The Last Of Us 2, Hades, Ghost Of Tsushima Lead Game Awards Nominations

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The nominees for the 2020 Game Awards have been announced, and The Last Of Us 2, Hades, and Ghost of Tsushima are leading the pack. 2020 has been a tumultuous year for video games. Thanks to the COVID-19 pandemic it's been a tumultuous year for everyone, but the video game industry also saw the release of two new next-gen video game consoles, with all the confusion and excitement that that brings magnified by stay-at-home orders, stock issues, and website crashes.

A lot of video games rose to prominence this year, but Hades, Ghost of Tsushima, and The Last Of Us 2 stand out for very different reasons. Ghost of Tsushima, for instance, is a triple-A title par excellence, a Japanese samurai epic whose level of polish earned it widespread acclaim when it released and drove it to break PS4 sales records. The Last Of Us 2 is another prominent triple-A title which earned global attention for its in-depth and emotional storytelling. Certain elements of the story resonated extremely poorly with players, leading to review-bombing and hate mail directed at one of the lead actresses. Hades is a much less controversial title and an indie darling, a masterful roguelike that has redefined the genre and its storytelling methods in a lot of very remarkable ways.

All three titles deserve renown for different reasons, and that's just what they're getting from the Game Awards nominations this year. All three games are up for Game of the Year, along with other heavy hitters like Animal Crossing: New Horizons and Doom Eternal. The Last Of Us 2 has hooked ten nominations, including Best Narrative and Best Art Direction. Ashley Johnson and Laura Bailey are both up for best performance as main characters Ellie and Abby respectively. Hades is up for eight awards, including Best Action and Best Indie Game. Logan Cunningham is on the Best Performance list for his menacing role as the game's title character. Finally, Ghost of Tsushima is weighing in with 7 nominations, challenging The Last of Us 2 for Best Narrative and Best Art Direction, among others. Daisuke Tsuji is also in the Best Performance running for his role as player character Jin Sakai.

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2020 has brought a lot of surprises to the gaming industry. An indie title like Hades getting a game of the year nod is a pretty big deal, and a testament to how much work and polish Supergiant Games put into it. It's been a good year for indie titles in general; multiplayer games like Fall Guys and Among Us have dominated Twitch and even become cultural icons. And despite having a smaller nomination count than these three titans, Animal Crossing: New Horizons changed the post-COVID social scene, playing host to talk shows and fashion runways, and it certainly deserves credit for that.

It's been a good year for video games, if for nothing else. A lot of great titles have come out that are sure to be remembered fondly by the gamers who've sunk dozens of hours into them. With the advent of the new console generation, future years are sure to astound and impress. But in the meantime, fans can curl up with instant classics like The Last Of Us 2, Hades, and Ghost of Tsushima, and wait to see how they fare at the Game Awards this year.