BioShock drowns competition at 2007 VGAs

by Jason Dobson on Dec 8th 2007 9:14AM

We know you're on pins and needles, so we'll just come right out and tell you that Spike TV's latest Video Game Awards has lifted up BioShock as the year's best game, with Andrew Ryan's underwater extravaganza besting other notables such as Mass Effect, The Orange Box, and Halo 3. With Samuel L. Jackson once again at the helm, the awards show went down last night at Las Vegas' posh Mandalay Bay, and we imagine is now being carefully outfitted with extreme graphics and Mountain Dew ads for its television broadcast on Dec. 9 at 9PM.

Besides its game of the year nod, BioShock also walked away with awards for being the best Xbox 360 game and having the best original score, making it also responsible for the event's most return trips to the stage.

Now, for the complete list, would you kindly make with the clicking?

Game of the Year
BioShock

Studio of the Year
Harmonix

Best Shooter
Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare

Best RPG
Mass Effect

Best Military Game
Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare

Best Individual Sports Game
skate

Best Handheld Game
The Legend of Zelda: Phantom Hourglass

Best Graphics
Crysis

Best Game Based on a Movie or TV Show
The Simpsons Game

Best Rhythm Game
Rock Band

Best Driving Game
DiRT

Best Action Game
Super Mario Galaxy

Best Team Sports Game
Madden NFL 08

Best Soundtrack
Rock Band

Breakthrough Technology
The Orange Box/ Portal

Best Xbox 360 Game
BioShock

Best Wii Game
Super Mario Galaxy

Best PS3 Game
Ratchet & Clank Future: Tools of Destruction

Best PC Game
The Orange Box

Best Original Score
BioShock

Best Multiplayer Game
Halo 3

Most Addictive Video game Fueled by Dew
Halo 3

Source

Tags: BioShock, BreakingNews, GOTY, PC, spike, spike-tv, Spike-VGA-2007, Xbox-360

Reader Comments (160)

Honestly, I'd probably have given best original score to Mario Galaxy. By far the best game soundtrack I've heard in years.

I agree, Mario Galaxy had a fantastic soundtrack. I know Rock Band's is a damn fine selection, but is it right to give best game soundtrack to a game which doesn't have any original music?

I'm curious: Have you listened to both the Super Mario Galaxy soundtrack AND the BioShock soundtrack, and that is why you claim that one of these should've won? If so, then you're the first person to listen to the BioShock score and not be completely blown away by its quality.

I would agree with that. Super Mario Galaxy had a score that actually made me feel like I was on an adventure. It kind of felt like I was listening to the score of an awesome old-school Disney animated flick.

Can't knock Bioshock though. If Mario couldn't win it, I'm glad Bioshock did.

Mario Galaxy has the best soundtrack of this year. Here's the orchestra.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4jmY-0hwV_w

I love the tune in the minute 1:38... just one word can describe this music: Beautiful.

The score for Mario was really good. It was like Intelligent Qube, only a lot more tracks.

Also, can we please get more orchestrated game soundtracks?

Live orchestra > synthesizer

I think that Mario Galaxy should have been nominated for best score too. Not only that, I would nominate it for best soundtrack in all of video games.

It should have been Mass Effect.

I may be a tad bit biased (seeing as how the game is in my top 10 favorites of all time), but I've got to say the best soundtrack ever was probably the one game that used music the least (to my knowledge), Shadow of the Colossus.

However, since that was made about two years ago, and I haven't heard most of the music of the games nominated, I'll go ahead and agree that it should have gone to Galaxy. The song Fernando linked to sounds a lot like something from SSB:B.

Colossal

You need to hear that song when you are playing (Good Egg Galaxy, Gusty Garden Galaxy)... it's so amazing, and fits perfectly with the game. Its so inspiring.

The Star Festival song it's also great.

Listening to both Bioshocks soundtrack and Mario Galaxy's, it's Galaxy's soundtrack that I'm constantly humming out loud. It is a phenomenal soundtrack and even though Bioshocks is go, it just isn't memorable.

But even if Mario Galaxy's is fantastic... C'mon... "Still Alive" from Portal will forever be remembered as one of the best original video game songs of all time.

A game where it's impossible to die with no multiplayer?..
Breath-taking.

...have you PLAYED Bioshock?

I've played it and the game is extremely over-rated. It's a beautiful looking game in a unique setting, but the gameplay is mediocre at best. I thought the story was pretty lame also.

Sorry, but two things i love in games are 1. Challenge, and 2. Multiplayer. Oh, and fun, but that usually goes hand-in-hand with the challenge. I have played it and, while the plasmids were cool, it didn't feel like so crazy-fresh of a game as people make it out to be. Vita-chambers kill pretty much any challenge.

As 'modified' says, it was a very nice game to look at, but other than that it was just not really fun.

Looks like somebody's got his knickers in a twist.

Come on people. You can't argue with SPIKE TV. If there was ever a prestigious organization that knows what it is talking about, it's SPIKE TV.

you can die in bioshock, you just go back to a checkpoint, same as most other games these days. what's the big deal?

Bioshock was incredibly overrated, and now that the flood of GOTY awards has started, it's just going to get bigger and bigger.

I tried to play it but there was nothing in the gameplay the seriously drew me in. It looks like Doom 3 with water. The hacking minigames were pulled straight out of Pipedream. And why the hell can't I use a weapon and a plasmid at the same time? The respawning mechanic was just a device to deal with the "revolutionary" overpowered Big Daddies. The only thing that stood out about this game with me was the art direction... which was ripped right off the cover of an Ann Rand novel.

This whole "Well, whatever keeps us from voting for a money-grubbing Microsoft game" attitude is wearing thin. COD4, Halo 3 and Orange Box were better contenders than this.

@gonk

I would agree, but the problem is that when you respawn in the vitachamber, everything is like when you died, Big Daddy's you were killing have the same HP as when you died, etc.

Still, you could easily just load last save every time you died yourself to make it more challenging, and now there is even DLC to disable the vitachambers.

People here seem to be enamored with Bioshock, but I completely agree with it being overrated. Objectively, the second half of the game showed a severe dropoff in quality compared to the first half. Gunplay was mediocre and the only useful Plasmids were standard "fire this stuff out of your hand", except Telekinesis, which was a direct ripoff of the Gravity Gun from HL2.

Want more? The final boss encounter was horrendous. There are only around six or seven enemy archetypes in the entire game, including massively significant bosses, who were merely these enemies re-skinned and given more HP. The "good vs. evil" choice, which was so hyped up, led to extremely similar experiences in both gameplay and story, as the additional Adam from the "presents" compensated and the only difference in plot were a few altered lines of dialogue and a different slipshod cliched ending.

Don't get me wrong, I played it through to the end and enjoyed the experience. When compared to gems such as the Orange Box and Mario Galaxy, though, please. I don't think so.

Woah, anyone who bad-mouths Bioshock gets voted down. Come on, people, it's good but is it game of the year good?

Re-replying to my earlier comment with just one thing:

@Edge
You obviously mean Ayn Rand, as "Ann Rand" is a children's book author. Get out of high school yet?
And I mean, OBVIOUSLY, everything is a rip off of something else, amirite? There was no originality in Bioshock, the developers just RIPPED OFF Ayn Rand, its obvious.
Thank you so much for bringing this to light.

Hate @ people who try to act smart by dropping philosopher's names, especially people who obviously don't even know who they are.

I quite enjoyed Bioshock, but it was getting old towards the end. It certainly deserves a few awards, but not the GOTY. Here would be my list:

1 Mass Effect (God I love that game)
2 Galaxy (Mario is truly back. Nice.)
3 Halo3 / COD4 tie (both semi-generic, but each have awesome online and replayability)
4 Bioshock / Orange Box tie (Bioshock was more of a jawdropper, but OB has more to it, even if it is much more familiar. Portal was very fun but it really was well under an hour of engaging difficult puzzles and 2 hours of essential filler.)

wow i cant belive COD$ won over halo in best shooter eh

I think that's because CoD4 has a great single-player experience (engaging, original, exciting, tense, etc) with a great multi-player component (interesting, tense, innovative, etc). Halo3 has great multi-player too (exciting, fast-paced, well-deveoped, etc), but the single-player lacks (boring uninspired story, boring levels, little to no innovation. Basically a mediocre shooter as far as the SP is concerned).

I also disagree with giving Rock Band the "Best Soundtrack" award, I mean, that's the whole thing behind the game, the soundtrack. I agree that it should have been given to a game the features an original soundtrack. Mario Galaxy or BioShock would have been more appropriate there.

Honestly, Halo 3 has better multiplayer than COD 4. Easily.

I'm comparing the Xbox versions, both of which I've played ad nauseum (just multiplayer). Halo just has some mystery fun factor that few other games capture. COD 4 is good, but it's just COD all over again.

I find COD 4 awful on PC, but that's just my opinion. Maybe because I have the option of playing Power Struggle in Crysis instead.

Mark

There's another category for Best Original Score below there....which was given to Bioshock.

"COD 4 is good, but it's just COD all over again."
I could say the same about Halo 3...it's Halo 2...with equipment.
I love Halo, but COD4 was a nice change of pace, so nice that I have not stopped playing it since I got it.

pwnage

look at all those ps3 games.

worse yet, look at all those multi-platform games.

Man your mean....lol....Anyone noticed that Microsoft has a game in every category PC/360...Man they owned this thing

Yeah, they probably do own it.

I'd probably agree with you if this wasn't the worst year of game releases Sony has had in 6 years...Next year will be better though...then my PS3 will become an uncontrollable, unstoppable force in my entertainment center

Sure thing McCloud. Just wait til next year... again.

Wow, weird. The first 10 minutes of Bioshock were fantastic, but after that.. meh. I think it's weird that the game got such high praise, when myself and all of my friends have already sold our copies. I tend to hang onto game-of-the-year winners. Not because they won.. but because they're that awesome.

Definitely check out tweakguides.com, and if you rock nvidia get the 169.13 or .17 beta drivers for a nice boost. My computer is starting to age and I have it running at 30+ in between high and very high in singleplayer and 50+ in multiplayer. =)

And for the record, I loved BioShock-- due to the story, atmosphere and presentation only. I beat it on hard without using a Vita chamber once-- easily. I will probably never play it again. Now that I've gotten the story once, the gameplay is just not worth revisiting-- at all.

As a Wii60 owner, I agree that Bioshock is the Game of the Year, followed closely by Mario Galaxy....

As a PSWii60 owner, I would put Mario Galaxy at the top, followed closely by Bioshock.

Damn, it's been a good year.

Not for the PS part of your name.

That's got to be the 80th time that picture's been used. You'd think that once the game is out, people would have had more pictures of Bioshock. But no, it's the same damn picture over and over.

But Bioshock is awesome. Just started playing it again last night after I installed the patch.

"Most Addictive Video game Fueled by Dew"? How the hell do you have that as a category? It's like they just made it up for the sake of adv...you know what? I just answered my own question.

I'm sure the fact that Mountain Dew had halo themed soft-drinks when Halo was launched had nothing to do with that award either :p

For all the free publicity Mountain dew got off Halo, you'd think they'd at least sponsor the first map pack...but oh wait...that is giving money OUT instead of getting it IN.

I'm usually cynical about these kind of awards anyway, but that Mountain Dew category pushed my cynicism to an unprecedented level.

I can't take a single one of these crappy awards seriously. They may as well have just called it, "The Microsoft Video Game Awards 2007".

Very surprising. I couldn't wait to play Bioshock and once I got it, sent it back to Gamefly after 4 days. Mario Galaxy though is one amazing game. I really think that Mario and Call of Duty were better gamers overall.

To me, Mario is somewhat revolutionary and COD4 finally brings the pizazz back to FPS war games / multiplayer. Bioshock is a good - great game but is getting too much credit by the industry.

Hell, even Halo 3 didn't "blow me away" but I'd still pit the two side by side and probably give it to Halo 3.

I like that COD4 won best shooter and military game...the game had amazing jaw-dropping moments that even the futuristic Halo 3 could not touch.
And terrorists scare me more than alien monkeys...(shiver).

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BioShock drowns competition at 2007 VGAs

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