Nominees:
- Battlefield 3 - DICE (Frostbite 3)
- Cysis 2 - Crytek (CryEngine 3)
- The Witcher 2: Assassins of Kings - CD Project RED (RED Engine)
- Hard Reset - Flying Wild Hog (Road Hog Engine)
- Bulletstorm - People Can Fly (Unreal 3)
- Dead Space 2 - Visceral Games (Visceral Engine)
- Portal 2 - Valve (Source Engine)
- Dark Souls - From Software (PhyreEngine) (PS3)
- Uncharted 3: Drake's Deception (Naughty Dog Engine 3.0) (PS3)
- Trine 2 - FrozenByte (Don't know, but it's pretty)
- RAGE - id (idteach 5)
- The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim - Bethesda (Creation Engine)
Whoo, boy. This is going to be a big one. I'll get through it in as few a words as possible. We start with the honourable mentions, as so:
Portal 2 - for proving you can push an ageing engine to new and beautiful places. Sure, it won't win any beauty contests, but it's like that woman you ask out cause you think she's twenty, but turns out she's thirty five.
Bulletstorm - for finally providing a colour other than brown to the Unreal Engine. Aren't colours wonderful?
There's been some incredibly pretty games this year, starting with Crysis 2. Running on the mindbogglingly pretty CryEngine 3, further optimisations meant it didn't take Jesus's desktop to run it. Sadly, before the Dx11 patch, PC gamers felt wrong, justifiably. With very little in the way of customisation, Crysis 2 loses for being a dodgy port and pretending it isn't. Dead Space 2 is gorgeous, too, and runs unbelievably smoothly. I get 60fps consistent with all settings maxed. Special mention for the incredible lighting. The Road Hog engine of Hard Reset has incredible lighting, too. Incredible everything, really, but suffers from poor optimisation. Even at lower settings I struggled to get a consistent frame rate above 30fps, which really messes with the fast paced action. While Dark Souls might not be the prettiest game, it has a better sense of aesthetics than nearly every game on this list .Sadly, it's limited by the hardware and suffers from some pretty noticeable frame rate drops at times. Uncharted 3 is sadly limited by the hardware, too, though you'd be hard pressed to find a better looking game on the system. A special mention again for Naughty Dog's thorough attention to detail, right down to the tiny ripples and footprints in the sand, which has to be a pain to animate. Trine 2, as I've mentioned twice before, is achingly beautiful, with varied locations, and bustling backgrounds. Sadly, the character design is a little unvaried and underdetailed, but it is by far one of the best looking games this year, and from a little indie studio, too. RAGE looked to stun with it's idtech 5 engine, but suffered from shocking bugs on release, rendering multiple copies completely unplayable, even to this day. Also the MegaTexture tech causes atrocious pop in. However, it has some of the best character animations I'v ever seen in a game. Skyrim's Creation Engine provides the greatest looking Elder Scrolls to date, but sadly, it's focus on consoles means it's running in Direct X 9, of all things, with no Direct X 10 or 11 support announced as of yet. Plagued by painfully low res textures, Skyrim disappointed a bit on the graphics front. However, the modders have been hard at work making Bethesda's game into what it should have been had the artists been given the freedom they so desperately need. That leaves only two. And in second place, we have:
Battlefield 3 - I'm sorry BF3. The Frostbite engine is truly a work of art, but between the lens flares, the dust clouds, the smoke, and god knows what else, you don't give me really that much of a chance to enjoy it. Still, it runs well and it's all but bug free.
And that leaves only The Witcher 2, hands down the most beautiful game ever created. Combining incredible hand crafted technology, with a wonderful aesthetic, The Witcher 2 proved that sometimes if you want it done right, you have to do it yourself. Even running at it's lowest settings, The Witcher 2 outclasses almost every other game released this year. Bravo, CD Project RED, you sure made one damn Smexy game.
Sing The Song, Vern - the best soundtrack
Nominees:
- Bastion - Darren Korb
- Uncharted 3 - Greg Edmonson
- Skyrim - Jeremy Soule
- Dark Souls - Motoi Sakuraba
- Catherine - Shoji Meguro
- Legend of Zelda: Skyward Sword - Koji Kondo
- Portal 2 - Mike Morasky
- Witcher 2 - Adam Skorupa, Krzysztof Wierzynkiewicz
Every game mentioned on this list has a soundtrack so good I went out a bought a copy of it. Every one. Except Portal 2, which was released free. And Bastion, which I got a free download of through IGN Prime. I really, really struggled to pick a winner here, and I won't talk about each individually because nothing I say in words can match them, you have to listen for yourself. So I'll just say that I gave the award to Bastion, for weaving together music and game so well that if it had any other soundtrack, I believe the game would not work. If you can, find footage of Zia's Song, or the scene towards the end SPOILERS HUGE SPOILERS where you have to save Zulf from his own people and his song plays in the background END SPOILERS.
I Preferred the Book - best story
Nominees:
- Portal 2 - Eric Waplow, Jay PInkerton, Chet Faliszek
- Bastion - Greg Kasavian
- Dark Souls - From Software
- Uncharted 3 - Naughty Dog
- Catherine - Atlus
- Skyward Sword - Nintendo
- The Witcher 2 - Andrzej Sapkowski
- Crysis 2 - Richard K. Morgan
- Batman: Arkham City - Paul Dini
- Deus Ex: Human Revolutions - Eidos Montreal
Despite the strong movement towards it, great stories in video games are still few and far between. This award honours those games that bother to rise above the much and give me reason to play. Or even better, make me care. While games like Portal 2 and Dark Souls don't have much in the way of a story, it's how they tell it that makes it special. Both games provide the story in bite size chunks and let the player work it out for themselves, although Dark Souls is definitely the more vague of the two, which I love. It shows as much as it tells, which is a critical device that games so often fail to grasp. Although borrowing heavily from The Last Crusade, it's Uncharted 3's character studies that make it so interesting, especially it's de mystifying of Drake, revealing his arrogance and deceit and showing that he causes as much harm as good to those who would give anything for him, especially his old friend Sully. Skyward Sword represents the first time in the series history that it's scope for cinematic story telling and it's prowess and abilities have finally met, creating a fitting sequel to the 25 year franchise. Still could use voice acting though. Crysis 2's story was written by sci-fi author Richard K. Morgan and weaved a delicious tale of trans-humanism akin to Deus Ex: Human Revolution. Both cast you as the link between man and machine, and show you through the eyes of those your technology most threatens, although Deus Ex makes a much bigger moral grey area out of this. In the end they both fall short of really examining the issue though. Catherine should be applauded for finally showing there's more to mature than sex and violence, presenting a middle age man and his growing fear of commitment. All the craziness aside, it's really a metaphor for the fear of responsibility, of becoming a husband, a father, and adult. Vincent's character arc alone makes this a fascinating story. Arkham City did the right thing, yet again, by hiring writer Paul Dini, who wrote some of the greatest Batman: Animated Series episodes to craft a dense, lore-faithful, twisting and delicious web of intrigue for Batman to unravel. Helped along by a brilliant voice cast, if it wasn't for the over-saturation, Arkham City could have easily won this one. Bastion took a different approach to story telling, with a constant unreliable narration from "the stranger" following you wherever you went. But it was the conclusion that did it for me, ten gut-wrenching minutes and pure joy and sorrow. I cried like a little girl. I fell in love. I felt fear, hate, anger, I felt changed for the experience. And when Zia spoke for the first time, her voice as beautiful as the song she had sung when we first met, I realised I would do anything for her. That is how you tell a story. And so the award goes to Bastion, well deserved. However, some of you may have noticed I missed a game. Sadly, The Wicher 2 is based off a book already, so It's story was guaranteed to be extraordinary, which it is. But great story or not, it is not one written for the game, so it sadly cannot win the award. It is an incredible story though, filled with characters you care about, incredible settings, and enough political intrigue to impress the most avid Game of Thrones reader.
That leaves only one award. The Game of the Year. Who will take it? Tune in tomorrow, and find out:)
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