A game-changer for any game is its atmosphere. How it can make you forget you have a controller in your hands and suck you into its world, make you believe in its world, or even scare you. There are many memorable worlds that have been created such as Fallout 3, Silent Hill, and Metro. These games have tons of atmosphere that suck you in and make you fear or delight in the next step that’s coming.

Resident Evil Village

Resident Evil Village brings back the fear factor and not just the action. While VII was more scare than action, I feel Village really balanced the two well. The entire world of Village just feels like absolute terror. Each level has a tense atmosphere of dread, death, and like you just want to get the hell out. There were many games that created convicing worlds, but Village did it the best.

Runner-Ups

The Medium

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Life is Strange: True Colors

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Returnal

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It Takes Two

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Hitman 3

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Ratchet & Clank: Rift Apart

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Psychonauts 2

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Kena: Bridge of Spirits

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Deathloop

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Metroid Dread

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Shin Megami Tensei V

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Marvel’s Guardians of the Galaxy

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Halo Infinite

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Forza Horizon 5

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A game-changer for any game is its atmosphere. How it can make you forget you have a controller in your hands and suck you into its world, make you believe in its world, or even scare you. There are many memorable worlds that have been created such as Fallout 3, Silent Hill, and Metro. These games have tons of atmosphere that suck you in and make you fear or delight in the next step that’s coming.

Resident Evil Village

Resident Evil Village brings back the fear factor and not just the action. While VII was more scare than action, I feel Village really balanced the two well. The entire world of Village just feels like absolute terror. Each level has a tense atmosphere of dread, death, and like you just want to get the hell out. There were many games that created convicing worlds, but Village did it the best.

Runner-Ups

The Medium

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Life is Strange: True Colors

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Returnal

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The Forgotten City

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What makes a great story? It needs to be entertaining, understandable, but not necessarily memorable but that helps as well. Stories are one of gaming’s biggest struggles. Very few stand the test of time and even fewer are remembered through time. The characters inside the story are a big part of it as well, including voice acting and the script.

Marvel’s Guardians of the Galaxy

Whether you like Guardians of the Galaxy or superhero games you can’t deny how entertaining and wonderful the story here is. You won’t want to put the game down or shut it off. Many favorite characters debut as well as cameos, and it’s just a blast to watch unfold. Better than the movies and on par with the comics, this was one of the most enjoyable and least convoluted stories this year.

Runner-Ups

Life is Strange: True Colors

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Deathloop

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Lost in Random

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The Forgotten City

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Sound design is a single category that gets taken for granted the most. People just expect things to sound how they should, but what about how iconic they sound? Mario’s jump, Sonic’s spin dash, Call of Duty’s realistic weapon sounds, these are all amazing sound design libraries. A good soundtrack can also help too.

Halo Infinite

Halo Infinite doesn’t just have great sound design, but it has a fantastic soundtrack that mixes classic songs, and all of your iconic sounds are here. Halo has some of the most memorable sound libraries in any game. The shield charge, the sound of the Needler, the Grunts screaming, the pitch and tone of voices for each of the Covenant. You know what enemy you are going to face just by the sound of their voice or grunt. That’s excellent sound design and Inifinite just adds layers on top of this.

Runner-Ups

Forza Horizon 5

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The Medium

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Returnal

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Happy Game

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Indie games are games developed by small teams or on a low budget. Usually not backed by a large publisher, or if they are they are still a small team. Indie games have been the backbone of the game industry for the last decade and a half ever since AAA games stopped taking the risks indie usually do these days. There are more great indie games every year than I can count, and it’s one of the hardest categories to pick.

Kena: Bridge of Spirits

Kena stood out thanks to the characters, voice acting, and gameplay, but also the striking visuals. The game is colorful, charming, has great animations, and it just a joy to play. This feels like a large budget game you would play in the PS2 era due to its linear level design and combat. This isn’t a bad thing though and feels like a breathe of fresh air amongst the 8-bit platformer clones and boring open worlds we have to trudge through.

Runner-Ups

Lost in Random

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Chicory: A Colorful Tale

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It Takes two

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Twelve Minutes

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Voice acting is essential for cinematic story-driven games, but the good voice acting is even more important. The acting can’t just be good though it needs to match the character, give it life, and bring out the other half of what makes a character memorable. We’re far from the days of the original Resident Evil, but there are still many games with good yet forgettable acting and just plain bad voice acting.

Ratchet & Clank: Rift Apart

Rift Apart wins out due to the unhuman nature of getting the characters across. Ratchet & Clank has always had great acting since the first game, but this time around each character just nails it perfectly and it feels like a Pixar movie. Each character comes to life in their voice, they show emotion, excitement, anger, and sadness. Emotion is a huge part in voice acting and it can be hard to pull off without sounding fake. Many games this year featured great voice acting so this was a hard one.

Runner-Ups

Deathloop

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Far Cry 6

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Life is Strange: True Colors

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The Medium

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Art is probably the single most important aspect of graphics. While a game can look great on a technical level, not all games are artsy. Sometimes not-so-impressive tech can be countered with beautiful art. There are a lot of games that come to mind that many consider interactive art, and many games this year were quite impressive in this category.

Psychonauts 2

Psychonauts 2 was more than a decade in the making and the visual style of the game is like non other. The character design, squiggly lines, and overall unique aesthetic looks like Psychonauts should. When you see just a shot from a level you know it’s from this game due to the amazing art that went into it. While not super impressive in tech it sure makes up for it in color.

Runner-Ups

Chicory: A Colorful Tale

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Kena: Bridge of Spirits

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Lost in Random

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Happy Game

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