First impressions are not everything, but always important. This is to celebrate the games that make us hype, or make it easy to set up our preferences from the very first thing it loads.
The nominees for the GOTY Award 2020 for Best Main Menu/Startup Sequence are:
- Dreams
- Final Fantasy VII Remake
- Ghost Of Tsushima
- Marvel’s Spider-Man Miles Morales
- Sackboy: A Big Adventure
Deliberation Summary
There’s a running theme of the nominees here: all are PS4 exclusives. Most of the arguments being made are highlighting the startup sequence process- which naturally favours console titles.
Instead of gunning to the options menu when you boot up a new game, it’s great that the initial startup just walks you through the main settings you want to adjust from the get-go, be it subtitles, invert camera options and more.
Miles Morales has a simple scene of Miles riding the subway, but the PS5 version with the next-gen lighting is enough to make it stand out. Sackboy borrows a trait from the LittleBig Planet series by making the start menu playable- you can jump, roll, slap and bump the floating title. From the get-go, you know this is a playful game that lets you press buttons with joy.
Ghost Of Tsushima is an exemplary use of the initial startup screen- have all the settings upfront and immediately cut to the opening cinematic with just a pan down of the camera.
Final Fantasy VII Remake remakes the title screen of the original- a buster sword bathing in light surrounded by utter darkness. It tickles the nostalgia buttons for sure, but making the buster sword practical by letting you test the camera settings in real-time is just a stroke of genius.
However, there’s one clear winner of this category. A brisk startup sequence that don’t faff about gets players of Dreams to start creating immediately. Which can lead to you creating a custom main menu screen to call your own.
There’s just no way of beating the power of making your own main menu, and the GM GOTY Award 2020 for Best Main Menu/Startup Sequence goes to Media Molecule’s game-creating game, Dreams. Congratulations!
The next award to be revealed will be for the Best Meme Generator.