Dualshockers' Game of the Year 2016 Awards

It’s January 1st, 2017, and it’s time to say goodbye to a 2016 full of great games, while welcoming a new year that seems to be even better, by drawing the line on the games that can be defined the best of last year, while also looking forward to some of the most exciting offerings of 2017.

This year, we decided to do something a little different than  usual: our most relevant awards, Game of the Year (Readers’ Choice) and Most Anticipated Game of 2017 (Readers’ Choice), are both voted by you, our readers. We certainly value our own opinions, but at the end of the day we’re just a bunch of dudes, and you folks outnumber us by quite a bit.

Incidentally, as you will be able to see from the results below, we’re very proud of our community. Not only the turnout was great, with you all coming to vote in droves, but there was a large degree of diversity among the votes. While the Game of the Year winner took the top spot by quite the landslide, a large percentage of our readers showcased a large diversity in taste, not automatically flocking to the usual big AAA productions, but giving quite a lot of attention to smaller games from every corner of the world and every development culture, western and eastern, AAA and indie, popular and obscure. This is, we believe, something of great value.

If you want to check out the rules of the popular vote, you can read them here, but without further ado, I leave you with the results. For the record, honorable mentions include games that scored over 5% of the total vote pool even if they didn’t manage to win or come out in second place.

Game of the Year (Readers’ Choice): Final Fantasy XV

Runner up: Uncharted 4: A thief’s End

Honorable Mentions: Dark Souls III, Overwatch

As you can see from the pie chart above, Final Fantasy XV triumphed among our readers. Hajime Tabata and his team worked very hard to bring us the new numbered chapter of the Final Fantasy series, and it appears that many of our readers found it so memorable that they elected it their best game of the year.

It’s certainly the crowning of a long period of hard work, done with remarkable humility, with Tabata-san and his developers often taking in consideration the fanbase’s opinion and feedback.

Uncharted 4: A Thief’s End also shown a strong performance and many will carry the last adventure of Nathan Drake in their hearts for a long time.

Most Anticipated Game of 2017 (Readers’ Choice): Horizon: Zero Dawn

Runner up: Persona 5

Honorable Mentions: NieR: Automata, Mass Effect: Andromeda, Red Dead Redemption 2, The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild, NiOh.

The popular vote for the most anticipated game of 2017 was a lot less one-sided that the one for Game of the Year, which is understandable considering how many great games are coming this year. In the end, Horizon: Zero Dawn managed to take the top, followed rather closely by Persona 5. NieR: Automata was also popular among our readers, with Mass Effect: Andromeda and Red Dead Redemption 2 also gathering a nice war chest of votes.

2017 appears to be a fantastic year to be a gamer.

Now it’s time to move on to the many categories voted by the DualShockers staff. Our awards system is really very simple: each writer votes three games (from the first to the third) for each category. Games voted as first choice gets three points, second choices get two, third picks get one. There is no distinction of rank or seniority, and everyone has exactly the same amount of points to assign. Ties are not broken. If two games get exactly the same amount of points, there is no reason why we can’t reward both.

Honorable mentions are game that scored over two points in the tally for each category.