IGN - Best of 2010 Awards

IGN has their Best of 2010 Awards, with accolades for the different platforms and various categories. Mass Effect 2 wins pretty much everything other than Best PC Game of the Year (Starcraft 2), with nods for Best Story, Most Innovative Gameplay (?), Best Character, Best Visuals, Best Soundtrack and Best SciFi game. Fallout: New Vegas picked up Best Bang for Buck and DeathSpank, Funniest Game.
I haven't looked through the other platforms and you can also vote in each category for the Readers' Choice awards.
More information.

Mass Effect 2 got the "most innovative" reward… you have to be joking me.

Nevermind, it's IGN.

I dont know which site is worse IGN or Gamespot , both a crawling with little Halo , COD, ME2 EPICNESS.

The VGAs are worse than anything IGN or Gamespot could come up with.

The article points out: "As was clearly evident in Mass Effect 2, decisions can have huge implications for the future, right down to whether major characters live and die."

Yeah, live or die right at the very end of the game. Characters which, I'm sure, will have very small parts at best in ME3. And how is that supposed to be innovative? Heck, most Bioware games have done that in the past decade.

Though I must admit, I'm having a heck of a time coming up with any game that was innovative this year.

Edit: And what the heck is this Illusive Man for best character?? The scientist guy in ME2 was much more interesting.

Best visuals... yeah, whatever. XBox has put a cap on our visuals for the past five years.

Thank goodness ME2 didn't win 'most challenging'.

I think some of the big decisions they're talking about include things like:

1) Saving the Rachni Queen
2) Geth Civil War
3) Quarian Politics
4) Capturing vs destroying the collector base

Of course... how innovative one might consider carrying these decisions throughfrom the 1st and 2nd games presumes quite a lot about how much effect they will have on the 3rd game. While Bioware has said the third game will include multiple highly divergent plot possibilities... I think IGN is going a little too far in presuming there will be sufficient payback.

If there is sufficient payoff on these choices in the third game (with highly divergent endings predicated on combinations of choices throughout the series) then I could see the 3rd game or the trilogy winning an innovaction award. Carrying decisions over from one installment to the next is not in itself innovative. It is something that modern series have largely amandoned. What would be innovative however is if those decisions had a significant and divergent effect on the cumulative story at the end of the series. That would be cool- but it seems a bit too kind to presume they will suceed at that without seeing the 3rd game.

Personally, I hope they're right. I would love for all those decisions to see real payoff in the 3rd one. Bioware admitted they had to keep the presentation and payoff of making those decisions minimal in the 2nd installment because they couldn't have divergent branching decisions in the middle of the series - the permutations of possible combinations could result in basically too much parallel material and grow increasingly difficult to cover. So, having said they intend to go all out on having those decisions result in meaningful changes in the 3rd game's plot lines it is something I hope they pull off. As journalists however, it is not appropriate for them to award a game based on assuming the sequel will accomplish this. I hope their optimism is right but it's kind of like giving a nobel peace prize to someone because of what you expect them to accomplish in the future.

What a load of crap, they probably played the Xbox version of ME2 and thought that was close enough to a PC game.

How much money do you think EA paid for those awards to help hype the 3rd game .

I feel that F:NV should have won most of those awards to be honest, but beyond F:NV I can't come up with a lot of games that are better than ME2 this year.

More PC gamer whine. It's actually worse than the Xbox kids.

Doesn't innovative mean bringing something new to the table?

Instead of complaining why not post your own suggestions?

This is not indie games award so they have AAA games to choose between... looking at which AAA games was released... they don't have much choice ?

Why must disagreeing be a complaint?

Anyway, if I had to make a pick for most innovative, it would probably be Amnesia - as it breaks new ground in terms of immersion and FPS adventure mechanics. Not the first one to do so, but I haven't played the other games by the same people - and I certainly think it's the best I've seen in that way.

Innovative shouldn't be about whether a game is simply solid or even great. It should be about breaking new ground that can potentially pave the way for the future of its given genre - and I have a very hard time seeing how Mass Effect 2 does that. It's basically a streamlined version of Mass Effect which was a streamlined version of KotOR.

Picking StarCraft with a facelift as game of the year is a travesty, in my opinion. I will concede that the new Battle.net infrastructure is pretty fantastic in technical terms, but that's separate from the actual game - which is about the most cliché and dull sequel I can think of.

I thought New Vegas & Alpha Protocol had much better plots than Mass Effect 2...
Also Illusive Man more interesting character than Mr.House? The Fu?

Yes Yes Amnesia !!! Great choice !!! The FPS formula is soooo tired i dont know why Developers dont try doing a Fist person RPG using what Frictional Games is doing. Frictional Games is alreadt hard at work for there next game , it should be one to look out for . Also Call Of Pripyat is a great game this year. Demon Souls was impeccable .

Most Innovative !?

I can even when being very nice and openminded not come up with a single, single new game element that ME2 have added to any genré.

Which is better for page views:

1) A list which everyone agrees with and doesn't discuss any further other than "yeah"

2) A list lots of people don't agree with, and therefore one that generates lots of "have you seen that list at X, I think it should be Y"

?

3) Pron

...

JemyM said:

3) Pron

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Click to expand...

They (used to?) have a 'babes' section or something equally juvenile didn't they?

Babes are juvenile?

Anyway, I guess what they meant was innovative in ME2 was the whole upgradable Normandy thing and in between the missions. I didn't like it much, myself.