In a stunning debut, Black Myth: Wukong from Chinese developer Game Science came out of nowhere to become one of the year's best-selling games. Considering it's a single-player outing, a new IP, and Game Science's first console title, it's especially impressive. In recognition of these achievements and more, Black Myth: Wukong has been declared Golden Joystick Ultimate Game of the Year, kicking off the awards season in suitably compelling style.
If you didn't know, The Golden Joysticks are a GamesRadar+ joint these days, an outlet we frequently cite here. It's actually the second oldest award show in the industry, after the Arcade Awards, and began way back in 1983, before many gamers were even born. While perhaps not as glitzy as Geoff Keighley's The Game Awards, they don't allow DLC to contend for Game of the Year, which is a pretty compelling differential in our opinion.
For the last two years, both The Game Awards and The Golden Joysticks have declared the same GotY winners, Elden Ring in 2022 and Baldur's Gate 3 in 2023. We wanted to try to draw a connection between the two, predicting the TGA winner by which way the earlier Golden Joysticks go. As Keighley and company seem quite intent on giving GotY to Shadow of the Erdtree, it remains to be seen if this bold theorem is proven true.