The Gamer Malaya And Gamer Matters Game Of The Year Awards 2021

As 2021 comes to a close, it’s time for us to look back at the year in gaming that is 2021. Despite still being a rough year for everyone, good video games still came out to give back some much-needed enjoyment and escapism in our life.

The Gamer Malaya and Gamer Matters GOTY Awards, representing the collective of us at Gamer Matters and our Bahasa Malaysia sister site Gamer Malaya, continues the tradition of celebrating the best of video games, and appreciating the game developers that have provided us joy throughout the year.

(Except for one award, where we go through some of the worst games of the year, and why it sucks, with a view that the mistakes made here are lessons learned for everyone.)

Though this is technically the second year we enter the next-gen console era that is the PS5 and Xbox Series X|S, global supply chain issues remained leaving only select folks having access to buy the new consoles, as well as new graphics cards for PC players.

As such, this 5th running of GM GOTY Awards does not have much representation for next-gen only titles, in particular PS5 games, as we still currently have no means to play them.

And us being a smaller-scale games media outlet, with the panel of the GOTY Awards deliberations consisting of only three people, our list of award winners does not reflect the overall best games of 2021 objectively– but the best games of 2021 in our book. It’s our list, we have our personal biases and preferences that may not line up with other outlets, or that other big game award everyone is watching.

With that, you can expect an interesting list of games being shortlisted, nominated, and winning these awards that may or may not be on your radar before.

As usual, our deliberation process is part of dia.log – The Gamer Matters Podcast. How we decided to agree on a winner are all recorded for those curious how we select our winners. We will update this post when the two-part episodes are live.

For 2021, here is the list of awards we will be giving out. Check back later as we update the list with the winners and dedicated posts for each.

• Best Remake/Remaster
• Best Meme Generator
• Best Game We Didn’t Play
• Best Racing Game
• Best Aesthetic
• Best Story
• Best Indie
• The Trashfire Award
• Gamer Malaya And Gamer Matters’ Game Of The Year, Top 10 Games Of 2021

And here are our list of the top 30 games of 2021, in alphabetical order:

• Chivalry 2
• Deathloop
• Far Cry 6
• Fatal Frame: Maiden of Black Water
• The Forgotten City
• Forza Horizon 5
• Guilty Gear Strive
• Halo Infinite
• Hitman 3
• Hot Wheels Unleashed
• Humankind
• Lost Judgment
• Marvel’s Guardians Of The Galaxy
• Mass Effect Legendary Edition
• Melty Blood Type Lumina
• Nier Replicant ver.1.22474487139…
• Old World
• Outriders
• Psychonauts 2
• Quake (2021 Remaster)
• Ratchet & Clank Rift Apart
• Resident Evil Village
• Road 96
• Samurai Warriors 5
• Scarlet Nexus
• Shin Megami Tensei V
• Tales Of Arise
• Unpacking
• Valheim (Early Access)
• Wildermyth