IGN’s Game of the Year is The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom
IGN’s Game of the Year is The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom
by Turbostrider27
38 Comments
Cnote824
Great choice! 👏 👏 👏
JustUseTheWordMmmkay
I would have said the same after the first day or so of playing. But while I enjoyed it, it felt most of the dev time went into the 4 abilities and nothing into giving us a new game. Yeah we had the depths and the skies but it was all just so empty. Mostly just ruins and the odd trial.
Hoping the next game has a lot more substance.
fatfuckintitslover
Loved totk but bg3 blew me away like elden ring did last year. Got me hooked on genre I had no interest in playing. Side note ign gave best movie to barbie which I did enjoy but Oppenheimer and flowers of the killer moon had me holding my piss in cause I didn’t wanna miss a second of em.
Bitter-Raisin9102
admittedly I have not played BG3, but this feels well deserved. ive never sunk as many hours into a game as I have with TOTK. truly a king of open world exploration.
zgillet
I’m having a hard time keeping motivated to keep playing TOTK. It hasn’t been too long since I completely beat BOTW, and the new game just doesn’t really have enough to keep me going. I will try at some point, maybe an hour a day, but right now I’m feeling more compelled to play the Avatar game, honestly.
DumbMeat
It was great for 10 hours and then it started to get extremely boring and repetitive again just like Breath of the Wild.
Oneiroi_zZ
I don’t think I ever even beat TOTK because it ended up being so repetitive. Was fun for a while though. I have sunk 100s of hours into BG3 though and beaten it multiple times.
LDragon2000
Good to see. TotK is my game of the year also. I understand that a lot of people loved BG3 but I couldn’t get into it. Maybe I’ll try again in the future.
BigBossHaas
It’s cool to see different outlets giving their GOTY to Zelda, BG3, or even Alan Wake 2.
CashmereLogan
I hate how the discourse has me so strongly defending TotK against BG3 (they are games 1A and 1B of this year, hell, probably of the last couple of years).
Both games are absolutely stunning and filled to the brim with fun things to do.
The physics system in TotK is just on a completely different level than anything else, though. It feels so much more limitless than BG3 (which is one of the most limitless games I’ve ever played).
Realistic_Sad_Story
Top 3 game for me. And I’m someone who didn’t think much of BotW.
LodossDX
To me TotK is just a pure delight to play. I love Baldur’s Gate III, but there are parts of the game that I found pretty tiring.
Writhing2
While TOTK was great, BG3 was clearly GOTY. Bracing for Nintendo sub downdoots
ButtOfDarkness
Though BG3 is amazing, TotK is my personal GotY. Just feel every moment of that game is pure fun, discovery and gratification.
Razrie
I really don’t think totk deserves goty. It really didn’t bring that much over botw. It’s a good game, but it really is a pretty lazy sequel.
Point4ska
TOTK gave me a sense of innocence and wonder I have not felt since childhood, for that reason alone it’s my GOTY.
swordmalice
Sometimes I feel so overwhelmed by ToTK. I’ve done 2/4 dungeons and I went wandering around and got distracted and somehow ended up in this crazy Labyrinth both in Hyrule and the sky and got completely destroyed by the boss at the end. But that’s the kind of game it is I guess. 80 hours and I feel like that’s just the surface!
Graestra
TotK is amazing on a technical level, but everything but the building mechanic felt lacking. If they had taken the underground, focused the majority of a full game on that location so it wasn’t so empty, add the caves, building, and new runes, and completely overhauled the story to be good, it could have been a masterpiece. Basically if they had taken all their new ideas for TotK and used them for a game that wasn’t just BotW 2 it could have been great. As it is it’s the first Zelda game I’ve never finished
Ok_Fee_2436
If BOTW didn’t exist then I would agree. Just too similar to me unfortunately.
megasean3000
Sweet! Not played BG3 yet, so can’t judge, but TotK is an amazing game and deserves the praise.
delightfuldinosaur
I like ToTK, but I honestly prefer BoTW over it. Too many quests which are just “talk to person A -> Talk to person B -> Talk to person A again”.
Its still an incredible achievement of game design which will be talked about for decades, but it just didn’t blow my socks off like BoTW.
MuNansen
Mine, too!
Ne0guri
I spent thousands of hours in BOTW but only beat the game once in TOTK and I am not interested to play again to be honest. It was a great game but it wasn’t the same impact as BOTW for me. That’s why BG3 resounded with me because it gave me the similar feelings I had when I played BOTW the first time.
ShipposMisery
Do people enjoy tedious tasks now? I couldn’t finish it, the entire game was BOtW but more tedious and less fun
First Zelda game I didn’t even bother to beat. It has always been my favorite until now
UltraRealisticRat
I’m Going To Be Honest Here….
I’m Not The Biggest Fan Of TOTK OR BOTW
DigiQuip
No surprise here. IGN is obsessed with anything Mario and Zelda. It kinda ruins their podcasts because it’s all they ever talk about.
huncherbug
You know what fuck it imma say it the awards especially this year by different outlets actually meant something since it highlighted the amazing games and the amazing year that it was for games.
Cazter64
Does every discussion about TOTK have to involve BG3? They’re both amazing games and deserve the praise they get.
owlitup
Wow. Unexpected. Not sure I agree, but it’s definitely in my top 3. Good for IGN.
Vast_Mix_3321
I hope Nintendo finds a nice middle ground for the open world people and linearity people, so both sides can enjoy the game. Who knows maybe Nintendo will change the gaming world again with the next Zelda.
MixWorried428
So happy it got this one!
Kaiju_Cat
Tears of the Kingdom is the strangest game. I know everything is subjective. But it feels like if Breath of the Wild never happened, Tears of the Kingdom would be 10 out of 10 for me. But because Breath of the Wild happened and I spent hundreds of hours in it, and objectively amazing game didn’t have quite the same impact it would have because so much of it feels similar to what I’ve already done.
Don’t get me wrong. Building stuff is great. The underworld was a fantastic addition I didn’t expect. All the stuff they added and changed is awesome. I love the new characters. I love the new story. I don’t dislike essentially anything major about Tears of the Kingdom.
But it feels like it loses around a point in my head and drops to a 9 out of 10 just because so much of it is also straight out of a game I already spent so much time playing.
With that said I am absolutely thrilled to see a Zelda game win game of the year from a major publication. It’s among my absolute favorite franchises of all time, hot take I know, and I am over the moon that the series is still going so strong after a period where are the series seemed like it had lost its footing a little bit.
HopeRepresentative29
ToTK deserves it. BG3 also deserves it. I figured BG3 would win everything–it *deserves* to win everything–but I’m not mad about Zelda taking an award in the slightest. Great year, toughest competition we’ve seen in a decade, perhaps ever. Congrats to all these studios who have bucked the trend of shitty, souless, fly-by-night titles that take your money and run, leaving you with a pile of shit. Thank all of you for staying true to your love of games.
redditadminzRdumb
Not COD smh IGN really has lost their way
jfxck
I can’t wait until enough time has passed and we can all be honest about TOTK (and BOTW for that matter). They are the two most overrated games I’ve ever seen. Truly. I feel like I’m living in the twilight zone or something.
People say the graphics are gorgeous: I think they look downright terrible, particularly the environments
People say the exploration is incredible: I think it’s fine but you’re not rewarded properly for anything
People say the story is amazing: I thought the story in BOTW was just okay, and the story in TOTK was awful
People say TOTK fixes BOTW’s problems: I felt it doubled down on them
People say the dungeons are fixed in TOTK: I found them terrible and not much better then BOTW
I think it just frustrates me because these new Zelda games cost us a gameplay formula I very much loved. Zelda was my favourite game series of all time, and now it’s turned into something unrecognisable. I just miss Zelda man.
Expanding-Mud-Cloud
I wasnt ready for TOTK when it came out – it wasn’t, design-wise, what I hoped it’d be – but now that some time has passed I’ve warmed up the the idea of what they made and am excited to check it out. Will probably pick it up at the end of the year and finally give it a real spin. I played BOTW now nearly 4 years ago, so I think my memory of the map will have somewhat faded, which seems like a good vibe for coming back in.
Galactus1701
ToTK is also my personal 2023 GOTY.
DankMayMaysRUs
To be honest, TOTK gets mad props from me just for the fact that, despite having incredibly complex mechanics, it never broke once on me. Never crashed, never had wonky physics (which feels like a miracle after many hours I spent in Garry’s Mod years back), and it’s all running on a slightly modified mobile chipset from 2015. Ultrahand blows my mind. Recall blows my mind. Fuse blows my mind (from a QA perspective). Being able to jump from a sky island and dive all the way down into the depths with no loading screen is incredible. The fact that the game has all this extra stuff going on yet still runs overall slightly better (in my experience) than BOTW is incredible.
38 Comments
Great choice! 👏 👏 👏
I would have said the same after the first day or so of playing. But while I enjoyed it, it felt most of the dev time went into the 4 abilities and nothing into giving us a new game. Yeah we had the depths and the skies but it was all just so empty. Mostly just ruins and the odd trial.
Hoping the next game has a lot more substance.
Loved totk but bg3 blew me away like elden ring did last year. Got me hooked on genre I had no interest in playing. Side note ign gave best movie to barbie which I did enjoy but Oppenheimer and flowers of the killer moon had me holding my piss in cause I didn’t wanna miss a second of em.
admittedly I have not played BG3, but this feels well deserved. ive never sunk as many hours into a game as I have with TOTK. truly a king of open world exploration.
I’m having a hard time keeping motivated to keep playing TOTK. It hasn’t been too long since I completely beat BOTW, and the new game just doesn’t really have enough to keep me going. I will try at some point, maybe an hour a day, but right now I’m feeling more compelled to play the Avatar game, honestly.
It was great for 10 hours and then it started to get extremely boring and repetitive again just like Breath of the Wild.
I don’t think I ever even beat TOTK because it ended up being so repetitive. Was fun for a while though. I have sunk 100s of hours into BG3 though and beaten it multiple times.
Good to see. TotK is my game of the year also. I understand that a lot of people loved BG3 but I couldn’t get into it. Maybe I’ll try again in the future.
It’s cool to see different outlets giving their GOTY to Zelda, BG3, or even Alan Wake 2.
I hate how the discourse has me so strongly defending TotK against BG3 (they are games 1A and 1B of this year, hell, probably of the last couple of years).
Both games are absolutely stunning and filled to the brim with fun things to do.
The physics system in TotK is just on a completely different level than anything else, though. It feels so much more limitless than BG3 (which is one of the most limitless games I’ve ever played).
Top 3 game for me. And I’m someone who didn’t think much of BotW.
To me TotK is just a pure delight to play. I love Baldur’s Gate III, but there are parts of the game that I found pretty tiring.
While TOTK was great, BG3 was clearly GOTY. Bracing for Nintendo sub downdoots
Though BG3 is amazing, TotK is my personal GotY. Just feel every moment of that game is pure fun, discovery and gratification.
I really don’t think totk deserves goty. It really didn’t bring that much over botw. It’s a good game, but it really is a pretty lazy sequel.
TOTK gave me a sense of innocence and wonder I have not felt since childhood, for that reason alone it’s my GOTY.
Sometimes I feel so overwhelmed by ToTK. I’ve done 2/4 dungeons and I went wandering around and got distracted and somehow ended up in this crazy Labyrinth both in Hyrule and the sky and got completely destroyed by the boss at the end. But that’s the kind of game it is I guess. 80 hours and I feel like that’s just the surface!
TotK is amazing on a technical level, but everything but the building mechanic felt lacking. If they had taken the underground, focused the majority of a full game on that location so it wasn’t so empty, add the caves, building, and new runes, and completely overhauled the story to be good, it could have been a masterpiece. Basically if they had taken all their new ideas for TotK and used them for a game that wasn’t just BotW 2 it could have been great. As it is it’s the first Zelda game I’ve never finished
If BOTW didn’t exist then I would agree. Just too similar to me unfortunately.
Sweet! Not played BG3 yet, so can’t judge, but TotK is an amazing game and deserves the praise.
I like ToTK, but I honestly prefer BoTW over it. Too many quests which are just “talk to person A -> Talk to person B -> Talk to person A again”.
Its still an incredible achievement of game design which will be talked about for decades, but it just didn’t blow my socks off like BoTW.
Mine, too!
I spent thousands of hours in BOTW but only beat the game once in TOTK and I am not interested to play again to be honest. It was a great game but it wasn’t the same impact as BOTW for me. That’s why BG3 resounded with me because it gave me the similar feelings I had when I played BOTW the first time.
Do people enjoy tedious tasks now? I couldn’t finish it, the entire game was BOtW but more tedious and less fun
First Zelda game I didn’t even bother to beat. It has always been my favorite until now
I’m Going To Be Honest Here….
I’m Not The Biggest Fan Of TOTK OR BOTW
No surprise here. IGN is obsessed with anything Mario and Zelda. It kinda ruins their podcasts because it’s all they ever talk about.
You know what fuck it imma say it the awards especially this year by different outlets actually meant something since it highlighted the amazing games and the amazing year that it was for games.
Does every discussion about TOTK have to involve BG3? They’re both amazing games and deserve the praise they get.
Wow. Unexpected. Not sure I agree, but it’s definitely in my top 3. Good for IGN.
I hope Nintendo finds a nice middle ground for the open world people and linearity people, so both sides can enjoy the game. Who knows maybe Nintendo will change the gaming world again with the next Zelda.
So happy it got this one!
Tears of the Kingdom is the strangest game. I know everything is subjective. But it feels like if Breath of the Wild never happened, Tears of the Kingdom would be 10 out of 10 for me. But because Breath of the Wild happened and I spent hundreds of hours in it, and objectively amazing game didn’t have quite the same impact it would have because so much of it feels similar to what I’ve already done.
Don’t get me wrong. Building stuff is great. The underworld was a fantastic addition I didn’t expect. All the stuff they added and changed is awesome. I love the new characters. I love the new story. I don’t dislike essentially anything major about Tears of the Kingdom.
But it feels like it loses around a point in my head and drops to a 9 out of 10 just because so much of it is also straight out of a game I already spent so much time playing.
With that said I am absolutely thrilled to see a Zelda game win game of the year from a major publication. It’s among my absolute favorite franchises of all time, hot take I know, and I am over the moon that the series is still going so strong after a period where are the series seemed like it had lost its footing a little bit.
ToTK deserves it. BG3 also deserves it. I figured BG3 would win everything–it *deserves* to win everything–but I’m not mad about Zelda taking an award in the slightest. Great year, toughest competition we’ve seen in a decade, perhaps ever. Congrats to all these studios who have bucked the trend of shitty, souless, fly-by-night titles that take your money and run, leaving you with a pile of shit. Thank all of you for staying true to your love of games.
Not COD smh IGN really has lost their way
I can’t wait until enough time has passed and we can all be honest about TOTK (and BOTW for that matter). They are the two most overrated games I’ve ever seen. Truly. I feel like I’m living in the twilight zone or something.
People say the graphics are gorgeous: I think they look downright terrible, particularly the environments
People say the exploration is incredible: I think it’s fine but you’re not rewarded properly for anything
People say the story is amazing: I thought the story in BOTW was just okay, and the story in TOTK was awful
People say TOTK fixes BOTW’s problems: I felt it doubled down on them
People say the dungeons are fixed in TOTK: I found them terrible and not much better then BOTW
I think it just frustrates me because these new Zelda games cost us a gameplay formula I very much loved. Zelda was my favourite game series of all time, and now it’s turned into something unrecognisable. I just miss Zelda man.
I wasnt ready for TOTK when it came out – it wasn’t, design-wise, what I hoped it’d be – but now that some time has passed I’ve warmed up the the idea of what they made and am excited to check it out. Will probably pick it up at the end of the year and finally give it a real spin. I played BOTW now nearly 4 years ago, so I think my memory of the map will have somewhat faded, which seems like a good vibe for coming back in.
ToTK is also my personal 2023 GOTY.
To be honest, TOTK gets mad props from me just for the fact that, despite having incredibly complex mechanics, it never broke once on me. Never crashed, never had wonky physics (which feels like a miracle after many hours I spent in Garry’s Mod years back), and it’s all running on a slightly modified mobile chipset from 2015. Ultrahand blows my mind. Recall blows my mind. Fuse blows my mind (from a QA perspective). Being able to jump from a sky island and dive all the way down into the depths with no loading screen is incredible. The fact that the game has all this extra stuff going on yet still runs overall slightly better (in my experience) than BOTW is incredible.
That being said, my game of the year is Pikmin 4