As we approach the end of the year, various game awards ceremonies happen around the world, and the most-awaited games industry awards night, The Game Awards, is steadily approaching. Recently, The Game Awards host, Geoff Keighley, announced the nominees of each category for this year’s game awards. While it’s not entirely a huge surprise, Sony Interactive Entertainment has been through the roof with its first-party games throughout 2018.

Earlier this year, Santa Monica Studios’ soft-reboot of their popular hack n’ slash Greek mythology franchise, God Of War, launched. Critics praised its narrative approach and game design decision. They moved on from the classic mechanics to a more closer, action-packed open-world adventure. This big change to the franchise brings the first-party studio to new heights, thus opening tons of possibilities to God of War‘s lore.

It was then followed by Quantic Dream’s newest IP that tackles on discrimination and slavery among androids. David Cage’s reputation did make people and the games media doubt Detroit: Become Human‘s success after Beyond: Two Soul’s mixed critical reception. The game was well-received by critics.

Fortunately, while not perfect, Detroit: Become Human impressed a lot of people with its significant improvement from Beyond, a story that people can connect with especially the game’s characters like Connor, Markus, and Kara due to their great voice-acting.

Now comes our friendly neighborhood web-slinging hero that just got a new studio to develop his game. Insomniac Games, you may know them for their Ratchet & Clank games and its critically successful Resistance franchise. They were chosen to bring Marvel’s Spider-Man back into the scene and they did tremendously amazing. Insomniac’s Marvel’s Spider-Man was the Spider-Man game we were waiting for in years.

The studio fixed a lot of the issues its predecessors had, one of which is web-swinging mechanics throughout New York. They improved the physics and Spidey’s abilities. But it’s not just that, the ‘amazing’ soundtrack composed by John Paesano perfectly captures the game’s narrative direction and its intense moments.

These great PlayStation exclusives were also supported by its comrades in the virtual reality to immerse people with decent gameplay and fun moments. You get to control a cute little robot hero in Astro Bot Rescue Mission (remember those Playroom moments?), duck and cover in intense gunplay with Firewall Zero Hour, and experience a way to play tetris in Tetris Effect.

Throughout the year, The Game Awards 2018 shows how well Sony’s games are performing. God of War and Marvel’s Spider-Man got nominated for Best Game Direction, Best Narrative, Best Art Direction, Best Score/Music, Best Audio Design, Best Performance, Best Action/Adventure Game, and, the biggest category Game of the Year.

Detroit: Become Human is also nominated for Best Game Direction, Best Performance, and Best Narrative. Then Astro Bot Rescue Mission, Firewall Zero Hour, and Tetris Effect are competing for Best VR/AR Game.

That’s 9 categories in The Game Awards and it’s a fact that this is another year for Sony to grab.

The Game Awards 2018 ceremony will be livestreamed on December 6, 2018, at 5:30PM Pacific Time / 8:30PM Easter Time / 9:30AM Singapore Time (December 7).