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Continuing the trend begun last year, I wanted to model some Game of the Year awards through categories in addition to simply ranking my personal favorites. Between now and the dawn of 2022, I'll be updating this page regularly with new entries for each category, so make sure to check in and see what titles win which awards.

The Categories

• Best Old Game
• Best Streaming Game
• Best Music
• Best Style
• Best Multiplayer
• Best Story
• Best Game

For each of these categories, I'll choose a winner and mention some notable runner-ups. Any game nominated or chosen for any of these cateories is then eligible for the final category, Best Game, which is the culminating category where I will construct a ranked list of my favorite games from this year.

MOBAs are a game genre that have almost everything working against them. at least on paper. They’re highly competitive and demanding multiplayer games where every player’s performance and abilities matter in determining the outcome of a match. Match lengths are pretty long, too, and if anyone rage-quits, the momentum of a match swings hard in favor of the team with more players.

All of these problems are exacerbated on mobile, where people are used to short play sessions in games they can drop in and out of. This is probably the reason why the turnover of games in this genre is so high on smaller screens. With the release of League of Legends: Wild Rift, we took a look on the App Store to find the best MOBAs that still have active communities. Check out our picks below.

I’ll be honest here: I’m not a huge fan of conventional tower defense games. I almost always need a twist of some kind on the basic gameplay of building defensive structures and managing an economy of resources to fend off stronger and stronger enemies. Otherwise, games too often feel a little too sterile or straightforward.

This is to say that this list features only one game that most folks would unquestionably call a tower defense game. The rest are more like titles that borrow concepts and mechanics of the tower defense genre and use them to creative effect. With that in mind, check out the list below:

Kingdom Rush Vengeance TD ($4.99)

This is the conventional pick. Ironhide Studio has been consistently raising the bar on tower defense games for years, with Kingdom Rush Vengeance being their latest and most successful attempt. In it, you take control of the baddies from all the previous Kingdom Rush games to get your due against the knights and heroes that have done you wrong for so long.

Action games are a hard sell on mobile, and they get even harder if the more precision they require. Stealth games are one such subgenre that just doesn’t feel like it could work well on small touchscreens where you’re prone to being distracted or mistapping by accident.

And yet, that hasn’t stopped plenty of developers of rising to the challenge to make some great stealth action games to enjoy on iOS. Here are our five favorites below, along with links to reviews so you can learn more about them.

Divinity - Original Sin 2 has hit the App Store, promising an uncompromised rpg experience on mobile. In order to play it though, the system requirements are pretty demanding and there are some quirks about the game in its launch state that make it far from accessible.

With that in mind, here’s a list of fantastic games that can deliver much of what Original Sin 2 promises, but without asking you to clear out enough device storage or ponder outright buying a brand new tablet. As a bonus, you could purchase all of these games for just under the asking price of Original Sin 2. Read on below to hear about our picks!

The release of Returnal has caused me to revisit this list of the best run-based games on mobile. For the most part, run-based games are really great for mobile, because they provide a lot of depth and satisfying gameplay in a relatively bite-sized package that’s purposely designed for you to play over and over and over again.

Although you might not be able to play Returnal on your phone or tablet (nor would you want to), there are still a bunch of great run-based games on iOS to play. Check out our picks for the best run-based games below:

Ports or coversions of games from one platform to another can be quite tricky. This is especially true when porting games to phones and tablets, as these titles have to be designed with workable touch controls and account for smaller screen sizes.

It’s rare these days for a console or PC game to grace the App Store in a totally unplayable state, but it can be hard to find games that make their transition to mobile look easy. It’s even rarer when a mobile port comes out and it’s just so dang slick it feels better than it did on its original platform, but these games exist. Here are five of them:

Every year, I always honor my favorite mobile games by highlighting some of my favorites. For this year, I'd like to try to do more than just say "hey, these games are fun." So, with some inspiration from other Game of the Year honors from around the web, I've assembled a few categories of video game honorifics to bestow on the mobile games that most deserve it.

In the coming days, be sure to check in to see nominees and winners picked from this list as we count down the final days of the horrid year known as 2020.

With new consoles coming out soon, it's inevitable for folks to want to look back and determine what were the best games that came out across the current console's lifecycle. This process is commonly referred to as picking the best games of the generation, but that terminology is making less and less sense as the games industry expands beyond console hardware and the systems themselves see half-step upgrades.

As silly as it may be as an exercise, I thought it would be fun to go back and look at "this generation" of mobile titles and pick and rank the ten best. In terms of time period, this takes us back to November 2013, which is actually interesting timing for mobile games. It's a world where Flappy Bird already released but hadn't yet become a cultural phenomenon, and the latest and greatest iPhone was the 5S.

Anyway, enough preambling, let's get to the list. See below for the best mobile games of the generation:

Genshin Impact is easily the most ambitious game to hit mobile devices to date, and we’re over here loving every second we can spend with the game. There are a few things about it that aren’t ideal though, so it’s entirely understandable why someone might walk away from it disappointed.

In light of that, we decided to put together a list of mobile games that are somewhat like Genshin Impact just in case you were looking for an alternative to play for the time-being. Check out our picks below. You can find our other game recommendation lists here.

Supergiant Games finally released Hades upon the world this week, and we’re loving it. The game plays to all of the studio’s strengths while still retaining a strong sense of identity. It also just so happens to play rather well using the Steam Link.

If you don’t have Hades, a PC or console that can run it, or perhaps have already blazed through it, try these mobile games that can give you some of the great blend of style and action that makes Supergiant’s latest so good.

This is part 2 of our Apple Arcade rankings. Quick navigation to other parts:

1-25 | 26-50 | 51-75 | 76-100 | 101-125 | 126-150 | 151-175 | 176-200 | 201+

26. Kingdom Rush Frontiers+

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Description:

Ironhide Game Studio has brought one of their acclaimed tower-defense games to Apple Arcade with Kingdom Rush Frontiers+. Your goal is simple, protect a goal point by building towers stationed by archers, wizards, warriors, and more as waves of increasingly challenging and complicated enemies get thrown at you.

Rank Explanation:

The Kingdom Rush games are untouchably good tower defense games. I can't think of another franchise that even approaches the same level of quality and polish as these ones. That said, I think Frontiers is a relatively weak pick from their lineup to throw onto Arcade. It's great, but it's no Vengeance, so basically on par with a lot of Apple Arcade decision-making.

Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater 1+2 dropped last week, meaning you can get remastered versions of two of the most iconic “sports” games ever made and experience some of the highest watermarks set in games of generations’ past.

There aren’t many new games like the Tony Hawk titles these days, and even attempts to re-capture the magic of earlier games in the series tend to go awry. That said, if you do want somewhat fresh and mobile takes on arcade, trick-based gameplay, here are our top picks.

Touch screens and action-oriented gameplay don't typically mix, but over the course of pondering the best platformers on mobile, I found myself having a really hard time picking just five. Quite a few developers have found really creative ways to make games that require quick reflexes and precision feel perfectly enjoyable on your phone or tablet.

Check out our top picks for platformers on iOS, which cover the range of one-handed, streamlined experiences to titles more typical of the console platfomer experience. If you're looking for some other great mobile games to play, click here to check out all the other top lists we've been making lately.

The Last of Us Part II is set to come out this week, but review scores have already been rolling in to pump up excitement for the latest entry in Naughty Dog’s expensive-looking apocalyptic survival horror series. Generally speaking, the game has already received near universal praise for its technical prowess, it’s a little less clear whether its story and tone will be as successful.

Some of this is due to the review embargo Naughty Dog has put in place around The Last of Us Part II, which has restricted critics from writing about the game in its entirety. Outside of that, there has been also heavy discussion among writers about how the game’s tone feels overly brutal and needlessly bleak, particularly since these aspects are seemingly being used in order to raise the same tired questions about player agency and violence that have been explored repeatedly in over a decade’s worth of “prestige” games.