BEST NEW GAME MECHANIC

This award goes to the most innovative, enjoyable and useful new game mechanic introduced in 2010.

Runner Up

EMBLEM EDITOR (CoD Black Ops)

The emblem editor in black ops took customisation to a new level. The 12 layers and 100s of images that you can combine to create interesting emblems is an excellent feature with a lot of potential. Obviously it's easy to misuse and people make a lot of offensive emblems, but this is relatively well moderated and more often than not you see well made, artistic or funny emblems. Being able to stick the emblem on your gun is also cool and makes for a lot of interesting looking guns.I've literally spent hours on the editor making all sorts of things, it's just a shame I can only settle with one at a time because I change it once or twice every day :P

Winner

FIGHT CARDS + ONLINE RANKINGS (EA MMA)

EA MMA gives you the option to set up fight cards with your friends or join others online. A fight card is like a real MMA event, you are assigned a fight and then watch the other fights until it's your turn to compete. In game they can be great for setting up multiple fights for easy private matches, or setting up mini tournaments and finding out who's the best.For me the fight card is a lot of fun, as it's quite exciting watching the fights and waiting for your own fight in front of a small audience. It may sound sad but it is a lot of fun. Also the creators hold "live" events showcasing the best fighters from the leaderboards, which can be tuned into like a real live fight. As well as this the standard ranked multiplayer has a division like the real life sport divisions, you fight for a belt and then hold your belt (I was Light Heavyweight champion of the world for a few matches :lol: ) against other competitors.It's all great fun, EA really done an excellent job implementing multiplayer for EA MMA, and its as authentic an experience as you can get for any sport game.

BEST NEWS

This award goes to the best news announced in 2010.

Runner Up

Elder Scrolls V Announced!

This news is very recent and only a few days old, but it's definately some of the best gaming news I've heard in a long time. Finally, after a painfully long wait, the sequel to Oblivion has been announced! Not only has it been announced but we've been given plenty of details, it will be a direct sequel to Oblivion, and is going to be set in Skyrim, the northern country of Cyrodil, home to the race "the Nords". So it is likely to be a cold/icy world we will explore this time.

The best part is, it's less than a year away! (provided there are no delays, which is unlikely...)

Winner

Gears of War 3 BETA + Dedicated Servers

Anyone who's played Gears of War will have likely experienced the lag like no other lag you will find in a game, or the ridiculous host advantage which nearly kills the amazing series. It should be gone in Gears 3, as EPIC have finally announced Gears 3 will have dedicated servers, so no more ridiculous connection issues!

There was some bad news, the game was delayed by half a year, but this news was balanced with some even better news that Gears 3 will be having a BETA!

SHOOTER OF THE YEAR

This award goes to my favourite shooter of 2010.

Runner Up

HALO REACH

What's this? My letdown of the year is also runner up for greatest shooter of the year? As much of a letdown as it was for me, Halo Reach was an excellent game. It had plenty of improvements over Halo 3, most notable was the amazing new forge mode, which I did spend a fair amount of time on. This combined with the dizzying options for game mode creation still makes this game the undoubtably best game on the 360 for private matches and customisation. The Campaign was good as well, relatively challenging on Legendary and a good end to the series. Multiplayer was the biggest letdown area for me but it was still good. As a game it's excellent, as a Halo game it's not so good which is why it was my biggest letdown. But it still held my attention for a few months, and it is definately worthy of being runner up Shooter of the year!

Winner

CALL OF DUTY: BLACK OPS

It had to win an award eventually, CoD Black Ops is easily the best shooter of the year, and for me probably the best shooter for the last few years. Campaign is amazing in traditional Call of Duty styIe. the Multiplayer is as addictive and expansive as usual, only now it's even better with theatre mode, private match customisation, more unlocks, credit system, file share, emblem editor and more. Also zombies returns in its greatest incarnation yet, with two great new maps and hopefully the WaW maps will be downloadable in the future.

If you want a more in depth look at the game check out my review.
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I will create some more awards for the next few blogs before unveiling my GOTY (although I'm sure you all could guess what it will be). Other awards I will reveal are Best News of 2010, best Film of 2010, I will think up more over the next few days, but please post ideas in the comments section if you want to see more!

Thanks!

RPG OF THE YEAR

This award goes to my favourite RPG of 2010.

Runner Up

ALPHA PROTOCOL

Alpha Protocol is a game like no other, a spy based RPG made by the legendary Obsidian, who ironically also created my most hyped RPG of the year (New Vegas) which I enjoyed much less. The game takes you to many famous cities, you can build your spy into a number of different sty1es, and the game can be played in a variety of ways. The gameplay is quite similar to Mass Effect (which isn't a bad thing, see below) from the conversations to the combat and even level up screens. Definately one to try if you are an RPG fan and haven't tried it yet.

Winner

MASS EFFECT 2

Mass Effect 2 is in my opinion (and the opinion of a lot of other people) undoubtably the best RPG of 2010, it delivered an amazing adventure in typical, brilliantly told Bioware fashion. After the fantastic ME 1 this game had a lot of expectations and it smashed all of them, the game has very little faults and is easily my RPG of the year.

And yes I'm so lazy I didn't even change the Legion pic :P

BEST NEW CHARACTER

This award goes to my favourite new game character introduced in 2010.

Runner Up

President John Kennedy (Call of Duty Black Ops)

"Do not pray for easy lives, my friends. Pray to be...stronger men."

JFK makes a suprise appearance early on in the Black Ops campaign (if you haven't yet played it then I guess it's no longer a suprise, sorry about that). But the real reason he's made the list is because of the unlockable Zombie pentagon mission. Playing as JFK fighting zombies is very novel and quite funny. He may not be "new" so to speak but it's definately a first for a video game.

Winner

Legion (Mass Effect 2)

"We do not comprehend the organic fascination of self-poisoning, auditory damage and sexually transmitted disease."

Characters and dialogue is where Mass Effect really shines, and for me Legion was a stand out character in the brilliant Mass Effect 2. He was an able squadmate, as well as an interesting and different character. Not the funniest or even the most useful follower in the game, but in my opinion he was the coolest, and his awesome robot voice clinched it.Thanks for reading!

BIGGEST LETDOWN

This "award" goes to the game which was a dissapointment to me. Some of you may disagree with me entirely, but please note letdown doesn't mean bad, it just means it wasn't what I was hoping for.

Runner Up

FALLOUT NEW VEGAS

I am pretty sure most people who read this won't agree with FNV being a letdown, but to me it was after the amazing Fallout 3. I enjoyed the game for the first 10 hours, but eventually the story became a chore, such a chore in fact that I sold the game because I really didn't want to continue. A lot of people I know have finished the game and enjoyed it, but for whatever reason I just couldn't progress into this game.

This combined with the glitches and problems which plagued the game early on made it a letdown for me. So Fallout New Vegas takes the runner up spot.

Winner

HALO REACH

Before I start slagging the game off, I will make it clear that I liked Halo Reach. It was a good game, the Campaign was fun and the multiplayer held my attention for a few weeks, and the new Forge mode rocks.

BUT Halo Reach was a huge dissapointment for me, the main draw of Halo is the multiplayer, in Reach the map choice was pathetic, there were very few good unique maps, half of them were ripped from the campaign and the rest were made on forge world. Forge world was a great idea, but Bungie are abusing it as a cheap and easy way to bring out new maps with minimum effort. It should be a community tool, they shouldn't use it to create lacklustre maps.

The gameplay itself is flawed, spawns are bad, the weapons are imbalanced, the MAIN weapon of the game (DMR) is based on luck with the bloom recoil system, some of the new armour abilities are so unbalanced that it ruins the game and limits me to only playing gametypes where they are not allowed.

So Reach was a good game, but it's not even half the game Halo 3 was, as a result it's easily my biggest letdown of the year.

Whether you agree or not, comment, and thanks for reading my blog!

MOST SUPRISINGLY GOOD GAME

My first award goes to a game which I played which was much better than I expected it to be. If you have never tried this game, or have heard about it and are curious about it, I recommend giving it a try!

Runner Up

MONDAY NIGHT COMBAT

I bought this game based on a recommendation from a friend and was pleasantly suprised. The gameplay is fun, action-packed and most importantly, very well balanced. There aren't many game modes to play, but the few modes you can play are great fun, and are perfect distractions to play in between whatever main game you are playing at the moment.

Despite some lag/matchmaking problems this game is an excellent arcade game and well worth the price.

Winner

JUST CAUSE 2

After being very impressed with the demo, I went out and bought Just Cause 2. It's improved so much on the first game it just had to win an award, the gameplay is fun, the game world is still massive, yet no where near as empty as it was in the prequel. The game is packed with things to do outside of the main missions, and getting to a mere 75% completion took me deep into the 60s hour mark.

I spent a lot of time playing this game, whether it was messing about, going for achievements or doing the main story, and despite some weaknesses, it's one of the funnest new games I played in 2010. Definately try the demo if you haven't yet, I guarantee you will enjoy it, and likely will want to get the full game afterwards!

Last year I saw some cool award type ceremonies in the form of blog series, and this year I've seen people already start on theirs, so I thought it'd be fun to join in. Over the following days I will post up the following categories for my Awards of 2010, in this order:

Most Suprisingly Good - This award will go to a game I played which was miles better than I expected it to be.

Biggest Letdown - Self explanatory, the game which I was dissapointed with the most will get this "award".

RPG of the Year - My favourite RPG of 2010 will win this award.

Shooter of the Year - My favourite shooting game of 2010 wins this award.

Sport Game of the Year - My favourite spo- a screw it you know what this award is for.

Film of the Year - The only non-game related category, my favourite new film of 2010 will win this award.

Game of the Year - My overall game of 2010 will win this one.

Every category will have a winner and one honourable mention.

Please comment if you have any other ideas for awards you'd like me to post up, or have a guess at what my awards will be! Check my profile tomorrow for the first award, for the most suprisingly good game of the year.

I wrote a review for Black Ops, check it out HERE.
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Also I saw the new Harry Potter film last night and would recommend it to everyone, definately the best in the series so far, amazing film.

My Photobucket accounts bandwidth has been exceeded again, so I was going through the account deleting useless stuff and found some of my old banner/blog headers, I forgot how cool they were so I made a new one with a New Vegas theme.

I hope people like it!