Tag: The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt

GOTY Flashback: 2015 Game Awards

Geoff Keighley will present the 2020 Game Awards to the best games from this past year on December 10th. But first, let’s travel back in time to an earlier incarnation of the show and see what was big in gaming in… 2015.

The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt racked up more nominations than any other title at the 2015 Game Awards, and it easily waltzed away with the “Game of the Year” prize. The game also secured the “Best Role Playing Game” statuette during the show, as well as “Developer of the Year” honors for CD Projekt Red.

While The Witcher 3 is known for its massive size, two smaller games also collected multiple awards during the 2015 ceremony. Sam Barlow’s Her Story took home the awards for “Best Narrative” and “Best Performance” (which was given to actress Viva Seifert). And Rocket League knocked two into the goal when it won for both “Best Independent Game” and “Best Sports/Racing Game.”

Nintendo also had a good night at the Game Awards in 2015 as Splatoon earned a pair of awards for its unique take on the multiplayer shooter (specifically, “Best Multiplayer” and “Best Shooter”), and “Best Family Game” went to Super Mario Maker.

Mortal Kombat X (“Best Fighting Game”), Life Is Strange (“Games For Change Award”), Ori and the Blind Forest (“Best Art Direction”), and Lara Croft Go (“Best Mobile/Handheld Game”) each won a single award.

Finally, Hideo Kojima’s Metal Gear Solid V: The Phantom Pain won “Best Action/Adventure Game” and “Best Score/Soundtrack,” though host Geoff Keighley explained that he couldn’t accept either award in person as Konami had barred him from the event. While that turn of events was a bit shocking (and frankly, rather petty), the biggest surprise from the 2015 Game Awards might have been that Bethesda’s Fallout 4 was completely shut out.

A complete list of all the winners and nominees from the 2015 Game Awards can be found after the break.

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Eurogamer Asked Developers and Journalists to Help Curate the “Top 10 Games of the Generation”

Eurogamer’s staff and contributors did a lot of looking back in 2019. The site’s video team traveled to PAX East last Spring to host a debate to determine “The Best Games of the Last 20 Years.” And just before the end of the year, more than 15 contributors highlighted a variety of unconventional titles as the “Games of the Decade” in a series of personal essays.

With the launch of the PS5 and Xbox Series X looming, it was time to produce another list. But this time Eurogamer turned things over to an outside panel of developers and journalists to help them pick “The Top 10 Games of the Generation.”

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The Washington Post Picks Ten Titles as “The Most Influential Games of the Decade”

The calendar is nearing the end of January, but here I am sifting through yet another “Best Games of the Decade” list. This time around, the Launcher team at The Washington Post gets their time in the sun, as they chose ten games to stand tall as “The Most Influential Games of the Decade“:

Gaming is now humanity’s favorite form of entertainment, and the medium’s legacy was cemented this past decade. While the early 2000s saw video games honing their ability to tell stories and build worlds in 3-D, this last decade built off those nuts and bolts of game making and propelled the medium toward bigger ambitions like open-world design, virtual and augmented reality and an influx of new genres such as battle-royale multiplayer.

The chronological list begins with 2010’s Amnesia: The Dark Descent, continues through the middle of the decade with 2014’s Destiny, and ends with 2017’s Fortnite. In between, you’ll find a few other familiar titles, as well as a more unusual choice in King’s Candy Crush Saga:

The Washington Post’s Launcher – The Most Influential Games of the Decade

  • Amnesia: The Dark Descent
  • Candy Crush Saga
  • Dark Souls
  • Destiny
  • The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim
  • Fortnite
  • Minecraft
  • Pokemon Go
  • The Walking Dead
  • The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt

Apologies to all the games from 2018 and 2019 that didn’t make the cut for The Washington Post’s list.

GQ Looks Backs at the 2010s in “The 17 Best Games That Shaped the Decade”

Just before the end of the year, the editors at GQ got together and published a look back at some of the “most important and best games” of the last decade. Here’s how they decided on which games to include:

Some of the best games we’ve ever seen came out in the past decade, but the 2010s were also the most turbulent, transformative, and revealing years for video games. Game development costs skyrocketed to new, unsustainable heights. Some games became never-ending, always online, services that you pay for in subscriptions. As advancements were made in public health care, indie game development flourished, and then regressed accordingly as it was dismantled. Games also reached beyond what was previously thought possible, delivering beautifully detailed worlds, touching and intimate narratives, and shared cultural experiences unlike any others. Here, according to the GQ staff, are the most important and best games of the decade.

“The 17 Best Games That Shaped the Decade” zigzagged it’s way through many of the titles that reshaped the game industry over the last ten years, as well as two that originally launched in Early Access in the previous decade (Derek Yu’s Spelunky and Mojang’s Minecraft). But which other games made the cut?

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