Japanese developers pick The Last of Us as Game of the Year

Japan's 4Gamer.net polled 151 Japanese game developers on the games of 2013, and the results are interesting. DualSHOCKERS has collated all the responses the site received into a handy list, revealing that Naughty Dog's The Last of Us was the most praised game, with 14 Japanese creators citing it in response to the question "Which game released in 2014 did you most admire, or which shocked you the most?" There was a tie for second place -- Grand Theft Auto V and Dragon's Crown each got 12 mentions. Third place goes to Final Fantasy XIV: A Realm Reborn, the completely redeveloped and relaunched version of Square Enix's flagship MMO, at 11. The list of respondents includes industry luminaries such as former Capcom R&D head and Mega Man and Onimusha creator Keiji Inafune, No More Heroes visionary Goichi "SUDA51" Suda, Bayonetta and Wonderful 101 director Hideki Kamiya, Puzzle & Dragons house GungHo Online Entertainment CEO Kazuki Morishita, and Ico and Shadow of the Colossus director Fumito Ueda. 4Gamer has posted the full comments of each and every of the 151 respondents. The responses are often true to form: Inafune selected the cinematic The Last of Us, which follows in the footsteps of Capcom's work; Suda called out Dennaton's violent and stylish Hotline Miami; Notorious Sega fan Kamiya, meanwhile, put forward 3D AfterBurner II, a Nintendo 3DS port of the classic arcade game. Interestingly, Fumito Ueda eschewed console titles to choose iOS game Clumsy Ninja (soon after saying he's interested in making a touchscreen game). Morishita, meanwhile, chose Grand Theft Auto V -- some distance from his big success, Puzzle & Dragons. You can read the full aggregated list of selections at DualSHOCKERS. The full list of comments (in Japanese) can be found at 4Gamer.net.