My Picks for the Golden Joysticks 2012

Voting closes today for this year’s Golden Joysticks – the awards where the public get to vote. With loads of games nominated in each of the 16 categories, there must be something that came out in the past year that you love, right?

Here are my picks, anyway:

Best Shooter: I really want to choose Binary Domain because it was great silly fun, but oh my god the plotline. Terrible. So instead, I’m going for Spec Ops: The Line because, by all accounts it’s a shooter that has some meaning. I haven’t even played it myself. Yup, this is the quality decision-making that you get with a public vote.

Best Action/Adventure: The only game I’ve played in this category is Assassin’s Creed Revelations and that was shit compared to the previous Ezio games so I’m voting for… Batman: Arkham City because my boyfriend liked it a lot.

Best Racer: Okay, even I’m going to abstain from this one. I am terrible at all racing games.

Best Sports: See previous.

Best Strategy: XCOM! But that’s not in this year’s vote so… Civilization V because I’ve heard good things and someone gave me their free duplicate copy. Nope, not played it yet either but at least I’ve played some Civ games. I am the worst voter.

Best Fighter: I dunno.

Best Mobile/Tablet: I am seriously beginning to doubt whether I even play games at all. Hero Academy because loads of my friends love it and hardly anyone talks about the other games. Also, Pocket Planes is shit.

Best RPG: The Witcher 2, undoubtedly. Sorry Mass Effect 3, you were great and all but expecting me to play through that London mission after every single-player DLC to get the extra ending dialogue is just insane. And Skyrim? Your vertically-climbing horses were entertaining but also stupid.

Best Handheld: Wipeout 2048. RIP Studio Liverpool. It would be an amazing game on any platform whereas Uncharted: Golden Abyss has too much silly Vita touchscreen and tilt stuff.

Best MMO: Another abstention because I really didn’t enjoy The Secret World and haven’t found the time to play Star Wars: The Old Republic. I hear great things about the others but hang on… isn’t League of Legends a MOBA?

Best Browser/Flash: I hate SimCity Social with a passion. It just outright lies to you about your friends living in your city and the endless popups to spam other people annoy me so much. I’m going for Triple Town because I’ve played that game so much on my phone. (Why isn’t it in the mobile category?)

Best Downloadable: Journey! Journey! I love Journey. I hear great things about Telltale’s The Walking Dead but I’m waiting to buy and play all the episodes at once. Minecraft XBLA is also pretty great but Journey is in the running for my Game of The Year.

Best DLC: No idea. I bought Dawnguard the day it came out on PC. Still not found time to play it :( Is it really fair to put toolkits in with actual game-playing content? I’m not convinced but the Portal 2 kit and Skyrim Creation kit are pretty cool.

Top Gaming Moment: Again, Journey. I won’t spoil it but if you’ve played, you know there are plenty to choose form.

One To Watch: There are so many amazing sequels coming out next year. Tomb Raider is fun, despite the QTEs. Assassin’s Creed III is out next week and could be a nice shake-up of the series. Or it could be exactly the same but with trees. I’m hoping not. Hitman Absolution is packed with choices and replayability. BioShock Infinite has some very cool ideas. Pikmin 3 is just plain cute and Dead Space 3 is exactly the opposite. I’m going for…

Dead Space 3 because I really like the way they’ve done the co-op. It doesn’t take away from the horror at all.

Ultimate Game of The Year: Tough choice between Journey and Skyrim. Both games are great and Skyrim’s bugginess was charming but ultimately, I have to go for the game that’s beautiful, polished, made me laugh and made me cry. It’s Journey.

The awards are this coming Friday so check out the finalists and leave your picks in the comments. We’ll find out who’s closest to the popular vote. (I got 2 last year)

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