"The Carpal Tunnel" Award For PC Exclusive Game Of The Year

[Dave]

Nominees:

StarCraft II: Wings Of Liberty
World Of Warcraft: Cataclysm
Football Manager 2011
Civilization V
Napoleon: Total War
Dawn Of War II: Chaos Rising
Worms: Reloaded

Chosen by the people, for the people!

PC gaming, you may say, is for the nerds amongst us but it still holds a place in the End Of Year Awards. When you think of PC gamers, you may think of 40 year-old virgins that play World Of Warcraft and boast about being a level 80 mage... Or something equally redundant.

Nevertheless, we need a winner.

Who takes home this prestigious award? You decide!

*Poll goes up tomorrow. In the event of a tie, written votes will sway the decision.​

 

[Kashagi]

Though the poll is closed, my vote would go to Starcraft II. Followed very very closely by Civ V. In all honesty, I was dissapointed with the single player of SC2, when the original had such a underrated story, full of some crazy twists, two fantastic villians and for that matter, a great cast of characters. Starcraft 2 Wings of Liberty failed to live up to the story, instead we were given a bit more of a cliche story. Jim Raynor suddenly became an action hero, at one point giving quite a generic speech on standing up for what you believe in bla bla bla. Sarah Kerrigan, one of the greatest villians in video gaming suddenly went into the shadows after seemingly winning the war of the previous game. While this would be fine with me, she simply lost so much of what made her threatening, the helpless damsel in distress ending made me cringe. But my biggest anger simply is aimed at the use of Arcturus Mengsk, my favourite villian in a game and my favourite character of the Starcraft universe. This power hungry dictator of the past, willing to kill off an entire planet for his own greedy purposes. The unmerciful, powerhungry, slimy dictator who took control of a whole race suddenly went to the shadows himself as well. I kind of liked the use of propoganda to make Jimmy appear to be the bad guy to the public in the story, but Arcturus is overthrown too easily, there is never any feeling of a ruthless dictator scouting the universe for his greatest foe. I dont ever even recall an encounter or an attack from him.

With that rant said, I still would call Starcraft II the PC game of the year, simply for its multiplayer, and because the story is only 1/3 over, there is still much room for improvement. Whilst the multiplayer is still being balanced with patches, there are few games that bring such a high level of competition. Whilst Starcraft 1 innovated the world of Online competition, Starcraft II is bringing that to the next level, with an easy to use online system, reasonably balanced races (which will only get more even) and a high level of competition. Battles are just as fierce as they were 10 years ago, and finally a new generation can take their shot at the greatest and most fiercest online multiplayer game out there. There is so much improvement to make, but where we are at, warrants enough for me.