Round Up: All Our Game of the Year Winners

Guardians of the Galaxy was robbed 😫

@fR_eeBritney I just started it having completed chapter 3 and so far it's a fantastic game. I had severe doubts that they'd be able to capture the banter of the movies for as long as an average game takes and they've been successful to the point I've reached. It's impressive.

Mass Effect Legendary Edition takes my overall 2021 GOTY. Taking remasters out of the equation, Guardians of the Galaxy would take it.

@fR_eeBritney and FIFA 22!
😆

@TheMadRabbid @fR_eeBritney I've been playing Guardians over the Christmas break and I've enjoyed it a lot, but I don't think it's anything amazing. For me, far too much of it is just walking down corridors and watching cutscenes (although the characters are really well done).

I will say though, that Guardians has been robbed in the sense that it's a much better game than a lot of people think it is. It's been handed an unfair disadvantage thanks to Marvel's Avengers and how poorly that was received.

@ShogunRok I get what you're saying but for me if the main criticism is that it's a walk down corridors and cutscenes then it's a lot better than the 'walking simulator' games I've played over the years, and those games get a lot of acclaim because they're a lovely 'experience'. For me GG is a brilliant walking simulator in that case with a good story and great dialogue that I can influence and gunplay/gameplay that's really sells the experience.
If Everyone's Gone to the Rapture had this level of immersion it'd been called a masterpiece 😁

Definelty agree it's suffered on the back of Avenger's reputation.

@Integrity A lot of 'walking sims' are only a few hours long, though. Guardians is roughly 15 hours of squeezing through gaps while a racoon complains about everything.

I am being a bit facetious, though. I've enjoyed Guardians a lot, and I'm not even a big Marvel fan.

@ShogunRok that just further bolsters my point! GG is twice the length of the lauded walking simulators 😊👍

And I love squeezing thorugh gaps. I'm going to miss that once games stop being developed for last-gen consoles 😄

Seems Lost Judgement is getting no love in any of the lists haha. It is in my top 5 of the year but I think it is simply struggling to meet the high standards of the superior original Judgement.

There are three cooperative/multiplayer games which is surprising haha. I think Guardians of the Galaxy and Deathloop were perceived on by many on the site as solid rather than spectacular which is perhaps why they made space for multiplayer games

Impressive that GG Strive actually made it on the list. You never really see fighting games get in a GOTY list(I understand why though) so it's good that something like Strive was chosen.

Guardians, Kena and Deathloop should be on the list. Kinda shocked they’re not.

@CynicalGamer I'm gonna heavily disagree on that. It surpassed the high standards of Judgement from the heavily improved gameplay(and added juggling with more counters), characters, story, how nearly everything is tied to the story(Seriously, there is a lot of small stuff that you'd easily miss that they show that's connected in a great way) even the antagonist's motives. You understand where the guy is coming from and why he does what he does unlike the villain in the original game(Not saying he's a bad one) where he is a literal psychopath. Only issue I can see with the game is the amount of times that Yagami keeps bringing up a certain character and that the stealth and parkour are obviously tacked on without much thought.

@Nepp67 you make good points. The narrative was thought provoking from a moral perspective and there was a lot of foreshadowing and subtle links I picked up, especially in my legend mode replay. I still think however that the original's narrative was better structured whereas the sequel felt a bit padded with parts that could have written more consisely here and there. Especially the dialogue which sometimes felt repetitive without adding any sort of hidden meaning or something to justify it.

Forget deathloop and guardians of the galaxy, how is tales of Arise the best rpg of the year but still can't make the top 10

It beat disco elysium to being the best rpg of 2021 but elysium is on the top 10 list but tales of Arise isn't, makes no sense unless the top 10 list was done differently to the specific categories lists?

@UltimateOtaku91 The top 10 is decided by a staff vote, so all of these games ended up with more votes than Tales of Arise. (For the record, I voted for Tales of Arise quite highly!)

The Best RPGs and other lists were decided by the editorial team with no voting process. We just got together and decided which games should win what (after some lengthy discussions).

In the Best RPG list, for example, I thought Tales of Arise deserved it over Disco because Disco is technically a 2020 game. The other editors agreed, and that's why Tales ended up as best RPG, even though it didn't get enough votes to be a top 10 GOTY overall.

Hope that makes sense!

@CynicalGamer I loved Lost Judgment and think it should have got more love but I disagree that the original Judgment was better. I loved the first one but LJ stripped away so many of the boring side cases and there wasn't a chase scene etc in every single case like before.

Add the school clubs into it and its a much better game (maybe not as good of a story though I'll admit that)

@Nepp67 @jstarr465 I tend to agree with @CynicalGamer on the story. I think Lost Judgment's story felt a little too bloated at times, and there was a lot of redundant dialogue — characters basically saying the same things over and over again. It kind of dragged a lot of the plot elements down for me.

That said, I'm totally with you on the gameplay. I love the combat in Lost Judgment, and I love most of the minigames that were added (robot club can go to hell, though. Way too long).

Lost Judgment's a great game, but for me, the original Judgment is a more 'focused' game.

As for Game of the Year, yeah, I do think Lost Judgment missed out, perhaps a bit unfairly. Hardly any of our writers played it, but that's partly down to a few of them being burnt out on Yakuza-style games (easy to forget we had PS5 Judgment and PS5 Like a Dragon this year as well!).

It's a shame, but it does feel like Lost Judgment got buried this year. The timing of its release wasn't great, and I don't think many people actually played it. I think SEGA could have handled Yakuza/Judgment a lot better than it has, especially in the West.

@ShogunRok ah I see that makes a lot more sense now as I thought it was the same people voting for each poll/category.

How come disco elysium was included if it technically released in 2020? If it was because it was a "final cut" version then would that also permit ghost of tsushima to be voted for in which im sure that would of scored high in the list

@UltimateOtaku91 Disco was also technically a 'new' release on PlayStation, so we thought it was right to include it since we're a PlayStation-only website. And it is an amazing game, so it wouldn't seem fair to leave it out completely.

Ghost was included in the staff poll as well! I think it ended up in 12th or 13th place if I remember right. So it only missed out by just a few votes.

@ShogunRok I can see the problem with characters repeating themselves and especially with Yagami. It even got me yelling, "You already said that, stop saying that!" at times but it was never enough for it to ruin the story for me and especially when there are some fantastic moments with the characters from Yagami, Kaito, Sugiura, Jin, Soma etc. And that final boss really made the story that much more memorable for me.

@ShogunRok I can totally get the Yakuza/Judgment franchise fatigue thing but I've never actually played any of the Yakuza games and I only discovered Judgement when they released the PS5 version!

So it wasn't an issue for me. I also liked the robotics club because you could customise your robots and create an unbeatable team....it was the motorcycle club that I found boring....same mechanics over and over again to win the races...yawn

That top ten shows it wasn't exactly a steller year for playstation, 22 is looking better though...

@Nepp67 I didn't like the main antagonist very much but I agree, that last 'dungeon' along with the last fights is really good.

@jstarr465 I liked the biker gang stuff because of how absurd it was, but yeah, it did get quite repetitive. I think with Yakuza games it's often best to take your time with the side activities. I rushed through a lot of the school stuff in LJ and in hindsight it made it less enjoyable. Best to jump from activity to activity to keep things fresh.

@ShogunRok Glad to see Tales of Arise get some love! Also agree on gameplay improvements for Lost Judgement. Great game but I think some more subtle, concise showing (rather than tell) plot devices could have made the repetitive parts of the narrative better, particularly in the main quest.

We can final say it’s out this year 2022
And out next month.
There is only one Horizon Forbidden West.

@CynicalGamer
Lost Judgment would be close to the top of my list too. If not too. Fantastic game. Have to disagree with you that the original was superior though. Lost has a far superior story in my opinion, better side games and side stories, plus the drone circuits were less frustrating. I also actually enjoyed the combat, whereas combat in the original seemed far less precise for some reason.

I don’t get the fatigue thing. Last year I got the plat for all 7 Yakuza games and Judgment (still working on Lost Judgment and FotNS). The games are so varied in what they offer that I only felt a little burn out with the worst of the bunch Yakuza 4. If any games keep fatigue at bay it’s the Yakuza /Judgment series I feel.

@lolwhatno why lol there's no real nudity plus it's a character from an anime with an age rating of 15

@thefourfoldroot It still easily makes my top 3 for the year tbh. Gameplay wise I preferred the sequel but I guess the manner in which the narrative was presented just felt repetitive and clumsy to me and I tend to judge games by their narrative quite harshly as per my narrative preferences. Its one of the few games I platinumed last year so I did enjoy the game a lot. In retrospect "superior" was the wrong word to use. I guess I felt the original was presented better while the sequel could have had some more dialogue refinement.

@lolwhatno ah I see, yeah if I had pfp with nudity I would of been either banned or my picture removed.

Criticizing Guardians of the Galaxy for the corridor gameplay? hmmmm. Last of us, Uncharted and Final Fantasy XIII would have a word with you. But of course Guardians of the Galaxy has the muti-plat tax.

At least it didn't suffer the xbox-timed-exclusive tax that prevents masterpieces such as Cuphead or Rise of the Tomb Raider to be considered for awards at a PS website.

Guardians is a great new IP and in my top 5 of the year. Easily (the atmosphere, music, graphics, performances, writing and just plain FUN are extraordinary).

Guardians of the Galaxy is the game of the year for me.

This list is why i never read reviews from push square. Knock out city? Lmfao

RE Village is my only choice for GOTY.... 2021 sucked!