The Game Awards 2025 nominations dropped this week, and holy moly, the gaming community's having a meltdown! As I'm scrolling through social media, the outrage is palpable – Shadow of the Erdtree's DLC nomination has folks seeing red, while cult favorites like Helldivers 2 got totally ghosted. But the real head-scratcher? Black Myth: Wukong becoming the lowest-rated GOTY nominee in TGA history with its 81 Metacritic score. Talk about a plot twist nobody saw coming! This Chinese action RPG smashed sales records when it launched, but now it's caught in a perfect storm of acclaim and criticism.

Let's break it down cold turkey: every previous TGA nominee cleared at least 82 on Metacritic. Control and A Plague Tale: Requiem barely scraped that benchmark, yet here's Wukong dipping below that threshold. Meanwhile, these heavy hitters got snubbed hard:

Game	Metacritic Score	Why It Hurts
Like A Dragon	89	Franchise peak ignored again
Silent Hill 2 Remake	88	Masterful horror revival
Helldivers 2	87	Cultural phenomenon

Honestly, I've gotta call a spade a spade – this nomination feels like it's riding purely on commercial clout. When Wukong dropped last year, it broke the damn internet:

• Steam records vaporized overnight

• 1 exabyte of data traffic in China alone

• Physical editions selling like hotcakes

But let's not kid ourselves: sales ≠ quality. If that were true, we'd be handing GOTY to mobile gacha games every year! My review acknowledged Wukong's stunning boss fights and lore depth, but the invisible walls and Pagoda Realm design had me wanting to throw my controller.

The irony's thicker than pea soup here. While Wukong gets the nod, its own upcoming DLC (early 2025!) might actually fix the combat jank that critics roasted. And get this – Chinese landmarks are offering free entry to players who beat the game! That's some next-level cultural impact we've never seen before. But at the end of the day, TGA's credibility takes a hit when higher-rated games get sidelined for what's essentially a popularity contest.

What really grinds my gears? This nomination proves gaming's become Hollywood 2.0 – it's the Barbie movie scenario all over again, where crowd-pleasing spectacle overshadows artistic merit. Don't get me wrong, fighting Erlang Shen with his 73 transformations was lit AF, but is that really GOTY material compared to narrative masterpieces that got snubbed?

So here's the million-dollar question: Has The Game Awards become more about celebrating commercial behemoths than actual game design excellence?