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Half-Life 2 Sweeps Bafta Games Awards
Ford Prefect writes "The British Academy of Film and Television Arts awards, or Baftas, are frequently considered Britain's equivalent of the Oscars. The winners of the second annual games awards were announced last night, and according to the BBC Half-Life 2 won six awards, including best game and best online game. No Katamari Damacy mentioned, Burnout 3 won three awards, and some plucky little upstart called 'Halo 2' won the prize for best Xbox game."
Half-Life 2 won six awards, including best game and best online game. No Katamari Damacy mentioned, Burnout 3 won three awards, and some plucky little upstart called 'Halo 2' won the prize for best Xbox game."
So, two derivative first-person shooters and a driving game - all sequels, mind you, however good they may be - beat out a wholly original, innovative, and fun concept in Katamari Damacy. I don't know what I can really take from this, except to say that gaming sure has changed a lot since I was a kid. And not really for the better.
Personally, I would like to see approaches such as Namco took in Katamari Damacy better rewarded. I would like to see approaches such as most developers take in producing sequel after sequel in well-worn genres rewarded quite a bit less often.
The correct spelling?
How can it be the correct spelling? The people hired to translate the game's title into English chose to spell it out as damacy. If the game was entitled Katamari Damashii, you'd be correct, but it's Katamari Damacy, so by no means is damashii the "correct" spelling. That's not the name of the fucking game.
Since Namco decided against releasing Katamari Damacy in Europe, that's why it wasn't nominated for the awards.
It makes sense to only reward games that are available in your area. If a publisher decides not to release a game in your area, don't reward them with an award.
Last I heard, the only proper way to spell Japanese words was in Japanese. Ditto for Chinese and Korean.
Romanization rules are frequently nebulous, and for good reason. Seoul, for instance, is often pronounced like "soul" in English, because people looking at the romanization don't realize that there are actually two syllables in the city's name.