Bungie has given us a fun and dynamic console experience.

Destiny

We love Destiny. Finding rare gear, upgrading talents, Public Events with strangers, dancing in the Tower. It blends an FPS and RPG as expertly as we could reasonably expect. It fills a niche in gaming we've always wanted. We forget how easily Destiny could simply not exist – but we're very glad it's real.

Individually, we've spent hundreds of hours acquiring new Exotics to laugh gleefully at their effects. Collectively, we've spent thousands of hours stomping the Fallen and fellow Guardians. When we're not playing Destiny, we're talking about it: our favorite Subclass, gear we're hoping to get, trash-talking the Cryptarch, or linking each other to items on DestinyDB (our Destiny site).

To be fair, we have the same gripes as other Guardians: no Faction Reputation in the menus, no Grimoire cards in-game, poor story presentation, an empty world, and questionable decisions about upgrading gear. Broadly-speaking, there's plenty of improve on. Critics see this and say Destiny is "good, not great" – narrowly escaping a yellow-backed 74 on Metacritic with a 75 and 76 (XB1, PS4).

Looking at the weak spots, it's easy to miss how much Bungie gets so completely right. The music. The atmosphere. The attachment we build with our favorite weapons. Deep, compelling lore in the Grimoire. Overall class design working well in PvE and PvP.

Even among all the "passionate" negative feedback, it's clear that people care. Destiny's core is strong enough that its harshest critics still want to keep playing. We acknowledge there are major issues at play; the very questionable presentation of the main story is a clear one. That hasn't stopped us from thoroughly-enjoying the game overall and expecting great things in its future.

At the end of the day, here's what matters: we're having a ton of fun. And isn't that the whole point? It's simple why Destiny wins Console Game of the Year: no other title convinced several of us to buy a current-gen console...and be totally satisfied three months later.

Runner-up