The game we love best from afar and pining to play
The nominees for the GM GOTY Award 2021 for Best Game We Didn’t Play are the following:
- The Forgotten City
- Guilty Gear Strive
- Lost Judgment
- Ratchet & Clank: Rift Apart
- Shin Megami Tensei V
Deliberations Summary
Unofficially the Anan Award for Best Game We Didn’t Play, dubbed in honour of our loyal GM crew member Anan (and how he don’t play newly released games in a year), this award is to acknowledge the games that got away.
Either due to lack of time, lack of access near the time of the game’s release, or our crew just didn’t get around to playing them this year. Gamer Malaya and Gamer Matters are small gaming websites where we don’t necessarily get opportunities to cover all the major video game releases timely.
However, we care enough about these titles that this is bound to be in our backlog, and something we will talk about more next year.
This is the first category where we have more than five nominations on our shortlist, and as per tradition, only five could stick. The Bandai Namco one-two JRPG releases of Tales Of Arise and Scarlet Nexus caught our attention, but not enough to stick in the final list.
The Forgotten City almost got the boot either if it were not for one person wanting to get around to play this intriguing time loop puzzler.
Lost Judgment, the Yakuza spin-off sequel and this year’s RGG Studios release, unfortunately, has come back to its regular category for the GOTY Awards after last year’s sensational win for Yakuza: Like A Dragon. The Yakuza games always have a special place in our hearts, but only a few that will make us go at it on day 1 of release.
Guilty Gear Strive suffers this fate as our now-current resident fighting games man isn’t really into fighting games. And he is also the resident JRPG guy in the crew and have elected not to play JRPGs this year, for one reason or another. Shin Megami Tensei V, the strongest JRPG on our collective radar, is something we have to pass for now, as we only have an active reviewer with a Switch only recently.
But the one game that really fits the bill, as the crew agreed, is the big PS5 game of the year. Ratchet & Clank: Rift Apart could have easily appeared more in this year’s GOTY Awards, but the fact of the matter is that we still cannot get a PS5. The disruption of the electronic chips supply chain (one of the economic impacts of the pandemic) won’t be ending soon, so who knows when will we be able to get our hands on Insomniac’s return to form for this platformer series.
Deliberation length (after edits): 19 minutes
Best Game We Didn’t Play Winner
Congratulations to Ratchet & Clank: Rift Apart for winning the 2021 GM GOTY Award for Best Game We Didn’t Play.
Stay tuned tomorrow when we reveal the winner for Best Racing Game.
For the full list and full recording of the deliberations (as part of dia.log – The Gamer Matters Podcast), check the main page for the Gamer Malaya And Gamer Matters Game Of The Year Awards 2021 here.