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29th Golden Joystick Awards – My Picks

After weeks of voting with a record-breaking 2.06 million votes cast, the 29th Golden Joystick Awards are finally upon us. I’ll be covering the event today so follow The Average Gamer on Twitter to find out what’s happening.

One of the awards has already been announced – this year sees the first outing of the Outstanding Contribution Award, which will go to Sonic The Hedgehog. Sonic celebrated his 20th birthday this year. Not bad for a character who started life as a rear-view mirror decoration

David Corless, Sonic Brand Director, says: “We are so excited that Sonic has been awarded the first-ever Outstanding Contribution Award at the Golden Joysticks. In today’s ever changing market it’s rare for a character to last for 5 years – let alone 20. And that’s testament to the popularity and longevity of our blue blurred mascot.

The rest of the winners will be announced from 2pm today. In the meantime, here were my picks for the awards:

Ultimate Game of the Year
For me, this was a close call between The Witcher 2 and Portal 2. Fallout: New Vegas was far too buggy to win anything like that. BulletStorm was brilliant yet seems to have no longevity. I don’t know anyone who played it beyond the first month. Portal 2 is very good but I the found narrative arc to be rather dull and rarely found myself thinking about the puzzles. The solution to most challenges was find-a-patch-of-distant-concrete. The Witcher 2 however, was superb. I love the impact that your choices have, combat is fun (albeit a little confusing with mouse and keyboard) and it’s a beautiful game.

One to Watch
Tomb Raider. I mean, obviously my first choice for upcoming game that I want will be Mass Effect 3 but that doesn’t need watching. No, I’ve been disappointed with the control schemes of the past few Tomb Raider games. Hopefully the new one will have more exploration and less go-here-do-this obviously shiny button design.

Best Shooter
BulletStorm. I’ve only played that and Brink. Brink was shit.

Best Action/Adventure
Another difficult choice between Dead Rising 2 and Portal 2. I do love the Dead Rising games and buzzing around Fortune City in a Blitzkrieg machine-gun wheelchair is absolutely one of my all-time favourite gaming experiences. I chose Portal 2 in the end.

For the record, I think Enslaved is rubbish. Too linear, awkward camera, too many invisible walls.

Best RPG
The Witcher 2. Dragon Age 2 is a very good game but I simply can’t vote for a game that uses copy-paste dungeons. I haven’t played many of the others and I refuse to acknowledge that the Zelda games are role-playing games. It’s the adventures of Link – no choices, no stats. Put it in Adventure where it belongs :P

Best MMO
I lost over 300 hours of my life to Aion. I could hardly vote for anything else.

Best Fighting Game
I have played none of these but I had the vague impression that I needed to vote in every category to be eligible for the Alienware laptop competition, so I picked Mortal Kombat 2011 on the basis of the babalities.

Best Racing Game
I am terrible at all racing games. I chose NFS: Hot Pursuit on the basis that other people say it’s good and I have actually played it for more than 5 minutes. At least 10, I’ll have you know.

Best Sports Game
I can’t even remember what I chose here. The only one I have played is Kinect Sports, which I don’t really like. I probably chose FIFA 11, again because other people say it’s good.

Best Strategy Game
Civilization 5. Not actually played of these but I want to win a laptop. I am shameless.

Best Music-Based Game
Dance Central. Obviously.

Best Free-to-Play Game
Probably Zuma Blitz which is sort of cheating given that it’s an arcade classic, no? I haven’t even played this free version but y’know, Monstermind wasn’t out within the nomination period. Next year…

Best Mobile Game
Tiny Wings. I like games that make me think but sometimes I just want to fly. Cut The Rope and Fruit Ninja were other options. I’m not a huge fan of Game Dev Story. I find it a bit… thin on choice. Sure, it’s hilarious to come with terrible game names but that wears off pretty quickly. I like Hot Springs Story much better.

Best Downloadable Game
I really wanted to choose Minecraft here but that would be yet another vote based on word-of-mouth. I picked Limbo. I love Limbo. Not for its visual style which, frankly, I can take or leave. I love it for the character that comes through in the animations and the fact that the designers are bastards who know exactly where you’ll try to go and put something in the perfect place to kill you. Bastards. But I laughed a lot at my own predictability.

What about your choices? Agree? Disagree? Couldn’t give a monkey’s left nut about a popularity contest?