The MMGaming Awards

A great many games have won awards over the past month as 2011 draws to a close. But now it is the moment they have surely all been waiting for. The moment for the most prestigious awards ever created in the world of video games… Yes dear friends… I am talking of The MMGaming Awards!

Let us get right down to business!

First category is: MMGaming’s Game of the Year

Seb: I’m going to be honest there is really no point in building up to this one… It’s Skyrim! Although MMGaming hasn’t got a review out yet (it’s due for early 2012… along with a few others…) we have been playing it an awful lot. In fact it’s actually fairly easy for me to say that it is the best game I have ever played. The depth, the graphics, the story, the quests… Everything just comes together in one absolutely gob-smacking, mind-blowing disc of pure joy and awesome. Frankly, it is the only possible choice that ANYONE could make…

Tim: I’m afraid I will have to conform here. Skyrim has been an absolute joy to play. Now at level 51 I can say I have enjoyed the 65+ hours beyond measure and would happily sink that same amount of time in again. So much to do, so much to see and so much of a good feeling when you slay that dragon and clear a dungeon. Its fairly certain that Skyrim will be on top of most game awards this year and it most definitely deserves to be there.

MMGaming’s Runner-Up Game of the Year

Seb: This award presented us with a few difficulties as, despite the ease with which Skyrim took GotY, it has been an absolutely amazing year for games with quite a few amazing candidates. However… it was decided that the award should go to… Batman: Arkham City. Despite lacking replay value it has some of the best graphics and THE best fist-fighting-based combat we’ve ever seen. It was a narrow win, true, but this game absolutely deserves this spot and on any other year would have been right at the top.

Tim: It was tough, with a very positive year for gaming with games such as Portal 2 and Battlefield 3 although Arkham City definitely stood out from the others. The story was an absolute thrill along with the brilliant fighting mechanics just placed it above the others. I really enjoyed my time there, and while I wouldn’t play it again any time soon it deserves that 2nd place spot.

MMGaming’s Best Indie Game of the Year

Seb: This category also had saw staunch competition this year. With various types of Indie Bundles and the success of Minecraft from last year (I do count Minecraft as a 2010 game, so it wasn’t considered for this award) a far greater degree of focus is coming on Indie developers and they have proved easily equal to the challenge coming up with a great many awesome titles. However, this year’s best Indie game was… Terraria! Despite having a slightly Minecraft-esque idea the gameplay and massive depth and scale of Terraria means it takes this years Award, narrowly beating Bastion. As well as the ability to build massive structures in a gorgeous 2-D world, having bosses and dungeons to fight proves that having an aim in a game (even one like this) is really a good idea.

Tim: If Minecraft was a 2011 game it still wouldn’t have beaten Terraria for me. Absolutely brilliant junk food for the brain, it provide fantastic and easy multiplayer, a wonderful number of items to collect and a tier system for bosses and armour which allowed the game to progress at a perfect pace. With the developers still adding more and more to the game this is an absolute gem of a buy and I will certainly be keeping up with it in 2012.

MMGaming’s “Wow… That’s Clever” Award

This is an award given to something which we think is particularly intelligent, an idea perhaps that just makes us go “Okay wow… that’s fucking smart…” It was another closely fought award with Portal 2 and Void going head to head to see which is cooler and cleverer. Also Parallax and QUBE will be released fairly soon and they were considered for the award. However, non of these actually takes the award. The mighty Portal 2, while amazing, isn’t quite as clever as this piece of genius. There isn’t even a proper game for it yet as it is only a tech demo but I would absolutely love to see one and both me and Tim think that this is just fucking unbelievably crazy stuff. Definitely deserves it’s cleverness and intelligence to be more widely spread…

MMGaming’s Favourite Trailer of 2011

Some of our awards were easier to choose than others and this was absolutely the hardest one. Trailers and promotional videos, while not always entirely relevant to the game, are sometimes some of the most epic and awesome things I’ve ever seen. It is true that an awful lot of the time the game doesn’t match the standard of the trailer, but that is irrelevant to this award. Coming a very close third is the Hugo Strange trailer for Batman: Arkham City with what has to be the best graphics I’ve ever seen. Coming second, due to a constant stream of awesome is the Assassin’s Creed Revelations Cinematic trailer. However our winner is… the Opening Cinematic for Star Wars: The Old Republic for what has to be the best lightsaber fight I have seen ANYWHERE (including the movies)…

MMGaming’s Award for the best Music – Tied Award

With all the focus on graphics and gameplay it’s easy to forget that there are other factors which are just as important in creating the feel of a video game. Whether it’s a light piece of music playing in the background while you wander across some open landscape or some intense, pounding music for when enemies engage and attack you. Unfortunately I genuinely couldn’t decide between Star Wars: The Old Republic because of it’s amazing remastering of the Star Wars theme music or for Skyrim’s equally awe-inspiring Sons of Skyrim. Hell, even Assassin’s Creed Revelations deserves a little look in for it’s music here. I guess for this one, you’ll have to make your own minds up…

MMGaming’s Award for the best Voice

This award on the other hand was actually very easy to come to a decision on. Despite the masses of voices in Skyrim and the absolute galaxy of voices in SWTOR. None could match this years hilarious and tragic-comedic character of Wheatley voiced by Stephen Merchant. Despite turning evil he has most memorable voice I’ve heard in any game in a long time, trouncing even the dulcet tones of Roger Craig Smith’s Ezio Auditore. P.s. SPAAAAAACE!

MMGaming’s Games I wish I’d played of 2011

Seb: Thousands of games come out every year and I’m sorry but not even a full time, professional game reviewer with infinite money, no friends and the ability to go without sleep forever would be able to play them all. So when it comes to a full time Uni student with no money the amount of games dwindles dramatically. So there are a few games from 2011 I still have yet to try and hope to give a shot at some point: Modern Warfare 3, Dead Island and Saints Row 3. It is unfortunate but I think it will be a while before I get much chance at some of them (and the others I didn’t mention).

Tim: Luckily I did get to play Saints Row 3 this year along with Dead Island and they were a blast. Yet I will agree with Seb that it is nigh on impossible to be able to play as much as I want to. There is so much to play, so much to write about and so much to moan about that I couldn’t get through it if it was my full time job (Maybe one day…) Hopefully 2012 will be kind to us and lend us some more time.

MMGaming’s “HOLY SHIT!! HOW MUCH?!?” Award

This prestigious award goes to Star Wars: The Old Republic. Lucas Arts and Bioware are rumoured to have spent over $135 million just developing the game, ignoring marketing and merchandising, and as such it is the most expensive video game EVER made. Of course, with a whole galaxy of worlds to explore, thousands of quests and items and variation and hundreds of thousands of lines of dialogue it’s not really surprising…

MMGaming’s “Oh-What’s-the-point?” Award for the Most Pointless Release

This Award goes straight to Mojang’s Minecraft. Technically released in November this year, the release date didn’t actually change anything much in particular (aside from adding a fair bit of new content in a patch) as by this point in time 4 million people had already bought and were playing Minecraft.

MMGaming’s Trendsetter Award

This award actually goes to the chaps at Wolfire Games for organising and managing the first Humble Indie Bundle. The Humble Bundle has allowed the sale of millions of bundles which means millions of games sold, and therefore an awful lot of money for developers and charities. It also paved the way for various other Bundles like Indie Royale. it will be definitely interesting to see how this aspect of video game marketing develops in the future.

MMGaming’s “We want your kids” Award for something truly special

Seb: While the Stanley Parable didn’t really have enough content to get near Game of the Year or even Indie Game of the Year, we both felt that it deserved a special mention. Despite it being short with very limited gameplay the game has stuck in our minds for the whole year and really should be a game that everyone has tried at least once.

Tim: Stanley Parable was amazing. No other way to put it. It really gave me a pleasurable evening that I haven’t had in ages. Better yet I loved seeing my friends reactions to the game and it gave me even more of a buzz. Beautiful game.

MMGaming’s “Looking-good-bro” Award for something we are looking forward to

Another game both me and Tim are really interested in and are keeping our eyes on is Kenshi created by Lofi Games. The massive Samurai RPG set in a enormous desert world deserves and needs as much attention as it can get. Both this and the Stanley Parable were worth making individual awards for simply so that we can try and force them into your conciousness because that is where they deserve to be.

MMGaming’s “We’d like to thank the little people” Award

This award goes to an awful lot of people who have already done so much to help out this site. All guest writers deserve a wee pat on the back as does our logo designer. A fair few companies were even nice enough to give us review and preview copies of their games and this is so much appreciated you cannot even imagine. An extra special thank you goes to Paradox Entertainment who have been amazingly supportive already giving us review copies of some truly fantastic games (which you will be hearing more of soon).

 

So that’s it for 2011. And what a year it has been… In fact it was one of the best years for Gaming that I can remember. Or at least it contained more exciting titles than any other year that I can name. While at the moment 2012 doesn’t look set to have the same amount of high profile releases I reckon there will be more than enough for us to enjoy ourselves. Thank you all for reading MMGaming so far this first half of a year and I hope you will continue to do so for the foreseeable future!

Also as a side note, I personally plan to do an “Introspection” of my thoughts and opinions of the upcoming games of 2012 during the first week of the New Year, so stay tuned for that. Also we have SO many games we need to get reviews done for so you should keep an eye on that. In the meantime Sabor117 and Timmeister out!