The Golden Joysticks is an award night like any other. There are awards handed out in a mass of categories, several of them quite meaningless, and there’s a reasonable share of surprising and entirely predictable results every year. However, the winner of the Game of the Year award this year was so far from being expected it’s difficult to fathom.
The awards are voted for by gamers and this usually means that the bigger awards will go the same way as the charts and sales figures for the past 12 months, however this definitely didn’t prove the case when Mass Effect 2 picked up the prize, stealing it from the grasps of Modern Warfare 2 in many gamers’ opinions.
Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2 sold a ludicrous number of copies, became the biggest selling game of all time, and stayed in the number 1 spot for 9 weeks. Mass Effect 2, which is admittedly a brilliant game, could only manage two weeks at the top and only really enjoyed one week of very good sales figures.
TechWatch believes that this slightly odd result is down to the fact that role playing gamers are more vociferous in their voting for their favourite game. Alternatively, it could be that Modern Warfare 2 buyers are still playing the game incessantly online, far too busy to trouble themselves with such things as voting for the game. Alternatively, of course, it could be that millions of gamers purchased the game on the back of the fact it was the latest in one of the biggest selling game franchise’s of all time only to realise it wasn’t as good as the hype.
Red Dead Redemption could only muster third spot in the adventure game awards with Assassin’s Creed 2 taking top spot and Batman: Arkham Asylum coming in 2nd.
Maybe it's just that Mass Effect 2 is an awesome game, a stellar accomplishment by Bioware that had to be honored by the gaming community, even if they aren't traditional RPG players. A game like this only comes around every so often, unlike Call of Duty, which seems to produce a lackluster game every year. Just my thoughts.
Overrated game anyway. Im pretty sure Gears has won it before and since ME2 is all about ripping off Gears of War anyway its no big surprise.
The surprise is that it scooped best RPG, since the game isnt even an RPG anymore, like I said its just another dumbass TPS.
Of course, runner up was Fallout 3 GOTY edition, so that tells you how pathetic the competition is in that department.