Critical Hit Game Awards 2020 – Best ongoing game

It used to be that you’d buy a game, play it once, and put it away for another rainy day when you were bored. These days though? Video games are a timesink, lengthy campaigns that last far beyond launch week. In an age where many a developer wants a single game to provide months if not years of live service content that continues to bring in revenue, only a few games really prove to be worth the time and investment that the crowded genre demands.

We’ve seen developers go for broke by hopping on the bandwagon, ambitious offerings that couldn’t find an audience, and titans rise over the years. Right now though? There can only be one winner, one game that brought us back again and again for more of its unique style and action. Before we reveal which game continued to be well worth its price of admission, here’s a look at some honourable mentions:

Fortnite: Battle Royale

Apex Legends

Destiny 2

Red Dead Online

No Man’s Sky

Call of Duty: Warzone

And the winner is…not Marvel’s Avengers

Sorry Crystal Dynamics, better luck next year.

And the real winner is…Borderlands 3

One of the best games of 2019 is still an absolutely joyous blast of fun in 2020. Gearbox didn’t just deliver a superb sandbox and multiple planets to explore last year, it created a game that was designed to be enjoyed again and again across multiple sessions, characters, and consoles. The beauty of Borderlands 3, is how it added value to its product.

The quartet of DLC campaigns were chunky romps across new worlds, building on the lore of the series and adding new twists to familiar gameplay, while other events and modes were sprinkled across the delicious serving of mayhem and guns. Maliwan Takedown, Bloody Harvest, and Revenge of the Cartels were all fun additions, that all arrived at the right time.

Where Borderlands 3 truly succeeded though, was the frequency in which it offered new content. While most ongoing games require constant grinding to get any value out of them, Borderlands 3 stuck to its guns and hopped back into the spotlight when it was ready to do so. It never outstayed its welcome, you could vanish for a month without feeling like you’d missed out on anything groundbreaking, and there was always something fun to do when you returned.

And that’s what makes a great ongoing game. Video games are escapist fare, they are hobbies. But when they begin to feel like chores and endless grinds? That’s when they become unfun exercises in tedium. Something which Borderlands 3 easily side-stepped with an eye on quality over quantity.

Last Updated: December 2, 2020