Tag: Sekiro: Shadows Die Twice

2019 GOTY Scoreboard: Sekiro: Shadows Die Twice, Untitled Goose Game, and More

It’s rare for the critical consensus around the “Game of the Year” to stray beyond a handful of titles. But that’s exactly what happened in 2019, as three games split the major awards and nearly a dozen others laid claim to at least one publication-specific award.

Leading the pack, if you can even call it that, is From Software’s Sekiro: Shadows Die Twice, which was the big winner at The Game Awards and the SXSW Gaming Awards. Then there was House House’s Untitled Goose Game, which waddled away with trophies from the DICE Awards and the GDC Awards. Finally, there’s Mobius Digital’s Outer Wilds, which won the big prize at the BAFTA Games Awards.

After that, it’s easy to go down the list and find a few highlights, including Remedy’s Control, Kojima Productions’s Death Stranding, and Capcom’s Resident Evil 2, all of which were recognized as the top title of 2019 by at least nine publications. And that’s not even getting into the massive traffic jam of titles that earned runner-up status. We might be heading into a transition year for the game industry, but 2019 was certainly a capstone year for this generation.

You can see all of the “Game of the Year” contenders from 2019 in the 2019 GOTY Scoreboard after the break.

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Sekiro: Shadows Die Twice Wins “Video Game of the Year” at the 2019-2020 SXSW Gaming Awards

The cancellation of this year’s South By Southwest feels like a distant memory, but in the weeks since the announcement was made, a few people had started to wonder if the winning envelopes from the 2019-2020 SXSW Gaming Awards would also remain locked away forever. Thankfully, the festival’s organizers recently fired off a press release that revealed all the winners.

Drumroll, please…

From Software’s Sekiro: Shadows Die Twice won “Video Game of the Year,” and the one-armed ninja also snuck away with a win for “Excellence in Visual Achievement.” Only ZA/UM’s Disco Elysium (the “Matthew Crump Cultural Innovation Award” and “Excellence in Narrative”) and Hideo Kojima’s Death Stranding (“Excellence in Musical Score” and “Excellence in Technical Achievement”) were able to earn more than a single award from this year’s voters.

“Gaming is a key part of the creative ecosystem that brings us together, and now more than ever it provides us with a unique sense of escape and adventure in uncertain times,” said Hugh Forrest, the Chief Programming Officer for South By Southwest. “We were devastated that we weren’t able to celebrate our honorees in person with the cancellation of our event, but glad that we’re still able to share their achievements and creative works with our community.”

A complete list of winners and nominees from the 2019-2020 SXSW Gaming Awards can be found after the break.

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Sekiro: Shadows Die Twice Wins “Game of the Year” at the 2019 Game Awards

Geoff Keighley and his co-presenters shotgunned their way through dozens of awards during tonight’s Game Awards, but in between all the World Premiere Trailers, they managed to shine a brief spotlight on a wide variety of titles. Unlike most years when a handful of titles dominate the conversation, this year’s Game Awards spread the wealth among a lot of worthy winners, including Sekiro: Shadows Die Twice, this year’s recipient of the “Game of the Year” award.

From Software’s ninja adventure also claimed the “Best Action/Adventure Game” trophy, but it wasn’t able to sway the jury for the other three nominations it was up for. Instead, ZA/UM’s Disco Elysium became the most-honored game of the night, winning “Best Narrative,” “Best Role Playing Game,” “Best Independent Game,” and “Fresh Indie Game.”

Some of the ceremony’s other winners included Kojima Production’s Death Stranding (“Best Game Direction,” “Best Score/Music,” and “Best Performance” for Mads Mikkelsen), Remedy’s Control (“Best Art Direction”), Beat Games’s Beat Saber (“Best VR/AR Game”), Respawn’s Apex Legends (“Best Multiplayer”), and Activision’s Crash Team Racing Nitro-Fueled (“Best Sports/Racing Game”).

In addition to a rousing speech by their former President, Reggie Fils-Aime, Nintendo had a great night too, taking home trophies for “Best Fighting Game” (Super Smash Bros. Ultimate), “Best Family Game” (Luigi’s Mansion 3), and “Best Strategy Game” (Fire Emblem: Three Houses).

The complete list of winners and nominees from the 2019 Game Awards, as well as a video replay of the ceremony, can be found below.

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Untitled Goose Game is Popular Mechanics’s “Best Video Game the Year You Were Born” for 2019

Popular Mechanics has has added a handful of titles from 2019 to their ongoing collection, “The Best Video Game the Year You Were Born.”

House House’s Untitled Goose Game was picked by Popular Mechanics’s editors as the best game of 2019, both for its “havoc-causing” stealth elements and its “wholesomeness”:

There were lots and lots of great games for 2019, but none had quite the reaction (and the wholesomeness) of Untitled Goose Game. The objective to be the most havoc-causing goose in existence, and it generates so much joy its almost hard to fathom. It just goes to show that sometimes a year’s best game doesn’t need giant budgets and super crisp graphics. It just needs a goose with a bad temper.

From Software’s Sekiro: Shadows Die Twice, Kojima Productions’s Death Stranding, and Electronic Arts’s Star Wars Jedi: Fallen Order were all given “Honorable Mention” status, along with a pair of Nintendo-produced titles for the Switch (Fire Emblem: Three Houses and Pokemon Sword and Shield).

Popular Mechanics’s “The Best Video Game the Year You Were Born” will be added to the Video Game Canon in the Version 4.0 update, which should be ready to go in 2020.