Voting opens for the Golden Joystick Game of the Year 2019 Award

The boat has sailed on the chance to vote on individual categories for this year's Golden Joystick Awards, but today you can have your say on the big one: the prestigious Game Of The Year 2019 award. The winner will be announced at the Golden Joysticks award ceremony, livestreamed on November 15th.

The games to pick from are:

Apex Legends (EA / Respawn Entertainment)
Call of Duty: Modern Warfare (Activision Blizzard / Infinity Ward)
Control (505 Games / Remedy Entertainment)
Disco Elysium (Studio ZA/UM / Studio ZA/UM)
Fire Emblem: Three Houses (Nintendo / Intelligent Systems)
Gears 5 (Xbox Game Studios / The Coalition)
Outer Wilds (Annapurna Interactive / Mobius Digital)
Resident Evil 2 (Capcom / Capcom)
Sekiro: Shadows Die Twice (Activision / FromSoftware)
Telling Lies (Annapurna Interactive / Furious Bee)
The Outer Worlds (Private Division / Obsidian Entertainment)
Untitled Goose Game (House House / Panic Inc.)

You can cast your vote over on the Golden Joysticks page here.

While I wouldn't presume to shape your opinion, my personal picks from the list have to be Disco Elysium (for turning the RPG genre on its head—see Andy Kelly's review here) and Sekiro (for being the best ninja game I've played in years—which Tom Senior similarly praised), with respectful nods to Control and Untitled Goose Game. I also can't help but smile at both Outer Wilds and The Outer Worlds making it onto the same list, which will undoubtedly lead to some confusion, but they both seem like lovely space adventures.

But the whole list is impressive, and doesn't even include a lot of my smaller favourite games of the past year. 2019 might have been a rough, depressing year in many regards, but at least the videogames have been top notch. It's also surprising that there's only four sequels or established franchises in the shortlist, and they all feel like returns to form.

Voting is open now, and the Golden Joysticks award ceremony will be streamed live on November 15th. Read more on their official page here. Voting closes on Friday, November 1st at 5pm GMT, so you've got time to squeeze it in after Halloween.

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The product of a wasted youth, wasted prime and getting into wasted middle age, Dominic Tarason is a freelance writer, occasional indie PR guy and professional techno-hermit seen in many strange corners of the internet and seldom in reality. Based deep in the Welsh hinterlands where no food delivery dares to go, videogames provide a gritty, realistic escape from the idyllic views and fresh country air. If you're looking for something new and potentially very weird to play, feel free to poke him on Bluesky. He's almost sociable, most of the time.