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It’s time to put on your finest designer sweats and custom-made slippers (aren’t you glad this isn’t televised?), as we roll out the red carpet once again for the one, the only... Aggie Awards presentation from Adventure Gamers!
In this, our third annual awards ceremony, we recognize the best and brightest adventure offerings from 2010. Sure, the list may not include many “AAA” titles, but everyone likes an underdog. Will Telltale reclaim its top honours for the third year running? Can a strong field of handheld and console games pry the PC’s grip off the golden statuette? Will the strongest indie candidates show up the publishers that backed other titles instead? What is the meaning of life? All these questions (okay, except the last one) will be answered soon.
For double the Aggie pleasure, we have tallied up the votes from our recent Readers’ Choice poll as well, and will be announcing the public winners along with our own. You may just be surprised at how the results played out: sometimes you even agreed with us! But certainly not always, including a difference of opinion on the biggest prize of all.
As always, there are really no losers here, only runners-up. There was plenty of competition for each and every award, including more than a few tiebreaks to settle before reaching a verdict. But like the Highlander, in the end there can be only one to claim the coveted hardware.
Read on, then, and find out which games claimed the Aggie Awards for 2010.
Table of Contents
Page 1: You are here
Page 2: Best Story
Page 3: Best Writing - Comedy
Page 4: Best Writing - Drama
Page 5: Best Character
Page 6: Best Gameplay
Page 7: Best Concept
Page 8: Best Setting
Page 9: Best Graphic Design
Page 10: Best Animation
Page 11: Best Music
Page 12: Best Voice Acting
Page 13: Best Sound Effects
Page 14: Honorary Aggies
Page 15: Best Independent Adventure (Commercial)
Page 16: Best Console/Handheld Adventure (Exclusive)
Page 17: Best First-Person PC Adventure
Page 18: Best Third-Person PC Adventure
Page 19: Best Adventure of 2010
Page 20: Final Notes
First up: Best Story... the envelope, please!
I see “Black Mirror 2” got runner-up in pretty much every category, AG staff AND readers!
Heavy Rain, champion of the people! It was a great game , the Origami Killer is amazing. My favorite characters were Gaius James Rover, Sadwick and the Origami Killer of course. I haven’t played one game the staff picked besides Heavy Rain..hmmm time to get busy!
I found Norman Jayden to be the most lovable character. Mixing virtual reality and drug addiction was a really nice idea)
So glad Amnesia took a handfull of prizes. Frictional Games deserve it so much.
Yes it was a surprising choice for best adventure of 2010! But a fair one. And good for AG and good for Cing, despite them not being anymore.
Wow! The Whispered World! And I didn’t even vote!
Most surprising: Sadwick. (After all the complaints about his voice).
My personal choice from the same game would have been ‘The Rock Bros.’.
I totally love how they sound exactly like I had imagined them when I translated their parts.
Big thanks to the AG community and of course the team.
Cheers, Dan.
Now I really must play Last Window. I actually found it at my local electronics store, didn’t even know there was a newer release from Cing than Again, but picked it up for 25£ and put it in my DS shelf, where it has been since (together with Again that’s also unplayed)..
Also need to finish the Whispered World, Sam and Max season 3, Heavy Rain and force my bf into playing Amnesia while I watch, as there is no way I’m playing that one alone..
At least I should have a lot to look forward to!
Now, this is a twist at the very end! This is the first time I hear about the Cing game and the fate of the developer. Must be for a good cause that the AG staff decided to put the spotlight on them! Unfortunately, the PC world may never find out the merits of this game. So sad…
As for the readers’ choice award… Interesting! The Whispered World is a very good game indeed, but does have some major flaws too. In my eyes S&M and Lost Horizon deliver a better overall package than it. My take - hype campaigns still work wonders for getting ahead. Alas!
An interesting Awards season with no easy picks amongst the contenders. Many thanks to the AG staff for making it all happen once again. Salute!
It’s great to see Cing getting the recognition they so rightly deserve. I bought The Last Window at launch but I still haven’t played it in fear of it being the last Cing game I’ll ever experience :-( Maybe now’s the time to get over it and play this wonderful game.
A great list of deserving titles, and a nice send-off to Cing. I anticipated every release and was heartbroken to hear they were being shuttered.
And a big thank you to the staff and readers of AdventureGamers.com for doing my favorite genre proud. I love visiting this site.
So happy to see all the love for The Whispered World; it’s easily one of the best adventure games I’ve played since the LucasArts era.
I won’t judge AG choice for best game because i haven’t played Last Window, but i’m really happy to see that community loved The Whispered World. It may not the a perfect adventure, but it really tried and at most cases succeded to catch the spirit of those “golden days” being original along the way as well. Black Mirror 2 and The Lost Horizon deserved to win some of the category i think, but - every award needs to have it’s “Scorcese”
And a big thank to AG editors who put this all together, now when you look at it, 2010. wasn’t that bad at all. I also hope that in the future we’ll get to see German releases much sooner in English localizations. I also hope to see more companies doing games and more adventure game publishers.
I have to say I’m VERY surprised that Sadwick was voted “best character.” Even once you gave in and turned off his atrocious, unlistenable voice, he was still a mopey, insufferable whiner in a stupid hat…
Surprised to see Heavy Rain win this. The story starts strong but falls to bits the closer you get to the end.
Great Year for gaming and great pick by the staff and Readers.
But there was this one category… this one award that completly dazzles me. How can Heavy Rain NOT win Best Graphic Design?
Everyone in Adventure Gamers staff should go back and be amazed by that amazing visuals again, because still to this day they are at the op of the industry.