Call of Duty 4 takes three BAFTAs

By Tom Bramwell Published 11 March, 2009

Mario Galaxy crowned Best Game.

Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare won three BAFTAs last night, including the publicly-voted GAME Award of 2008, while Super Mario Galaxy was crowned Best Game by the panel of judges.

Infinity Ward's stupendously successful first-person shooter collected the GAME Award, voted for by more than 60,000 people, along with Story And Character and Gameplay gongs.

There were also nods for Fable II (Action & Adventure), LittleBigPlanet (Artistic Achievement) and Left 4 Dead (Multiplayer), while Steven Spielberg's Boom Blox won the Casual category.

In addition to taking Best Game, Nintendo also celebrated Professor Layton's victory in the Handheld category, although there was nothing for two of the company's other massive 2008 hits, Wii Fit and Mario Kart Wii.

Electronic Arts, meanwhile, did well in the technical categories, with Dead Space winning for Original Score and Use of Audio, while Spore was commended for its Technical Achievement.

Amazingly though, there wasn't a single award for Grand Theft Auto IV, Fallout 3, Gears of War 2 or Metal Gear Solid 4 despite numerous nominations. And let's be honest, Viva Piņata was robbed yet again.

Finally, as previously announced, Atari founder Nolan Bushnell was given a BAFTA Fellowship. See below for the full list of winners and nominees.

Action & Adventure: Fable II
Nominated: Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare, Dead Space, Grand Theft Auto IV, Prince of Persia, Tomb Raider: Underworld

Artistic Achievement: LittleBigPlanet
Nominated: Assassin's Creed, Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare, Dead Space, Gears of War 2, Metal Gear Solid 4: Guns of the Patriots

Best Game: Super Mario Galaxy
Nominated: Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare, Fable II, Fallout 3, Grand Theft Auto IV, Rock Band

Casual: Boom Blox
Nominated: Guitar Hero World Tour, Buzz! Quiz TV, LittleBigPlanet, SingStar Vol. 2, Wii Fit

Gameplay: Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare
Nominated: Grand Theft Auto IV, Left 4 Dead, Mario Kart Wii, Rock Band, Super Mario Galaxy

Handheld: Professor Layton and the Curious Village
Nominated: Geometry Wars: Galaxies, God of War: Chains of Olympus, The Legend of Zelda: Phantom Hourglass, Patapon, Soul Bubbles

Multiplayer: Left 4 Dead
Nominated: Buzz! Quiz TV, Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare, Gears of War 2, Mario Kart Wii, Rock Band

Original Score: Dead Space
Nominated: Assassin's Creed, Fable II, Fallout 3, LittleBigPlanet, Metal Gear Solid 4: Guns of the Patriots

Sports: Race Driver: GRID
Nominated: FIFA 09, Football Manager 2009, MotorStorm Pacific Rift, Pure, Wii Fit

Strategy: Sid Meier's Civilization Revolution
Nominated: Advance Wars: Dark Conflict, Command & Conquer: Red Alert 3, Ninjatown, SOCOM: US Navy SEALs Tactical Strike, Viva Piņata: Pocket Paradise

Story and Character: Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare
Nominated: Assassin's Creed, Fable II, Fallout 3, Grand Theft Auto IV, Mass Effect

Technical Achievement: Spore
Nominated: Assassin's Creed, Fable II, Fallout 3, Grand Theft Auto IV, LittleBigPlanet

Use of Audio: Dead Space
Nominated: Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare, Gears of War 2, Grand Theft Auto IV, LittleBigPlanet, Super Mario Galaxy

GAME Award of 2008 (public voting): Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare
Nominated: Fallout 3, Gears of War 2, Grand Theft Auto IV, Guitar Hero: World Tour, Left 4 Dead, LittleBigPlanet, Professor Layton and the Curious Village, Wii Fit, World of Warcraft: Wrath of the Lich King

Picture of Tom.

About Tom Bramwell

Tom is Operations director of Eurogamer Network and Editor-at-Large of Eurogamer.net. He joined the company in February 2000.

Read more articles from Tom by visiting the Tom Bramwell archive page.

You may also like...

Comments (32) Latest comment 3 years ago

Comments threads automatically close after 30 days, but please feel free to continue chatting on the forum!

  • phycus #1 3 years ago

    Mario galaxy as best game of the year? wtf?

  • bad09 #2 3 years ago

    Hmm, I'll never understand why SMG is regarded so highly, I really just cannot see it myself. Me I would call GTA4, and Grid over FIFA09?

    Story and Character COD4? Are they serious?

    Glad DS got some love and of course L4D won best MP man that game is like crack online!

  • DFawkes #3 3 years ago

    I really can't belive COD4 got Story and Character. I literally couldn't name the characters in COD4, apart from that guy that's in all of them. Even his name escapes me right now, I'm just saying it doesn't desrve that BAFTA in particular because it's a fairly generic story used to keep the game flowing - functional at best.

    The other winners seem reasonable enough though.

  • dr_faulk #4 3 years ago

    Professor Layton was fantastic! Glad it got some recognition.

  • asphaltcowboy #5 3 years ago

    I'll never understand why SMG is regarded so highly

    Because it's f-ing brilliant?

  • Vistrix #6 3 years ago

    Mario Galaxy isnt appreciated enough.

    CoD4 should only be appreciated for its multiplayer aspec though...

  • Lukree #7 3 years ago

    Even Assassins Creed's story and character is better than CoD4:s!! CoD4 is wonderful in many aspects but surely it is the weakest of all the nominees in this category.

    Please!!

  • LazyDan #8 3 years ago

    I know it's bad and silly, but I'm glad GTAIV didn't walk away with anything. GTA3 in HD and an eastern european accent. Biggest disappointment of last year for me.

    Glad Mario Galaxy got the nod - I'm still confused as to how it didn't get nominated for and win 'Original Score.' Professor Layton, COD4's and L4D's nods were also excellent... Story and Character maybe less so, but the others in that category weren't great either so it was arguably a random pick out of a choice of 'meh'.

  • kangarootoo #9 3 years ago

    "Casual: Boom Blox"

    Did anyone actually buy that game?

  • kangarootoo #10 3 years ago

    And good to see L4D getting best multiplayer. The winner by leagues.

  • clockworkzombie #11 3 years ago

    Boom Blox is excellent, especially with friends, lager and ale in any particular order.

  • systems #12 3 years ago

    I too was glad to see GTAIV with nothing. Probably the dullest gaming experience of the year for me.

    Professor Layton deserves more praise. Best thing I played on the DS last year.

    Civ Rev best strategy game? There's hardly anything to it. I ditched it and went straight back to the PC version.

    Dead Space did indeed have the best use of music and audio (Bad Company is close though) so well done there.

    The story and character award is a joke. Even Crysis Warhead could beat CoD4 on that. Or Bad Company. Or Mass Effect.

  • kangarootoo #13 3 years ago

    I'll admit I don't really know the first thing about Boom Blox. Is it a Wii download or a boxed title? And what did Speilberg do regarding its development?

  • jonthepymm #14 3 years ago

    Story and character - surely Fallout 3 wins this hands down!

  • RedSparrows #15 3 years ago

    Story and character of CoD4 over Mass Effect? GTA IV? What the fuck?

  • chessboxer #16 3 years ago

    COD4 is severely overrated.

  • kangarootoo #17 3 years ago

    As a shooter I think COD4 is ace, but I agree that the story is hardly original and mostly pointless, and the characters are barely relevant to what makes the experience of playing it so great.

    Awards like this always have a few confusing results. You have to wonder out of the several hundred people that vote, how many have actually played all of the nominated titles. Sometimes it may just come to voting for the one you heave heard of.

  • kinky_mong #18 3 years ago

    I agree with some awards I disagree with others.

    Summary posts are the new black.

  • udat #19 3 years ago

    How often do they give these awards out? Aren't some of these games a little old to be winning now? I swear I played Assassin's Creed two christmasses ago...

  • andywilkie35 #20 3 years ago

    Aren't most of the nominations for games that came out ages ago?

    Street Fighter IV to win Best Story and Character in 2012

  • roz123 #21 3 years ago

    I am glad super mario galaxy won it is a gaming experience unlike any other. Its pure joy seeing mario flying from planet to planet kicking stuff around

  • GreyBeard #22 3 years ago

    Best score for Dead Space? Ridiculous! Overall sound design in that game was superb, but the score itself was a fairly anonymous mood-piece. It does its job but doesn't draw attention to itself at any point.

    I feel really bad for the audio team on MGS4, regardless of any feelings about the gameplay the sound and score for it was absolutely top-notch and deserves far more recognition than its been given.

  • mad_caddy #23 3 years ago

    don't forget that Boro-toro won an award, congratulations to them :)

  • jeebthegreat #24 3 years ago

    Fallout 3 easily deserved way more recognition than this, SMG best game of the year? I should think not. Sure I had fun playing it but lost interest not too far into it, it was boring and repetitive. In all honesty CoD4 didn't really deserve much either, story should have gone to GTAIV (heck there's not much TO CoD4 really, it's good and all but easily trumped by Bad Company IMO) Congratulations to Dead Space though :) Glad to see it winning awards as it's definitely one of the gems of 2008.

  • Stuz359 #25 3 years ago

    The only problem with Metal Gear 4's sound was the truly atrocious voive acting.

    SMG definately deserved the best game award.

  • Sean.Aaron #26 3 years ago

    @kangarootoo: it was a boxed title and is getting a sequel soon which will feature DLC and a method to share your custom levels using an expanded editing tool without use of friend codes (this will be awesome).

    I believe Steven Spielberg was involved as a designer on the game (I'm pretty sure he came up with the concept) and he's also contributed to the sequel.

  • Burkey123 #27 3 years ago

    Mario Galaxy, what a game!!
    GTAIV should of got character and storyline, not COD4.

  • antony_williams #28 3 years ago

    Metal Gear not even nominated for Technical Achievement or Use of Audio? Some kind of joke???
    Should've got Score and Artistic Achievement too

  • General Coxykiller #29 3 years ago

    The reason these are old games is that there was no BAFTAs last year so they had to look at older titles to give them recognition.

    COD 4 owns, you can't deny the awards, you all here bitch but I bet when you get home you fire up the console and stick with 4 or 5 in and go get some online!

  • metalangel #30 3 years ago

    But neither CoD won anything for online play... perhaps the BAFTA folks got sick of being Martyrdom'd?

  • frankfurter209 #31 3 years ago

    Call of Duty 4 is the most overrated game this gen, GTA4 beats it in every award it won

  • Spence1115 #32 3 years ago

    General Coxykiller
    Nope, never played it online, can't be bothered with that. Coop > Typical Online for me, hence why Left 4 Dead multiplayer is far better than Call of Duty 4 for me.

    Anyway, Mario shouldn't have won best game in my opinion, but all the bits on Radio 1 saying how everyone was shocked GTA4 didn't win it can go to hell, since that would have just been lazy award giving because of its sales figures. Not good enough for game of the year definately. Civilization Revolution is an awful strategy game, but theres only one that is actually better than it in that nominated list, RA3, and even that wasn't that great.

    Still, the idea that GTA4 didn't win because of violence? Yeah, because Left 4 Dead, Call of Duty 4, Dead Space, all happy shiny run round hugging games aren't they? Stupid lazy 'journalists' on Radio 1.