Special Awards
Best Art Design:Muramasa: The Demon Blade (Wii)
While Muramasa isn't going to stun anyone with photorealistic graphics, it features some of the most beautiful art since developer Vanillaware's last game, Odin Sphere. Muramasa's meticulously hand-painted sprites show that Wii games can look great when in the right hands, hardware limitations be damned.
Best (Worst?) Boneheaded Quote:
"It's full of technology." -- Tony Hawk
Tony Hawk, the skateboarder: awesome. Tony Hawk, the businessman: brilliant. Tony Hawk, the electrical engineer: laughably bad. Pro tip, Mr. Hawk: Leave the tech-speak to the dudes responsible for making your up-and-coming lawsuit device (AKA the Tony Hawk: Ride skateboarding controller that the quote refers to) carpet-worthy. A lot of absurd quotes get thrown around at E3 (runner-up: "The internet's gonna be so awesome" in a Nintendo promotional video), but this one really took the cake: Hawk uttered it live, on-stage, at Microsoft's pre-show press conference.
Best Graphics:Assassin's Creed II (PS3/360/PC)
Looking back at Assassin's Creed II's bustling cityscape and breathtaking character models, it didn't disappoint in the least. When Ubisoft unveiled the first gameplay footage of AC2 protagonist Ezio taking to the skies in Leonardo da Vinci's famous flying machine, it was obvious that the developers packed a ton of detail into this ambitious reimagining of Renaissance-era Venice.
Best Multiplayer:Left 4 Dead 2 (360/PC)
Left 4 Dead was arguably the best multiplayer game of 2008, and this second zombie-killin' outing continues the four-player co-op carnage. Fresh campaigns, new weapons, and an even craftier A.I. Director system (AKA "nefarious eye-in-the-sky who triggers zombie apocalypses") have us eagerly looking forward to more trigger-happy hell-spawn hunts.
Runners-Up: Battlefield: Bad Company 2, Brink, Halo 3: ODST, Uncharted 2
Best New Technology:
Project Natal (360)
Microsoft's motion camera controller definitely caught everyone by surprise. Rumors of a Microsoft-funded motion controller circulated in the weeks leading up to the show, but nobody expected it to be a highly sophisticated full-body movement-tracking system. By studying your gestures and voice, Project Natal turns you into an integral part of the gameplay. If it does indeed work the way it claims (and we've heard several behind-the-scenes reports that claim it does), Natal could provide us all with a whole new way to play videogames.
