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24 years of Metacritic GOTYs (2000-2023)

Huey

Huey

Member
Oct 27, 2017
13,633
First off, Jason Dietz and team put some effort into this whole thing so always worth visiting the site itself to see the writeups and potentially click through to read some reviews:

Every Metacritic Game of the Year Winner

These are the best-reviewed games released each year in the 21st century.
www.metacritic.com www.metacritic.com

Now first and foremost, we know this is not the be-all-end-all designation of GOTY status for that year, it's just Metacritic's designation of the best reviewed game of the year using their weighted scoring system, which has it's fans and detractors. That said, here it is:

The list
2000 - Perfect Dark (N64) ; Runner up: NFL 2K1 (Dreamcast)
2001 - THPS3 (PS2); Runner up: GTA3 (PS2)
2002 - Metroid Prime (GC); Runner up: GTA VC (PS2)
2003 - Legend of Zelda: Wind Waker (GC); Runner up: Madden NFL 2004 (PS2)
2004 - Half Life 2 (PC); Runner up: GTA: SA (PS2)
2005 - RE4 (GC); Runner up: Splinter Cell Chaos Theory (Xbox)
2006 - Legend of Zelda: Twilight Princes (Wii); Runner up: Gears of War (360)
2007 - Super Mario Galaxy (Wii); Runner up: Bioshock (360)
2008 - GTA4 (360); Runner up: LittleBigPlanet (PS3)
2009 - Uncharted 2: Among Thieves (PS3); Runner up: Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2 (360)
2010 - Super Mario Galaxy 2 (Wii); Runner up: Mass Effect 2 (360)
2011 - Skyrim (360); Runner up: Portal 2 (360)
2012 - Persona 4 Golden (Vita!!); Runner up: Mass Effect 3 (360)
2013 - GTA5 (360); Runner up: The Last of Us (PS3)
2014 - Super Smash Bros. for WiiU (WiiU); Runner up: Bayonetta 2 (Wii U)
2015 - MGS5: The Phantom Pain (PS4); Runner up: Bloodborne (PS4)
2016 - Uncharted 4: A Thief's End (PS4); Runner up: Inside (XB1)
2017 - Legend of Zelda Breath of the Wild (Switch); Runner up: Super Mario Odyssey (Switch)
2018 - Red Dead Redemption 2 (PS4); Runner up: God of War (PS4)
2019 - Disco Elysium (PC); Runner up: Resident Evil 2 (PS4)
2020 - Persona 5 Royal (PS5); Runner up: The Last of Us Part II (PS4)
2021 - Forza Horizon 5 (Xbox); Runner up: Chicory: A Colorful Tale (PC)
2022 - Elden Ring (PS5); Runner up: God of War: Ragnarok (PS5)
2023 - Baldur's Gate 3 (PC); Runner up: Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom (Switch)

My thoughts? It does a reasonable of identifying what most would agree is the best game of the year, which is mathematically what it's trying to do, but some years will obviously always be controversial (ie. Bloodborne). Cool to see a Vita release on there, two persona games, and a year where the Wii U had both winner and runner-up.

What are your thoughts, era?
 
Linus815

Linus815

Member
Oct 29, 2017
20,288
well, my thoughts are that its an amazing list of games. some of them are definitely more appealing to me personally than the actual goty winners.
 
Tagyhag

Tagyhag

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Oct 27, 2017
12,971
2019 - Disco Elysium (PC); Runner up: Resident Evil 2 (PS4)

I didn't know this happened.

That is so freaking cool, and not expected to be honest.
 
Shrikey

Shrikey

Member
Oct 27, 2017
687
It pains me that Disco Elysium is the 2019 winner. On a list with that many major studio titles, it's pretty amazing to see. Is there any other winner that was a first effort by a studio? But it neither got the recognition or success it deserved.

Also, GTA on PS2 getting robbed three times in a row, huh?
 
CloseTalker

CloseTalker

Member
Oct 25, 2017
32,345
2014 was such a weak year lol.

Generally speaking though, those are all very solid picks. I'm not going to go to bat for many of them being unworthy

THPS3 over GTA3 is very correct
 
Zeeman

Zeeman

Member
Oct 25, 2017
792
Shrikey said:
It pains me that Disco Elysium is the 2019 winner. On a list with that many major studio titles, it's pretty amazing to see. Is there any other winner that was a first effort by a studio? But it neither got the recognition or success it deserved.

Also, GTA on PS2 getting robbed three times in a row, huh?
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Metroid Prime
 
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Huey

Huey

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Oct 27, 2017
13,633
Shrikey said:
Also, GTA on PS2 getting robbed three times in a row, huh?
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Had the same thought. Prime and Half Life 2 I would argue by better games. THPS3 is a bit more of a toss up, but given the degree to which GTA3 has aged while THPS3 is relatively timeless, maybe it's the right call after all.

The Tony Hawk games of that era were absolutely critically bullet-proof.
 
Bear

Bear

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Oct 25, 2017
11,102
2012 and 2020 seem to be the weak years. Wild to me that a Persona game on the Vita got GOTY one year.
 
NuclearDistortion

NuclearDistortion

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Nov 9, 2017
1,071
MGSV was the overall GOTY in 2015?

I wasn't aware of that given how much it was derision it got.

For the record I have over 1.5k hours in MGSV and platinumed it twice (PS and Xbox) so I clearly loved the game but this is news to me…..
 
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Huey

Huey

Member
Oct 27, 2017
13,633
NuclearDistortion said:
MGSV was the overall GOTY in 2015?
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The *2015 GOTY as denoted by the highest average review score based on MC's aggregator. It's an important distinction and why some of these are not consistent with GOTYBlog aggregators etc. It's not hugely surprising actually - MGS4 and 5 both reviewed extremely well only to receive some serious hindsight backlash for their high review scores (whether they deserved them or not)

LV-0504 said:
I seriously don't remember MGSV scoring higher than BB and TW3
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Yeah 93 vs. 92 a piece. One thing to note is that one MC "picks" a version, it's the version with the most review score (I think), ie, the exemplary version and the one that the most people likely played.
 
ghostcrew

ghostcrew

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Oct 27, 2017
30,637
Hell of a list of games and actually includes some bonafide classics that often get overlooked in these GOTY discussions (Inside, Bayonetta 2, Chicory)
 
Vertpin

Vertpin

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Oct 27, 2017
6,035
2014 SUCKED. Smash bros for Wii U/3ds were so awful to play. Only good thing about that game was the characters added.

Never seen a game so quickly obsolete by the time ultimate came out.
 
Paquete_PT

Paquete_PT

Avenger
Oct 27, 2017
5,550
Yup, that's a list of some of the best videogames out there. I never understood why Metacritic is frown upon by some, unless people don't understand what averages are and their purpose. It sucks that it is sometimes used as an objective for bonuses by some studios, but you can look at the top games in a given year on metacritic and those are, indeed, the best games of the year. It doesn't mean you can't love a game that scored 70 or hate a game that scored 95.
 
Lobster Roll

Lobster Roll

signature-less, now and forever™
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Sep 24, 2019
35,207
Forza Horizon 5 not getting a nomination at TGA is ridiculous. Put some respect on the racing genre.
 
Kaitos

Kaitos

Tens across the board!
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Oct 25, 2017
15,009
Seeing Madden earlier on makes me remember how much more of a cultural impact among gamers the EA sports titles used to have. They're still popular, but I rarely see people talking about them in the hobbyist circles that you used to see when they were considered to be really high quality sports games. Madden 04 got a 9.5 from IGN! (Different time, but still).
 
Nameless

Nameless

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Oct 25, 2017
15,605
Oddly enough, me and MC have been in alignment the past 2 years after only agreeing on GOTY twice in the 22 years before that (2008, 2018).
 
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Vex

Vex

Banned
Oct 25, 2017
22,404
I think them doing it by the meta numbers leaves out a lot of culturally and mechanically important games. For example:

  • Oblivion didn't make the list at all
  • GoW shouldve beaten twilight princess (especially considering what it did for shooters at the time)
  • No witcher3 at all.
  • Cod4 didn't place AT ALL and that game was pivotal for FPS games.
 
Kazaam

Kazaam

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Oct 26, 2017
1,898
London
A fantastic list of games. Crazy that some of my favourite games of all time actually released in the past 10 years. I'm sure part of it is recency bias, but hard to think the likes of Bloodborne, Disco Elysium and BOTW would vanish from my mind with time.
 
HemoGoblin

HemoGoblin

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Nov 3, 2017
874
Honestly I can't really have a problem with any of these games, barring the ones I haven't played. Seems like a reasonable list to me
 
Version 3.0

Version 3.0

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Oct 27, 2017
11,781
At a glance it's pretty good. Although Perfect Dark over Majora's Mask, right at the top...no bueno.

And FromSoft taking L after L, LOL.

But still, it matches my picks 5 years, 8 including runner-ups.
 
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Whisu

Whisu

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May 19, 2021
504
Some games have less reviews than others, so even if the list if good, is not really a fair comparison
 
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