Uncharted 2 voted best game of E3
By the US critics. Natal also wins praise.
The Game Critics Awards has crowned Uncharted 2: Among Thieves as the best game of E3 2009.
The panel, made up of editors from 28 American videogame websites and magazines, voted in 15 separate categories.
Notable winners are Project Natal, which snagged Best Hardware/Peripheral, Split/Second as Best Racing Game - despite tough competition - and DJ Hero as Best Social/Casual/Puzzle, as Rock Band: The Beatles must have been hard to beat.
The full list of winners is below.
Eurogamer, incidentally, disagrees. We thought the best game of E3 was New Super Mario Bros. for Wii, although Milo & Kate - the Lionhead game for Project Natal - was our pick of the technology on show.
Uncharted 2: Among Thieves got an honourable mention, and publisher Sony, we thought, had the most impressive wares of the show.
The Game Critics Awards
Best of Show
- Uncharted 2: Among Thieves (PS3)
Best Action/Adventure Game
- Uncharted 2: Among Thieves (PS3)
Best Console Game
- Uncharted 2: Among Thieves (PS3)
Best Hardware/Peripheral
- Project Natal (Xbox 360)
Best Role Playing Game
- Mass Effect 2 (Xbox 360)
Best PC Game
- Star Wars: The Old Republic (PC)
Best Action Game
Best Original Game
- Scribblenauts (DS)
Best Handheld Game
- Scribblenauts (DS)
Best Racing Game
Best Sports Game
Best Fighting Game
- Tatsunoko vs. Capcom: Ultimate All-Stars (Wii)
Best Strategy Game
Best Social/Casual/Puzzle
Best Online Multiplayer
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Comments (79) Latest comment 3 years ago
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Simply the best graphics this side of Crysis.
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That's quite something. "
The E3 judges saw the behind-doors demo of TOR, the public saw the CGI trailer.
Seeing as just about every critic who watched the demo except EG [which was still pretty positive] has been positively glowing about TOR, it doesn't surprise me that it won best PC game. Besides, there wasn't exactly a lot of competition, Crysis 2 wasn't being shown and there were only a handful of other major PC titles at E3.
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Well, a lot of us are dubious about Natal's viability (I'm with Miyamoto and others on the absolute neccessity of some kind of button/trigger control), but I guess time will tell.
Sony's device seems to have more immediate practicality, but as its not a great deal different to Motion+, its hard to get really excited about it.
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Natal was simply a bit more different than Sony's wand from Nintendo's offering, I'm hopeful that both will be great in their own way, but Natal got a bit more of a buzz after it's E3 showing by virtue of it being the first to be shown at E3. Natal is also potentially more ambitious, but it remains to be seen whether it works as well as it is said to by the PR guys, hence there is naturally more speculation about it. Not raining on the wand's parade here, just saying that Natal had a few PR advantages after E3, and that it innately looks more futuristic than the wand which just seemed to be a refinement of Eyetoy mixed up with the Wiimote.
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Have just finished the first one recently and it is definitely one of my gaming highlights of the last 12 months. Am hoping for great things from the sequel.
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I keep seeing people saying this, and I don't get that at all. Motion+, AFAICT, just means the remote knows better which way it is facing, to increase accuracy a bit. I'm pretty sure it doesn't feature absolute sub-millimetre precision accuracy within all dimensions like PS3MC does. Also, the pointing aspects only work within direct line of sight of the sensor bar, which limits the Wii remote. For example, that little bit of the PS3MC tech demo where he has the torch, and can lean in and shine it at any angle, behind objects on the screen, I'm pretty sure wouldn't be possible on Wii, since unless you're pointing the front of the remote at the sensor bar it doesn't have any idea how far away it is from the screen, which to me restricts it a lot. PS3MC seems to be the first motion controller that knows exactly where it is at all times, which opens up many more possibilities.
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EurogamerLOL
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Just shows how out of touch this pathetic site is.
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Why are you even here if this site is so pathetic!?
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has the shitstorm started yet?
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My criticism is the site, not its users who I think are a bloody helpful / nice bunch.
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For the most part with Natal, once the novelty wears off, you're going to be wanting to be sat on the sofa and having your hands and fingers do most of the work. How well it copes with your fingers, which are relatively small and fiddly (and, from the single point of view of a camera or two stuck on top of the telly, constantly blocking each other from view) is going to play a large part in how well Natal does.
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It'll sell at least 10 times more than Uncharted 2. And all those tens of millions of customers will love it.
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Hopefully we still get to see more articles on some of these games, I can understand EG wants to spread its E3 content but it's been two weeks now since the show and still no SupCom 2 preview even though several other major sites gathered enough intel for a preview after Chris Taylor's presentation of that game. Not to mention Hearts of Iron III, East India Company or Disciples III. Where is the strategy here?
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With regards to Natal, MS are certainly winning the PR war on that front, they are getting so much more column inches than both Nintendo and Sony. So credit where its due, the question is can they release it with critical acclaim and good games. I think this is less likely because we have all seen the Wii, and for many the gloss of that will affect how people see Natal.
If Natal had been released before the Wii, I am pretty certain that MS would now be leading the console sales, but many people have played the wii, got bored and realised actually I dont want to be jumping around for 10, 15, 30 minutes or more. This will affect sales of Natal no doubt... the question is by how much.
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Like others above, I see more gaming applications for the wand than natal, partly because I've got a small living room and don't have space to perform a roundhouse on every enemy, but more because there are lots of difficult questions that I don't think the natal announcement addressed. Still, it's done MS a lot of good in terms of coverage. The wand is an evolution of tech that I played with at a Game On exhibition with the EyeToy many years ago. TBH, I'm surprised it's taken so long to come around to us, but that also explains a little why it's not made such an impact.
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What's wrong with a game that's all about gameplay and doesn't bore you with a poor and uninteresting story?
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I must be mental.
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/awaits backlash
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Uncharted 2 looks terrific, I'm very excited about playing that later on this year, but I'm surprised that God of War III wasn't mentioned in there or Last Guardian, those for me look very, very interesting. God of War III is probably the game I'm most excited about playing but it's nine months away at least.
The PS3 had a very strong E3 I felt, possibly the strongest to date, although the 360 wasn't too far behind. Alan Wake and Forza 3 look great so I'm really looking forward to those, and Natal looks intriguing.
The disappointment for me was the Wii. The announcement of a new Mario and Zelda was welcome but predictable and are no doubt both years away so it still leaves 2009 as a disappointing year for Wii games for me. I can't say I'm excited about a new 2D Mario game though as you can imagine from the opening paragraph of my post. Klonoa was very nice (and cheap!) but if I have to wait a year between quality game releases then I may as well sell my Wii now and buy it three years down the line when there's three or four decent games for it!!!
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Anyway, good results mostly, I s'pose. It will be interesting to see more demonstrations of Natal over the next 12 months or so, as I am still sceptical of it's potential beyond an advanced version of EyeToy. Ideally I would like KotOR 3 with some sort of online co-op, but I'm hoping TOR is good enough to encourage me to delve into the world of MMOs.
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True. I've got nothing against Uncharted. Loved the first game, one of the best on PS3 so far IMO. But I'm a bit disappointed that the critics seem to favour eye candy over gameplay TBH.
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Have you even played the first game? It has superb gameplay!
Oh, and I see Fapula is hovering around here but not posting, hence the last few comments looking forward to Uncharted 2 have got negative feedback.
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Motion Sensing, face recognition, talking 12 year old AI boy hasn't got anything on the heart monitor add on!
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Yes, that's what I said in the sentence before the sentece you quoted...
Again, to make things clear, I didn't mean to say that Uncharted 2 didn't deserve to win. But looking at the list of award winners, I'm a bit disappointed that pretty much everything in there is the standard HD 3D stuff.
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Scribblenaughts
/does in your face gesture
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And who is this who's giving everyone who says anything positive about Uncharted 2 negative feedback (like chris @ post 52: he had -2 before I brought it back to -1 a moment ago)? C'mon, own up...
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Everything points to pre-rendered parts (way to good AA). Check out the Digital foundry report.
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I do not know if Uncharted has the best graphics for any game out there but I will definitely say that the developers techniques are probably the best because they really know how to compose a scene to the strength of their game.
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Some odd choices though. Split/Second instead of GT5 or Forza 3? Tatsunoko vs. Capcom: Ultimate All-Stars (Wii) instead of something like Tekken?
Mass Effect 2 didn't even show up (all their stuff was from before the E3) and they still got a spot? But then that would have some logic behind it considering that it will be the most awesome game in the next couple of years.
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Some odd choices though. Split/Second instead of GT5 or Forza 3?"
What's funny about looking forward to the sequel of a very good game from a developer with an excellent track record...?!
I also think Split/Second looks a lot more interesting than the dullfests GT5 or Forza 3 - exciting arcade racing beats driving 'sims' any day, in my book.
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A lot of people dont like the aggressive simulations of Forza, GT games... so more of a pick up and play enjoy racer has more "mass market" appeal.
I'm personally not a fan of GT games as I dont have the patience to learn the tiny minute details required to be very good at it so I stick to more arcadey racers... but I do know a few people who would sell a testicle for GT5...
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The game with the best graphics when the PS wands come out?
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/does in your face gesture"
Which is why I said 'pretty much everything' instead of plain 'everything'...
But Scribblenauts is one of the games I'm looking most forward to on any platform TBH. My DSi is getting most of my playtime recently. In part because I can play it while my girlfriend watches TV or does other things and in part because I can play stuff like Pokemon (grinding doesn't require that much immersion) while watching MLB.TV games.
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This is indeed a classic gaming/CGI trick. There are even companies (I am not going to give names) that remove some shadows because they know your brain will actually fill them in instinctively. Many parts of a 3D scene can be lowered in detail, such is the magic of the human brain. It tends to compensate. In many ways it is the same principle as JPEG but not on a pixel level but on an object level.
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Trust me I know this is a technique to maximize a game graphics by developers but once the magic is revealed, you seem to notice it more. When I first watched some of the videos, I did not even notice the slight of hand because I was concentrated on the spots the developer wanted me to. Once the video paused and I saw how the scene was composed, now I noticed it much more and it does take away from the total effect. Sometimes ignorance is bliss
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No this had nothing to do with compression because that would effect the whole video not just certain objects within the scene. Also bad compression will not take the poly count out of certain objects and increase them in others. If you can find a direct feed video of Uncharted2 with the truck scene I describe you will easily see what I am talking about.
Do not get me wrong, Uncharted still looks absolutely gorgeous but thats because the developers are also masters of what they do. It's just not the graphics that make Uncharted look so good it's also the animation, sound etc. It looks like the developer did not leave anything up to chance.
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I'm not a big fan of those games either - but I do enjoy them - but it just seems far more obvious choice.
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IMHO the whole feedback system is rather useless as the fanboys will be the most fanatical in actually giving it. Didn't work on crap sites like N4G.com and in all likelihood won't work here.
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What would be more interesting would be to see how the MS devs got on with the PS3 to see if they are up to the challenge, or are Naughty Dog the best in the business at present.
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Very likely about the same as developers like Epic or Bungie are capable of. As the PS3 is mainly flawed from a cost-of-development perspective as it uses a non-standard architecture.
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Wouldn't exactly call the 360 an all rounder TBH. It's a pixel pusher while the PS3 has an architecture that in theory allows developers to sacrifice some pixels for interesting gameplay (there's a reason Sony didn't invest too heavily in a dedicated GPU: When needed, the Cell can offer support). But as gamers ask little more of developers than lots of brown pixels, that's what we get and much of PS3's potential is actually wasted.
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Suck on that 'innovation' junkies
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Yep, playing games on easy is for some.
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EG still calling Milo a "game"? 3 parts impressive tech demo, 4 parts scripted con job, zero parts game shurely? At least the infamous pre-rendered Killzone 2 video showed an actual *game*. So far, I've seen zip in terms of actual fun things to do with Milo, apart from make posh voice killbot apocalypse jokes. Methinks EG got sucked in worse than that Bolivian tv news showing footage from Lost as an air france crash video.
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EG is funny.
Natal's potential does look great.... but I am concerned how it will work in my sometimes cluttered lounge? If a mirror is anywhere behind you, creating extra motion or your dog runs past etc, will it really mess up what you are doing in that instance?
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Maybe, just maybe, motion control is a dead end.
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People get excited by new tech, thats how everyone is these days. Ive suddenly got into Apple after years of not being interested, now I have an iPhone and a Mac...
I just think Natal, is a good concept, but wont work in practice, but peoples excitement for futuristic tech and good PR/videos can really drag people in. I mentioned it in another post, but I really think if Natal came out before the Wii, MS would be leading the pack, now most people know what the Wii is and isnt at this point (how many users who own a wii are not using it) and I wont be bitten twice...I think duplicating the Wiis success this generation with a new controller is not going to happen. MS really should have considered holding it back and putting it into the 720.