Topic: The Game Awards 2025

Looks like a new thread is made annually for this, so I thought I'd kick it off.

I'm not massively into the game awards, mostly because it's on at too silly of a time in the UK but I will be interested to see the nominees in around an hour or so because I'd really like Donkey Kong Bananza to be nominated for GOTY and also, less likely though still possible, Mario Kart World to be nominated for Best Soundtrack because my lord does it deserve it.

Of course, there are loads of other games on Switch/Switch 2 that could be nominated as well though, anyone have any particular hopes or opinions for this year?

I've said something along these lines in another thread, but I'd like to see Deltarune win Best Soundtrack and Best Ongoing.

Donkey Kong Bananza will probably win Best Family Game.

Hot take, but I hope Mario Kart World wins Best Racing Game.

These are all my hopes for this year's Game Awards.

DK BANANZA IS IN THE RACE FOR GOTY LETS GO!
The Game of the Year nominees are Clair Expedition 33, Death Stranding 2: On the Beach, Kingdom Come Deliverance 2, Donkey Kong Bananza (yes!), Hollow Knight: Silksong, and Hades 2. All worthy in my opinion.

As soon as I saw 'sponsored by Spotify' pop up, I knew Mario Kart World was out of the race to get best soundtrack which is a real shame.

Nothing too surprising, it's a shame Metroid missed the window for this.

Clair Obscur is a worthy nominee for GOTY and several other categories, but on what planet does it count as a debut indie game? I guess that's both words that have lost all meaning now.

I feel particularly sorry for Tonda Ros, the maker of Blue Prince. He spent eight years learning game development from scratch and making a game pretty much by himself, but is up against a team of industry veterans with a budget in the tens of millions for an award that I don't see how he could possibly win now.

I would have opinions on the nominees, but that would require me to actually have played more than like 5 games that came out this year. I will say some things though I guess. I like how many indie games are nominated for stuff, that's really cool. I like COD not being nominated for best multiplayer, that's funny. I like that Mario Kart World and Sonic Racing Crossworlds are likely to be the two top options for best sports/racing, that should be fun. And lastly, I hope Troy Baker wins best performance for Indiana Jones and the Great Circle, cause I thought he did some really impressive work.

Also I only went 3/6 on my GOTY nominee predictions. Big yikes.

I do wonder if Nintendo's going to announce their late March game here alongside more movie news. With the exception of 2017 which had 3 1st party Switch games on March 3rd and 2021 which they gave the month to the 3rd party game MH Rise, each year has had a 2nd half of March 1st party game. This is the current list of 1st party March games:

• March 3rd 2017 - BotW, 1-2-Switch, Snipperclips
• March 16th 2018 - Kirby Star Allies
• March 29th 2019 - Yoshi's Crafted World
• March 6th 2020 - Pokemon Mystery Dungeon Rescue Team DX
• March 20th 2020 - Animal Crossing New Horizons
• March 25th 2022 - Kirby and the Forgotten Land
• March 17th 2023 - Bayonetta Origins
• March 22nd 2024 - Princess Peach Showtime
• March 20th 2025 - XCX Definitive Edition
• March 5th 2026 - Pokemon Pokopia

I don't see Nintendo releasing 2 life sims in the same month so Tomodachi Life is likely May which suggests Wonder Switch 2 Edition or Yoshi is the 2nd half of March release.

The voting page is seriously lagging. Bananza is my GotY vote though. I haven't played many 2025 released games so I have no idea what to vote for in most categories.

They put Exp 33 in the indies category... Having a game which took 10 or 20 million dollars, has devs with connections to AA and AAA studios, and is expected to win GotY seems kind of unfair to the small new indies.

Since it is 'sports and racing' I assume some bad but insanely popular sports game will win instead.

I think Best Sports/Racing Game is probably Nintendo's best chance of winning an award as it comes down to whether the judge panel loved intermissions or not. If they did then MK World would win, if they didn't I think Sonic Racing CrossWorlds would win.

As for the other categories, there's patterns in previous years which make Bananza unlikely. GotY winners have always been nominated for Best Game Direction so if that follows you're left with Expedition 33, Death Stranding 2 and Hades 2. I think Expedition 33 will win.

Meanwhile Best Family Game most of the time has had the game with the best couch co-op win the award so if that follows you'd see Split Fiction win.

Non-GOTY contenders don't ever really beat GOTY contenders, so Donkey Kong definitely takes Best Family Game.

@UpsideDownRowlet It has happened before like in 2019, Smash Ultimate was 1 of the GotY nominees but it lost to Luigi's Mansion 3 in the Best Family Game category. The nominees for Best Family Game were:

• LM3
• Smash Ultimate
• Mario Maker 2
• Ring Fit Adventure
• Yoshi's Crafted World

@Grumblevolcano I forgot we had a year which was 100% Nintendo in that category...

Although your example above also shows the good couch multiplayer game losing to a less multiplayer focused game.

Hmm I actually haven’t really played all that many titles that came out in 2025 but I think that Pokémon Legends Z-A takes the cake for Nintendo Switch in more than one this year.

I'm expecting E33 to clean up nicely at the event, and can't see it getting beat for the 'main' GOTY award. Nice to see KCD2 still in the conversation though.

I think Hades 2 will sadly end up a little overlooked.... whereas if the full release was last year 2024, this game might have fared better

I thought Bananza had really good couch co-op. It's just not completely centered on that experience, like a Hazelight game is.

@FishyS That's weird, @UpsideDownRowlet gave that quote, not me😂

I was wracking my brain as to when I would've said something like that lol

@FishyS I was talking about co-op specifically, not multiplayer in general. Smash Ultimate is rather limited for co-op like World of Light is single player only rather than having a co-op option.

@Nintoz Sorry about that, not sure how that happened. Some bizarre copy-paste fail I can only assume.