I don't know who called IGN as being a product of the major game developers and publishers but if the PC Best of 2008 awards are anything to go by, IGN certainly aren't the premier neutral game reviewer they once were anymore.

For those of you too lazy to click, let me break this down for you. For the most part, the awards were pretty straight forward. Most of the awards - such as Best Action Game, Best Puzzle Game, Best Graphical Adventure Game, Best Music/Rhythm Game etc etc - were one horse races. World of Goo won Best Puzzle Game, shock horror. Best Persistent World Game went to Warhammer Online and God only knows why they couldn't call it the Best MMORPG. Best Action Game went to Grand Theft Suto 4, who's only real contendor was Assassins Creed, which wasn't that good. The winners in most of the categories were pretty obvious. 

There were a few awards that went to - frankly - the wrong titles and suggests to me that IGN aren't as neutral as they'd like us to believe.

The first travesty I was shocked by was the Best New IP Award. This year has seen lots of praise lavished on BioWare for bringing one of the most epic IPs to the console and PC in the form of Mass Effect. Closely influenced by games like Knights of the Old Republic, Mass Effect was a true epic when it came to story and game play. The dialogue between the main character and NPCs was beautifal and the development of the game universe was immense. They progression and discovery you could achieve with Mass Effect was second to none and reprisented another bold step by BioWare. The Mass Effect IP was first featured in 2007 on the Xbox 360, but wasn't featured on the PC until 2008. Now, you could argue that the Mass Effect IP wasn't new, but for the PC - which the awards I am talking about are for - it was and it was certainly a better IP than Sins of a Solar Empire. And even if we aren't going to count Mass Effect, there are far better IPs that have come about this year than Sins. World of Goo was far more original than the Sins IP. Left 4 Dead broguth more to the table. Now don't get me wrong, Sins is a good game but it isn't that good. Line it up against other Space RTS titles like Masters of Orion, Imperium Galactica, Galactic Civilizations and Homeworld and Sins is humbled at the bottom of the list.

The next travesty is that Sins goes on to win Most Innovative Design, which is arguable when you line it up agains Fallout 3, Spore and Left 4 Dead. Ok, Sins brought some late additions to an aged genre but it didn't do anything horrifically innovative, did it? 

The cherry on the cake is that Sins of a Solar Empire won PC Game of the Year, which should have gone to either Fallout 3, Mass Effect or Grand Theft Auto 4 in any reasonable non-biased line up. A lot of people have been shouting that Fallout 3, Mass Effect and GTA4 are ports from console games but that is of no consequence. They were released for the PC and they are all better than Sins, so despite the fact that the console saw them first, they should not have been discounted.

Needless to say, I'm a little disappointed with the awards this year, like I was last year. One thing that does come from the awards is that there is a distinct lack of good titles on the PC.

Now let's see what other reviewers have to say.