For the record, I actually have seen The Piano. Twice. Have sex with me, ladies!

And yes, the one time I played Nintendogs, I felt like a complete idiot. I was sitting there blowing into the machine to blow bubbles on the screen, and my friend's fairly mild-mannered and polite Japanese mother, who was in the room, shouted out, "You look so retarded!"

[Edited on May 28, 2006 by TedKoppel]

Yeah. RE4 was pretty badass, though.

thinking of getting it....on a scale of 1-10 what would you guys rate it??

i'm not saying RE4 is a bad game but for creativity awards they didn't really pick very original or creative games to nominate. (and out of those they probably picked the least creative game as a winner)

Nah. Least creative would be Call of Duty 2. I mean, it's what, only the 400 bajillionth WWII shooter? (and, coincidentally enough, almost all of them seem to completely ignore the war against Japan, despite that being our primary struggle during most of WWII). And there's not much room for creativity when you're striving to authentically recreate a historical setting.

RE4, for all that it doesn't break a huge amount of new ground, is a major departure from previous games in the series, and the total setting, enemy, etc revamp represents the fruit of a reasonable amount of creativity.

And you're right, they're all polished, well-made games but not exactly the pinnacle of industry creative thinking. (For which I would likely tap Katamari Damacy).

I'd love to see a WWII game with an ANZAC campaign in New Guinea and defending against bombing raids on Darwin and such. /sigh

Keep waiting.

So...er....are those actual historical events, or are you wanting alternate history? (You could probably arrange something kind of like it, either way, in Hearts of Iron or sequel, the WWII strategy game where you can play any country in the world....with realistic capabilities, so if you play, y'know, Chile or someplace you're probably not going to accomplish much. I tried playing Mexico and conquering Central America. Not so much with the working well.)

I would kill for Call of Duty 3 to include a Kokoda trail campaign or the ANZAC's in Africa. Or even just a freakin multiplayer map of one of those 2. SOMETHING that acknowledges the Australian and New Zealand input to the war.

I tried to get into Hearts of Iron but it was a bit too hardcore for me, and I was still fully addicted to Civilization III at that point.

It was too hardcore for me too, frankly. I just wanted to fuck up history. And I did. (The Soviets knocked Germany out of the war early, then mopped up the rest of Europe. By 1948 and the close of simulation, the only remaining bit of the Axis was an outpost of Vichy France in Africa someplace, and a valiantly struggling Japan, being eaten up province-by-province with hundreds of armed forces groups surrounding it. The amount of US and other allied forces there was obscene.)

The BAFTA's have been giving away video game awards since Max Payne got one in 2001. It’s only taken 5 years for it to catch on. . .

Admittedly I've not finished it yet, but I think that Resident Evil 4 doesn't deserve an award because; it’s depends a lot on one of those 'escort' mission, and personally I don't find that conducive to fluent gameplay or responsive controlling, every time I find one in a game it just annoys me that the

GTA: SA should have got an award (I know its two years old now, but seriously, it's still a benchmark of excellence, and even if you've finished the 'story' there's so much more to do). Half Life 2, another two year old game should have picked up an award either for the PC version or X-box, but maybe when it's released on PS3, and loads of people buy it it'll get the recognition and acclaim it deserves from its plot to its physics and graphics, they’re still magnificently photorealistic, and awe inspiring (even if the plot didn’t have the same impact and originality as Half Life).

For some reason I read this as D&ADD - figuring it was a roleplaying game for people with short attention spans.