In a year packed with plenty of top game releases, Helldivers 2 has won the Golden Joystick Awards’ Critics’ Choice Award for 2024.

While the players decide many of the show’s award winners, this prize has been decided by veteran journalists from GamesRadar+, PCGamer, Edge, Retro Gamer, The Future Game Show, and Future’s trusted network of freelance writers. There’s no shortage of excellent candidates this year, but the lure of spreading managed democracy has proven too great.

Our Helldivers 2 review gives the prize winner a four-star rating, calling it “astonishing to behold” and “a fiercely challenging and visually breathtaking cooperative shooter where failure is funny and success feels magnificent.” The judging panel clearly shares this sentiment, with Helldivers 2 winning out in a year packed with great releases.

The third-person squad-based shooter has you enlisting to join the titular Helldivers to turn the tide of an intergalactic war as Earth struggles to rid the galaxy of rising robotic and alien threats. To play your part, you must aid fellow divers in completing major orders often involving plenty of squashing bugs and spilling oil.

Alongside some biting satire, what makes Helldivers 2 special is that you shape the ongoing narrative. Success or failure dictates where the overall story heads next. Over the year, we’ve seen players finally take the infamous Malevelon Creek and aid in completing a space station that we’re not totally sure is friend or foe – more on that as we have it.