The Game Awards has announced its ‘Game Of The Year’ nominations for 2020 – and nearly everything is exactly what we expected.

It’s been a wild year to say the least, with COVID-19 wreaking havoc on the world, movies getting delayed left and right, and the U.S. presidential election taking up all the attention to the detriment of everyone’s health.

But amidst all the carnage, the one thing that’s stayed solid has been video games and it’s been a goddamn solid year on that front.

As we inch towards the end of 2020, The Game Awards – aka arguably the biggest awards event in video gaming – has today unveiled its Game Of The Year nominees, and everything was actually pretty undramatic.

So without beating around the bush any longer, here they are:

Normally there’s a lot of debate over a couple of nominees in the Game Of The Year list but 2020 has been stuffed with so much good stuff that the consensus has generally been “you know what, I’m cool with any of these games winning this year, even The Last Of Us Part 2.”

Okay, there were a few interesting snubs, like Persona 5 Royal, Half-Life: Alyx, and Ori And The Will Of The Wisps, but those can be chalked down to some plausible explanations.

Persona 5 Royal is an enhanced version of Persona 5 which came out in 2016 so that rules it out, Half-Life: Alyx is a VR game is it’s a bit of a niche, and Ori is fantastic but not “massive” in the same way the other Game Of The Year nominees are in terms of player base.

But all in all, the most surprising thing about The Game Awards 2020 nominees is how surprising it all was in the end.

If you want to check out the entire nominees list for every category (and there are a lot), head over to The Game Awards 2020 right here.

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