Best Game That Could Have Been Even Better
Don't get me wrong here, I liked Arkham City a lot, but it always felt like it was missing something. The best comparison I can draw here is Assassin's Creed. Much like Altair, Batman has an open city that he can swoop around and hunt out his prey. He tries to get from one section of the city to another, except there's an occasional puzzle or boss fight, and in those regards Batman wins hands down. But the freedom in Assassin's Creed is what Batman is missing. You can't just wander around the city cleaning up crime in the same sense that Ezio can. Sure you can fly around, but you kind of HAVE to fly around because there's piles of garbage everywhere locking the sections of the city into smaller manageable pieces that respawn over time, giving you no sense that you're actually accomplishing anything.
Here's what I want to see: Batman: Gotham City. It's the life of Batman, a crime gets committed, and you can go check it out and play detective, and it leads you to the supervillian's lair or heck, just some punk gang that got lucky. When you're done, you can wander the streets keeping them safe, or retire back to the Batcave and train or upgrade your gear. Hell, throw some living the life of Bruce Wayne in there a bit if it makes sense. You can build an overarching story in there, but keep each section it's own special bit. I know I'd be excited to see this game.
Best Multi-Platform Game
It's hard not to gush about Portal 2, it's a fantastic single player experience that gives fans of the first game more of what they want. It's also a fun filled multi-player cooperative experience that we just don't see that often anymore. Valve really delivered here, and everybody needs to play this game. Spaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaace.
Best iOS Game
No game got more play time from the VG30 crew than Ascension on the iOS. We played it at home, we played it at work, we played it at Gencon, we played it in the beta, we played it in the expansion beta, and we're still playing it in the expansion. Gary Games and Incinerator Studios did a great job of putting everything together, and all of the hard work shows in the finished product. Still waiting on the hard difficulty though ;).
Just these three awards today, there's just a couple categories left, including Game of the Year, check back tomorrow to find out what it's going to be!
