If you’ve been on Twitter in the last week, you might have seen a lot of tweets in your timeline where people listed their favorite games from the past decade and a half. The “15 Years of GOTY” trend has highlighted a lot of great games going all the way back to 2004, but what does the Video Game Canon have to say about some of the choices?
Using Version 3.0, I was able to sort out the best game from each of the last 15 years as ranked by their C-Score (how each game is ranked by the 53 Best Games lists that currently make up the Video Game Canon).
As you might have guessed, in some years the answer was obvious (Half-Life 2 in 2004, The Last of Us in 2013), but in other years it wasn’t (Braid barely squeaked above Fallout 3 in 2008 while Okami leapfrogged The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion in 2006). In the end, Sony and Capcom shared the trophy for most-honored publisher, as both can lay claim to the “Game of the Year” in three separate years.
Take a look at the game with the highest ranking from each of the last 15 years (and the runner-up) after the break.
It takes a special game to sweep all five major year-end awards and Sony Santa Monica’s God of War was just such a game. It’s brutal combat was praised by critics, but it also managed to do the impossible by transforming Kratos, previously portrayed as an instrument of pure rage, into a gruff (and almost lovable) father figure.
In what is surely to be the first of many accolades, Sony Santa Monica’s God of War won “Game of the Year” at the 2018 Game Awards. Kratos’s latest adventure also picked up statuettes for “Best Game Direction” and “Best Action/Adventure Game.”
The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild. What more needs to be said about 2017? Honestly, not much. 
