Here Are Your 2014 E3 Game Critics Nominees

I think all of these categories instead of saying, Best should say, "Notable...."

Notable Online Multiplayer

Notable Indie Game

Notable Driving game

"Best" is an extremely evaluative term, it denotes some amount of knowing, weighing, and evaluation. And, you know what, the word "Notable" might not be something publishers will be so eager to put on the box thus making earning one of these 'suspect' awards more constrained.

And, that won't happen because honestly that is the ONLY reason some of these developers show up. The ESA is desperate to be relevant, and about all they can do is allow for a "BEST ONLINE MULTIPLAYER" badge to show up on a box. That alone for a mediocre game could sell a million more copies, so that is why a EA shows up.

I think when we talk about the relevance of e3 we have to include in that discussion three things core gamers don't like to think about

1) 59% of Americans play video games of some kind, so any ESA show is about Flappy Bird just as much as it is about core game, indie games, and high tech.

2) If, we say e3 is irrelevant than is ESA irrelevant? (If ESA is irrelevant that is something serious! Or, are core gamers - the people who come to Giant Bomb - less relevant in the new games industry?]

3) Giant Bomb does not go to TGS (Japan), Gamecom (Germany), or Blizzcon, Quakecon, or Minecon either. Maybe, they can skip e3, or just send two people. I think for an audience of core gamers, PAX Prime/East are better shows to cover; and e3 is a show to cover from San Francisco, New York and Chicago video video feeds.

If you want to talk about the relevance of e3... you really need to talk about the relevance of core gamers being there or needing 'on-the-scene coverage.

The dearth of racing games, especially on new hardware, is starting to tick me off. I'm going to pick up Driveclub and The Crew, but it's kind of ridiculous that it will have been nearly a year since getting Need for Speed Rivals at launch that another racing game finally becomes available to me on that hardware. I was super bummed out that GRiD Autosport was last gen only. Hell at one point I was actively hoping that at E3 Sony would announce (for PS4) one of those quickie cash-in Gran Turismo sidesteps they used to love. Of course the blame for this lies squarely on the middle period of the last generation when the racing game market was saturated with also-rans like blur, squeezing out sales from other, better racing games and effectively dropping the bottom out the market.

As many have commented, it seems odd games like The Witcher were excluded but games like Bloodborne were included given the mentioned stipulations.

SO HAPPY TO GET FORTUNE MAGS TAKE ON THIS

Looking on other gaming sites, Alex is right that almost every other gaming site gives out E3 awards. If there ever was an obvious ploy to make worthless content just for the clicks, this is it.

I guess it wasn't optimized for console yet. One of the biggest questions the dev gets is whether the console version will be 1080p60fps.

I want the entire games industry to understand that no one gives a flying fart about how many E3 awards a game gets and the amount of awards given out is obscene. It's monopoly money at the end of the day.

If they wanted to be crazy about it they should give award multipliers out too. 3x for pre release DLC announcements, 10x for stilted online chatter in the trailer, 15x for being rated M, and so on. I want Battlefront to win 100,000 E3 awards next year...

It was there and I heard over on Garnett on Games that it was kinda jacked up, framerate/performance wise.

The Keighley lifeform needs lists to sustain itself.

Huzzah!

So the judges actually had hands-on with No Man's Sky and Bloodborne?

Is it just me, or does giving awards to games that aren't even released feel wrong? It directly contributes to the pre-order business culture and rides alongside Early Access as a questionable practice used by all the wrong people. Like, seriously. People need to stop paying for games before release because the vertical slice they made was cool enough to impress.

This award list really does feel pretty sparse and I guess it only makes sense that things like E3 have shrunk in size. Aside from the fact that a good chunk of games these days are being made by smaller studios and even by individuals and are more likely to show up at PAX instead of E3 (if they show up at a convention at all), E3 used to be so big in part because the way people used to get most of their gaming news was via magazines and showing up at E3 meant your game was guaranteed to at the very least be mentioned instead of just entirely ignored.

Now, people use the Internet for most of their gaming news, so the pressure to present things specifically at E3 regardless of what state they are in is largely gone and developers/publishers can toss out news whenever they want and it'll certainly be picked up by sites and the word will spread that very day; releasing trailers and other news about a game during a less-intense time than E3 is even probably beneficial at this point as it means websites will rush to use that news to fill the void during slow weeks.

So how come No Man's Sky is nominated for best of show but isn't nominated for best console game. Are the games in that category supposed to be console exclusive, cause that's kind of dumb.

And if not then why not just copy paste the best of show games to the best console game list? That category seems pretty redundant if it's not made up of console exclusive games (i.e. games that are not available for PC)

Best RPG:

Middle-earth: Shadow of Mordor, Fable Legends !Sorry......

As far as I Know Xenoblade Chronicles X is an RPG.....

Has to be playable to be eligible.

To sum it up....meh.

Evolve looks like it'll be super fun...IF you can line up the people to play it. I don't have friends willing to put down sixty at launch.

Though really, I don't see how relevant E3 awards are, except as an excuse for media outlets to write more about E3 and for marketing departments to churn out lame box art. I feel the same way about Game of the Year though, so thats just me. (Probably why GB's crazy videos are the only GOTY content I consume most years)

Kind of a lackluster E3

How is Killer Instinct a nominee here? They've literally shown just one character, T. J. Combo. Is that enough to warrant a "best game in X genre"?

They actually found 4 handheld games at E3 this year? That's quite a feat. Man, what a bummer this year (and next?) is gonna be for handheld gaming if E3 is any indicator of upcoming games to be excited about... I figured devs would have jumped on the 3DS train by now seeing as how well it did last year, or that Sony would try to push the Vita like Nintendo pushed the Wii U this year because development has, so far, been pretty lackluster for that thing.

Heck, I'm more interested in picking up a Wii U and using it as a sort of bootleg in-house handheld at this point... even though the range on that thing probably isn't that great if you're trying to stream from the console to the controller?

Shouldn't Far Cry be action/adventure and The Order be Action? seems silly.

Not a Hero was incredible. I had a blast with it over at Devolver's lot outside of E3. Too bad they didn't go there, it seems anyway.

No Witcher or Bloodborne. O ok, I see now. It's all just a joke.

@erhard: Fuck yes they are...this is ammunition for shitty box art marketing.

Playable by judges in a back room. Not on the show floor.

Wait. They said they weren't entertaining The Witcher, MGS5 and The Division because they weren't playable. And yet I'm seeing games that I'm pretty sure didn't have playable demos at E3. Batman, No Man's Sky, Bloodborne?

Also, best hardware? PlayStation TV was out eons ago and Morpheus and Oculus Rift aren't technically even finished.

This list is bullshit.

E3 awards, just bullshit to put on the back of the box above the bullet points. Now everybody gets a trophy for just showing up.

I didn't know No Man's Sky was playable other than by the devs. It seems every piece I read about that game its never from a hands on perspective. But if its eligible for an award it had to be playable.

Evolve, Sunset Overdrive and The Witcher 3 look incredible, and combined with most of Nintendo's showing they represent the only reasons I'm not totally bummed out about video games right now. Also, am I the only one who thinks The Crew looks pretty cool?

I'm not really seeing a segment on that list where a Kirby remake and yet another Mario spinoff should be. "Most Nostalgic?" "Least Original Platformers?"

Alex Navarro, your snark is fantastic and endless. I love it.

Keep up the good work.

No one else in the game anymore outside of 2K and occasional SEGA.

No one else in the game anymore outside of 2K and occasional SEGA.

Oohh I like that idea. That would be a game changer

@steelerzfan101: They probably did all the judging at critics week before E3. Nintendo doesn't do critics week.

There should be an E3 Game's Critic Awards where the games judge the critics.

@altairre: I played DriveClub and I did not really like DriveClub very much. It seemed bland. My feelings on The Crew might be outdated, as people at E3 this year seemed to like it more. When I played it at the PS4 launch event last year, I did not care for it AT ALL.

I am kinda surprised by the extreme lack of Wii U titles. But I guess a lot of their good stuff is still in the conceptual/non-playable phase of development. (i.e. Legend of Zelda)

this list and the whole e3 nominees thing is pretty dumb, but damn Alex is a great writer.

I need to go back and read some more GoN pieces.

Giving awards to games before they're out is kinda dumb.

"..list of nominees that could easily be mistaken for just a list of "games that showed up to E3.""

Stopped reading right there. Thanks for the honesty, Alex; saves me a ton of time.

The game had an alpha that was relatively popular. There are a ton of gameplay videos online to. I see no reason why it wasn't playable on the show floor.

I'm almost positive I saw video of people playing it. Maybe it just wasn't at judges week?

Where's Senran Kagura?

That is a fantastic and totally accurate lede. Good observations all around.

@mrfluke: I had a lot of fun following E3 this year, but there's enough goofy junk like this that fully deserves criticism.

its funny and in a way not that surprising to me anymore to see the backlash over this E3, i thought it was easily one of the better ones,

actually really surprised at all the nods Evolve got, gotta make it a point at pax prime to play that game then.

Totally agree with the PC/Console. Not only are four out of the five PC nominees coming out console, four out of the five console games are coming out for PC. It's the dumbest.

Best action games could also be renamed to best FPS. All the nominees are FPS.