Here’s the game that will likely win Game of the Year at the Game Awards

The Game Awards are tonight, marking one of the biggest nights for the industry this side of E3: Over the past five years, the Geoff Keighley show has become the pre-eminent awards show in a vast sea of them, and that means whatever game you take home, Game of the Year has a certain sparkle, more than a GOTY nod from a major publication. The nominees are tough this year:

• Animal Crossing: New Horizons
• DOOM: Eternal
• Final Fantasy VII Remake
• Tsushima ghost
• The last of us part 2
• hell

So who will win? The last of us part 2, A narrative giant and a technical masterpiece? Tsushima ghost, One of the best open world games ever created? Animal Crossing: New Horizons, which became a cultural touchstone during the early closure?

It is not hell.

I hope hell win for two basic reasons. The first could not be easier: I hope hell win because hell is incredible. It’s mechanically perfect, intense, and endlessly interesting. It is the best rougelike I have ever played. It makes tremendous strides in the type of storytelling you can do even in the context of repetitive gameplay, with implications for interactive storytelling across genres. It is, like all SuperGiant games, impeccably elegant, at times beautiful, and backed by an incredible soundtrack. She is exceptionally horny. Has it all.

The second is that the Game Awards are chosen primarily by a voting jury comprised of industry outlets from around the world, and hell it’s the kind of game that really appeals to people who play video games. A game like The last of us part 2 could be an excellent storytelling game, and a game like Tsushima ghost may be a great open world game, but hell It seems to push things in more interesting ways, and it’s been very popular with the industry types I follow on social media, both developers and journalists.

hell it’s also the game that is likely to benefit the most from a win, not that that matters when it comes to choosing it. The other two games are already gigantic, AAA business, but I have a feeling there are still a ton of people who might like it hell They haven’t played it, and a GOTY win might be just what they need to make the jump.

So that’s my prediction. I could well be wrong, but that’s my prediction. Let’s see what happens.