Here’s Which Game Will Probably Win Game Of The Year At The Game Awards – Forbes

The Game Awards are tonight, marking one of the biggest nights for the industry this side of E3: over the past five years or so, Geoff Keighley’s show has emerged as the pre-eminent awards show in a vast sea of them, and that means that whichever game takes home Game of the Year gets a certain shine to it, moreso than a GOTY nod from a major publication. The nominees are tough this year:

• Animal Crossing: New Horizons
• DOOM: Eternal
• Final Fantasy VII Remake
• Ghost of Tsushima
• The Last of Us Part 2
• Hades

So who will win? The Last of Us Part 2, a narrative behemoth and technical masterwork? Ghost of Tsushima, one of the best open-world games ever made? Animal Crossing: New Horizons, which became a cultural touchstone during early lockdown?

Nah, it’s Hades.

I expect Hades to win for two basic reasons. The first couldn’t be simpler: I expect Hades to win because Hades is awesome. It is mechanically perfect, intense and endlessly interesting. It is the best rougelike I have ever played. It makes tremendous leaps forward in the sorts of storytelling you can do even in the context of repetitive gameplay, with implications for interactive narratives in every genre. It is, like all SuperGiant games, impeccably stylish, at times beautiful, and backed by a killer soundtrack. It is exceptionally horny. It has everything.

The second is that the Game Awards are primarily chosen by a voting jury composed of industry outlets from around the world, and Hades is the sort of game that really appeals to people that play an absolute on of video games. A game like The Last of Us Part 2 might be an excellent narrative game, and a game like Ghost of Tsushima might be an excellent open-world game, but Hades feels like it pushes things forward in more interesting ways, and it’s been hugely popular among the industry types I follow on social media, both developers and journalists.

Hades is also the game that will also probably benefit from a win the most, not that that matters when it comes to picking it. The other two games are already gargantuan, AAA affairs, but I have a feeling there are still a ton of people who might like Hades that haven’t played it, and a GOTY win might be just what they need to make the leap.

So that’s my prediction. It could well still be wrong, but that’s my prediction. Let’s see what happens.

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