Players’ Choice: Hades voted August 2021’s best new game

Congratulations, Supergiant! Hades, the underworld escape hack-and-slasher from the creators of Transistor, Bastion, and Pyre, garnered the three-headed guard dog of the underworld’s share of votes in August’s Players’ Choice poll, securing it the title of Best New Game for the month.

Your runners up for August were Psychonauts 2, Aliens: Fireteam Elite, and Axiom Verge 2 — all worthy entries in their own right!

Thanks for voting, and we’ll see you next month. For now, feel free to drop your September predictions in the comments!

Salutations! We have officially opened the polls for the month of August 2021, which means it is now your sacred duty to click the little button next to the game you think most deserves the title of Players’ Choice. You’ve got plenty to choose from this month — the three highlighted in the image above, plus Madden 22, Fracked, Hunter’s Arena: Legends, I Expect You To Die 2, Recompile, and more.

We’ll keep the polls open until Sunday at 11:59pm Pacific, so finish your deliberations and cast your vote before then. Once you do, don’t be afraid to tell us why your chosen game deserves to be this month’s champion. See you in the comments!

How does it work? At the end of every month, PlayStation.Blog will open a poll where you can vote for the best new game released that month. Soon thereafter, we’ll close the polls, tally your votes, and announce the winner at PlayStation.Blog. PlayStation Store will also showcase some top Players’ Choice winners throughout the year.

What is the voting criteria? That’s up to you! If you were only able to recommend one new release to a friend that month, which would it be? In keeping with our long tradition in the Game of the Year Awards, remastered or re-released games won’t qualify. Ambitious, larger-scale rebuilds and remakes like Shadow of the Colossus and Crash Bandicoot N. Sane Trilogy will.

How are nominees decided? The PlayStation.Blog and PlayStation Store editorial teams will gather a list of that month’s most noteworthy releases and use it to seed the poll. Write-in votes will be accepted.