Every Game Awards Game of the Year Ranked Worst to Best

hello everyone and welcome to sunburned albino ranks every game of the year winner from every broadcasted year of the game awards from worst to best starting in 2014 the game awards debuted to a humble 1.9 million viewers and has since increased that viewership by over 50 times to the tune of over 100 million viewers during 2022's broadcast it has only trended upwards since its Inception and I wonder if that Trend will continue into 2023. anyway I thought it would be interesting to rank every game that one game of the year during these Awards and pit the supposed cream of the crop against each other while talking about what else existed during those years to see if maybe you or I would have made different decisions about who should have won or been nominated to begin with the winners in order from 2014 on were Dragon Age Inquisition The Witcher 3 wild Hunt OverWatch The Legend of Zelda breath of the wild God of War sekiro Shadows died twice The Last of Us Part 2 it takes two and most recently in 2022 Elden ring nine entries nine winners nine doors and I've actually played them all to some degree or another well let's get it started number nine it takes two 2021 the worst game of the year winner in the game awards history is it takes two if you've watched my Channel at any point from 2021 to 2022 you probably heard me say something about how I thought 2021 was the worst year for games that my adult brain can remember it was supposed to be huge but tons of stuff got delayed to 2022 so 2022 became huge instead it takes two is a totally acceptable and fun Co-op platformer that should reasonably expect to have been on any person's top 10 list for that year but the g-o-t-y it's a game about two divorcing parents one of which is basically Chris Pratt while the other is British for some reason and they're unfortunately bigger daughter who handles the news poorly and casts a magic spell with her depressed tears that turns her parents into little Sackboy dolls they then have to figure out how to work together to overcome obstacles both physical and mental to return to normal the the only problem is these characters are [ __ ] unlikable and they should absolutely be divorcing never to speak to each other again and hopefully never to meet anyone else either and subject them to their personalities I was not motivated to try and mend their relationship through the power of Teamwork because I believe it belongs in the dumpster so the driving force behind the game was falling on deaf ears and left me not super eager to continue it's also a co-op only game so if you have no friends you can't play and if the ones you do have are frequently busy or flaky you're not going to get very far very fast that it takes two one game of the year in my view it's just a condemnation of the overall game quality 2021 brought to the table it was up against death Loop a decently fun murder puzzle Metroid dread a game that felt like it could have come out on the Wii Psychonauts 2 a platformer where everything and everyone is drawn unappealingly Ratchet and Clank Rift apart one of the most visually gorgeous games to ever exist and Resident Evil Village a more action-oriented re title with werewolves a couple of these games are bangers but like top five level bangers like in a vacuum if you had no idea what they were up against you would maybe estimate that games like Resident Evil Village or Rift apart would be the number three or four best game of Any Given year and you would hope that a couple other games would come out that were of a higher quality but in 2021 that was as good as it got I picked Village as my personal game of the year that year and it takes two was number 10 on my list number eight The Witcher 3 wild Hunt 2015. I don't know what to tell you I just never clicked with this game I tried it for a couple hours and said no thank you I barely even remembered what it was like since it was back in 2015 but after booting it up again for the footage it definitely feels incredibly dated The Witcher 3 was up against bloodborne one of the PS4's most beloved exclusives Fallout 4 a pretty alright Fallout game Metal Gear Solid 5 a stealth game where they replace snake with a guy from 24 and Super Mario Maker a game where you can make your own Mario levels with a bunch of cheap [ __ ] traps and then make a hidden developer exit so you don't have to complete your own dumbass s level definitely some decent competition of which I would have instantly chosen bloodborne I'm looking at the game release date list for 2015 though and they missed some serious hitters Dying Light Ori in the blind Forest Batman Arkham Knight Goat Simulator just kidding number 7. Dragon Age Inquisition 2014. the game awards first ever Game of the Year Dragon Age Inquisition is a party-based RPG where you hold the button to attack forever and sprinkle some skills with cooldowns in there I looked at my play time before I gathered this footage and thought it was a typo I don't like this combat style and I didn't really like the game that much but apparently I played 126 hours for God Knows Why much like 2021 this game didn't have great competition up against Bayonetta 2 which I'm sure is fine but not Game of the Year worthy Dark Souls 2 the one everyone hates because they don't want to level up adaptability Hearthstone a card game and Middle Earth Shadow of Mordor the latter of which would have secured my vote because it's a terrific game and even though I am a Dark Souls 2 enjoyer Shadow of Mordor is still better as for the games that weren't nominated that could have been 2014 saw the release of South Park the Stick of Truth Titanfall Infamous Second Son which actually blows me away that that wasn't in there because that was the best game of 2014 and Destiny remember the first Destiny game were old only ogs remember farming the loot cave before they patched it but yeah Infamous Second Son should have been nominated and then subsequently Vindicated number six OverWatch 2016. I feel bad for OverWatch 2 players all their promised story content progression and single player offerings went straight in the dumpster because the dev team decided they were too talentless mismanaged to deliver I played OverWatch back when McCree was still McCree and Bastion was still a [ __ ] and I had fun for a few weeks putting revolver bullets and skulls with the people I played with but multiplayer games only last so long until the frustration of increasing losses piles up and you have to decide am I going to put in the effort and research it takes to get better so I can have fun again or am I gonna quit and do something else I lasted about a month in 2016 OverWatch was up against the Doom reboot Titanfall 2 whose terrible launch date made it the Horizon forbidden west of 2016. Uncharted 4 a thief's end and inside inside is an indie game from the people who made limbo back in the day and I'm as confused as you perhaps about why it's here since it's just limbo but less memorable I would have voted Doom here that reboot was so unexpected and so satisfying and to this day I'd probably call it the best first person shooter I've ever played it's insane to me that XCOM 2 wasn't nominated and other notable snubs include the first Hitman game Dark Souls 3 if you can believe it salt and Sanctuary which was my game of the year back then because I hadn't yet played XCOM 2 Deus Ex mankind divided which was another straight Banger civilization 6. wow dude how did inside the zerva spot over all these way better games I didn't have a PC in 2016 so I really missed out but in retrospect this seems like it was one of the strongest gaming years there's been and they gave it to OverWatch LOL number five sekiro Shadows die twice 2019. this was another year where all the nominated games were top five in a vacuum but in my opinion not good enough to deserve a game of the year status sakuro is a good game that I am not good at I am a Souls game veteran I can beat bloodborne Dark Souls Elven ring with only a couple problem boss fights but sekiro the entire game is the problem because of its departure from the general Souls format into a much more rapid Perry driven scenario I enjoyed running around and killing regular enemies but most of the bosses required so much Flawless execution and a lot more pattern memorization because you had to actively Parry each hit in a combo without it staggering them until the bar finally filled and you could break their posture it's more demanding than Souls games and the Perry window is tight so it's difficult the other games nominated were control a third person shooter with telekinesis mechanics which was decent Super Smash Bros ultimate the only nominee from any year that I still play to this day the outer worlds which is basically a very good Fallout clone from the people who made New Vegas the Resident Evil 2 remake which was a good time and death stranding which belongs nowhere near any show that aims to Levy praise at video games death straining is a post-apocalyptic joke I imagine the way the environment was cataclysmically ruined was because the game devs couldn't stop littering it with ads from shoving Monster Energy piss in your face to making sure you know when a ride with a Norman Reedus airs death stranding should have been satire instead it's satire's abuse and remember it got nominated before the director's cut was announced that supposedly put some actual content in there that didn't involve carrying people's dead grandmothers around my game of the year in 2019 was Fire Emblem three houses for its huge branching story and insanely rewarding replayability it had the best new game plus offerings of any game I've ever seen and kept me going through 11 playthroughs in like 500 hours at least at one best strategy game but it should have been a no-brainer Gotti nomination Number Four The Legend of zel the breath of the wild 2017 it's like tears of the Kingdom but you're not a glue sniffer I've talked about this game in its sequel Ad nauseam recently in other videos but basically breath of the wild is a decent game that's over hyped people act like it redefined open World Games just because you can go wherever you want when it starts and get one shot at your discretion lots of design choices are annoying like weapon durability and temperature mechanics the combat is passable I don't love it and without the DLC bike traversal is just really slow it feels like you're an ant in a vast world and while that may sound appealing from a possibility and content standpoint if you can only Sprint for two seconds at a time and your Sprint speed is like a 1.2 x multiplier it's gonna be a slog but even though I'm harping on negative stuff I still put the game at number four so you know it's still got a bunch of positive stuff going for it this was a good and bad year for nominations breath of the wild definitely deserve to win against what it was paired with even though there's a game I liked more that was also nominated but another nominee's inclusion was just pathetic breath of the wild was up against Horizon zero Dawn which is basically PlayStation's breath of the wild Persona 5 which was a good turn-based game and by turn based I mean how you take turns with all your simultaneously romanced girlfriends Super Mario Odyssey which is the best Mario game ever made and playerunknown's Battlegrounds before it even fully [ __ ] launched Bishop was still in Early Access the only thing it had going for it was that it was a battle royale that's all the criteria it needed to fill it was a blueprint and nothing more and an unfinished one at that they created a proof of concept demonstration and then said [ __ ] it that's the game I don't care how many people played it if player count were all that mattered we'd be watching game of the year go to Roblox for the ninth time that nomination slot could have gone to Neo or destiny 2 before it sucked or Divinity original sin 2 which is actually the best game that released in 2017 by a mile and a half or even South Park the fractured butthole 2017 was weird number three God of War 2018 with this reboot Kratos made the jump from Greek mythology to Norse and gained a whole new religion of God's display while a fantastic game it wasn't without its faults namely the complete and utter lack of Boss design there were like eight unique bosses in this game and the rest were troll clones or some other [ __ ] it also traded in the bombastic set pieces of the the original games for a more quiet and understated journey through the Realms which is a tonal shift with reasons not to appreciate it but your opinion may vary God of War was up against Assassin's Creed Odyssey which is interesting since I don't remember that game even reviewing that well Celeste a hardcore platformer that marked the first time in game awards history that a nominated indie game actually deserved to be there Marvel's Spider-Man which was a straight Banger and my personal Game of the Year pick for 2018 Monster Hunter World which was a decent Monster hunting time besides the monsters taking 20 minute battles to incapacitate and having this weird implementation of Co-op where you couldn't join a transmission unless you had already started that mission in single player and the last nominee was none other than Red Dead Redemption 2 which I would have bet the entire Farm on it winning that year I didn't personally love it I felt the realism was a double-edged sword at times that sliced away at the Flesh of convenience but the cultural impact it had was greater and I thought for sure the game awards would lap it up the only change I would have made to 2018's nomination list is that I honestly would have put Detroit become human in there instead of Assassin's Creed I know some people like to meme on the writing in that game but the sheer Dynamic choice in the narrative and the Absurd variety of outcomes made it such a spectacle I think way more YouTubers should have done full playthroughs so we could see all their choices because I was hooked on figuring out different endings and stressing about how successful I wanted my initial playthrough to be in terms of keeping people alive and fulfilling their goals but yeah I think Spider-Man should have won here but at least its sequel has a chance to in 2023. number two Elden ring 2022 the most recent Game of the Year at the time of me writing this Elden ring is certainly worthy of the moniker no doubt I don't think it's the second coming of Christ like some people do I think the open world is more a waste of time than anything else putting distance between you and the actual Souls game content that exists in the Dungeons and major landmarks but even without the open world at its core it's still a giant game packed with an absurd amount of weapons and bosses and content and boasts way more replayability than other Souls games because of it the second playthrough is always better than the first in Souls games and that's especially true here when you can cut out most of the aimless wandering and make a b line for the locations of important stuff you remember from last time but even though you might expect the phenomenon like Elden ring to sweep a normal game of words it had some unfortunately Fierce competition and I say unfortunately because the fierce competition was also good enough to win game of the year and deserved it but the bracket was just too stacked Eldon ring was up against God of War Ragnarok who you'll remember is the sequel of 2018's Game of the Year winner and is a much better game than its predecessor and my personal Game of the Year pick for 2022 which makes the defeat sting in a similar position is Horizon forbidden West another sequel whose previous game was nominated in 2017 when breath of the wild took it and is another sequel that is leagues better than the original which stings just as hard I mean these games did everything they could to iterate and improve and succeeded only to still lose to Elden ring in the eyes of the jury that's gotta hurt that's where the top tier competition ends and where the middling competition begins although I can't really speak for plague tale Requiem because I never played it the next nominee was Xenoblade Chronicles 3 another game I didn't play but that received relatively average review scores some people loved it in typical jrpg Fanfare and others were less enthused I don't even want to mention the last game nominated because it's a slap in the face of Storytelling but stray is up there that cat game everyone fell in love with which was an intriguing premise and setting that they just [ __ ] [ __ ] on with the ending I'm probably in the minority on this one but I feel jilted because I was excited for this game and my main motivation and what had to have been the cat's motivation for playing through to the end instead of just staying in the city forever was to see the one thing the developers were like nah don't bother showing this or even eluding that we remember it was part of the story to begin with it's the narrative equivalent of running 98 yards for a touchdown and then right before you cross the line you throw the football at the waterboy's head and start kicking the [ __ ] out of him in this metaphor the football is the story and we are collectively the water boy I didn't mean to write this long but I always do when I talk about stray anyway Elden ring Ragnarok and forbidden West were like the Mount Rushmore Cerberus of 2023 three juggernauts who should have all won in their own right and so even though I'm lukewarm about the rest of the nominees I still think overall 2022 had the strongest competition number one The Last of Us Part 2 2020. the reason the Last of Us 2 is here instead of Elven ring is because I have less problems with the last of us too it was just a joy to play all the way through the story was like six hours longer than I expected and I didn't care I was happy to keep going it was unequivocally the best looking game on the PS4 and although everyone loves to quibble about the narrative I just don't see the problem it's been almost three years so I'm gonna discuss spoilers heavily and make my case for why this game story is very good it's not perfect but it's very good reason one Joel deserved to die I don't know how you can think otherwise he committed the most cardinal sin possible in a post-apocalyptic landscape he killed a hospital full of doctors and prevented Humanity's Last Hope for a cure if I was the daughter of one of those doctors I would have played 18 holes with Joel's head as the ball reason two the game's entire narrative leaked weeks before it came out so people saw all the story beats naked with no context or build up to help justify or enhance them they didn't have time to think differently about developments and let certain moments sink in over the course of many hours of gameplay I didn't read these leaks so I was fine Reason 3 Revenge is easy acceptance is hard in the latter half of the game both Ellie and Abby have separate opportunities to kill each other out of Revenge and wash their hands of the whole conflict they don't take them why because they both grow as characters over the course of the story and begrudgingly come to understand where the other is coming from they both have justifications for the things they've done and you can empathize with both plights Abby teed off on Joel's head Ellie killed Abby's pregnant friend and her unborn baby among other things so it's safe to say nobody's fully in the right here each person can justify why they did what they did and eventually actually the only truly satisfying conclusion is the one where nobody is satisfied the fact that both these characters could get to a point where they could take the high road as top tier character growth and something you just don't see in stories very often peace true bitter painful peace it would have been so easy to just have one of them kill the other when they had the chance and the game would have been 10 hours shorter and that's what some people wanted but that would have been so shallow compared to what we got as far as gameplay goes it's still top-notch I like Scavenging stuff finding materials for upgrades and New Game Plus makes it worth a second go-to The Last of Us Part 2 was up against Animal Crossing New Horizons kovid's game of the year because the virus is the only reason anyone dove into that as hard as they did Doom Eternal a good FPS sequel but I prefer the first one Final Fantasy VII remake which I enjoyed somewhat I always like watching Final Fantasy stories play out but I'm never keen on the combat I really don't know why jrpgs don't use like Kingdom Hearts 2 combat because it's the best I've ever played and nobody else even tries to mimic it it's like how Super Smash Bros has my favorite fighting mechanics and every once in a while you'll hear about oh here comes the next smash killer but then the game plays like brawlhalla instead like these idiots are never gonna make a smash killer if they keep ripping off other games that failed to be the smash killer instead of ripping off smash directly the next nominee was ghosts of tsushima which was definitely a banger and could have easily deserved game of the year and then the last one was Hades a good indie game roguelite everyone overrates but it's still good I guess one of the other main reasons The Last of Us 2 is here and the number one slot is because out of all nine years of the game awards this is the only year where I agreed with their Top Choice makes you wonder how 2023 is gonna go well that's gonna do it for this ranking I hope you enjoyed it despite all the naturally controversial opinions on display if you did you can like share and subscribe watch all my other videos which have nothing contentious in them whatsoever I promise and I'll see you guys in the next time

Channel: Sunburned Albino

Views: 13,419

Keywords: Sunburned Albino, The Game Awards, Video Games, Game of the Year, Ranked

Id: pCfgG5u51Nw

Length: 19min 10sec (1150 seconds)

Published: Wed May 31 2023