ASTUKA'S GAMING PALOOZA GAME AWARDS 2013

Yes, it's that time again. The time I've been waiting for for about a year now. Once a year it comes and goes and all children are filled in absolute amazement only to brag or argue to their friends the next day about it. You know what I'm talking about.



AWARD SEAASSOONNN

Ah, yes. The one time where all the fanboy factions come together to stage all out war, the winner normally being whoever wins IAA or VGX. Now, here in the AstukaGaming household the tradition of holding a massive game awards ceremony has been in existence since 2010, but this is the first year that we're recording it for the internet to see. So before we start, let's take a look at some of the past overall winners.

2010
Game of the Year: Mass Effect 2
Studio of the Year: Rockstar Games

2011
Game of the Year: The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim
Studio of the Year: Bethesda Game Studios

2012
Game of the Year: Journey
Studio of the Year: Telltale Games

Now normally there's about 16+ award categories but I can't even remember what I had for breakfast yesterday much less what I rated the best mobile game in 2011 was so for the most part I'm going to skip the rest of that. Well, that's enough of the intro -- let's get to the awards!

MMO OF THE YEAR

The recent years of gaming have seen a massive uptrend in highly anticipated MMORPGs being released, only to fail about two days after launch. While we haven't found a WoWkiller yet, it seems as though the MMO community is just going to keep throwing out shitty MMOs until it finally does. Or WoW goes free-to-play and adds another 10+ years to it's lifetime. Whatever works.

Nominations

Eve Online: Odyssey

World of Warcraft: Mists of Pandaria

Firefall

Defiance

Guild Wars 2

The Old Republic

The Secret World

Neverwinter

Final Fantasy XIV: A Realm Reborn

Rift

And the winner is...

Out of all the ideas for an Action MMORPG, a full 3D, diablo-esque game seemed about as good as it could get. Yet for some reason, none of the attempted "WoWmurderers" even attempted to try that -- until Neverwinter came along.

Neverwinter does something no other MMO has done yet; feel like it's not a grind. A heavy action/gameplay oriented F2P MMO with a fair cash shop and Blizzard-focus on both PvE and PvP, Neverwinter seems like a gamers dream come true -- and despite a few hiccups along the way, that's exactly what it is.

MOBA OF THE YEAR

Despite being highly unpopular with some of the gaming community, MOBA's are one of the largest mainstream gaming trends since World of Warcraft and Call of Duty. Now with a previously one-game genre spurting out new games left and right, it's only fair to crown a winner.

Nominations

League of Legends

DotA 2

Smite

Rise of the Immortals

Guardians of Middle Earth

And the winner is...

Even with the MOBA industry now being chockful of games, the one real winner as always is the (slightly) original League of Legends. True, it may have a shit community, but the category that helps this one succeed is without a doubt the gameplay.

Well, that's all for now. Stay tuned for more posts, with will lead up to our game (and studio) of the year!

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