This is always the hardest category for me to pick and I always spend weeks thinking about it. What makes a game better than all the others? Does it have to be revolutionary? One of a kind? Bigger than any other game? Not necessarily. GotY is usually for a game that exceeds expectations and feels solid, structured, fun, and memorable, and just stands out as a whole over any other game. This was a hard year to pick from as there were so many fantastic games that fell under these criteria.

The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild

I’m just as shocked as you are about this. I was on the bandwagon that BotW was overrated, hyped-up nonsense, but after getting a Switch during the holidays and really playing it I started to see just how wrong I was, and how blind all the naysayers are. Nintendo always gets a bad rap for their hardware and using the same franchises for 3 decades, and I get that. However, BotW is something different, something unique and revolutionary for Nintendo themselves. They stepped out of their comfort zone and looked at other popular games that helped influence BotW. BotW has so much going for it, gorgeous visuals, unique puzzle-solving, a vast open world, and so many secrets and things to discover and explore. 30 years of Zelda has all accumulated and is playable in one game. I can’t think of another game that was this ambitious and this well done this year.

Runner-Ups

Horizon: Zero Dawn

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Wolfenstein II: The New Colossus

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Call of Duty: WWII

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Resident Evil 7 Biohazard

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Persona 5

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Forza Motorsport 7

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Nier: Automata

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Super Mario Odyssey

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