Portal, Bioshock Lead Game Developer's Choice Nominations 71
Gamasutra is reporting that the annual Game Developer's Choice Award nominations are now available for your reading pleasure. Portal, BioShock, Mass Effect, and Call of Duty 4 are all looking pretty good, with Portal in particular sitting pretty in five separate categories. Here are a few of the nomination lists: "Best Game Design - BioShock, Call of Duty 4, Mass Effect, Portal, Super Mario Galaxy. Best Visual Art - Assassin's Creed, Team Fortress 2, Crysis, BioShock, Uncharted: Drake's Fortune. Best Writing - Portal, God of War II, Mass Effect, Half-Life 2: Episode 2, BioShock. Innovation - Rock Band, Portal, flOw, Peggle, Mass Effect." Five bucks says Portal sweeps the awards.
Portal` (Score:4, Insightful)
Rock Band (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Portal` (Score:5, Insightful)
Call of Duty 4 (Score:5, Insightful)
Personally I think it was the best FPS released this year, and definitely the best out of the entire franchise, and that's not even taking into account the amazing multiplayer mode. I'd definitely opt for this game over BioShock in a heartbeat, and I loved BioShock.
Re:Rock Band (Score:4, Insightful)
It's definitely original. I don't think any other games have gone all out trying to simulate the rock band experience with a full set of instruments.
It's hard to explain, but getting large group of friends together to play Rock Band (and drink) is an experience unlike any other game I played. Maybe because females actually get involved, and that doesn't happen much when we're playing games.
Re:Am I seeing things... (Score:3, Insightful)
Maybe it's because, unlike most people on the internet, they are only discussing that which they know?
So Steam games aren't downloadable? (Score:5, Insightful)
Pac-Man Championship Edition
Everyday Shooter
Peggle
Puzzle Quest: Challenge of the Warlords (XBLA version)
Flow
So while, Portal, TF2, HL2:ep2, COD4, and Bioshock get lots of "Best" nominations, they're mysteriously absent from the "Best Downloadable Game" category, even though they're all quite downloadable via steam. Maybe they meant "best downloadable (only) game (not available in stores?"
With Steam and (the relatively crappy) Direct2Drive sales channels, isn't just about everything "downloadable" now? Heck, if you include torrents and such, I'm sure absolutely everything is downloadable
Re:Awards that Portal should definitely clinch (Score:3, Insightful)
Portal is very straightforward both in control and objective. The environment is clean and homogenious, with a minimum amount of props needed to create the challange without "overthinking" it. You can count the number of game elements on your fingers and they are all rather intuitive in nature: Buttons, doors, elevators, moving platforms, ball launchers and catchers, and blocks. It's basically an old-school 2D platform/puzzle game at heart and that strikes a chord with a lot of people.
The only time this breaks down is at the end of the game, and that's very deliberate.
You're still a douchebag for getting a Companion Cube tattoo, though. As big a fan as I am, I must admit that point.
=Smidge=
Re:Rock Band (Score:3, Insightful)
flOw - just Eco the Dolphin with no story
Peggle - just another puzzle game with physics
Mass Effect - just another FPS game but with RPG elements
see? You could take the innovation out of any game by breaking it down to its elements.
Re:I would own them all, but (Score:2, Insightful)
To Steam's credit, they've been imposing interesting metrics (like logging where and how frequently people die on maps in various levels) and have interesting surveys revealing computer specs. In the end, it will probably result in a better game and an awesome Episode 3.
That being said, I find Steam highly annoying as well. When playing my single-player HL2 campaign, it sometimes took forever to load, while at other times it loaded up as quickly as any other FPS game should. I suspect that the slowdown was due to peak usage times, but doing so can make reloading a saved game highly frustrating. I don't understand why it needs the server's permission just to load scenarios in a single-player game, and even if I did understand, it's a significant enough imposition to find pretty infuriating on dangerous levels where dying (and reloading) can be frequent.
Sadly, Portal was one of the best gaming experiences I've ever had, so it's with a twinge of shame that I declare my principles have been compromised in enslaving myself the Steam-dependent Orange Box.
Re:Rock Band (Score:2, Insightful)
I don't think the poster was joking -- I nodded with appreciation when he mentioned GlaDOS and the credit song as well. Maybe it's not 100% original... but fresh? There is something much more rewarding about GlaDOS as a antagonist with her split personalities and peculiar musicianship. I found her to be one of the best adversaries in just about any game I've played, and it highlights Valve's ability to create amazing, immersive scenarios with a great deal of depth. Unlike Shub-Niggurath in Quake, or whoever that generic demon was, GlaDOS had a strange attraction in that she (well, discounting the cannons) was the only one who interacted with you in the sterile surroundings, and a certain co-dependency arose between her and Chell.
It's not just GlaDOS, it's the environment, the austerity of the surroundings, the hints of the madness of the other subjects, the glimpses behind the scenes, and the different modules you whack off of GlaDOS that illustrated facets of her character. It was great storytelling in a video game -- perhaps that's the innovation more than the fact that she was basically a HAL 9000 variant. But that end song -- how could you deny its innovative coolness??