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Best E3 Game by Platform
Best E3 360 Game
Gears of War 2
Gears of War 2 had an especially strong showing at E3 with the public unveiling of the co-operative Horde mode and a drop dead gorgeous single player demo. Further improving upon the formula that helped the first game sell almost 5 million copies, Gears 2 looks to offer gamers more multiplayer options, a refined online experience, and a more adult story this time around.
Runners Up:
Best E3 PS3 Game
Little Big Planet
Media Molecule's innovative do-it-yourself platformer strikes us as a quintessentially postmodern and potentially revolutionary gaming experience. It plays to the PS3's unique strengths (snazzy visuals, free online play, and ubiquitous storage space), allowing players to cooperatively construct and play original levels in real time, and then share those creations on a global scale. In the realm of user-defined content, no other console game even comes close.
Runners Up:
Best E3 Wii Game
MadWorld
Mad World's stark black & white visual approach blends Sin City with Viewtiful Joe, further reinforcing the idea that given the Wii's hardware abilities, developers are far better off relying on art than raw power. The game itself is gloriously and comically violent, with creative methods of impalement and dismemberment punctuated by quips from a jackass announcer.
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Best E3 PC Game
Left 4 Dead
It may be impossible for Valve Software to top last year's phenomenal Orange Box, but Left 4 Dead shows that they are still on a creative roll, as this zombie survival/shooter co-op game walked (or shambled?) away with our Best PC Game of the show award, thanks to a winning combination of kickass graphics, scary and challenging monster A.I, and innovative co-op gameplay. The zombies are coming to kill us, people....and we can't wait.
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Best E3 DS Game
Chrono Trigger
You know, we usually try to avoid giving these sorts of awards to ports of games, but when it's such a fantastic translation of quite possibly the best RPG of all time, it's a pretty big deal. Even if you already played it through on the SNES, seeing Chrono Trigger running on the DS immediately reminds you of how good the game is.
Runners Up:
Best E3 PSP Game
Resistance: Retribution
They never got the hype of God of War or Final Fantasy, but Sony Bend's two Syphon Filter PSP games have earned some of the best reviews on the system. And now that team is moving on to the Resistance franchise, with a new third-person game, a new default control scheme, and plenty of new weapons/story answers/characters worth getting excited about.
Runners Up:
Yumi's Odd Odyssey
(Umihara Kawase)
Best E3 Game by Genre
Best E3 Action Game
Mirror's Edge
Part of what makes Mirror's Edge so special, from what we've seen so far, is that it accomplishes what it sets out to do -- it brings the idea of a super-intense first-person action game to a whole new level. But what's also important is that it does all of this with an eye-catching vibrant style rarely seen in action games these days.
Runners Up:
Best E3 Shooting Game
Resistance 2
The 60-way multiplayer and 8-player co-op campaign are nifty and all, but Resistance really stole the show by raising the bar on FPS boss battles: A hundred-foot-tall creature smashes its way through the streets of Chicago, picking up the player and hurling him across town. Insomniac talked a lot about "scale" in their presentations, and from what we've seen so far they're poised to deliver in a big way. Uh, literally.
Runners Up:
Best E3 Role-Playing Game
Fallout 3
Fallout 3 grabbed our attention immediately with its breathtaking vista across a post-apocalyptic Washington D.C. It won us over when we picked up the controls and found we could choose at will between run-and-gun, and carefully planned tactical combat, yet neither felt unbalanced. Maybe absence makes the heart grow fonder after all.
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Best E3 Strategy Game
Halo Wars
Halo Wars has that right "inviting to newbies and hardcore RTS folk alike" vibe. Newcomers will come for the easy controls and cool visuals like a badass Spartan ripping apart a Covenant tank while blowing up Grunts. The hardcore will appreciate a workable interface that allows for things like combined arms assaults, individualized commanders, and support powers. And everyone will enjoy the total non-appearance of Master Chief using a hoe for dirt-farming.
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Best E3 Fighting Game
Street Fighter IV
Following Street Fighter II's wild popularity, Street Fighter III catered to a hardcore niche thanks to split-second parrying mechanics and a roster of relatively unlikable new characters. Street Fighter IV recaptures that old magic with an accessible new Focus attack system, an influx of familiar faces, and an overall feel that more closely resembles 1994's Super Street Fighter II Turbo. This is SF2's true successor -- and it's beautiful.
Runners Up:
Best E3 Download Game
Flower
We've seen pictures and videos of this graphical stunner, but E3 was our first chance to play the game and discover that it's every bit as engaging as it is pretty. Flower's creator Jenova Chen explains that if flOw were a haiku, Flower is a poem -- something with more content, with a message to communicate, and with a desire to leave players changed at the end.
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Best E3 Music Game
Rock Band 2
While its core gameplay won't be seeing a whole lot of major changes, just about every other facet of the Rock Band experience has been tweaked for the sequel. It's now easier than ever to play your favorite songs thanks to some nifty sorting options and the ability to make your own set list. And the addition of the Battle of the Bands feature to the online portion of the series will undoubtedly lead to some heavy duty rivalries.
Runners Up:
Best E3 Trailer
Infamous
The Infamous E3 trailer wasn't great for revealing news -- we've known for roughly a year to expect a lightning-infused open world jump-and-punch game -- but for how nice it looked. No fancy CG -- just comic book-style art panels mixed with footage of the main character throwing cars, lighting a gas tank on fire, and leaping through the city. Basically, we're fans of lightning as a gun replacement.
Runners Up:
Best E3 New Title
M.A.G.
Of the few games shown at E3 that we didn't already know about, MAG easily has us most intrigued. We know SOCOM-developer Zipper can make a great tactical shooter, but if they can also somehow marshal the chaos of promised 256-player online matches into games of military precision, then MAG could be something special. Let's just hope they change the silly name -- we don't mean "Best New Title" literally.
Runners Up:
Game of Show
Little Big Planet
This E3 properly justified the volume of hype that Little Big Planet had amassed since its startling debut at 2007?s Game Developers Conference. As a toolkit for wannabe game designers, it offers an elegant interface packed with depth and expandability. This fall, meeting up with your online buddies to make games will be all the rage. But don?t overlook LBP?s innate appeal as a game you simply want to play.
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I can agree with this list a lot more than I do with IGN's, though I don't like Spore got so few awards (isn't it a Strategy title? Why isn't it even nominated?), at least they gave LittleBigPlanet the credit it deserves.
