IGN’s Best of GamesCom 2009 Awards

Last week’s GamesCom has officially been added to the list of game conventions that IGN hosts an award ceremony for. Fable III gets the “Biggest Surprise” nod, while Mass Effect 2 takes the “Best of Xbox 360” spot and the overall “Game of Show”:

We were so bored of science-fiction shooters before we got to Gamescom. But then Mass Effect 2 came along, managing to make us more excited than anything else we saw at the show, despite being set in the future and involving guns. Some games wowed us with their emotional depth, others with innovative mechanics but none managed to combine the two with such a masterful approach to story-telling.

We can empathise with Shepherd, we buy the excellent acting and we genuinely believe our decisions will have a meaningful impact on the overall experience. Crucially, too, Mass Effect’s core mechanics have been gently massaged and previous flaws are being addressed to hopefully deliver a title that’s a more complete, consistently enthralling experience. For instance, combat is vastly better this time around, elevating it from fiddly annoyance to tense, enjoyable set-piecing that augments the game’s narrative rather than distracts from it.

More than anything though, it’s the scale of Mass Effect 2 that has us all starry-eyed this time we get to truly explore the galaxy rather than scan planets from afar, occasionally hopping down to pick up a side-mission. Mass Effect 2 is the game its predecessor wanted to be, and the game we wanted it to be too. From the looks of things, gone are the technical quibbles and slight inconsistencies that made it difficult to feel truly immersed in BioWare’s craftsmanship last time around; this is a beautiful universe that we absolutely can’t wait to explore.