Geoff Keighley’s The Game Awards wrapped up an absolutely massive year for video games, celebrating indie titles such as Tchia and Cocoon, all the way to the heavy-hitters like Baldur’s Gate 3 and Marvel’s Spider-Man 2. As always, gaming’s night of nights was an excellent way to for us to look back on the year that was and the amazing games we all played, and perhaps even more importantly, the games we’re excited to play next year!

While some of the results may have divided our writers’ room (shoutout to Team BG3 and Team Alan Wake 2!), there’s no denying that 2023’s offerings did NOT come to play. Before we take a look at today’s showstopper announcements, including returning classics and originals destined to be classics, let’s recap the big winners of this year’s awards!

It was a BG3 sweep, with Larian Studios’ Baldur’s Gate 3 scoring several awards over the show, including Best Performance for voice actor Neil Newbon as Astarion, Best Community Support, Best Multiplayer, Best RPG, the Players’ Voice award, as voted by everyone at home, and… The big one, Game of the Year for 2023! Alan Wake 2 was the other big winner, nabbing Best Game Direction, Best Art Direction, and Best Narrative!

The other winners include:

• Best Sim/Strategy – Pikmin 4
• Best Fighting Game – Street Fighter 6
• Best Family Game – Super Mario Wonder
• Best Action/Adventure – The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom
• Best Action Game – Armoured Core VI – Fires of Rubicon
• Best Independent Game – Sea of Stars
• Best Debut Indie Game – Cocoon
• Best Score and Music – Final Fantasy XVI
• Best Audio Design – Hi-Fi Rush
• Best Adaptation – The Last of Us TV Series
• Best Mobile Game – Honkai: Star Rail
• Best VR/AR game – Resident Evil Village VR
• Best Sports/Racing – Forza Motorsport
• Best Ongoing Game – Cyberpunk 2077
• Games for Impact – Tchia
• Innovation in Accessibility – Forza Motorsport

Now… Onto the reveals! Here are the announcements that really have us excited!

OD

Does it get more exciting than a new Hideo Kojima game? What about a Jordan Peele film? PSYCH, YOU GET BOTH!

Two masters of genre and storytelling, teaming up on a horror game no less! We all know that Jordan Peele has been killing it in horror movies right now, with Get Out, Us, and Nope; all films that frighten us, but with incredibly important underlying messages that reflect our own reality. Hideo Kojima, of course, scared everyone with that amazing PT demo on PS4 many years ago, that turned out to be a secret tease for his Silent Hill remake, that unfortunately never happened… Now he’s back to right that wrong!

Death Stranding was an absolutely amazing reflective work, and Metal Gear Solid is one of the best series ever that was so far ahead of its time with intelligent storytelling and gameplay, so it’s safe to say that we can expect a MASTERPIECE with OD!

Blade

The Marvel game universe is expanding, but forget everything you think you know about superheroes, ‘cause The Daywalker is here, baby. Blade, the vampiric vampire hunter caught between the world of the living and the undead, is getting his own third-person action adventure game set in the walled city of Paris, and it’s being developed by Bethesda and Arkane Lyon, the team behind Dishonoured and Deathloop!

SEGA Power Surge

This is a game-changer for diehard Sega fans, as we can expect not one, not two, but FIVE updates of classic Sega titles!

Crazy Taxi is a highlight for sure, one of the original wacky driving games in the genre, but one of our personal favourites is the return of Jet Set Radio! Stylish as heck with an awesome punk aesthetic, anti-authoritarian sentiment, and an incredibly fun and unique traversal system, it’s always good to see the return of an old favourite! Alongside those two was the revival of Shinobi, Golden Axe, and the side-scrolling beat-em-up, Streets of Rage.

Light No Fire

Hello Games is back! Now, everyone knows that the initial reveal of No Man’s Sky wasn’t the best; however, they’ve been fixing the game for ten years since, and right now it’s in the best state it’s ever been in, rich with content and ways to play! So, with Hello Games now having a decade’s worth of knowledge and experience, perhaps we’re right to be optimistic about their new game coming out.

And this one is even more ambitious than No Man’s Sky was when it was announced! Instead of a billion-trillion-whatever sparsely populated little planets, Light No Fire is attempting a FULL-SCALE WORLD, as in, a to-scale model of Earth! It’ll be a procedural, fantasy Earth, filled with mystical creatures, and magical locations. And it’s co-op multiplayer!

Monster Hunter Wilds

Capcom has done it again! A new Monster Hunter is always cause for celebration, especially since it’s been five years since the last true mainline installment! (You can argue about Rise but it was made for Switch and then ported to everything else later).

Back in 2018, we wrote that Monster Hunter World was by far the best game in the series, and the more content it got down the line, that position only got more concrete. The world felt incredible to explore, it was beautifully stylised, the combat was fun, and the RPG elements were oh so satisfying. Now the series is finally coming to next-gen! If you think it ain’t gonna be the Game of the Year 2025… You ain’t been payin’ attention.

Honourable Mentions

God Of War: Ragnarok – Valhalla

God of War: Ragnarok gets a FREE DLC next week, in the form of Valhalla, which appears to be a run-based rogue-like experience.

Dragon Ball Sparking! Zero

Dragon Ball fans got a new look at the upcoming fighting game Dragon Ball Sparking! Zero, set to be a spiritual successor to the Tenkaichi Budokai series!

Big Walk

The Aussie team behind the chaotic Untitled Goose Game revealed their next project Big Walk, which they describe as a “cooperative online walker-talker” and is due out in 2025.

Suicide Squad: Kill The Justice League

Rocksteady dropped a new look at their upcoming Suicide Squad: Kill The Justice League multiplayer co-op game, which features wrestling super-star Samoa Joe as the voice of King Shark.

Final Fantasy 7: Rebirth

Square-Enix treated us to a special look at the next chapter of the FF7 story in Final Fantasy 7: Rebirth, featuring Cid, Vincent, Zack, and the theme song No Promises to Keep.

Jurassic Park: Survival

There’s a new single-player Jurassic Park game in the works titled Jurassic Park: Survival from the team at Saber Interactive, which looks set somewhere around the time of the first two films.

Of course, this isn’t an exhaustive list of all the reveals – the show was nearly four hours long after all! But we also got details on the FF16 DLC (one of which is out today), Ubisoft’s Skull and Bones will (finally) be released in February 2024, plus new games from the teams behind Thumper, Dead Cells, Life is Strange, among so many others. With 2023 being so jam-packed with quality gaming, all we can ask is to give us some breathing room between games next year, please?