The British Academy of Film and Television Arts (BAFTA) Video Game Awards has enough glitz to rival the Oscars in terms of showmanship. After all, it's not every day members of the industry vie for a golden mask with dead, empty eye sockets affixed atop a pedestal.
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- Action: Assassin's Creed: Brotherhood
- Artistic Achievement: God of War 3
- Best Game: Mass Effect 2
- Family: Kinect Sports
- Gameplay: Super Mario Galaxy 2
- Handheld: Cut the Rope
- Multiplayer: Need for Speed: Hot Pursuit
- Original Music: Heavy Rain
- Social Network Game: My Empire
- Sports: F1 2010
- Story: Heavy Rain
- Strategy: Civilization 4
- Technical Innovation: Heavy Rain
- Use of Audio: Battlefield: Bad Company 2
- Ones to Watch: Twang!
- GAME Award: Call of Duty: Black Ops
Frontier Developments (Kinectimals) founder David Braben explains his belief that review aggregation site Metacritic should start rating the actual critics. "I think a lot of people assumed I was criticizing journalists, which wasn't the intention," Braben told Spong. "What I was really saying was that actually, it's a really hard job. Because if you want to try and make your reviews stand out, you end up producing something that, with time, will make you look silly. So, in actuality, hitting Metacritic early on is a challenge, and I am impressed by the writers who manage to do it. Essentially, yes it's a very hard job and I apologize to those who either misunderstood what I said or disagreed. I'm happy to debate with them if they want at some time!" Metacritic co-founder Marc Doyle had disputed Braben's initial idea, saying, "Penalizing a brilliant critic who happens to utilize the lower end of its publication's scale more often than a middling critic who never gives lower than a 6/10 doesn't make sense to me." I can think of harder jobs than being a video game critic…struggling, nearly broke video game critic springs to mind.
Volition has lots of love to lavish upon the PC. Even in the ever-present face of piracy, the company behind the upcoming Saints Row: The Third and Red Faction: Armageddon games is stoically supportive of the platform. "Some people say PC is dying. Some people say PC is the future," Volition Studio Manager Eric Barker told Eurogamer. "PC is the most variable, because it depends on what you've got under the hood." But the kicker is Barker's comment towards piracy: "Let's make a game that's worth stealing, and then we'll worry about making sure they don't."
The HD remake of Beyond Good & Evil is coming to the PlayStation Network in May. Associate Producer Eric Damian-Vernet was mum on a specific release date, but revealed that players who buy the game within the first two weeks of its release will receive two free avatars of Jade and her piggy sidekick Pey'j. I think I'll stick with the avatar I'm using rather than risk looking like a walking abomination of Piglet. [PlayStation Blog]
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