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Technical Achievement
Bestest Explosions
For the visceral joy of exploding pretend stuff in videogames.
Crackdown
Not sure that we expected much from this one; the HALO 3 Multiplayer Beta Entry Ticket in-pack giveaway suggested a lack of confidence on the publisher’s part… but oh fuck me how we were surprised. Crackdown turned out to be a true highlight of 2007 and a small part of that highlight-making was explosions. Creative, inventive and massively satisfying – blowing stuff up in Crackdown is among life’s very finest experiences. A pyrotechnic's playground!
Motorstorm
Not explosions, as such – but the destructive animation at the point of your vehicle’s last moments heralded-in the next generation in one huge jump. Just a year later and the sort of detail seen in those animations is now commonplace. But at the start of 2007, witnessing the boom and slo-mo disintegration of the hitherto most-solid-thing-ever-to-have-featured-in-a-videogame was brain-poppingly special.
Halo 3
See that Scarab? We’ve got to kill that. Yeah we both know that we can do it, and we both know we’ll have plenty of re-starts should we need ‘em but all the same – actually doing it is going to be a ‘proper job’. So you wade-in, throw ordinance at the big metal bastard and run around like your brain is soaked with futuristic speed and then the mechanical killer-cow explodes. And explodes and explodes and fills your world with explode and you hold your breath while the massive thing shits itself apart and you remember that playing videogames is fantastic.
Flatout Ultimate Carnage
Destroy a car or hit an important environmental feature and you cause an explosion that is huge in both graphical effect and in eardrum shattering noise. Also, so as to comply fully with tradition, a single tyre will bounce out of the apocalypse towards your face. Might not sound like much but it gives you a glimpse here that the developers want fun and larks to be what you remember after playing Flatout. We like that a lot.
Synthesised ‘Ghostbusters!’ Memorial Voice and Character Award
For the characters that most convinced and delighted us.
Nathan Drake – Uncharted
We’re going to stick our necks out here and make a prediction: Nathan Drake will be the next mass-media breakout gaming character – he has all the wisecracking charm of John McLane, the presence of Lara Croft and the soggy trousers of an incontinent child. A mix set for stardom. That Uncharted also delivered an experience that was fun, immersive and full of spirit and character will help, together with an excellent supporting cast, Nathan Drake shines.
The entire cast of Bioshock – Bioshock
We’ve nominated all of them: the splicers, Andrew Ryan, the cockney maintenance bloke, the spurned mistress, crazy, crazy Cohen, mad old fishermen, the haunting Little Sisters – the fucking lot. Right from Atlas’s early innocent ‘Would you kindly…’ we were convinced, we gave a shit and we were hooked. Quite simply the very best voice acting, script and characterisation ever to feature in a videogame.
GlaDOS – Portal
Ooh she’s a minx and no mistake. The voice of the mysterious science agency in Portal is at once mechanical and emotional, friendly and meanacing but always utterly convincing. Your encounter with her stays in the brain—like she was real—long after the game has gone and we reckon that’s a pretty good sign of quality. You miss GlaDOS especially after that ending…
Local DJ – Resident Evil: Umbrella Chronicles
Sure this fella appears only fleetingly but he represents something special in videogame storytelling: the local radio station is still on air while you play through the Hunk mission, and as you progress, the DJ realises he’s fucked. He gets more and more mad on air, finally concluding his desperate lunacy with a fusillade of truly shocking screams. It is a mere detail but fuck me it gets to you.
The Holy Shit will you just look at that Eyes of Jesus Award
For those moments when graphics and atmosphere combine to overwhelm
Flight over the Coast in Helicopters – CoD4
Something important lies within this game, something hinted at during the early taxi ride through an Eastern City in the grip of revolutionary anarchy. And then, later, aboard a flight of helicopters, with the shimmering sun bleached city below, like Three Kings meets Apocalypse Now, you ride-on full of an almost queasy sense that this is for real.
The view from your first vantage point – Assassin’s Creed
Climby, climby, climby. Up you go, wondering why you have to be doing this, and wishing instead that you were already knifing market-traders in the guts. Then you reach the top, settle yourself a bit and look. And you look and your jaw damn-near drops right down to the world way below. Breathtaking doesn’t come close – these vistas are damn-near spiritual in their beauty and depth.
Uncharted - Drakes Fortune
We could pick two-dozen moments from this one. Uncharted is the first hint that perhaps the PS3 really might have been worth the wait – it’s that special. Beautiful, just really beautiful, and we’ve plumped for the bit where Nathan Drake starts to shin about outside the windows of the ruined castle and you see the sea and the scenery for the first time. Gobsmacking.
Opening Ocean Sequence – Bioshock
Its night and your plane crashes. You’re underwater – a 1930s propeller goes spinning by, doppler scream loud in your confused brain. Then you surface. You’re surrounded by flames, no idea where you are. You grapple-swim to an ocean-tower and turn around. Your plane is slowly sinking into the sea leaving a trail of aviation-fuel flame lighting up the void. Instant loneliness drives you to explore the tower… no game has ever begun with more portent. That it goes on to deliver utterly on that portent is extraordinary.
1. Technical Achievement
2. Gameplay
3. For the People, With the People
4. Game of the Year
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