#game-of-the-year

#game-of-the-year

The thing that surprises me most about these personal GOTY lists, which I've been doing most years since I started working at Kotaku (including in the delivery room for my third child), is just how little I remember them after they go up. I could guess what was on the 2020 list, or the 2018 one, or my very first one from 2016, but I would probably get half of them wrong.

The first minutes of The Game Awards set the mold for the next three hours. Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 won best independent game during the preshow, beating out acclaimed sequels like Hades 2 and Hollow Knight: Silksong. Moments after, the main stage opened with operatic singers and a full orchestra (plus the obligatory electric guitar!) belting out music from the game. Clair Obscur was already the favorite to win the grand prize but kicking off the show with the game front-and-center felt like an anointing.

Game director Guillaume Broche took to the stage at the end of The Game Awards to accept the GOTY trophy on behalf of the team at Sandfall Interactive. While commenting that the outfit--a traditional French garb replete with a black-and-white striped shirt and a red beret--started as a joke and thanking the team, publisher Kepler Interactive, and the cast, Broche had a couple more people in mind to give special thanks to.

IGN's Logan Plant awarded Donkey Kong Bananza a full 10/10 'Masterpiece' rating, calling it 'a truly groundbreaking 3D platformer.' Eurogamer's Alex Donaldson was a little more mixed, saying, 'When it smashes, DK really smashes.'

Nintendo's first big single-player adventure for the new hardware sounds like the GOTY-contender Donkey Kong sequel fans have been waiting for.