Topic: Game of the Year: 2024

So is the next Astro Bot game just a regular game, or is it still (optional?) VR?

the games I’m most excited for haven’t come out yet so I’ll wait like, maybe a couple more months before posting.

@gcunit No PSVR2 support, it's a regular PS5 game.

@Grumblevolcano Wow, I did not know. What a massive two fingers up at PSVR2 owners.

I'm not the right person to talk about which game is the best in a given year, as I played only a few at most the year they come out anymore. But it does feel like the year's either gonna be weird and/or backloaded in terms of GOTY contenders.

I felt 2022 was really bad for AAA game releases, but this year it feels like its free falling. Sony's big game for the year you can no longer play in most countries. Indie games were being widepread promoted as a contrast to Microsoft's inexcusable layoffs. Geoff Keighly bluntly stated to everyone that 8 out of the 10 biggest Steam games weren't AAA. And considering how Nintendo has (mostly) set this up to be a quiet year in preparation for the next, its felt like a showcase that most of the best games of the year are anywhere but AAA. Like I can't even say Helldivers 2 is a contender because that's like saying Mother 3 was a contender in 2006, most people can't play one of the best games of the year.

For a personal choice? TTYD. I have nearly 50 hrs of gameplay and not done playing with it. It has been out 2 months. I have games owned for 2 years with less time than that. (even lengthy ones).
Will it get a nod? Maybeeeeeee....but I concur these awards rarely favour Nintendo in anything but family category.

New Zelda or Brothership might squeak in with a nomination, but I would be surprised if either win anything, except for our hearts, which is what really matters.

Commercially and critically FFVII Rebirth is leading the pack.

@Magician im shocked at all the final fanstasy seven rebirth answers cause from what i heard it had
1. an annoying amount of technical issues, graphics were not exactly astounding too.
2. Did not meet Square Enix’s sales expectations
3. Remakes and Remasters are very rarely even nominated, let alone winning, so i would be surprised out of my mind. and also its a sequel too and they have a lesser chance.

@Magician is right, FF7-Rebirth is definitely a pack leader... even in spite of how divisively it has landed. It is probably one of the few 'weightier' titles from 2024 that have landed well enough.

I still have a feeling though that something in the latter half could grab the title - new Dragon Age maybe?! Would love to see Balatro sweep it, but probably a bit too small-fry to get the coveted GOTY award (likely will get the Indie award, unless Animal Well grabs it)

It has the highest reviewer metacritic score of the year (aside from Elden Ring DLC which isn't eligible for GotY) and is also in the top 10 player score metacritic.

As for remake? I mean... technically? But it is turning a 1990s game into 3 massive modern 3D games which have significant story changes. And even the second part of the trilogy is much longer than the entire original game. I don't think the Game Award people would put it in the same category as e.g. The Thousand Year Door. Fundamentally it is a re-imagining more than a remake.

As for sales, rebirth sold millions, but we don't know the exact number. Less than 7 remake certainly but 7 remake came out in early April 2020, possibly the best time in history for a major video game to release (or second best after the animal crossing new horizons release slot a couple weeks earlier)

@FishyS ok all of those are absolutely great points actually !! :3 i definitely think itll be a nominee, but i have my doubts it will win. its no pokemon violet but from what ive read it definitely has its technical flaws still.
honestly astro bot looks like its going to win, i’ve literally heard NOTHING but good things abt it. and that’s rare so far this year. also i think echoes of wisdom will definitely be a bug competitor, i think its way bigger than it seems, especially after that last series. plus nintendo hasnt won a goty in a while and thatd be nice. metaphor also might be some competition too.

i think the game awards this year will be really laidback, but the 2025 ones are gonna be even more crazy than 2023 i think. I mean Switch 2 is bound to have mario kart, 3D mario, new pokemon and new ip, possibly animal crossing and xenoblade…(hey look i can dream guys !!). then theres highly anticipated titles such as gta 6, monster hunter wilds, metroid prime 4. Its gonna be an interesting year for gaming for sure. but thats next year, lets stay with this year well it exists ahhhhh time moves so fast !!

but not fast enough cause i wanna celebrate silksong’s goty win in 2083 😡😡

Since I already said the dreaded M word... it is generally true that most Game Awards main category GotY nominations are ranked near the top in the yearly metacritic ranks. Obviously some not yet released games will end up with high scores, but currently the ranking is:

1. Elden Ring: Shadow of the Erdtree - probably not eligible since it is DLC

2. Final Fantasy 7 Rebirth

3. Animal Well

4. Balatro

5. Thank Goodness You're Here! - that's a surprise but there haven't been many reviewers so I wouldn't necessarily trust this ranking.

6. The Last of Us Part 2 Remastered - a remaster of a game which fairly recently won a bunch of awards? I would guess ineligible.

7. Tekken 8

8. Destiny 2: The Final Shape - is this also DLC?

9. Tsukihime: A Piece of Blue Glass Moon - another remake and not a lot of reviewers.

10. Horizon Forbidden West: Complete Edition - Is this just a re-release of a fairly recent game?

11. Like a Dragon: Infinite Wealth

12. Lorelei and the Laser Eyes

13. Paper Mario: The Thousand-Year Door - more remakes.

The metacritic player-score generally doesn't matter as much but it's interesting to note that if I made the same player-score top 13, FF7 rebirth and Paper Mario are the only games on both lists. Ignoring a game with basically no reviews which somehow temporarily became rank 1, the top 2 player-score games are Paper Mario and Stellar Blade.

@OctolingKing13 I could easily imagine games which come out later this year taking the lead. There have been a lot of very decent games this year, but it does feel much less packed in terms of front-runners than last year.

@Anti-Matter i came looking for your strange choice.
I was not dissapointed.

It's been such a slow year that I don't think there is one, though if I absolutely had to choose, I'd default to The Legend of Zelda: Echoes of Wisdom (though I'd have to actually play it first, but I'm confident I'll enjoy it).

Remakes can be nominated for the Game Awards, and have even sometimes won categories, in the shape of FF7 and GTA V. It's never happened in GOTY though. I'd think that that would be taken as a sign of an industry that's truly bereft of fresh ideas, and the jury would sooner give it to an indie game.

DLC can also be nominated, and boasts a single winner with Witcher 3: Blood and Wine, which took the RPG category in 2016. Deservedly so, I'd say, because it is basically a full sized game in its own right.

Honestly, I try not to get too excited. Beyond serving as a focal point for discussion, and maybe a checklist of games that might have slipped my notice, it's mostly just an industry hype and backslapping exercise.

This year, for me, has been utterly dominated by indies and remakes. The only exception would be Unicorn Overlord and Vanillaware aren't exactly a huge studio. The last I heard, their head count was around fifty, so maybe even they're a bit of an indie too?

As such, unless there's some serious movement in the last third of the year, we're probably looking at a lot of great indies missing out, while the other categories are padded out with remakes and sub-par games.

In the past decade of The Game Awards, no Game of the Year winner has had a MetaCritic score under "88".

I haven't really looked into the big upcoming games to come, but if I had to guess, I'd say the game of the year hasn't been released yet.

@MontyCircus There are 14 games at or above 88 already even though a few of them probably don't count as GotY contenders.

@MontyCircus

Only a few months left. Games released in late November or December are usually deemed "released too late" to qualify for award season. Looking at the remaining release schedule I don't see anything supremely anticipated by the masses. Plenty of games that should land well enough, but probably won't turn enough heads to unseat FFVII Rebirth.

I'd put two of my most anticipated games into that bucket, Fantasy Life i: The Girl Who Steals Time and Ys X: Nodics.

Maybe this is CoD's year to shine? Lots of buzz around the new movement system in BO VI.

Oh well. At least next year we'll have GTA VI. That'll win multiple categories by a landslide.

Like others have said, I think FFVII Rebirth is a shoe in for a GOTY nod, and honestly, I don't think any of Nintendo's titles make the cut this year (in the main category) depending on how well Echoes of Wisdom hits & how the rest of this year's titles turn out.

I'm personally rooting for FFVII Rebirth at the moment, though I'm also loving Stellar Blade (though unless it ends up being a slow year, I don't really expect it to pick up any GOTY nods. Maybe for best action adventure, but it's looking to have some stiff competition with Black Myth Wukong & Phantom Blade Zero coming out this year as well).

Also, never underestimate the Game Awards ability to nominate the big mainstream Ubisoft & EA type games that generally don't get the enthusiasts excited (especially the Nintendo fans), but will no doubt be huge sellers and at the very least mechanically sound games, like Assassin's Creed Shadows & Star Wars Outlaws.

I misread the stat I posted. That was OpenCritic.

For MetaCritic, the minimum score for a The Game Awards Game of the Year of the past decade is "89" (I used the highest score on all platforms).

The minimum # of ratings for a The Game Awards Game of the Year winner in the past decade has been 45 reviews (I used the platform with the highest # of reviews).

So let's explore the games of 2024 with a minimum MetaCritic score of "89" on at least one platform, and a minimum 45 MetaCritic reviews on at least one platform. I found only 3 eligible games:

Final Fantasy VII Rebirth
Tekken 8
Like a Dragon: Infinite Wealth

None of these 3 games seem to have anything close to the online hype that Tears of the Kingdom and Baldur's Gate 3 did last year.

Probably ineligible:
Elden Ring: Shadow of the Erdtree is DLC
Animal Well not enough reviews
Balatro not enough reviews
Thank Goodness You're Here! not enough reviews
The Last of Us Part II Remastered basically a re-issue
Destiny 2: The Final Shape DLC and not enough reviews
Tsukihime: A Piece of Blue Glass Moon came out 3 years ago in Japan, a remake of a game that came out a quarter century ago, and not enough reviews.
Horizon Forbidden West: Complete Edition a re-issue and not enough reviews.
Persona 3 Reload a remake
Shin Megami Tensei V: Vengeance new ports of 3 year-old Switch game, and a review shy of 45.
Unicorn Overlord 2 reviews shy
Braid Anniversary Edition a re-issue, and not even close to enough reviews