Metacritic has become a go-to website for gamers over recent years, giving those looking for the best games to play a place to find all the reviews and an aggregate score quickly. Metacritic also hosts a sizable forum of fans that enjoy sharing their own opinion, and the community recently voted in a poll for 2020’s Game of the Year.
In an interesting turn of events, The Last of Us 2 took home the title of Metacritic’s Game of the Year winner. While this would normally not be surprising, as the sequel dominated at The Game Awards and racked in hundreds of other achievements, this specific accomplishment is an ironic twist of fate. With The Last of Us 2 being review bombed upon its release last year, leading to a noticeably low metascore, seeing it bring home the website’s Game of the Year title is something that few could have predicted.
Perhaps an example of Metacritic’s anti-review bombing changes in action, those targeting the game for illegitimate reasons seem to have been weeded out — though it is possible that the people bashing the game have simply moved on from the topic. Regardless, The Last of Us 2 winning a fan-voted award on Metacritic is quite different from what was happening last year, and the game beat out some strong competition to acquire yet another Game of the Year award.
Despite the heavy competition that the latest Naughty Dog game was up against, it managed to win the Metacritic poll in a landslide. Amassing over 10,000 votes, nothing came close to The Last of Us 2, as its closest competition was the wildly popular Ghost of Tsushima at merely 2,079 nominations. Cyberpunk 2077 followed with 1,691, and Hades came in at fourth place with 1,510 votes from fans. Doom Eternal rounded out the list with just over 1,000, making The Last of Us 2 ten times more popular with gamers on the review site.
A technical masterpiece that is divisive only because of its character choices and story beats, it is hard to argue against The Last of Us 2’s latest Game of the Year win. At the same time, it is odd to see the fan response change so heavily, becoming the complete opposite of what it was less than a year ago. Perhaps caused by a combination of players coming to appreciate The Last of Us 2’s narrative as well as more toxic voices moving on from discussions of the game, this Metacritic win is certainly a major victory for fans of the sequel.
With the original The Last of Us game winning Metacritic’s Game of the Decade early last year, the series has captured some of the website’s biggest awards despite the controversy. Further, based on this latest achievement, The Last of Us 2 may not be quite as divisive as it seems.
The Last of Us 2 is available now on PS4.