Now in its 39th year, the Golden Joystick is the second oldest video game awards show in the world, and decides its winners by accepting votes from the public.
For the first time ever, the awards ceremony was conducted entirely digitally, forgoing its usual London venues for an almost completely 3D-rendered show hosted by Uncharted voice actors Nolan North and Emily Rose.
The ceremony also added two entirely new award categories, Ultimate Game of All Time and Ultimate Hardware of All Time, in honor of the 50th anniversary of the release of the first console game.
The award for the Ultimate Game of All Time went to Dark Souls, the first game in an Action RPG series so renowned for its unforgiving difficulty and enrapturing gameplay, it spawned a whole genre named after it known as the Soulslike genre.
It beat out the original release of the infamous 3D first person shooter DOOM by a single percentage point to receive its award.
Wouter van Vugt, head of PR at Bandai Namco, was “incredibly humbled” to receive the “prestigious award” on behalf of game designer Hidetaka Miyazaki and his team, who were unavailable to attend due to their ongoing work on the upcoming game Elden Ring.
Such is the legacy of the Souls series that Dark Souls III is currently the 70th most played game on Steam, easily overcoming giants like Among Us and Skyrim, and almost 600 Steam games have been tagged under the Soulslike genre.
As for the rest of the awards ceremony, Resident Evil: Village polled massively favorably, winning not only its first Game of the Year award, but also its nominations for Playstation Game of the Year, Best Audio, and Best Performer for Maggie Robertson’s portrayal of Lady Dimitrescu.
Capcom producer Tsuyoshi Kanda said of the Game of the Year award that it was “an even more amazing achievement when you consider that a lot of game development has been impacted by local lockdowns and a shift towards remote work.”
Popular MMO Final Fantasy XIV also lived up to its successes, taking home both the Best Game Community award and the Still Playing award, even in its eighth consecutive year of existence.
You can find a full list of awards and award winners on the gamesradar website.