10 Early Contenders For Game Of The Year 2016

6. Pokémon GO

Possibly a controversial choice, but you can't deny the sheer impact and success of Pokémon GO, as for as much as we can sit back and complain about how little Niantic have done with the game since launch, have you ever seen the world react to a game quite like this?

Popularity by no means equals objective quality, but Pokémon GO had within it a simple set of effective mechanics that allowed millions of people to rekindle their 'original 150'-loving youth, or try an entirely different form of Poké-hunting altogether. Irrespective of its cultural zeitgeist, Pokémon GO is a solid video game, turning the pursuit of virtual pocket monsters into something you can actually do in the real world.

Its mechanics are relatively self-explanatory (save for some things it forgets to tell you) as you just need to flick a finger to catch said Pokémon, but there's something so indescribably enjoyable about combining geocaching to populate our own world with creatures of varying rarities, and the social mechanics that inevitably emerge from that.

People have organised entire evenings around hunting Pokémon, struck up conversations with total strangers, stampeded across local parks because a random player yells the word, "Charizard!". PoGo (as it's affectionately named) may need more depth to survive the long-term, but I think you'll be hard-pressed to find one single title that dominated the mainstream populace with so many positive things to say, quite like Pokémon GO.