If you’ve been on Twitter in the last week, you might have seen a lot of tweets in your timeline where people listed their favorite games from the past decade and a half. The “15 Years of GOTY” trend has highlighted a lot of great games going all the way back to 2004, but what does the Video Game Canon have to say about some of the choices?
Using Version 3.0, I was able to sort out the best game from each of the last 15 years as ranked by their C-Score (how each game is ranked by the 53 Best Games lists that currently make up the Video Game Canon).
As you might have guessed, in some years the answer was obvious (Half-Life 2 in 2004, The Last of Us in 2013), but in other years it wasn’t (Braid barely squeaked above Fallout 3 in 2008 while Okami leapfrogged The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion in 2006). In the end, Sony and Capcom shared the trophy for most-honored publisher, as both can lay claim to the “Game of the Year” in three separate years.
Take a look at the game with the highest ranking from each of the last 15 years (and the runner-up) after the break.
If you can believe it, Blizzard is just as well known for franchises like Diablo and Warcraft as it is for the monstrous statues that tower over the desks at its Irvine campus. It’s even become something of a tradition for newly-hired employees to pose in front of The Orc Statue on their first day.
The road to a finished product is long, and inspiration can often come from the weirdest places. But if you follow that muse, you’ll often come up with something amazing. And even if you run out of gas, you’ll always have people wondering what could have been.
It takes a special game to sweep all five major year-end awards and Sony Santa Monica’s God of War was just such a game. It’s brutal combat was praised by critics, but it also managed to do the impossible by transforming Kratos, previously portrayed as an instrument of pure rage, into a gruff (and almost lovable) father figure.
It’s a clean sweep for Sony Santa Monica’s God of War. The highly-acclaimed title collected the “Best Game” statuette at this morning’s BAFTA Games Awards ceremony, and the developers can now add it to a stuffed trophy shelf that also includes “Game of the Year” honors from the GDC Awards, SXSW Gaming Awards, DICE Awards, and the Game Awards.
