Astro Bot is the present frontrunner for Sport of the 12 months. It at present has recency bias in its favour, launching simply final week, however with its common attraction and sky-high important ranking, I nonetheless assume it is the favorite by a good margin. Naturally, some individuals disagree with Astro Bot being seen as the top of gaming, and – get this – that is fully high-quality. The difficulty is we now have deified Sport of the 12 months to such a degree that, even for individuals with no connection to any of the video games nominated, it has turn out to be oddly private.
Sport of the 12 months is, fairly actually, a recognition contest. The Game Awards has gotten it ‘proper’ (or no less than picked a really worthy winner) every time, however we do are likely to see the largest promoting and most mentioned video games on the rostrum, with the big and unweighted jury making extra curated picks for lesser identified greats inconceivable to wriggle by means of. What Astro Bot has going for it, together with being superb, is that everyone is enjoying it. Only a few individuals are going to take a look at it and be delay by the complexity, runtime, or style, and so it has extra potential voters.
Sport Of The 12 months Ought to All the time Be Private
It is the identical at TheGamer – our Sport of the 12 months listing is completed slightly otherwise to most websites. Slightly than a giant debate the place we collectively determine our order, everybody right here will get to make their very own private high ten, and the scores (ten for first, 9 for second, and so forth.) are added up mathematically to present us our Sport of the 12 months listing. It ensures our listing is reflective of the positioning’s tastes as an entire, nevertheless it does imply video games that everybody performs usually tend to make the minimize.
Having spent the final three years convincing everybody to check out after which vote for The Forgotten City, Citizen Sleeper, Immortality, and Slay the Princess (three wins and one loss on that entrance), it additionally means we get to push one another to strive new issues. However the hazard is loads of video games that crowd the underside of lists rack up extra factors than the indies that solely a handful of individuals are extraordinarily obsessed with that simply did not get performed sufficient – this yr, it could be contact and go for 1000xResist and Balatro.
The purpose of this ramble is straightforward – your listing is your individual. Wherever you write it, even when solely in your individual head, your Sport of the 12 months is the one which meant probably the most to you. For very personal reasons, even Astro Bot’s 5/5 efficiency is simply ok for second place in mine to Like a Dragon: Infinite Wealth. However there may be this creeping behavior on-line of when somebody says ‘Astro Bot is GOTY’ to answer with ‘no it is not’.
Worse than that, there may be this need for GOTY to be ‘truthful’. And by ‘truthful’, individuals normally imply ‘vote for the issues I like’. Final Fantasy 7 Rebirth, which I believe is Astro Bot’s present greatest challenger for The Sport Awards, is a really completely different kind of recreation. It is narratively extra advanced, and subsequently extra heartfelt, and has a wider vary of gameplay, however with that comes extra flaws, rougher pacing, and extra elements you wish to skip. For a lot of of you, it could nonetheless be GOTY, however we now have given this title an excessive amount of significance that we will not simply talk about Astro Bot and say it is superb – we will solely point out it by means of the lens of whether or not Geoff Keighley will give it a trophy.
The expertise of really enjoying and having fun with a recreation has been overshadowed by the necessity to have that enjoyment ratified by official endorsements, or shut it down so it doesn’t outshine one thing else. I do not assume 2024 has been a very sturdy yr for gaming up to now when in comparison with 2023’s choices, nevertheless it has given us the perfect PlayStation unique in an extended whereas, perhaps the perfect Like a Dragon/Yakuza recreation ever, and a stirring reminder of the everlasting energy of Ultimate Fantasy 7 – and that is earlier than we point out Black Myth: Wukong or Helldivers 2, plus the upcoming Zelda, Dragon Age, and Indiana Jones titles. Simply take pleasure in it and cease worrying about who will get the crown on the finish.
