The Awards no one else gives out.

by AXIS_of_Reality

©2010 Alex Baldwin

One thing we noticed as we wandered around the main halls in E3 was the large number of stickers, plaques and awards attached to the signs for many games, proclaiming them as being ‘IGN Best Action Game Nominee’ or ‘Kotaku Best of E3′. Predictably these were fixed on the biggest sequels or most elaborate setups.

It got us thinking however: why do we have to stick to the traditional Academy Award-esque categories? Why not honour the less obvious achievements overlooked in the chaos of the show floor?

Click for full sized panorama

And so we present to you,

OXCGN’s First Annual E3 Awards!

• Best Promotion: Homefront (THQ) – Huge carpark outside transformed into New Korean base camp
• Worst Promotion: Activision - no theming or swag at all…
• Best Exhibit: Bethesda – enclosed media only themed Brink, Rage, Fallout and Hunted booth
• Worst Exhibit: Activision – plain white room with plain white media rooms for each game
• Best Media Room: Spec Ops: The Line (2K) – Dubai architecture and luxury
• Worst Media Room: Portal 2 (Valve) – plain room with black cloth seperation
• Best Media Room Soundproofing: EA – chaos outside, silence inside
• Worst Media Room Soundproofing: 2K – hearing rap music from the next room while watching Civ 5 demo
• Most Exclusive Media Area: Microsoft’s 2nd Level inner sanctum – no appointment or not important enough = no chance of entry.
• Least Exclusive Media Area: Sony Europe – I got straight in without an appointment and from an Xbox site
• Largest Exhibit: Sony – monstrous.
• Smallest Exhibit: All the accessory and peripheral makers.
• Easiest to Find: EA – it’s impossible to miss the noise and sheer flashiness
• Hardest to Find: Atari - tiny cubicle at the back of the hall
• Most Bouncers: Microsoft - at their special hotel parties and their booth
• Least Bouncers: Everyone else
• Most Helpful Person: Mandy (you know who you are)
• Least Helpful Person: All Nintendo’s media desk attendants
• Best Use of Playboy Playmates: Mafia II (2K) – 2K knows how to get attention
• Worst Use of Playboy Playmates: Random wannabe playmates begging for photos outside and in the halls.
• Most Camera-Friendly: Everyone, except Square Enix
• Least Camera Friendly: Square Enix – 45,000 people with cameras and you want to stop them taking pictures of your exhibit and games? Good luck…
• Best Meeting Place: Under the ESA logo at the entrance
• Worst Meeting Place: EA – separate more than 2 metres and you’re gone
• Biggest Queue for Game: BulletStorm (EA) – felt sorry to everyone without EA all-access passes, kind of felt bad being ushered straight past you all…
• Smallest Queue for Game: EA Active 2 (EA) – right next to BulletStorm, but wrong audience to promote to
• Biggest Lineup for Console: Nintendo 3DS – wrapped around the entire Nintendo exhibit
• Smallest Lineup for Console: GameStreamer – game streaming service hidden behind OnLive’s big showy booth.
• Best Swag: Stuffed leopards and panthers from Kinectimals (Microsoft) – mainly because we could take as many as we wanted
• Worst Swag: Far too many – they seem to be cutting down this year
• Best Aussie-Developed Game: TIE between XCOM (2K) and De Blob 2 (THQ) – both look fantastic
• Worst Aussie-Developed Game: We couldn’t find any others…
• Most Regretted Missed Appointment: Vanquish (SEGA) – sorry, we got there too late!
• Most Regretted Missed Game: The Witcher 2 (Atari) - really disappointed I didn’t get to see it
• Best Private Media Lounge: TIE between 2K’s Sports Bar and Sony Europe’s private room
• Best Way To Skip Queues: EA’s Media Access pass – for obvious reasons like walking straight into private media sessions
• Worst Way To Skip Queues: have an ‘exhibitor’ E3 badge - indicating you’re just visiting from a different booth and therefore not media or journalist going to report on their game
• Best Death-Glare: the guy in the Sony Europe’s private media room who saw my bright green 360-themed OXCGN business card go into the bowl to win a PSP Go
• Best 3D HD-console game: Killzone 3 (Sony) – looks gorgeous as expected.
• Worst 3D HD-console game: Killzone 3 (Sony) – the depth makes aiming more difficult
• Loudest Media Session: Call of Duty: Black Ops (Activision) – the volume gave us all headaches
• Softest Media Session: Civilisation 5 (2K) – by softest we mean actually comfortable to listen to
• Biggest Banner: Assassin’s Creed Brotherhood (Ubisoft) – covered most of the side of the building
• Smallest Banner: there’s no such thing as a small banner at E3
• Most Blatant Use of Booth Babes: Test Drive Unlimited 2 (Atari) – in bikinis sunbathing outside the entrance next to a Mercedes. Such a tough job.
• Best Glitch in a Media Showing: RAGE (Bethesda) – a dead enemy ragdoll getting stuck on another’s head
• Worst Glitch in a Media Showing: Call of Duty: Black Ops (Activision) – tense stealth section ruined as a half-screen-sized shadow flickered on and off while hiding.
• Most Promising Series Reboot: Deus Ex Human Revolution (Square Enix) – we saw gameplay behind closed doors, and it is a guaranteed winner
• Most Questionable Series Reboot: Driver San Francisco (Ubisoft) – interesting car-shifting mechanic that could cause more problems than it solves
• Most Promising New Direction For Existing Series: Need for Speed: Hot Pursuit (EA) – Criterion have taken the wheel and introduced an amazing array of social tools
• Most Questionable New Direction For Existing Series: Red Faction Armageddon (THQ) - why the shift from huge open world to more linear, enclosed cave environments?
• Most Promoted Genre: Action/Shooter – ALL the biggest games shown were shooters
• Least Promoted Genre: Extreme Sports – where did they go?
• Best Themed Media Assets USB Drive: Star Wars: The Force Unleashed 2 (LucasArts) – mini Darth Vader stick with the helmet as the cap!
• Worst Themed Media Assets USB Drive: Kinect (Microsoft) – it’s rubber and purple. Yay?
• Best Kinect Game: TIE between Dance Central (Harmonix), Your Shape (Ubisoft) and Kinectimals (Microsoft) – all made great use of the hardware and were genuinely fun to use
• Worst Kinect Game: Dance Masters (Konami) – hard to compete once you see Dance Central
• Best Move Game: Heavy Rain (Sony) – finally, those silly thumbstick movements make sense with the wand!
• Worst Move Game: TIE between Resident Evil 5 (Capcom) and The Fight (Sony) - RE5 for the inaccurate, laggy and unintuitive controls (thumbstick AND move wand needed just for aiming while standing still), and The Fight for the serious delay and unresponsive controls that saw it ignoring some of the moves the developer was making
• Most Attractive New Console: Xbox 360 S – it is very sexy in-person, although prone to fingerprints
• Least Attractive New Console: Nintendo 3DS – the differently sized screens and black face on the top panel ruin the symmetry. Backwards step in aesthetics from the DSi XL.
• Biggest PR Screw-Up: Microsoft – Failing to notice someone shaking a 360 S while a disc spun inside to see if it would scratch it
• Worst Media Question: Swedish guy in Dead Space 2 media showing – “what are the controls for walking forwards?”
• Worst Choice of Audience For Event: Microsoft for Kinect – don’t invite game press for an event not targeted at them!
• Most Misconstrued Game: Forza 3 (Microsoft) – they’re adding Kinect features, but it’s still Forza 3! No idea why much of the mass media decided to call it Forza 4
• Most Humorous Game: Portal 2 (Valve) – everyone was genuinely laughing in the media showing
• Biggest Party: Activision – $US6 million concert / party with Usher, N.E.R.D and tons more. Unfortunately Aaron (Twodogz) misread our invitation email and we didn’t get to go!
• Smallest Party: Aussie E3 Industry Drinks – was great to chat to the other developers and journos from Hyper, GamePro Aust, Game Informer Aust, Activision, ZOO, etc who could speak Australian.
• Best Prize Won: Sunglasses from Medal of Honor (EA) – I won the 8-player media session of Medal of Honor multiplayer, even though I tend to not be that great at competitive play! Woohoo!
• Most Sequels: Nintendo – new game for almost every existing series, and almost nothing new at all
• Least Sequels: Bethesda – out of the 4 games they were showing, 3 were new IPs (RAGE, Hunted and Brink)

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©2010 Alex Baldwin

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Filed under: 1st Party Titles, 3rd Party Games, Console gaming, Demo impressions, E3 2010, Editorial, Events, Game Impressions, Game Industry News, GameBanter, Industry News, Microsoft Games, New Game Information, New Xbox 360 Games, Software News & Updates, Xbox 360, Xbox 360 3rd Party Games, Xbox 360 News Tagged: | 2K, 2K Games, Activision, Atari, Bethesda, Codemasters, E3 2010, EA, EA Sports, Electronic Entertainment Expo 2010, Konami, Namco, Namco Bandai, Square Enix, THQ, Ubisoft