The 100 Best Games of the 21st Century

@zombiepie: They put Radical Heights in their top 10 of the century. Convinced me it's a troll account lol

@marino I was surprised seeing Call of Duty 4 a little low, at #77. But it looks like it's there again, at #170.

I sorta doubt 43 people intentionally voted for the DS version with the same release date.

Are we interested in changing data, based on likely voter intent? :D

That's a massive list of games spanning all kinds of genres and sub-genres—like a vibrant fruit medley.

My two favourites from the list are Cyberpunk 2077 and Halo 3.

@sweetj said:

Not just those two, but that is an inherent problem with lists like these that isn't easily solvable. You'd need to have a way of disallowing someone from putting both on their list. And before that you'd need an arbiter to decide which games are close enough to be combined. For example, The Last of Us Part I is extremely close to the single player of the original, and it would be reasonable for people to have put it instead of the original for being the "definitive" version of the game. But it's missing the Factions multiplayer mode many enjoyed, and some might argue that the AI changes are a significant enough differentiator. On the other hand, Resident Evil 4's remake is different enough that it makes sense to allow someone to have both on their list.

The Last of Us would be a bit split too. Though in a more-disparate, but still potentially-confusing way.

The Last of Us & Remastered (PS3 & PS4 - 2013-14) - 71 Score | 273 Votes

The Last of Us Part I (PS5 & PC - 2022-23) - 10 Score | 24 Votes

I don't even know how many proper releases Kingdom Hearts has had (I'd guess 3 console + 1 or 2 major handheld), but there are 13 entries with votes.

Edit: How did I write this, then let it sit, and someone submitted 1 minute before I did.

From these community votes (years later, of course), here's what would have been Game of the Year:

2000 - Deus Ex (#39)
2001 - Metal Gear Solid 2: Sons of Liberty (#20)
2002 - Metroid Prime (#23)
2003 - The Legend of Zelda: The Wind Waker (#32)
2004 - Half-Life 2 (#10)
2005 - Resident Evil 4 (#16)
2006 - Kingdom Hearts II (#55)
2007 - Halo 3 (#25)
2008 - Fallout 3 (#76)
2009 - Batman: Arkham Asylum (#69)
2010 - Mass Effect 2 (#4)
2011 - Dark Souls (#9)
2012 - Persona 4 Golden (#49)
2013 - The Last of Us (#26)
2014 - The Binding of Isaac: Rebirth (#104-111?)
2015 - Bloodborne (#7)
2016 - Stardew Valley (#30)
2017 - The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild (#1)
2018 - Red Dead Redemption II (#14)
2019 - Outer Wilds (#3)
2020 - Hades (#13)
2021 - Mass Effect Legendary Edition (#52)
2022 - Elden Ring (#2)
2023 - The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom (#5)
2024 - Balatro (#40)
2025 - Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 (#17)

this list sucks! giant bomb fans collectively have deeply boring taste

Looking for 2014's game was interesting. BoI: Rebirth came up oddly late.

The other top choice would've kinda been Mario Kart 8. Except obviously most people would be voting for the 2017 Deluxe version on Switch. Beyond that, it would've been between Destiny and Dark Souls II. (2015's Scholar of the First Sin also got 2 score|7 votes, though Destiny expansions don't have their own entries.)

Notably missing, with 0 votes:

• Velocity 2X
• Child of Light
• Theatrhythm Final Fantasy: Curtain Call
• Freedom Wars
• OlliOlli
• Broken Age - Act 1
• Call of Duty: Advanced Warfare

Top scores of 2014 (Score|Votes):

1. The Binding of Isaac: Rebirth - 17|55
2. Mario Kart 8 - 15|70
3. Destiny - 7|28
4. Dark Souls II - 7|24
5. Subnautica - 6|25 (Steam Early Access Dec '14; 1.0 Jan '18)
6. Transistor - 6|21
7. Phoenix Wright: Ace Attorney Trilogy - 5|17 (3DS Dec '14; earlier in Japan & iOS)
8. Shovel Knight - 4|21
9. Bayonetta 2 - 4|16
10. The Talos Principle - 4|12
11. Ultra Street Fighter IV - 3|15
12. Donkey Kong Country: Tropical Freeze - 3|13
13. Hearthstone - 3|12
14. Alien: Isolation - 3|11
15. Diablo III: Reaper of Souls - 3|8
16. Elite: Dangerous - 3|6
17. The Sims 4 - 2|9
18. Middle-earth: Shadow of Mordor - 2|9
19. Wolfenstein: The New Order - 2|8
20. LISA: The Painful - 2|7
21. Threes! - 2|7
22. Sunset Overdrive - 2|6
23. Bravely Default - 2|5

Fuller list (that I found), so it doesn't totally chew up the comments section:
https://rentry.co/rtwg9n7q

It is what it is. It's not the only situation where I'm relatively certain that people picked the wrong thing. But, I'm not going down that road.

Great work. I didn't realise Control only had an 82 on metacritic and is the lowest scored game on the list. I thought it was universally loved.

Looking at the full list I see us Binding of Isaac freaks should have picked one version. I think it could have made top 100. Also, Dead Cells isn't super far down the list, but it's lower than I would have thought.

and shoutout to the one person who voted for Furi. I was too much of a coward to join you, I'm sorry.

I liked Clair Obsure Expedition 33 as well as most people, but for it to be ranked so high as one of the best games of the 21st Century this soon is just funny to me. Many of the other games I expected, so it's overall a good list. I noticed a huge lack of racing games on this list, and some great ones came out over the century. A pity.

@anonymousbroccoli: This is a really cool idea. I'm gonna move up into the article with your name on it.

Stop the count!

I figured not. And when I found another few just on my own (19 votes for Rock Band on iPhone; 5 votes for Mirror's Edge mobile), let alone potentially distinguishing between Resident Evil 4s, or Silent Hill 2s, or a Fable that doesn't exist yet. . .

I'm sure you're not looking for endless appeals. Thanks!

Also interesting: Going back to the actual GOTY community votes, at the time. (I don't know if I have it in me to trudge through Archive.org for pre-GB GameSpot community votes.)

Giant Bomb Game of the Year Awards

Inconsistencies:

• 2008 - Fallout 3 (#76)
  • Actual: Metal Gear Solid 4: Guns of the Patriots (now #107)
• 2011 - Dark Souls (#9)
  • Actual: Portal 2 (now #24)
• 2012 - Persona 4 Golden (#49)
  • Actual: The Walking Dead (now #257)
• 2013 - The Last of Us (#26)
  • Actual: BioShock Infinite (now #205)
• 2014 - The Binding of Isaac: Rebirth (#104-111?)
  • Actual: Middle-earth: Shadow of Mordor (now #503)
• 2015 - Bloodborne (#7)
  • Actual: Metal Gear Solid V: The Phantom Pain (now #67)
• 2016 - Stardew Valley (#30)
  • Actual: Doom (now #75)
• 2018 - Red Dead Redemption II (#14)
  • Actual: God of War (now #47)
• 2019 - Outer Wilds (#3)
  • Actual: Control (now #68)
• 2021 - Mass Effect Legendary Edition (#52)
  • Actual: Inscryption (now #193)

I know 2014 was one of the worst years but wow wow wow at the top pick being 106 lol

There's some wonderful smaller picks hidden in the full data (thanks so much for linking to it). The number of individual passion picks is delightful to see.
Always great to see some attention paid (no matter how small) to Drakengard 3, Vagrant Story, Get in the Car, Loser!, and Odin Sphere.

This was fun, but really brutal. When I put Persona 3, 4, and 5 on my list and seeing I only had 7 spots left for literally everything else made me realize how tough this was going to be.

I can't remember what Hitman game I put on my list, but had a feeling that was going to split the vote.

@anonymousbroccoli: Thanks for posting all this follow-up stuff, it's really interesting. Very funny to see how opinions have changed between GOTY votes at the time and now. But hey, recency bias is a thing and some games just don't age very well or get forgotten, all of that is expected!

Is anyone else going to spend the next year coming up with their proper top ten list?

I did the best I could on short notice but I feel like I overlooked a few games because time is deleterious to memory.

@starstuff_29: I saw that too 😂

Heh. You're not wrong. I'm guessing a lot of people feel that way.

@atheistpreacher: ME2 had improved combat and those loyalty missions, so I remember the discussion being "they made an amazing game better with more character stuff." But I agree with ME1. The world-building, and those last few hours, it all blew me away (not as much as 3 but still!). I really need to play the Legendary edition to see how they updated it.

I would gladly play any of these. Except Disco Elysium that is..

yucky list, NGL

@csl316: I found the Legendary Edition to be a downgrade for Mass Effect 1 but I also think that the combat was best in the first game.

This is great! Thanks for putting it together!

@lyndbako: With over 3,000 lists, it's sort of inevitable that the safe, popular picks will rise to the top.

Thank you for putting all of this together! I understand that people may have voted for a different version of the game than they meant to. Mentioning a few of those in the initial post with details about how that would've changed certain votes is a good way to address it without going crazy trying to determine intent.

I can speak for myself when it comes to Mass Effect. I considered just putting ME1 on my list, because it is my favorite of those games for many reasons, but I feel that the Legendary Edition is a great way to experience all of those games today (especially with the inclusion of all DLC), so it was a conscious choice. Had there been a rule about no compilations or remasters/remakes, I would've placed ME1 in the same spot.

I appreciate seeing that 4 other people each put one LoTR game in their 10th spot. Tag yourself; I was The Third Age. My brother and I had a years-long co-op game of that going on. We would play it together every time we were both at home for Christmas or vacations. The writing is terrible. The turn-based gameplay is good, but makes no sense within the lore of the LoTR universe. The terribly compressed video from the LoTR movies is painful to watch and we always skipped it. We love that game.

Alone in the Dark: The New Nightmare for the Game Boy Color was robbed, robbed I say!

@anonymousbroccoli: It's super cool to see you are still kicking around, made me smile to think of Gamespot circa 2002!

I'm going to try ignore the fact that was over 20 years ago, everything is always reminding me I'm old.

That top 3 is actually killer, this was fun!

Definitely an interesting list. I may not agree with it, but I respect it. And it's really cool to see Giant Bomb do things like this!

No Rock Band in the top 50 is criminal

@bondfish: Eh, it's just another series that's hurt by people spreading their votes among multiple entries. If you combine RB2 (which literally just missed the top 100 at #101) and RB3 they slot in together at #47. Long-running numbered series like that are not designed to do well in a contest like this, everyone picks their favorite one and leaves off the rest.

Yeah. 1, 2, and 3 all had over 60 votes, so they cannibalized each other a bit. Rock Band 2 is literally #101. So close.

I was the one who voted for Everquest 2 :)

o7

I was the lone Velious voter.

Hard to argue with that list. Surprised Mario Galaxy didn't place higher.

Yeah, no Monster Hunter in the top 100 really surprised me too — MHW literally defined an era for me.

I would like to thank the 4 other people who voted for LA Noire

It just barely missed it. Tied for #104 with FF7 Remake.

Its a shame so many people here have such bad taste

Clearly, not many people played it...

I wish Odyssey was lower

If the score is less than the number of votes then certain votes must not ad to the score. I can think of a scoring system that gives more points for 1st but ends up giving 0 points for 9th and 10th place votes. That would make it so the score was less than the number of votes.

But, if that were the case we would see games at the very bottom of the full list that got a few votes but a score of zero. But when we look at the bottom of the full list the smallest score generated by 1 vote is a score of 1 meaning ANY vote has at lease a value of 1 to the score, which can’t be the case. I’ve been following these GOTY scoring for a really long time. and I have my own archive. I might dig back through the oldest ones i have.

But i think in this case what is labeled score is the total number of voters and what is labeled votes is the actual weighted scores.

The highest game with a score of 1 is Lies of P with 8 “votes”, but i think in reality one person voted for Lies of P but it was high enough on their list to generate a weighted score of 8.

Looking at the full list there isn’t a single game that got 1 vote in the vote column but a score higher than 1. Around 900 games fall under this category. There would be way more variance than this if the vote column was actually counting votes. I feel like i remember 10 or 12 years ago Dave saying they had to flip the results.

@drbroel: I think you’re overlooking something very basic. It seems pretty clear to me from the fact that the scores are all lower than the vote totals that the formula is simply awarding fractional points, rather than not counting them at all.

For instance, while I certainly can’t say for sure that this is how the formula works, it could be something like:

1st place = 1 point

2nd place = 0.9 points

…

9th place = 0.2 points

10th place = 0.1 point.

From there I’m sure it’s rounding to the nearest whole number (but not less than 1).

So perhaps the 8 votes for Lies of P were all lower-rank votes that added up to 1.4 or less and hence got rounded to 1.

I agree that it would be nice if we could know the composite scores out to at least one decimal place, but I don’t know if the auto-generated reports @marino gets can provide that (I suspect not). I feel sure that everything is being counted, the scores as just not as granular as we could want.

@atheistpreacher: Feels strange to work with decimals and round when you could stick with whole numbers and get a more accurate result, doesn't it?