Nintendo made last year’s pandemic-related lockdowns more bearable with Animal Crossing: New Horizons. Naughty Dog ruled the Summer with The Last of Us Part II. CD Projekt finally showed us their vision of the future with Cyberpunk 2077. And Valve brought virtual reality to a new level with Half-Life: Alyx (the first expansion to the Half-Life franchise in over a decade).
Oh, and Sony and Microsoft each launched brand new consoles in November.
But it was Hades, developed by the small team at Supergiant Games, that walked out of Hell with the most “Game of the Year” accolades in 2020.
You can find the other four, as well as more of last year’s most-acclaimed titles, after the break in the 2020 GOTY Scoreboard.
Hades
★ BAFTA Games Awards
★ DICE Awards
★ GDC Awards
★ SXSW Gaming Awards
★ Ars Technica
★ Complex
★ Critical Hit
★ Destructoid
★ DualShockers
★ Eurogamer
★ Fanbyte
★ Games Radar
★ GamingBible
★ Giant Bomb
★ Golden Joystick Awards
★ The Hugo Awards
★ IGN
★ Jeuxvideo.com
★ Mashable
★ New York Game Awards
★ Paste Magazine
★ Polygon
★ Rock Paper Shotgun (Best PC Games)
★ Slant Magazine
★ Stuff.tv
★ Time
★ Unwinnable
★ USgamer
★ The Washington Post’s Launcher
The Last of Us Part II
★ BGR
★ Den of Geek
★ EGM
★ Empire
★ Entertainment Weekly
★ Game Informer
★ Gamereactor France
★ Gamereactor Italy
★ Gamereactor Norway
★ Gamereactor Portugal
★ IndieWire
★ NME
★ Power Unlimited
★ Tom’s Guide
★ Twinfinite
★ Den of Geek
★ Destructoid
★ DualShockers
★ Eurogamer
★ GamingBible
★ Golden Joystick Awards
★ IGN
★ Inverse
★ Kotaku Australia
★ Metacritic
★ Power Unlimited
Animal Crossing: New Horizons
★ CBR
★ Gamereactor Spain
★ GameRevolution
★ Gaming Age
★ The Guardian
★ Los Angeles Times
★ Nintendo Life (Best Switch Games)
★ Video Games Chronicle
★ Vulture
Doom Eternal
★ DarkZero
Final Fantasy VII Remake
★ Cubed3
★ Gaming Bolt
★ Kinda Funny
★ MinnMax
★ Siliconera
★ TheSixthAxis
Ghost of Tsushima
★ Brutal Gamer
★ COGconnected
★ Forbes
★ Gamereactor Finland
★ Hardcore Gamer
★ Mandatory
★ MP1st
★ TechRadar
★ USA Today
★ Famitsu
★ The Game Awards – Player’s Voice
Half-Life: Alyx
★ Gamereactor Denmark
★ GameSpot
★ Shacknews
Immortals: Fenyx Rising
Kentucky Route Zero
Microsoft Flight Simulator
Ori and the Will of the Wisps
Persona 5 Royal
Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater 1 + 2
★ Uproxx
Unranked Lists
★ The AV Club
★ Esquire
★ GameSpew
★ Inverse
★ Kotaku Australia
★ The New Yorker
★ Screen Rant
★ The Verge
★ Waypoint Radio
And there were a lot of other great games from 2020 that might not have earned “Game of the Year” honors, but did appear further down at least one list…
- ★ 13 Sentinels: Aegis Rim (#7 at USgamer)
- ★ Assassin’s Creed: Valhalla (#3 at GamingBible)
- ★ Astro’s Playroom (#5 at Giant Bomb)
- ★ Bugsnax (#9 at Mashable)
- ★ Call of Duty: Warzone (#7 at Time)
- ★ Carrion (#11 at Ars Technica)
- ★ Crash Bandicoot 4: It’s About Time (#22 at Games Radar)
- ★ Crusader Kings III (#4 at Glass House Games)
- ★ Cyberpunk 2077 (#7 at Den of Geek)
- ★ Demon’s Souls (#7 at EGM)
- ★ Fall Guys: Ultimate Knockout (#3 at Ars Technica)
- ★ Fuser (#11 at Paste Magazine)
- ★ Gears Tactics (#31 at GamingBible)
- ★ Genshin Impact (#16 at Games Radar)
- ★ Grounded (#32 at GamingBible)
- ★ Hardspace: Shipbreaker (#25 at Polygon)
- ★ Hyrule Warriors: Age of Calamity (#8 at Hardcore Gamer)
- ★ If Found… (#2 at Paste Magazine)
- ★ Paper Mario: The Origami King (#20 at USgamer)
- ★ Phasmophobia (#12 at Games Radar)
- ★ Paradise Killer (#7 at GamingBible)
- ★ Sackboy: A Big Adventure (#18 at Slant Magazine)
- ★ Signs of the Sojourner (#25 at Slant Magazine)
- ★ Spelunky 2 (#15 at The Guardian)
- ★ Spider-Man: Miles Morales (#3 at Mashable)
- ★ Spiritfarer (#4 at Entertainment Weekly)
- ★ Star Wars: Squadrons (#19 at USgamer)
- ★ Streets of Rage 4 (“Finalist” at The Washington Post’s Launcher)
- ★ Superhot: Mind Control Delete (#14 at Tom’s Guide)
- ★ Townscaper (#15 at Tom’s Guide)
- ★ Treachery in Beatdown City (#14 at Paste Magazine)
- ★ Umurangi Generation (#5 at Paste Magazine)
- ★ Valorant (#7 at Ars Technica)
- ★ Wasteland 3 (#7 at Shacknews)
- ★ Yakuza: Like A Dragon (#8 at Vulture)
Like Zagreus’s quest to escape the underworld, there will always be more “Game of the Year” lists from 2020 to uncover. But this collection of links appears to be a fairly representative sample of the critical reaction to last year’s releases.