Portal, Bioshock Lead Game Developer's Choice Nominations

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.

Comments

Portal`

[FredFredrickson]

Portal is a great game- too short in my opinion. It shows that PC gaming is long over-due for something more innovative in the game-play category. Now combine portal with half-life 2 = most amazing game ever!!!

Re:Portal`

[Shimdaddy]

Portal does rock, but I think one reason it's so great is because of its minimalism. I think Half-Life & Portal in the same game would be too much, and worse than the two games separately.

Rock Band

[Freeside1]

Exactly how is Rock Band innovative? It's multiplayer Guitar Hero with drums, and a mic.

Re:Rock Band

[Cornflake917]

Rock Band is innovative in how it brings it all together. Yes pretty much every aspect of it has been done before, but you could say the same for Portal.

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:Rock Band

[nEoN nOoDlE]

Portal - just an FPS with 1 weapon and decent writing
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:Rock Band

[Spellvexit]

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??

Call of Duty 4

[framauro13]

A shame CoD4 was left out of the writing nominations. It had the most immersive storyline of them all.

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:Am I seeing things...

[Liquidrage]

I've also noticed that the Oscar's rarely put up anything from Bollywood.

Maybe it's because, unlike most people on the internet, they are only discussing that which they know?

So Steam games aren't downloadable?

[randyest]

Best Downloadable Game
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

[Smidge204]

I think a large part of the game's charm is it's simplicity. Stark, naked simplicity. Remember back in the "good ol' days" of gaming when the best games had the fewest mechanics and nuances? THink of the original Super Mario Bros. or Sonic the Hedgehog games... barely more complex than "Run to the right and jump at the right times" but they are eternal classics for many and have earned all the praise they've received.

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:I would own them all, but

[Spellvexit]

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.