Quality contenders
When it comes time to pick Game of the Year, there’s one thing and just one thing that you look for: Quality. If it’s good, like cream-of-the-crop good, it belongs in the conversation. Brevity is not a strong suit of this year’s PC list.
That is to say, there were a lot of good games that came to PC in 2016. We have 17 titles that we believed deserved consideration for PC Game of the Year. Of those, five of them (five!!) were scored perfect tens (including The Witness, the second ten I’ve ever given). The competition’s bound to be stronger as the term “console exclusive” becomes ever-closer to extinct, at least within the PlayStation and Xbox families.
On the bright side, the nominee stage is relatively easy. Err on the side of including it and let the whole staff sort it out. It’s the sorting that’s tough, choosing just one game while staring at so many that rightfully deserve the award. We’ll cross that bridge when we get there.
Here are the nominees for Destructoid’s Best PC Game of 2016:
- Battlefield 1
- Devil Daggers
- Doom
- Epistory: Typing Chronicles
- Firewatch
- Hyper Light Drifter
- Inside
- King’s Quest
- Overwatch
- Owlboy
- Stardew Valley
- Stephen’s Sausage Roll
- Superhot
- The Witness
- World of Warcraft: Legion
- XCOM 2
[Incomplete products like Steam Early Access titles, and episodic titles that are not fair to assess as standalone experiences, without a full episode count, were not eligible for this year’s awards. The cutoff for entry into Destructoid’s 2016’s Game of the Year awards is December 6, 2016.]