It all comes down to this. With 2020 in the rearview mirror (something we all surely wanted), it's time to look ahead at 2021 and a new generation of games to play. However, before we completely closed the book on 2020, there was still some discussion to be had on the best games that we played last year, with the whole conversation unfolding for your viewing pleasure.

Today we officially revealed the winners of our Game of the Year Awards 2020, with Hades taking DualShockers' Game of the Year Award (along with Best Indie Game and Best Roguelike), while The Last of Us Part II won Game of the Year - Readers' Choice and the most overall awards at 10 wins. It's safe to say that this year was a competitive one with so many incredible games throughout the year, which made our final decision on Game of the Year a challenging one, even compared to year's past.

Featuring an extensive pool of the staff from DualShockers alongside special guest Logan Moore (ComicBook.com), below you'll find our entire Game of the Year deliberations, where we held our final conversations and debates on which game would win our Game of the Year Award for 2020. We'd recommend cozying up and preparing for the long haul, since the conversations went on for about 4.5 hours.

Take a look at Part 1 and Part 2 of our final Game of the Year 2020 discussion below:

During 2020, we decided to take a bit of a different approach to our Game of the Year Awards by rolling out our deliberations on our favorite games throughout the year. During 2020, we held 4 discussions for each quarter of the year and highlighted our favorite games that would eventually make their way into our final Game of the Year discussion.

Below you'll find the 20 nominees that were considered in our final Game of the Year discussion:

DualShockers’ Game of the Year 2020 Nominees

  • 13 Sentinels: Aegis Rim
  • Among Us
  • Animal Crossing: New Horizons
  • Assassin’s Creed Valhalla
  • Crusader Kings 3
  • Desperados 3
  • DOOM Eternal
  • Final Fantasy VII Remake
  • Fall Guys: Ultimate Knockout
  • Ghost of Tsushima
  • Hades
  • Half-Life: Alyx
  • The Last of Us Part II
  • Ori and the Will of the Wisps
  • Persona 5 Royal
  • Spiritfarer
  • Star Renegades
  • Trails of Cold Steel 4
  • Wasteland 3
  • Yakuza: Like a Dragon

Thanks again to everyone that has watched our discussions along the way, and especially for those that voted in our Readers' Choice Awards and our overall GOTY Awards categories. As we head into 2021, we'll likely use this format again to discuss our favorite games throughout the year, but feel free to let us know if you have any suggestions or feedback in the comments ahead of our next GOTY Awards.

For a recap of our staff conversations on our favorite games from 2020, you can check out our previous discussions below: