Now that the end of the year is here, everyone is starting to declare their "game of the year"—and Metacritic has now thrown its hat into the ring.

No big upsets here: the Spike VGX named Rockstar's Grand Theft Auto V their game of 2013. Other nominees were not named Grand Theft Auto.

Though Speak Up on Kotaku became one with the Force back around September, the reader-voted GOTYs it spawned lived on in the second annual Speakys, which longtime reader GiantBoyDetective organized this year again.

The staff of Kotaku nominated nine games for 2012 Game of the Year. One game, XCOM: Enemy Unknown, blew the competition away.

The votes are in, and you have spoken. The second annual Speakys, the Kotaku community-voted awards organized by GiantBoyDetective, have named their individual category winners. From here, the category winners will be faced off in a vote to determine the Speakys' overall game of the year.

April 16, 2015
Location: Sapporo, Japan
Operation: Extraterrestrial Terrorism Response
Codename: Lost Spark
Mission Parameters: Failure will result in the immediate loss of resources and support from Japan. This would deal a devastating blow to the XCOM project.
Project Goal: Save the Earth, and all who call it home.

Earlier today, our own Luke Plunkett nominated Crusader Kings II for Kotaku 2012 game of the year, writing that it's "the only game on this list that's about sex and politics."

It's easy. Because it's the only game on this list that's about sex and politics.

The first time I played Journey, I thought, "Okay."

Papo & Yo did something that too few games manage to do: it let me step into the life of another, actual-living-breathing person. And once I did that, I played through an experience that showed me how that person got through a painful relationship and was left with a lesson that I too could pick and use if I needed…

On the surface, Spelunky is a roguelike platformer where you become like Indiana Jones, going farther and farther inside ancient caves holding untold riches and perhaps even lost civilizations. You have some rope, some bombs, a whip and whatever else you find along the way. It's a difficult game, and you will die a…

The Walking Dead is lovely in the most horrifying ways.

To describe why Zero Escape: Virtue's Last Reward was my favorite game of 2012 is to describe why I fell in love with games in the first place.

Speak Up on Kotaku may be no more, but its legacy lives on in The 2012 Speakys, organized by and voted on by our readers.