The 2011 GSA Gaming Awards

The 2011 GSA Gaming Awards

Well the votes are all in now and its time to let you know which games are the favourites of GSA last year and so without further ado let's begin.

Best RPG

It's been quite a good year for RPG's this year with the likes of Dark Souls bringing old-skool difficulty and Deus Ex rebirthing a classic game but unsurprisingly the outright winner this year was Skyrim. With its huge amount of content, impressive world and newbie friendly approach (at least compared to the stat heavy Oblivion and Morrowind), the game has really been a huge success. There have been a few bug (which is kinda expected from Bethesda) and to be honest if we were a PS3 site I doubt this would have won, but as it is in the eyes of GSA this is the best RPG this year.

Winner - Skyrim

Best shooter

As usual the onslaught of shooters in the market have swamped gamers but there have been a few stand out titles this year, Bulletstorm brought the fun back to the genre with its toilet humour and innovative score system, we had the big three 3's as well with Battlefield, Gears of War and Modern Warfare all hitting their third entries and we even had the return of zombie based killing with Dead Island. However it seems despite a hit and miss SP (from accounts I've heard) the MP aspects of Battlefield 3 won the GSA crowd and took a decisive victory.

Winner Battlefield 3

Best Racer

This was a closely fought battle with everyone having their own favourite from Dirt 3, Test Drive 2 and F1 2011 and even a couple of off the wall entries with Dead Island and RAGE, but in the end it was a win for our old exclusive favourite Forza 4. With impressive graphics and its usual brand of realistic driving its clear that its still going strong in its fourth incarnation.

Winner - Forza 4

Best Action/Adventure

As with most years beside the shooters this is often the busiest genre every year. This year so the likes of Assassin's Creed: Revelations finish off the story of two of its main protagnaists, LA Noire amaze us with its story based gameplay and impressive facial mo-cap technology, Dead Space 2 continued to scare the pants off people and Portal 2 was simply amazing. It seems that gamers are all secret comic fans too though as a resounding win for Batman: Arkham City s what we've found here. Taking all the elements of the original Arkham Asylum and transporting them to an open world setting was a big risk but Rocksteady pulled it off impressively and managed to keep the mood of the comics as well.

Winner - Batman: Arkham City

Best Puzzler

In a market full of mind numbing action games where often you just have to run and shoot mindlessly its good to see developers still pushing the more intellectual titles if few in number. In fact it was pretty much a whitewash for a victor this year for puzzlers. Valve once again proved why they are often called the best game developers currently. They took an innovative little adventure and expanded into a full retail title with a funny and well written script and then as SP wasn't enough for them they also decided to create one of the best MP experiences this year. That's right, the return of GLaDos and the introduction of Stephen Merchant voiced Wheatley added to an already superb gameplay experience which left Portal 2 as GSA's puzzler of 2011

Best Puzzler - Portal 2

Best Party game

A category which may well be retained for next years awards just for pure comedy value, it would evidently seem that the GSA crowd's are not huge party game players. Although we had many entries from Pass the Parcel, Strip Poker and the worryingly two girls one Kent (please don't ask!!), the only genuine party game entries were Rio and Kinect Sports 2 and as such they are both awarded the prize fo best party game of the year!!

Winners - Rio and Kinect Sports 2

Best Single player Experience

An interesting array of titles were put up here from Dead Space 2 and Deus Ex to Gears 3 and Portal 2, its good to see the tastes of GSA are varied, but unsuprisingly once again Skyrim takes home the gold as its in-depth huge world will still be keeping people entertained in 6 months to a years time.

Winner - Skyrim

Best Multiplayer Experience

This was an interesting category and some surprise mentions were thrown in. GSA gaming night favourites Dirt 3 and AC: Revelations were thrown up as entries and there was even votes for Saints Row the 3rd and Modern Warfare 3. However out of the blue there was actually a tie for first place. Unsuprisingly Battlefield 3 was up there but out of the blue came Zombie survival game Dead Island. It seems that the GSA'ers are fans of clobbering zombies with friends when not creating in depth strategies to take out enemy installations.

Winners - Battlefield 3 and Dead Island

Best XBlA title

One of the greatest benefits of online marketplaces is the fact that smaller titles which would not survive the retail market can have a thriving life on the XBLA marketplace and this was reflected in the entries for this category. From re-released old games like Resi 4, Portal 2 and Crysis to brand new games like Bastion and Stacking. However there was one game which kept cropping up and that was Torchlight. A great dungeon crawler which like the mighty Diablo has randomly generated dungeons and endless amounts of loot its a game that just keep giving even after completion.

Winner - Torchlight

Best WP7 game

A wide and varied catalogue of games have been released this year for the WP7 from strategy games like Plants vs Zombies and Sally's Salon to tower defence style titles such as GeoDefence. However its not that much of a surprise that the winner is probably the most popular mobile phone game of all time. Yep that's it its Snake Angry Birds!! It seems even GSA was not safe from the dominance of those pig hating flightless birds and they walk away with the title.

Winner - Angry Birds

GSA Game of the Year

Well this is it, the big one, the all important winner of GSA's game of the year. There were dozens of great games this year and it seems fair to list all the entries which had votes placed for them as they were all excellent games. Representing shooter you had Gears of Wars 3 and Battlefield 3, from the RPG corner you had Skyrim, Dark Souls and Deus Ex and in the Action/Adventure category AC: Revelations, Portal 2, Saints Row 3, Dead Space 2 and Batman Arkham City. However there can be only one winner....however the voting came to a split vote between Gears of War 3 and Skyrim. So congratulations to both titles as being truly superb games, but this is the GSA Game of the Year and we can only have one winner. So considering Skyrim has already taken two titles home already its logical to say that tips the scales in its favour and I therefore declare Skyrim the GSA GOTY 2011!!!

Winner - Skyrim

Well that's all for these awards, who will win next year? Well its shaping up nicely already with FF13-2, Halo 4, Dead Space 3, Crysis 3, Assassin's Creed 3 and Kingdoms of Amalur Reckoning all pretty definite with probably several more to be announced it looks like another great year for 360. Hey you never know we may even see a Half Life 3 too!!

WOW!

Great work mate.

This gets my vote for post of the year and its only day one!

I am going too move this to the official review page so all the guys that read our reviews but do not post get too read it too.

Oh how I could do with another game of two girls one Kent right now

Some good games there, all deserve their places - except Rio maybe

Great work there Tenlo, i've got to admit the more i play the better Skyrim seems to be getting. Never played Oblivion, so wasn't really sure what to expect (Fable 2 & 3 are about as RPG as close as i've got to RPG's).

Nice work my friend!!

Loved and completed Battlefield 3 so glad to see it win!! Looking forward to starting Skyrim, hopefully this week!

Super work Tenners!! GSA legend!!

Good work mate, nice to see torchlight in there it sneakily made its way into my most played list this year, a great game. I think Portal 2 is probably my favorite overall although I've only put 10 hours or so into Skyrim so far so we'll see how that pans out