Hello and welcome to the Global Game Awards 2013

It’s been another great year for us gamers and tech enthusiasts. Here at the Global Game Awards 2013 you get the chance to make a difference, voting on your favourite gaming highlights of 2013. In the categories below we have stuffed in everything from games, hardware, console and even best developers, so you can tell the world what made your gaming year in 2013. VOTE NOW and have your say in the 2020 gaming industry recognised Global Game Awards.

GLOBAL GAME AWARDS

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Game of The Year

Only the best of the best are nominated for the prestigious Game or The Year title, and there can be only one. We are all looking for that one supreme game that brought us to our knees over the past 12 months. Maybe it was the most beautiful experience ever, or perhaps its story was so imaginative that you couldn’t help but be whisked away to its pixelated shores. Nominees are usually highly competent in every facet that makes a title brilliant and all of them are video game titans that stand above the rest. These titles reach the lofty heights where the ‘Half-Lifes’ and the ‘Elder Scrolls’ of gaming history dwell. They push the industry forward, innovating with rich new features and exceptional gameplay, all the while perfecting mechanics that will set the template for every other title to aspire to.

Best Holiday Console

Far be it for us to engage in console wars but we’re going to stick our oar in anyway; this is the console that you think is most worth picking up this holiday season.It could be a next gen machine or even an aging console that you think best represents value for money in this hotly contested market. This award is a true testimony of where gamers think to invest their holiday cash, when faced with the new gaming calendar of next year.

Wii U

Ouya

Best Indie

The rise of the sleeping indie beast is continuing unabated, and here we celebrate some of the most creative and forward-thinking talent around, embracing new mechanics, while revitalising the old. These are games developed with a fraction of the budget of the AAA monsters, but are no less enjoyable for it. The indie devs behind them craft personable, unique games that showcase some of the greatest underground talent in the world today.Indie devs often work their magic under considerable pressure, sometimes holding down full time jobs while ploughing any of their precious time into their own projects. The best of those projects become commercial successes and the best of those are given pride of place in our Best Indie Award category.

Best PC EU

Suppliers and builders have been known to cut every corner they can to put together a perfect beast for a perfect price. This category is the culmination of these deals, where full PC builds enable the modern PC gamer to play the most demanding games at the highest quality for the best price.We also consider the flexibility on offer to the purchasing gamer; Can it be easily transported, will it perform well at a Lan party, does it look powerful or cooly stylish, does it come with a brilliant warranty. This selection is for PCs available in the EU.

Foniks - Phoenix i7 2x GTX760 SLI

Komplett Gamer Premium i65

Wired2Fire Predator Z87

Ginger 6 Fusion 900

Best Historical

Put down the textbooks and pick up that mouse. This award is set aside for only the greatest historical recreations and experiences around. Why read about Caesar when you can be Caesar? Combining historical authenticity with great gameplay, these are the ones that cause every history teacher a moments consideration for their job security.The games in this category dig up more historical nuggets than the Time Team. They allow the player to step into our past, while playing a title that is not afraid to uncover what got us to where we are today. When done right these games are among the most rewarding, allowing magical moments of history to be completely re-enacted via the power of game entertainment.

Europa Universalis IV

Total War: Rome II

Call of Juarez: Gunslinger

War of the Roses

Best Multiplayer

Let loose the dogs of war! These are the best games that let you go head to head or fight side by side in multiplayer arenas. Whether its spewing forth hot lead at one another or wishing this car had a seventh gear, these are the ones that got your adrenaline pumping and unleashed your competitive urges.Regardless of when they launched, these are the games that have been swallowing up your time like nobody’s business, as you desperately try to inch up that scoreboard.

Best Gaming Keyboard

Keyboards are part of the PC gamers arsenal and some keyboard manufacturers have really managed to push the innovative boundaries when it comes to design.The Gaming Keyboard award will go to the keyboard that has made the longest strides in innovation, usability and flexibility, while keeping their products cost effective and accessible to the masses.

Razer Blackwidow UItimate 2013

Corsair Vengeance K65

Cooler Master Storm Quick Fire

TT eSports Meka G Illuminated

Most Atmospheric

Dripping with dread and crammed full of character, these titles bring together an electric atmosphere to set the player’s mood. This category and these nominees are the games that are awash with ambience and can take you away to a magical place. All can be considered for this accolade, but only a select few offer a gamer the pure escapism that the Most Atmospheric Award Nominees can deliver.Whether its a stiflingly terrifying asylum or a chilled-out backwater bayou, the degree of personality, charm, character that each nominee brings to the table will let you breath in hours of visual and audible experiences.

The Last of Us

Bioshock Infinite

Assassins Creed 4 Black Flag

Amnesia: A Machine for Pigs

Most Anticipated Game Of 2015

You don’t need tea leaves or a crystal ball to pick out these plum choices. We’re not even through 2013 yet but we can’t help but look forward to all the gaming gems coming our way over the next year, as the next-gen machines find their feet.These choice cuts are the ones that have us slavering in anticipation, eager to get hands-on with their out of reach wares.

Watch Dogs

Titanfall

Thief

The Order: 1886

Best PC US

Alienware X51 R2

Maingear Shift Battlefield 4 Ed

Acer Predator G3

Falcon Northwest Fragbox

Best Mouse

For exceptional accuracy and to compliment your lightning quick reactions you need the best gaming mouse around. These are the industry’s hottest offerings in the mouse world, optimised for gaming to ensure nothing stands between you and victory.From DPI switching to ergonomics and tracking technology, the best mice are customisable in the extreme and give you the options you need to stay right at the top of your game.

Razer Deathadder 2013

Logitech G600 MMO Gaming Mouse

SteelSeries Sensei RAW

Anker 8000 DPI High Precision

Best Horror

You’ve sat through four Paranormal Activities and barely batted an eyelid, you watch Saw for breakfast, while chowing down on your cornflakes, but these games came along and the living daylights are now scared from your very being. Titles in this award category pitch you in a horrific situation, through which there seems to be no escape, and are all the more terrifying for it. The best horror game teeters on the brink between intense and unplayable, waiting to push you into the abyss, challenging your sanity and testing your metal. Only the hardiest of gamers can play any of these alone, with the lights turned out and an immersive headset on.

Outlast

Amnesia: A Machine for Pigs

Dead Space 3

Resident Evil: Revelations

Best Management

We want more and more control within our games and the Best Management title is the accolade that salutes those games that provide us with an incredible management experience. We are looking for a business simulator or empire manager and then to be able to tweak and pull every button and option that someone in that role might face in real life.Then we sit back and watch our efforts take shape. Replicating a living model in this way is a huge undertaking from the developer and only the best Management Sims find their way into this category. Offering hundreds of hours of game time, building empires and working business strategies within a fully defined game environment is what we look for and what we get with the nominees.

Prison Architect

SimCity

Football Manager 2014

Cities in Motion 2

Best Headset

Real gamers do not overlook the impact a brilliant gaming audio experience will offer to their games. Cowering behind a crumbling rocky wall as bullets whizz overhead, fragments of exploded rock crashing down around you, the ping as your comrades clips emptyOr the roar of your cars engine as you rev on the start line, the screech of rubber as it burns around you as you tear away, the hurtling crush of metal on metal as you come to blows on the first bend. Gaming headsets take the best games in the world, and they make them even better, drawing you in with astonishing 3D sound that helps you feel the full force of your gaming experience. These are the headsets that bring gaming alive like no others.

Best RPG

Roll your D20s its time for the RPG game of the year award. It all sounds so simple but behind the doors these games represent some of the more complex mechanics and plots around, giving us some of the most expansive and varied gaming environments we’ve ever seen.Role-playing is all about immersion, and these games represent some of the deepest, most engrossing experiences available, often involving the player in some of the most grandiose tales of pure fantasy. The roleplaying game mechanic has been with us since the RPG Lord, Gary Gygax, first thought of pen & paper tabletop games with your buddies, and since then leveling up and character development has found its way into a huge proportion of video games.

Shadowrun Returns

Van Helsing

Ni no Kuni: Wrath of the White Witch

Dust: An Elysian Tail

Best Story

Throw away Dickens, set alight to your copy of Tolstoy, Wuthering Heights meet paper shredder. You have no need for these intellectual curios with gaming’s huge advances in storytelling and character development. These are the cream of the crop, the booker prize for our new interactive age.All of the nominees give us a riveting yarn that had us hooked from the very first page screen, with stories that will live long in our memory. Intriguing plot devices, exceptional character dialogue, twists and turns that all come together to deliver a real contender for the Best Story Award.

The Last of Us

Bioshock Infinite

Assassins Creed 4 Black Flag

Tomb Raider 2013

Best Gaming Hardware Manufacturer

This award is one of the most sought after accolades in the gaming hardware industry. You cant fake technological advancement and you cant feign exceptional standards, they either deliver the gaming goods or they disappear trying. This highly competitive technology market is where the gaming consumer gets the last vote and we are the most selective and vocal communities across the net.

Asus

Razer

Logitech

SteelSeries

Best Developer 2014

Its often the publishers that take the lime-light during game launches, after all they’re usually the driving force behind its marketing. But with the Best Developer Award we want to draw the attention back to the bodies of developers making the awesome games we know and love.This award is for those unsung dev heroes that deserve our loving attention. These guys may be the people that have really pulled out the stops to bring us something pretty special, maybe they fought the money men, who pay their wages, on our behalf in order to release a great game rather than a cash-in dud.

Ubisoft Montreal

DICE

Telltale

Arkane Studios

Best Benchmark Tool

Gaming is not always just about playing something pretty, its about achieving through a good grasp of the resource available to the gamer. This is why benchmarking our hardware is so popular. Through use of awesome software we can increase our comprehension of what we can expect from a product, before we invest in it.This means whether the product is a state of the art piece of hardware in your gaming machine or a next generation game that will melt your eyes if only you can play it in ultra settings, benchmarking hardware and games help you get that better picture. The tools we have lined up for the Best Benchmark Tools award could be excellent value or powerful or comprehensive or simple to use or even highly specific in what they report, but whatever tricks they offer, they are excellent at helping gamers get a better grasp of their gaming hardware relationships.

Fraps

CPUID

Passmark Performance Test

Novabench

Best Adventure

Enter the masters of the winding saga. These titles take the player to far off exotic lands, where they can explore, discover and resolve mystery, thats what we are expecting. Many titles have an element of this category within them, from platformers to text only games through to fully fledged open worlds, but only the greatest manage to harness the perfect pace of adventure through a game’s unfolding. The Best Adventure award stands out as one of the most richly awarded game accolades, only going to those titles that really capture our imagination and hold our hands as we journey across the reaches of possibility.

The Walking Dead

Brothers: A Tale of Two Sons

The Raven: Legacy Of A Master Thief

Memoria

Best Motherboard

Mobos are the body of the PC and allow data to flow around the various hardware components. We all know that PC gamers can be like Dr Frankenstein when it comes to building their rigs, so this award will go to those motherboards that provide excellent build quality...using premium components, while also offering an array of component placement options to accommodate our varied build needs. We are not looking for motherboards that has necessarily been released during the last year but that are available during this last year.

Asus Sabertooth 990FX

Gigabyte G1.Sniper 5 Intel Z87

ASRock X79 Extreme4 Intel X79

MSI 990FXA-GD80 AMD

Best Strategy

Click. Click. BOOM. Strategy games are the bedrock of PC gaming, capitalising on the addictive nature of amassing huge armies and wealth, or constructing a sprawling metropolis from the comfort of your own chair. Strategy games run the full gamut from fast combat-focused competitive titles through to the ponderous thinking-man’s city-builders, with everything in-between. This genre of gaming is hard to branch out from and rarely do we see titles brave enough to reshape this incredibly popular arena. Refining what works and expanding on something we have played before, only gets a game so far, but nominees for the Best Strategy Award offer you something more. A lot more! Building complete worlds or letting the gamer build or take over complete worlds is all par for the course with these titles and they will sometimes keep you entertained for literally hundreds hours.

Europa Universalis IV

Total War: Rome II

XCOM: Enemy Unknown

Company of Heroes 2

Best Gamers Case

The home of our beloved gaming PC components. This award will be given to those cases that appeal to our aesthetic senses while providing the gamer flexibility over installation of modern components.The case might be the pinnacle of Sci-fi or understatedly simple, it could be large enough to house a fleet of components or tiny and discreet. Whatever its design it needs to fill its case requirements to perfection.

Corsair 540

NZXT Phantom 630

Fractal Design R4 Soundproof

BitFenix Prodigy M Micro-ATX

Best DLC/Expansion

This generation has seen a seismic shift from traditional expansion packs to bite-sized downloadable content. Seldom does a game get released now without a flurry of additional content following swiftly behind, and it’s become harder than ever to know which bits will be worth buying.Fortunately there are still titles that manage to stand out from the crowd, with huge fully fledged expansions that almost feel like new titles in their own right. These are the titles where you just can’t get enough, taking the dynamics of a beloved title and expanding on it in new and compelling ways.

Crusader Kings II: The Old Gods

Far Cry 3: Blood Dragon

The Elder Scrolls V: Dragonborn

StarCraft II: Heart of the Swarm

Best Sandbox

Every year the benchmarks for gaming get pushed further and the big hitters in the industry are now at the stage where they have to create entire worlds for a player to roam around in at their own pace. The Best Sandbox Award Nominees are those titles that set those benchmarks.Developers build breathing worlds for the gamer to skip merrily through, but it is only the best that allow the gamer to bounce along with a rocket launcher in hand and a complete world of possibilities resting on their trigger finger. Mastering this field means keeping the player entertained whenever they want, without railroading them into a story arch they cannot escape, while simultaneously providing them with entertaining, relevant options whenever they so wish. No easy feat, but the year’s nominees manage to walk that ground comfortably.

Grand Theft Auto V

Assassins Creed 4 Black Flag

Far Cry 3

Saints Row 4

Best Handheld Gaming Device

We all like to kick back on the sofa in front of our beaming HD TVs to get some gaming in, but for those times when we can’t get our gaming fix at 50 inches, these handheld gaming devices are the best around.Whether it be on your morning commute, lunch break, or in the evening when the TV’s not available, these handheld wonders provide gaming on the move that now stands head and shoulders to the AAA-blockbusters we see hitting PC and consoles week in and week out.

Best Publisher 2013

To get a game out the door takes a lot of organisation and often a huge amount of backing. This is where the publishers turn up. Orchestrating the release or taking a risk on a new IP is no easy task.The Best Publisher award is set aside for those companies who put the gamer first, where they strive hard to support the ongoing health of the industry, release games that are good value for their price tag or maybe invest in top quality aftermarket support for. They may champion struggling genres or release free expansions.

Ubisoft

Paradox Interactive

Sony Computer Entertainment

Koch Media

Best Sports

Combining two of the worlds leading entertainments, video games and sports, is as genius as it is obvious, but with critical eyes from both sets of fans watching carefully it means that only the best reach the Best Sports nominees. Digitally recreating the technical subtlety and high impact involved in today’s top sports, these are the titles that bring the world of sport to our living rooms.

Fifa 14

NBA 2K14

Pro Evolution Soccer 2014

Rugby Challenge 2: The Lions Tour Edition

Best Racing

Participating in adrenaline fueled competition on a race track is not always possible, especially when you think of the multi million dollar equipment required for Formula One. So the world of racing games is a much needed way for us to get into the cockpit of a souped up sports car or on the back of a motorbike.The Best Racing Award does not require a track race, but it definitely looks for games that bring the fast paced thrill of competitive racing to our driving gloved gaming mits. These nominees will give us a good reason to break out our steering wheels, flightsticks or joypads and offer the rush of a racing simulation brought to life.

Need for Speed: Most Wanted 2013

Forza Horizon

F1 2013

Grid Racedriver 2

Best Free 2 Play

I have to start by saying, we live in an age where you can play full blooded, top quality games, that provide hundreds of hours of play time…..FOR FREE. Thats just incredible and this award category salutes all those games that strive to be a part of that almost crazy sounding business model. But free to play games exist and if done right they exist very well indeed. The nominees for the Best F2P award represent the years exceptional releases that dared open their game doors to the world with the confidence that their game is so good eventually you will want to give them their money to get an even greater experience. I just want to say it one last time, each one of these nominees is brilliant and free, therefore you should be downloading them now to see what makes them so incredibly playable.

Best Action

Its all about non-stop, sweat inducing, heart pumping, high-octane action in this Award Category. The sort of titles that demand a constant stream of coffee, pumped straight into the veins, just to get you focused enough to keep up.The year’s greatest action games are those that left you itching to play “just a bit more” and going toe to toe with some of gaming’s greatest enemies, in explosive action-packed battles. Often inspired by some of the classic action hero movies, we may find titles ranging from 3rd person beat-em-ups or possibly dirt track driving sims through to sci-fi space shooters. Many games fall under this category but only the most innovative, well paced, and explosive titles are nominated for the Best Action Game Award

Grand Theft Auto V

Batman: Arkham Origins

God of War: Ascension

Shadow Warrior 2013

Best Sim

As gaming continues to knock on the door of reality we are treated to a steady stream of titles that enable almost realistic gameplay across a variety of real world arenas. Up for this category we could find flight simulators facing off against racing simulators against tank simulators.Gaming allows us to explore passions and pursue very real hobbies and this award category represents the best real world simulations that gaming has to offer. Perfecting these simulations means painstaking research and a meticulous eye for detail by the developers as they rebuild our passions and hobbies for us.

Farming Simulator 2013

Euro Truck Simulator 2

War Thunder

Train Simulator 2014

Best Platformer

Resolutely old-school in design, the humble platformer has been an industry stalwart synonymous with fun, pick up and play gameplay. The best platformers of the year combined classic gameplay with innovative new features and slick mechanics that made them a true joy to play.Level design and excellently implemented physics showcase the best the genre has to offer, serving up fresh ideas and situations at an exhilarating pace.

Rayman Legends

New Super Mario Bros. U

Sly Cooper: Thieves in Time

Puppeteer

Best Handheld Game

Gaming on the go has evolved significantly with the development of mobile games in the last few years, and yet the handheld console still holds a special place in our hearts.With franchises series like Killzone and resident evil narrowing the gap between handheld consoles and their living-room-based siblings, these titles prove that bigger isn’t always better.

Pokemon X & Y

Killzone Mercenary

Fire Emblem: Awakening

Lone Survivor: The Director's Cut

Best MOBA

The Multiplayer Online Arena Battle is a highly competitive game genre that has really come into its own over the past five years. Although some classic MOBA titles spearheaded this new frontier of competitive gaming it is only in recent times that the entire world at some point or another is likely to have encountered this merciless game category.This award is reserved for MOBA titles that are not just brand new but continuing to evolve or managing to maintain the attention of the masses. With the classics still being played as much today as they ever were, if they are good enough then they still have a right to command the prestigious nominee slot. Fast paced, unforgiving, complex to master are all traits that are attached to these incredible games and only the best reach the nominee status.

League of Legends

Heroes of Newerth

DOTA 2

Guardians of Middle-Earth

Best Co-op

As a wise man once said, two heads are better than one, and that’s never been more appropriate than in the world of co-operative gaming. Whether you’re saving the planet or just having a race, getting another player involved is always instantly more fun. Co-op gaming has a strong place in many gamers hearts and as online gaming becomes easier this Award category helps us find the gems that let us play and share our gaming experiences with our friends. The gameplay complexity escalates when working alongside your friend and this is relative to the complexity the developers have to contend with in order to make the co-op experience work smoothly. For many, co-op play is the greatest part of gaming, and these nominees are the best of the best when it comes to team-based experiences

Payday 2

Borderlands 2

Tom Clancys Splinter Cell: Blacklist

Monaco

Most Beautiful

They have been known to drive grown men to tears by their beauty. Their exquisite attention to detail has brought millions flocking to bask in their brilliance. No, it’s not the Mona Lisa, it’s of course the Global Game Industry’s Beautiful Game Award nominees.These games have sent corneas ablaze with their looks, whether it be unique graphical styles or sheer polygonal power. Screenshots would flood the net followed by youtube videos all depicting their astounding beauty, and it is up to us to choose between these artistic triumphs as we can have only one winner.

Best Humor

Gaming is all about entertainment and this category focuses on that lighter side of life, humour. The nominees for the Funniest Game Award are titles that made us smirk and titter, tickled our funny bones or just kept us smiling the whole way through whatever fantastical nonsense the game presented.Humour can be found in the strangest of places sometimes and it takes an excellent writer to create a genuinely amusing game. We are looking for vibrant amusing characters or witty script and story that works within the boundaries of the genre, that those developers set out to achieve.

Best Graphics Hardware

This section is often only a two horse race, when considering the core manufacturers, but we will also be considering bang for your buck across the overclocking companies that prepare the graphics cards for retail.Throw into the mix the ever more impressive onboard solutions available, which provide very real options for laptops as they become more popular as gaming machines. All of this opens this Award category up to some serious competition. Each item of nominated hardware will offer a brilliant solution to people looking for their ideal graphics solution but only one of them can win the Best Graphics Hardware Award.

GeForce 650 Ti Boost 2GB

Radeon R9 290X

Radeon HD 7970M

Intel Iris

Most Anticipated Hardware

Here we look to see what delights the future world of tech holds for the gaming industry. We hunt down the coolest and most exciting industry changing hardware and the best of those incredible technological gems finds it way into our Most Anticipated Hardware award lineup.Possibly one of the most exciting categories for us as it lets us glimpse our gaming world of tomorrow and we will show our excitement here.

Oculus Rift

Steam Controller

Affordable 4K Monitors

G Sync

Best FPS

A crowded genre to be sure, the best FPS’s of the last year have had to work their socks off to stand out from the crowd, giving you the best shooter action around. An ever-popular genre, these nominees have done that magical bit extra to distance themselves from the pack, putting you in creative situations through which you had to make like Arnie and decimate the opposition.Arnie in Commando that is, rather than Arnie in Jingle All The Way. Of course this award is also about bringing the gamer both what they want and something original. Blowing away Nazis zombies in laboratories is all well and good but the Global Game Awards Best FPS Award reaches for far greater aspirations than yesterdays FPS formula. And as always the games industry delivers an ever flowing list of amazing first person shooter titles to choose from, but only the best will make it to the nominees.

Best Sci-Fi

In space, no one can hear you vote. Don’t let that stop you though, as these games are the latest and greatest in interstellar travel and all things fantastically futuristic. The nominees considered, will push the boundaries of reality, offering us the chance to embrace incredible wonders from the comfort of our own homes.Boldly they explore the dark frontier of space and push our imaginations to the limits. This genre is one of the most difficult to get right, as the creators of the title have to maintain believability, while still wowing us with stuff that could happen but hasn't.

Best Laptop

Laptops come in all sizes, offering a dizzying amount of variety in performance and cost. This can sometimes leave the consumer lost. The nominees for the Global Best Laptop Award are those awesome gaming laptops that shine out across a sea of similar products.They will be laptops that push the gamers sweet spot by balancing between cost and performance, flexibility and luxury, style and of course exceptional gaming experiences. They may have brilliant acoustic speakers or be bundled with lightning fast memory and a perfectly matched motherboard, possibly the top end mobile GPU for a mid range price, but whatever these nominees have done to get our attention they represent the best in portable gaming, making it the exciting option it is today and for that we gamers salute them.

Alienware 17

Razer Blade

MSI GT70 2OC-059US 17.3 inch

Chillblast Messiah 17 GTX780M