormasight: The Mermaid’s Curse
2. 007 First Light
3. Replaced
4. Mina the Hollower
5. Resident Evil Requiem

I still can’t get over how much I enjoyed Paranormasight’s story. Right when I thought that game was done surprising me, it hit me with a twist that still shocks me when I think about it months later. I am literally playing the first game in the series right now because of how much I enjoyed The Mermaid’s Curse. This will be a tough one to take down from this spot.

007 First Light’s story is so good that it made me consider watching some of the Daniel Craig Bond movies. The pacing is excellent, and there are a lot of great character arcs throughout. It’s just a thrill ride from start to finish.

Replaced’s story snuck up on me big time. It feels pretty generic and dull early on, but it becomes a bit more than expected in the second half of the game, and I found myself very locked in for the last several hours.

The last two are ones I don’t feel all that strongly about. I’m only 3 or 4 hours into Mina the Hollower, but there are some interesting things being hinted at in that story that have me more interested in playing the game than the actual gameplay. Resident Evil Requiem’s story has a few highs, even though I feel like it mostly falls apart by the end.

Best Exploration

1. Crimson Desert
2. MIO: Memories in Orbit
3. Resident Evil Requiem
4. Nioh 3
5. Mina the Hollower

I have plenty of issues with what happens when you actually do the various open world activities in Crimson Desert, but there’s still a sense of awe and wonder every single time I look across the landscape in this game. It’s absolutely massive. And while it’s not hard to get inundated with a million icons on your map, you actually have to earn your way to a decent amount of them. I really like how Crimson Desert handles its open world exploration.

MIO is a Metroidvania, and Resident Evil: Requiem has plenty of Metroidvania elements. They both have pretty rewarding exploration, even if the games are not completely “open.”

Nioh 3 has an extremely basic open world, but it works great within the Soulslike framework. Even if it doesn’t do anything special, exploration feels great in that game because it is so rewarding.

Finally, we have Mina the Hollower. The lack of a detailed map makes exploration really annoying to me. Even the main town in the game can be frustrating, because you really have to go out of your way to learn (and relearn) where all the shops and such are. But, there are undeniably tons of secrets everywhere here, and it is rewarding as heck when you actually break through.

Best Graphics

1. Replaced
2. Mixtape
3. Crimson Desert
4. 007 First Light
5. MOUSE: PI For Hire

Replaced’s pixel art is unlike anything I’ve seen before. The art style, combined with the art direction and the lighting effects, constantly had me in awe. I feel like the entire art style was such a great fit for the setting and themes of the game too. Replaced has not gotten nearly enough love for how good it looks.

Stop-motion art has been getting really popular in the gaming world, but it still constantly amazes me. Mixtape is yet another game that pulls it off really well. I’d probably put it right around the same level as South of Midnight from last year, which I also thought was a fantastic looking game.

It’s important to note that this category is for “Best Graphics” and not “Best Art Direction.” I view this as a mix between technology and art direction, as I think that is how most people decide if they like how a game looks. I prefer strong art direction, but sometimes a game that really takes its fidelity to another level can wow me, even if there are other things I don’t like. Crimson Desert is a great example of this. There are many elements of the art direction that I don’t like in that game. A lot of the towns look plain and underwhelming. There’s a fantasy and sci-fi mix that just doesn’t seem to mesh nearly as well as it does in something like Final Fantasy. But the scope of the world and draw distances are so amazing that it kind of made up for everything else. This game’s visuals left me in awe all of the time, despite the flaws, and that is why it is on here.

007 First Light is a stunning game all around, from the environments to the character models. There’s one character model in particular that is very, very good looking.

Finally, I have MOUSE: PI for Hire here, which is a game that got tons of attention because of its art style in particular. The animations and character models in that game are absolutely stunning. It’s just a shame that the environments in the game are so dreadfully boring. I think a few more touches could have been added here, but MOUSE is still an amazing looking game.

Best Music

1. Nioh 3
2. Lovish
3. Mixtape
4. Replaced
5. Mewgenics

I haven’t seen Nioh 3’s soundtrack get nearly as much hype as it deserves. Apparently, it has plenty of reused songs from past games, but it is epic as hell and makes the big moments seem that much bigger. I love it so much.

Lovish is an 8-bit platformer with some insane retro bangers. Seriously, go look up “Kingdom of Rats” from this game.

Mixtape’s soundtrack is interwoven into its story so well, and it has quite a few fantastic alt-rock songs. However, it is admittedly not as strong of a soundtrack as I expected, even though it is still very good.

Replaced has some really great atmospheric synth songs that fit really well with its setting. Mewgenics might have the most memorable soundtrack this year. I still can’t get “crispy legs and tasty thighs” out of my head. But it’s also not exactly the kind of soundtrack I would ever want to listen to outside of the game, which is a factor for me.

Best Character

1. James Bond (007 First Light)
2. Reach (Replaced)
3. John Greenway (007 First Light)
4. Moneypenny (007 First Light)
5. Q (007 First Light)

Obviously, 007 First Light did a pretty good job with its characters! As a guy who hasn’t watched a James Bond movie in full, I was shocked by how much I grew to like him. I actually think this version of James Bond might be one of the best versions of the likable, cocky protagonist I have ever seen. From there, First Light has tons of other enjoyable characters as well. John Greenway really won me over in particular. His arc is nothing special, but it is executed so well that I was still a big fan of his by the end of the game.

The only character not from 007 is Reach from Replaced. I really didn’t expect much from a character who is “AI,” but his story has a few surprises, and he ends up with way more depth than I could have imagined.

Best Performance

1. Patrick Gibson as James Bond (007 First Light)
2. Lennie James as John Greenway (007 First Light)
3. Troy Baker as Jack Pepper (MOUSE: PI For Hire)
4. Priyana Burford as M (007 First Light)
5. Kiera Lester as Moneypenny (007 First Light)

Once again, it’s no shocker that this category is dominated by the 007 First Light voice actors. They all do a tremendous job. If it weren’t for GTA6 being on the way, I’d say Patrick Gibson would be in a really strong position to win the “Best Performance” category for The Game Awards this year.

The only addition outside of 007 is Troy Baker for his work in MOUSE: PI For Hire. He does a great job as a noir detective. He remains a bit underappreciated in many gaming circles, in my view.

Best Optional Content

1. Crimson Desert
2. Nioh 3
3. MOUSE: PI For Hire

I haven’t played many open world games this year, so this category is a bit thin.

Crimson Desert easily takes the crown for me so far. It doesn’t have a lot of optional content that I really loved, but it still has a pretty insane amount of it, and it is all relatively rewarding in different ways.

Nioh 3’s open world activities are extremely basic and mundane, but mixing an open world with a Soulslike leads to a very rewarding experience.

MOUSE has a few missions that I’m pretty sure were optional, but I’m honestly not 100% sure. Either way, it has a baseball card game that is actually a blast at first, though it has a few fatal flaws that killed it for me after 8-10 games. Considering this is an FPS, I still viewed that as a win of sorts.

What a disappointing category this year!

Best Combat

1. Mewgenics
2. Nioh 3
3. Saros
4. 007 First Light
5. Resident Evil Requiem

Now this category is cooking. These are all some incredible entries.

Mewgenics might genuinely have my favorite turn-based SRPG combat ever (I’m still not putting it above Unicorn Overlord for SRPGs as a whole). It avoids a lot of the pitfalls that the genre tends to have thanks to smaller maps and a lot of movement abilities that help you avoid the awkward “creep up to the edge of the attack zone” combat you tend to get in the genre. There are also tons of other creative elements to the gameplay, and it also might have the best SRPG bosses that I have ever seen. It’s really impressive. I loved the combat here so much, which is why I get so annoyed at how much I hated the breeding element of the game.

Nioh 3 is just sublime Team Ninja work. The amount of depth in the combat is incredible. I didn’t even really dive into the weeds of the combat system at all, but the enemy and boss design, and even the basics of this system are so good that it didn’t matter.

Saros honestly feels really low at 3, because it is still really freaking good. The sound design, animations, and general impact are all fantastic. The movement in the game is also a huge highlight. You feel like a serious badass in this game. There’s a world where this is #1, but a few awkward controls that I could never quite get right even with modifications, and a lot of guns that I hated using held it back just enough to push it back to #3.

Once again, 007 First Light feels like it should be higher, but it’s just been a very strong year for combat. 007 First Light has a crazy mix of Uncharted, Max Payne, Batman, and Yakuza in its combat sections. Melee combat is a bit clunky, but it’s super over the top and fun. The shooting is also incredibly impactful, and the need to constantly find new weapons to use mid-fight keeps things interesting. It’s really unlike anything else out there.

Finally, Resident Evil: Requiem sneaks in over Pragmata for the last spot. Requiem just has rock solid survival horror gameplay.

Best Puzzles

1. Paranormasight: The Mermaid’s Curse
2. Pieced Together
3. Cairn
4. Librarian: Tidy Up the Arcane Library
5. Replaced

This is another slightly weird category this year. I actually don’t fully love any of the puzzles here, and some of these just have puzzle elements more so than consisting of traditional puzzles.

Paranormasight: The Mermaid’s Curse has a few of my least favorite puzzles this year. There are a few meta-puzzles that feel almost impossible to solve without a guide. But there are some really clever ones too. And honestly, even the puzzles I hated are so interesting that I still respected them in a lot of ways once I knew the solutions.

Pieced Together is a scrapbooking game with extremely basic puzzles that are at least logical and satisfying. This isn’t doing anything special, but it’s enjoyable.

Cairn and Librarian are basically games where the entire gameplay loop is one big puzzle. Cairn is all about figuring out which path to climb up a mountain, and Librarian involves using context clues to figure out where certain books go. Even though these aren’t traditional puzzles, I still think they qualify here.

Finally, we have Replaced, which has occasional puzzles that are fine.

Best Platforming

1. MIO: Memories in Orbit
2. Saros
3. Lovish
4. Grime II
5. Pragmata

I’m sad the developers of MIO: Memories in Orbit won’t get a chance to make another game. There are a few issues with the platforming in that game, but it has some devilishly good design and tons of platforming sections that had me sweating in good ways.

Saros has incredible movement, and it uses that pretty well for its platforming segments. At times, I don’t feel like the game has enough precision with its movement for some of the platforming sections it throws at you, but I still enjoyed it.

Lovish is an 8-bit styled platformer that has an air dash that goes halfway across the screen. This makes precision a bit difficult, but it’s still a very solid platformer.

Grime II is a soulslike Metroidvania, and its strength definitely lies more in its combat than its platforming, but it does have some acceptable platforming. Finally, we have Pragmata. I feel like Pragmata could have given you a slightly longer jump boost, which would have given them more avenues to do cool things with the platforming, but it is also perfectly acceptable.

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