Josh has been playing video games for longer than he can remember, kicking things off with a Master System before upgrading to a Mega Drive. Covering the industry since 2018, if a game has a strong story – or even better, the decisions you make determine the course of that story – odds are he’s going to like it. Or, you know, put Sonic or Pikachu on the cover and that’ll get his attention too.
The nominees for this year’s Game Awards have been announced, with a lot of titles from the past 12 months up for various awards. However, during what has been such a packed year, there are naturally some titles that either aren’t up for awards people think they should have been nominated for, or in some cases, have been omitted from the ballot entirely.
We’ll start with the latter, as I think that’s the biggest talking point of all when it comes to this year’s omission that isn’t being talked about enough. All those nominations for all of those awards, and Mafia: The Old Country doesn’t appear once. Sure, it wasn’t game of the year, but you’d have thought it might have shown up in another category, maybe under Best Narrative or Best Action/Adventure.
Not a great year for Take-Two all around, as Borderlands 4 didn’t receive any nominations either. People don’t seem to be quite as torn up about that one, though.
This Year s Best Adaptation Category Is All Messed Up
The TGAs category getting the most flak is Best Adaptation. It’s usually filled with anything that happened to release that year, but this year, there were actually options. That’s why it’s bizarre that Sonic 3 and Twisted Metal missed the cut. You could argue those voting simply forgot Sonic 3 was eligible since it released last December, but they didn’t forget about Indiana Jones and The Great Circle, which has been nominated for Best Performance thanks to Troy Baker.
Twisted Metal may have been tainted by a lackluster first season. It returned for season two this year, which was much better, but not good enough that it got people to tune back in, it seems. I’ll give A Minecraft Movie a pass due to its popularity, even though it was objectively terrible, but Until Dawn and The Witcher season four getting in there proves that, in this category at least, many of those calling the shots just threw in the first thing they could think of.
There Were Great Performances That Didn t Happen On The Continent
This year’s Best Performance category is dominated by actors from Clair Obscur: Expedition 33, and deservedly so. The problem is, some big performances have been overlooked. Most notably, Alex Jordan, who played all of the Jans in The Alters. There’s an argument to be made that Jordan’s was the best performance of the year. You could say the same about Tom McKay, who plays Henry in Kingdom Come: Deliverance 2.
At least Henry and the Kingdom Come gang are still in the running for Game of the Year. The same can’t be said for Arc Raiders. No, despite a campaign by its fans claiming The Game Awards are rigged, the hit extraction shooter didn’t make it into the final six. Strange. On a more serious note, and a personal one, I believe Split Fiction should be in there, and that it would have been had it launched later in the year.
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Lastly, less of a snub and more of an observation. Expedition 33 has received a record 12 nominations. That includes nominations for GOTY, Best Indie, and Best Debut Indie. Logic dictates that if Clair Obscur is the game of the year, then it should win Best Indie and Debut Indie, too. Perhaps if an indie game is nominated for GOTY, it shouldn’t be eligible for those other categories. That might just be the fan of Blue Prince and Ball x Pit in me talking, though.
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The Minecraft Movie was actually really good, but sure bud. That statement honestly ruined the article as a whole.
2025-11-20 11:11:29
Luckily there is not Best Shampoo Bottle Direction for Expedition 33
2025-11-28 12:26:18
Expedition 33 was good, but not the best. Split Fiction not being a GOTY nomination is a crime.
2025-11-19 20:17:27
Sounds to me just a way to try delegitimize the awards because they recognized expedition 33, or didn’t kowtow worship the Tsushima sequel?
It would be helpful to tell us what mafia games were nominated in the past, against what competition, and which mafia games weren’t nominated in the past ( similarly, against what competition). That would be helpful context. I didn’t play a Mafia game since 1 2, tho good, neither seemed good enough for award nominations.
2025-11-19 18:02:59
Nope, it is just an article about good games that did not get nominated.
2025-11-20 02:53:11
