The 30's! Part 1

Welcome everyone to our annual critically acclaimed and highly regarded award week:

This week we'll be giving awards out to what we think the top in any given field for the year are in gaming.  This year, the judges deliberated for what seemed like minutes to determine the categories and nominees and then after painstaking debate with the entire videogamesat30.com staff, came up with a single winner for each category that we will now share with the world. 

In order to have been in the running, your product /service must have been released to the public in 2010. 

Best Interactive Story Experience

Heavy Rain is the finest example of interactive story telling that I've ever seen.  The game cannot be described properly without spoilering everything to it.  Quantic Dream, I don't necessarily want a sequel.  No, I want another story.  Bring me more of the magic that you used to create this world, and I'll be first in line to buy it.

Best Game that was Fawned Over Way Too Much by the Gaming Media

Congrats, Limbo.  Here, have another award.  Limbo was a good game, and while I have no problem with a good game being short and leave you wanting more, Limbo wasn't memorable enough to leave me wanting more.  The main character didn't evoke emotions, nor did the story attempt to explain itself.  Despite this, they won several awards and are sure to earn several more in the downloadable games categories for year end wrap up posts like this one.  Fear not, this is the last we'll see of this game in our award show, damnit.

Best Way to Drain Your Iphone Battery

 

Infinity Blade drained my battery four times this weekend while spending Christmas with the in-laws.  The graphics are beautiful, the gameplay is simple and addicting, and you constantly find yourself saying "just one more fight".  If you haven't picked it up yet and you have at least a 3gs, do yourself a favor and get it.

Best Wii Game (that we actually played)

We played exactly zero Wii games this year that were released in 2010. Weren't there ANY good games released this year on the Wii?  Sure there were.  I would have happily played Mario Galaxy 2, Epic Mickey, or Tatsunoko vs Capcom, and I definitely wanted to try No More Heroes 2, but the allure of the Wii is dying. The best games are coming out for the Xbox 360 and PS3, and now that they both have motion control (as gimicky as they may be), there's little reason to boot up the Wii anymore. Nintendo is going to need something major announced in the next year to hope to compete in the next generation of gaming, or risk going the way of Sega.