Judging by Tears of the Kingdom's Metacritic score, it's an instant GOTY contender

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The Breath of the Wild sequel is already Metacritic's best game of 2023

The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom Zelda
(Image credit: Nintendo)

Sorry to all the other games releasing this year, but it looks like The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom is already a strong Game of the Year contender.

Ahead of Tears of the Kingdom's release on May 12, reviews went live for the game today - including our Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom review, where we gave it a glowing 4.5/5 score. We weren't the only ones to give the Breath of the Wild sequel a lot of praise, as it's currently sitting at the top of Metacritic's best games of 2023 list. 

Following the first of probably many reviews, Metacritic has given Tears of the Kingdom a Metascore of 96/100. To put that into perspective, the new Zelda game has overtaken other big hitters from this year such as Metroid Prime Remastered, Resident Evil 4 Remake, Dead Space Remake, and many more. 

In fact, Tears of the Kingdom has even managed to land fairly high up on Metacritic's best games of all time list. It's not as close to the top as it is on the other list; it's got to compete with the likes of GTA 5, Super Mario Galaxy, Red Dead Redemption 2, and Tony Hawk's Pro Skater 2 after all, but it does sit comfortably at number 28. 

It's not even the first Zelda game to appear in that list. It's also joined by Breath of the Wild slightly higher up at number 14 (Switch) and 26 (Wii U), and Ocarina of Time which takes the overall number 1 spot. 

It's not too late if you still want to pre-order The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom!

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Hope Bellingham
Hope Bellingham
News Writer

After studying Film Studies and Creative Writing at university, I was lucky enough to land a job as an intern at Player Two PR where I helped to release a number of indie titles. I then got even luckier when I became a Trainee News Writer at GamesRadar+ before being promoted to a fully-fledged News Writer after a year and a half of training.  My expertise lies in Animal Crossing: New Horizons, cozy indies, and The Last of Us, but especially in the Kingdom Hearts series. I'm also known to write about the odd Korean drama for the Entertainment team every now and then.  

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