It’s rare for the critical consensus around the “Game of the Year” to stray beyond a handful of titles. But that’s exactly what happened in 2019, as three games split the major awards and nearly a dozen others laid claim to at least one publication-specific award.
Leading the pack, if you can even call it that, is From Software’s Sekiro: Shadows Die Twice, which was the big winner at The Game Awards and the SXSW Gaming Awards. Then there was House House’s Untitled Goose Game, which waddled away with trophies from the DICE Awards and the GDC Awards. Finally, there’s Mobius Digital’s Outer Wilds, which won the big prize at the BAFTA Games Awards.
After that, it’s easy to go down the list and find a few highlights, including Remedy’s Control, Kojima Productions’s Death Stranding, and Capcom’s Resident Evil 2, all of which were recognized as the top title of 2019 by at least nine publications. And that’s not even getting into the massive traffic jam of titles that earned runner-up status. We might be heading into a transition year for the game industry, but 2019 was certainly a capstone year for this generation.
You can see all of the “Game of the Year” contenders from 2019 in the 2019 GOTY Scoreboard after the break.
Sekiro: Shadows Die Twice
★ The Game Awards
★ SXSW Gaming Awards
★ Forbes
★ GameSpot
★ Gaming Bolt
★ The Telegraph
★ Thrillist
★ Unwinnable
Untitled Goose Game
★ Vulture
Outer Wilds
★ Edge (Issue #341)
★ Eurogamer
★ Gamer.nl
★ Giant Bomb
★ The Guardian
★ Polygon
★ Rock Paper Shotgun (Best PC Games)
Control
★ Ars Technica
★ EGM
★ Game Informer
★ Games Radar
★ GamingBible
★ Golden Joystick Awards
★ IGN
★ Mashable
★ Paste Magazine
★ Press Start Australia
Death Stranding
★ BGR
★ CNN
★ COGconnected
★ Complex
★ Jeuxvideo.com
★ Popular Mechanics
★ Power Unlimited
★ Screen Rant
★ TheSixthAxis
★ DualShockers
★ IGN
Disco Elysium
Fire Emblem: Three Houses
★ The Game Awards – Player’s Voice
Judgment
The Outer Worlds
★ Destructoid
★ New York Game Awards
Resident Evil 2
★ Cubed3
★ DarkZero
★ Empire
★ Entertainment Weekly
★ GameRevolution
★ Gaming Age
★ Hardcore Gamer
★ Metacritic
★ MinnMax
★ Stuff
★ Tom’s Guide
★ Twinfinite
★ VGChartz
★ Video Games Chronicle
★ Destructoid
★ Eurogamer
★ Game Informer
★ Golden Joystick Awards
★ Kotaku Australia
Sunless Skies
Super Mario Maker 2
Unranked Lists
★ The AV Club
★ Den of Geek
★ Fanbyte
★ Los Angeles Times
★ The Washington Post’s Launcher
And there were plenty of other great games from 2019 that might not have earned “Game of the Year” honors, but did appear further down at least one list…
- ★ Apex Legends (#9 at USgamer)
- ★ Baba Is You (#4 at Polygon)
- ★ Gears 5 (#14 at GamingBible)
- ★ Hypnospace Outlaw (#12 at The Guardian)
- ★ Kingdom Hearts III (#10 at Esquire)
- ★ The Legend of Zelda: Link’s Awakening (#16 at Gaming Age)
- ★ Luigi’s Mansion 3 (#3 at Mashable)
- ★ Metro Exodus (#21 at Gaming Bolt)
- ★ Mortal Kombat 11 (#8 at Complex)
- ★ Pokemon Sword/Shield (#17 at Thrillist)
- ★ Ring Fit Adventure (#8 at BGR)
- ★ Sayonara Wild Hearts (#9 at Games Radar)
- ★ A Short Hike (#10 at Polygon)
- ★ Slay the Spire (#7 at Vulture)
- ★ Star Wars Jedi: Fallen Order
- ★ Telling Lies (#20 at Ars Technica)
- ★ Tetris 99 (#9 at DarkZero)
- ★ Tom Clancy’s The Division 2
- ★ What the Golf? (#8 at Paste Magazine)
I’ll continue to search for more “Game of the Year” lists from 2019, but for now, I think this is a fairly representative sample of the overall critical reaction.