It’s New Year’s Day. You’re recovering from last night. You’re probably thinking about what to play, and looking at a truly bewildering pile of Best Ofs and Game Of The Years. Let us do you a solid: We did the math to find the actual Game Of The Year. And just who came out on top might surprise you.
First, the methodology. We only used lists that polled the whole staff of a site: Individual best-ofs from sites and similar articles were left out, giving us ten lists (including Gamma’s own, but that’s for next week). If a game wasn’t on the list when we put together the spreadsheet, we gave it a “100” — which would drive it down in the averages while also telling us roughly how many lists it wasn’t on.
So, who won? We’ll let the most notable meme from said game tell you:
Yep, Mario Kart 8 takes the prize, with an overall score of 14.9. Interestingly, the only other game that even came close was Middle-Earth: Shadows Of Mordor. At 16.6, it was the closest competitor and on just as many lists. If just one more outlet had put Talion’s first adventure on the list, or ranked Mario a little lower, he would have won.
Here are the top ten, and their overall rankings. Remember, the lower the number, the better.
Mario Kart 8, 14.9
Middle-Earth: Shadows Of Mordor, 16.6
Hearthstone, 27.3
Dark Souls 2, 34.2
Super Smash Bros. WiiU, 35.3
Far Cry 4, 35.9
Alien: Isolation, 42.2
Bayonetta 2, 43.8
Dragon Age: Inquisition, 46.6
Wolfenstein: The New Order, 54.9
You might notice that Nintendo is the only publisher to have more than one title in that top ten… and that they’re all Wii U games. Maybe Nintendo really is onto something.