Heavy Rain Cleans Up at BAFTAs

[Logan Westbrook]

Heavy Rain Cleans Up at BAFTAs

The French-flavored thriller went down a storm with the BAFTA board, but failed to nab the best game prize.

Cinematic thriller Heavy Rain proved something of a smash hit at the Videogame BAFTAs last night, being the only game to win more than one award. Other winners included Mass Effect 2, Call of Duty: Black Ops, and Assassin's Creed: Brotherhood.

Heavy Rain beat the likes of Alan Wake, Mass Effect 2 and Fallout: New Vegas to nab the best story award. It also won the award for best original music, and the award for technological innovation. It didn't win either of the best game awards, however, with the BAFTA pick going to Mass Effect 2, and the GAME-sponsored, public award going to Black Ops. Besides the awards handed out to games, Lionhead boss Peter Molyneux received a BAFTA fellowship, which he accepted with a heartfelt apology [http://www.escapistmagazine.com/news/view/108540-Peter-Molyneux-Apologizes-for-Over-Promising] for being, well, Peter Molyneux.

The rest of the winners were as follows:

• 
  [li]Action: Assassin's Creed Brotherhood[/li]
  [li]Artistic Achievement: God of War III [/li]
  [li]Family: Kinect Sports [/li]
  [li]Gameplay: Super Mario Galaxy 2 [/li]
  [li]Handheld: Cut the Rope[/li]
  [li]Multiplayer: Need for Speed: Hot Pursuit [/li]
  [li]Social Network Game: My Empire [/li]
  [li]Sports: F1 2010 [/li]
  [li]Strategy: Civilization V [/li]
  [li]Use of Audio: Battlefield: Bad Company: 2 [/li]
  [li]BAFTA Ones to watch: Twang! [/li]

There's certainly a few eyebrow quirking choices in the list - Assassin's Creed Brotherhood is an odd choice for best action game, for example, especially when you consider it was up against Halo: Reach, Black Ops and God of War 3 - but even so, it's encouraging to see a high profile organization like BAFTA acknowledging that games are as worthy of praise as films and television.

Source: BBC [http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-12767026]


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[Who Dares Wins]

I was most amazed when I saw the nominees: CoD: BLOPS for Artistic Achievement and Fallout NV for Strategy. Seriously WTF? Also how is Hot Pursuit the best multiplayer?

 

[Zhukov]

Whoooo, go Mass Effect 2!

Also, the fact that Black Ops only won the popularity prize makes me viciously happy.

Not sure how I feel about Heavy Rain. It's nice to see the industry attempt something different, but if you're going to make a game that closely resembles a movie then it needs to be a good movie. Still, it did have its moments. So... yay for Heavy Rain I guess.

 

[GeneticallyModifiedDucks]

I can't help but laugh at these awards. These are almost as bad as GDC. Almost.

 

[Professor Cubbage]

Black Ops is in absolutely no way an artistic achievement. It's almost like it gets nominated for awards just for being "Call of Duty". Hmmmm....

 

[Zom-B]

Wow, these seem like very... arbitrary awards. I would agree that Heavy Rain deserves best story, but not best game. As a "game" Heavy Rain was a chore to play and sit through. As a story driven experience it was very good. I basically finished the game in two sessions, though separated by approximately a month, haha.

 

[Outright Villainy]

Heavy rain had a good story? Okay, the game was a lot of fun, and it sucks you in, but it's incredibly pulpy fun. If you think about the story for more than 5 minutes your head will hurt from the stupid.

 

[Swifteye]

I'm not sure about some of these entries. And the thing god of war won was well. I certainty wouldn't have picked god of war 3 for artistic achievement in any particular way. And what is Twang?

 

[mireko]

Heavy Rain beat the likes of Alan Wake, Mass Effect 2 and Fallout: New Vegas to nab the best story award.

...

Heavy Rain beat the likes of Alan Wake, Mass Effect 2 and Fallout: New Vegas to nab the best story award.

...

Sorry. It just makes less and less sense every time I read it. These awards are silly, but Heavy Rain? Story? Technological innovation? Are you fucking kidding me?

 

[v3n0mat3]

Heavy Rain did have a good story. Much better than the other nominees (yes, even Mass Effect 2, which was only ok, in terms of storyline). Especially the ending. The ending was amazing, no doubt. As for Technological Innovation, well, it does look astounding.

 

[Citrus]

That's ridiculous. Heavy Rain was a decent experiment, but it wasn't close to being as good as people make it out to be. The story was nothing special, and was actually pretty poor considering how important it was to the game. Stupid twists, plot holes, bad pacing... Alan Wake or ME2 definitely deserved that award more.

 

[Mr. Omega]

Nice to see Assassin's Creed and Mario Galaxy get some love, at least. And I think Heavy Rain deserves the awards. But it just loses so much impact when God of War 3 gets the award for artistic achievement.

 

[LightspeedJack]

Terrible choices shame on BAFTA they clearly don't know what they are doing when it comes to video games.

 

[Jumplion]

That's ridiculous. Heavy Rain was a decent experiment, but it wasn't close to being as good as people make it out to be. The story was nothing special, and was actually pretty poor considering how important it was to the game. Stupid twists, plot holes, bad pacing... Alan Wake or ME2 definitely deserved that award more.

Mass Effect 2's story was a "meh" for me, it didn't have that same sense of wonder or epicness that the original Mass Effect had on me. That coupled with how I dumped ammo clip after ammo clip into anything that moved, it really just felt more generic to me. I wouldn't know about Alan Wake, but I've heard it was good.

Heavy Rain might not have had the most polished story, but I think what it gave us was better than most game stories. It at least tried, and the developer had the balls to go through with it. I personally loved the story despite its shortcomings, and I thought the twist(s) meshed perfectly with the gameplay. But, eh, it's just another awards show. Not like they matter in the end, they're all great games.

EDIT: Seriously, people have to understand that they're just recognition awards, they're all great games whether they won or not. What I see here is mainly "I didn't like the game, therefore it shouldn't have been nominated!" or "I liked this game the most, they're a bunch of idiots for not letting it win!" seriously, guys, like, totally, get over it.

 

[Yossarian1507]

Yeah, I love the story of Heavy Rain, so I'm dying from joy right now. Also totally agree with the two other awards - it looks astounding. If someone would mix Heavy Rain's graphic with L.A. Noire's facial features that would be the peak of videogames graphic. And music? Guess what OST is always on my iPod whenever I have to go to college when the rain falls?

The rest of the awards look fine. I would only swap NFS: Hot Pursuit with Asscreed: Brotherhood for the best multiplayer. AC:B's multi is unbelievably fun.

 

[HentMas]

[li]Handheld: Cut the Rope[/li]

wait WAT!?!??!?!?!?

a flash game remade into the Iphone actually won best portable game!?!?!? WTH????

how could that possibly be true!!! it doesnt make any sense!!!, why would... how?????

ARGH my brain is on FIREEE

 

[HentMas]

Wow, these seem like very... arbitrary awards. I would agree that Heavy Rain deserves best story, but not best game. As a "game" Heavy Rain was a chore to play and sit through. As a story driven experience it was very good. I basically finished the game in two sessions, though separated by approximately a month, haha.

Heavy rain had a good story? Okay, the game was a lot of fun, and it sucks you in, but it's incredibly pulpy fun. If you think about the story for more than 5 minutes your head will hurt from the stupid.

this my friends, is what we call "Point of view", its an amazing little thing because EVERYONE can have one, and if the mayority think about one over the other, that one wins!, and receives an award, like best game! or best "story"

sorry sorry, i find it funny that both post are right one after the other, it is so funny, two guys not getting why someone would think what the other guy is thinking hahaha

 

[Senaro]

My mind is more blown by God of War winning Artistic Achievement. Not that it doesn't deserve it for whatever reason, but I'm highly amused that it got that over an Action award.

 

[The Sane]

I was a little miffed at Bad Company 2 winning for sound.. I can't say how good it actually was, its been too long since i played it, but the sound quality never stood out to me. Whereas the combat sounds in Medal of Honour spelt wrong really caught my attention.

The rest of it seems all fairly generic, doesn't look like they went looking very far for each winner, rather just picking the well known ones.

 

[Zom-B]

Wow, these seem like very... arbitrary awards. I would agree that Heavy Rain deserves best story, but not best game. As a "game" Heavy Rain was a chore to play and sit through. As a story driven experience it was very good. I basically finished the game in two sessions, though separated by approximately a month, haha.

Heavy rain had a good story? Okay, the game was a lot of fun, and it sucks you in, but it's incredibly pulpy fun. If you think about the story for more than 5 minutes your head will hurt from the stupid.

this my friends, is what we call "Point of view", its an amazing little thing because EVERYONE can have one, and if the mayority think about one over the other, that one wins!, and receives an award, like best game! or best "story"

sorry sorry, i find it funny that both post are right one after the other, it is so funny, two guys not getting why someone would think what the other guy is thinking hahaha

I never said that I didn't think that the story had plot holes and other problems, but overall it was quite good. But yes, opinions are like assholes, right? Everyone's got one.