GOTY 2018: Community Voting Begins Now!

This is my tentative list. Dark Souls is standing in for remastered and West of Loathing is the Switch release from this year.

Edit: Forgot the Missing was this year too! Swap out Hades since it's still very early and put The Missing at #6 bumping the rest down.

@cyrusraven: i like platformers, i'll check it out

Hey, anyone know the rule when it comes to ports that were released on a platform this year, but came out the year before? (i.e. The game came out for other platforms in 2017, but came out on the Switch in 2018).

Just realized I did not play 10 games released this year. Improvised with some known classics.

FunFact: That wikipedia list doesn't show a lot of VR stuff, mobile stuff, or smaller under-the-radar stuff.

@rorie Just a heads up - because of the new site layout, this article is not linked to from the home page. You need to click the > on 'Latest' a couple times to see it. I don't know if you consider this an issue or not, but I would not have seen it at all if it wasn't linked in the newsletter.

@mostman: Yeah I need to promo it more before the GOTY stuff goes live - I'll also keep tweeting about it and sending it to facebook, but thanks for the heads up!

God Of War has a strong shot at taking the top spot this year, in both community and staff lists. If it does, it will have been the first time since I started voting in these that I actually played the top choice in year of release.

I only played five new games this year. Four of them were great, highlights of the year and huge amounts of fun, and the fifth one also made the list I guess.

1 - God Of War

2 - Monster Hunter World

3 - Soul Calibur VI

4 - Dragon Ball FighterZ

5 - A Way Out

Pretty happy with my choices. Honorable mentions for me include:

• Hollow Knight - This definitely would have been on my list if its actual release date was 2018, but I wanted to play by the rules here. I played a ton of the Switch release and loved it!
• Tetris Effect - This is a really great Tetris!
• Dead Cells - A really fun game with excellent combat.
• Unavowed - Really great narrative-heavy point-and-click game. Probably would have taken my #9 spot if I hadn't played 428 (which is just a fantastic visual novel).
• Yakuza Kiwami 2 - I love this series, and this is a great remake, I've just played a LOT of these games in the past couple years now.
• The Messenger - This was almost my #10 spot, but Yoku is a more unique concept that is executed pretty flawlessly, so it won out.
• Dragon Quest XI - I've played a good 60 hours of this so far, but still haven't finished it as of yet. It's a very good DQ game :)

EDIT: I wrote a bit about each of the games on my top 10, if anyone cares:

https://www.giantbomb.com/profile/beard_of_zeus/lists/best-of-2018/364289/

Just want to remind everyone that Subnautica launched back in January. I almost forgot!

Games still in early access not applicable? eg. "Slay The Spire"

Just give GOTY to Tetris Effect and be done with it.

@zeeman155: You can vote for whatever you like!

I need drop down menus

I understand.

From what I recall of last year, I didn't have a ton of new games to vote on, same for this year, though I did manage to get 10, actually had more than 10 somehow. I also didn't feel too strongly about most of the ones on my list though. So meh.

I think early access tends to skew these things for me as I tend to jump onto a game in early access quite a bit before they officially launch and don't play too much post launch.

Sea of Thieves is a good game

This year is going to be a hard one! I suspect there's going to be some hard swings and unexpected results!

My list is pretty damn weird. Wonder how many others don't have RDR2, GOW or Spiderman in their top 10.

I obviously can't speak for everyone, but those games aren't on my list since I don't actually own any consoles. I only play games on the PC. So my list has games like Yakuza 0, Unavowed, and BATTLETECH

Is the Splatoon 2 Octo Expansion valid? DLC in general?

@mems1224: I'm the rare vote that has neither RDR, GOW, Spidey, AC, nor Celeste, Dead Cells on my list.

My top 2 are Into the Breach and Pit People. Also Mutant Year Zero, Battletech, VC4. It's been a good year for strategy games.

I definitely played more of Dead Cells and RimWorld before this year, but they're two of my top games (by hours played), so I don't mind voting for them in their actual release year.

@francium34: oh wow, you took it a step further than me. Celeste cracked my top 10 and Odyssey is probably my GOTY. into the breach is great, it's in my top 10 too. I haven't played enough of mutant Year Zero but what I have played I really enjoyed.

All those lists severely lack DJMAX Respect obviously

Lot of lists. Most are missing Sea of Thieves for some reason. Game is the ultimate just chilling with your friends game.

I'm a bit surprised Smash Ultimate seems to be absent in most people's lists.

My personal GOTY (having only played 8 2018 games) was Dragon Quest XI. In a year where I was getting severely burnt out on RPGs and longer games of any kind, I couldn't pull myself away from it.

I just realized how few new games I've played. Like it's literally just God of War, Obra Dinn, Yoku's Island Express, and Finding Paradise. I blame Critical Role 1 for stealing all my time.

My Destiny choice is specific to Xbox One and Forsaken. Man this was a tough year as there were a lot of good solid games but nothing (with the exception of a few) blockbusters.

So far i see a shocking lack of Hitman 2 on some people's list...

It seems people have forgotten the flamingo, the super cocaine, and the apocalypse illuminate.

Wow, what a year this has been!

1. MHW

2. Timespinner

3. Dark Souls Remaster

4. Below

5. Shadow of the Tomb Raider

6. Death's Gambit

7. Return of the Obra Dinn

8. Castlevania: Requiem

Been working so much these were the only 8 games I have played this year. MHW still stands as the game I enjoyed the most and put the most time into, but Timespinner is a damn close second. Hope everyone has a great holidays and enjoyed the year in video games.

My GOTY List. In addition to the top 10 there are 3 side awards with a winner/runner up each, "Most Honorable Mention", "The Fuck This I'm Done Award" and "Character of the Year".

It was a good year.

@yoghurt a person of culture I see, with that Battletech pick. I haven't played it in awhile, I don't suppose you've picked up the flashpoint dlc and have any comments on it?

My list is a bit odd. "Stabbing myself in the eye repeatedly for spending money on Battlefield V" wasn't an option. Also due to being The Slowest Gamer™ and replaying a lot of 2017, 2016, 2015, etc. games, I still haven't played:

Florence, Donut County, Battletech, Tetris Effect, Obra Dinn, Below, Ashen, Mutant Year Zero, Dead Cells, and Forza Horizon 4

...even though these are all extremely my type of shit.

Here's what I did play (and love):

@jagubrah - I'm replaying the campaign with the DLC right now and there is a lot of new stuff even without it, after lots of free patches.

The character builds were changed, the pilot skills were revamped and made more useful. The survivability of mechs was also tweaked so cover and positioning (which go well with new tanking skills) are much more important now. The economy was also redone a bit, with more quests of different difficulty in each zone you fly to, so no more 20-day flights just to get to one or two mediocre missions.

Flashpoint DLC content made the mercenary aspect of the game more fleshed out, with branching short stories and fun conversations with your crew. The missions vary in quality, from ok to very good, they are more interesting than the random ones and give better rewards while also giving your pals on the ship some limelight.

All in all it was worth a buy, thanks to all the changes introduced in patches and the DLC the 2nd playthrough is not boring at all.

So one of my top games for this year was Sunset Overdrive because it came out on PC in 2018 and completely absorbed my life until I beat it. Same with Captain Toad and the switch. So two of my favorite games of the year were rereleases. Not to mention Dead Cells (early access last year).

For me 2018 was, with rare exceptions, the "Best Year to Play Games that Originally Released on Other Platforms Years Ago."

1. Iconoclats

2. Marvel's Spiderman

3. Dead Cells

4. Assassin's Creed Odyssey

5. Monster Hunter: World

6. Dragon Ball FighterZ

7. Madden NFL 19 (because it got a PC release)

8. Forza Horizon 4

9. Hitman 2

10. Return of the Orba Dinn

My list for now. The bottom 2 might change. Someone has to give love to iconoclasts. Shame how that game was forgotten in 2018.

Edit: Decided to change the last two after all. This is the final list I'm going with.

Ok done ^___^

I did ten different games. One of them was Kingdom Come because even though it has many bugs, has imo a bad closing act, and did not deliver on their Kickstarter promises, I think that it was an important step for games set in older times. It was the first and only game I ever played that was able to give me a sense of what things may have been like. And I would love to see many more games like that, maybe set in different times and places. if there was a 'greatest achievement in games' category I would probably give it to them.

And number one for me was of course Monster Hunter World. I'm a big Monhun fan and I was skeptical about them changing things up until I heard the details and realized how well thought out they all were. I am very happy with that game and played both the PS4 and PC version for over a 100 hours each. Which, given that I played almost 60 games this year is a lot of hours to commit to one game.

@rasrimra: my # 1 was also monster hunter world , that said there was a possibility that had KC:D not ended up for me with a corrupt save after over 80hrs that it could have bumped it for me since i was loving it bugs aside.

My Top 10:

1. God of War

2. Shadow of the Tomb Raider

3. Spyro Reignited Trilogy

4. Marvel's Spider Man

5. Dragon Ball FighterZ

6. Darksiders 3

7. Fist of the North Star: Paradise Lost

8. Warhammer: Vermintide 2

9. Onrush

10. The Messenger

Disclaimer: played so few games that came out this year. This trend seems to be increasing, personally. Played a lot of retro games on emulators. New arcade cabinet. Love it!

MY LIST:

10: Moss: haven't played it, but have a PSVR with it coming. Expect to enjoy it. (And Astro Bot.)

9: Tetris Effect VR: haven't ordered it yet, but will.

8: Marvel's Spider Man: once it's half price, I'll be buying it. Can't wait to play it.

7: Hitman 2: bought it for full price when it came out 'cause IO deserves my money. Haven't played it yet, but looking forward to it.

6: God of War: bought it for half price, and intend to play it soon.

5: No Man's Sky: put 90 hours into this game and loved it when almost everyone was hating on it. Played it more than most games this year. They've made some awesome improvements to an already awesome game.

4: Sea of Thieves: closest a game has come to make you feel like you're actually sailing the seven seas.

3: Red Dead Redemption 2: I'm in the middle of Chapter 2. Really enjoying my time with it. Wrestling with the controls a bit, but they seem to be getting better. Remember when every game had a learning curve for its controls?

2: Destiny: Not my number 1 for the first year since its original release, and not because of any lack of quality, but for how amazing my 2018 GOTY is and how relatively few hours I put into Destiny this year (probably still around 60, but year one was like 250).

1: Dead Cells: With a bullet.

RETRO HONORABLE MENTIONS:

1: R-Type: this game is fucking phenomenal. Level design, Challenge, Graphics, Soundtrack. It has it all.

2: Ghouls and Ghosts: Better art design than the original, but similar challenge. Gotten to level 4 so far. So proud. Fuck that giant bug!

3: Street Fighter II: CE: Reminded me what I loved about fighting games, and why they're so popular today.

4: Burger Time: Peter Pepper.

alright, locking it in

The House in Fata Morgana would be #1 or 2 if it had come out this year

My top 10

1. 1.Celeste
2. 2.God of War
3. 3.Marvel's Spider-Man
4. 4.Super Smash Bros. Ultimate
5. 5.Call of Duty: Black Ops 4
6. 6.Red Dead Redemption II
7. 7.Musynx
8. 8.Detroit: Become Human
9. 9.The Messenger
10. 10.Guacamelee! 2