British game magazine publisher Future has announced the results of over 2 million public votes for its annual Golden Joystick awards, with Valve's
Portal 2 taking top honors as "Ultimate Game of the Year."
Portal 2 beat out Game of the Year runner-up
Starcraft II, which won an award for Best Strategy Game. Surprisingly,
Portal 2 actually lost to Ubisoft's
Assassin's Creed: Brotherhood in the Best Action Game category.
Other notable winners include Riot Games
League of Legends for Best Free-to-Play Game, Mojang's
Minecraft for Best Downloadable Game and Bethesda's
The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim as "One To Watch."
Nintendo's 3DS won a special "Innovation of the Year" award for its glasses-free 3D screen, while Sega's
Sonic the Hedgehog was noted for its "Outstanding Contribution" to gaming over the years.
2.06 million voters used the Golden Joystick web site to register their favorites from
a wide list of nominees chosen by Future publishing editors. The record voter turnout for this year's awards surpassed last year's mark by roughly 25 percent.
A complete list of Golden Joystick winners is included below:
Best Action
Assassin's Creed: Brotherhood, Ubisoft/Ubisoft Montreal
Runner-up:
Portal 2, Valve Corporation/EA
Best Mobile
Angry Birds Rio, Rovio
Runner-up:
Fruit Ninja, Halfbrick RUNNER UP
Best RPG
Fallout New Vegas, Bethesda/Obsidian
Runner-up:
The Witcher 2: Assassin's Of Kings, Namco Bandai/CD Projekt Red
Best MMO (subscription)
World Of Warcraft, Activision Blizzard/Blizzard Entertainment
Runner-up:
Rift, Trion Worlds
Best Fighting
Mortal Kombat, Warner Bros/NetherRealm
Runner-up:
Marvel vs Capcom 3: Fate of Two Worlds, Capcom/Eighting
Best Racing
Gran Turismo 5, SCE/Polyphony
Runner-up:
Dirt 3, Codemasters/Codemasters Southam
Best Sports
FIFA 11, EA Sports
Runner-up:
NHL 2011, EA Sports
Best Strategy
Starcraft II: Wings of Liberty, Activision Blizzard, Blizzard Entertainment
Runner-up:
Civilization V, 2K Games/Firaxis Games
Best Music
Guitar Hero: Warriors of Rock, Activision/Neversoft
Runner-up:
Rock Band 3, MTV Games, Harmonix Music Systems
Best Free-to-play
League of Legends, Riot Games
Runner-up:
World Of Tanks, Wargaming.net
Best Downloadable
Minecraft, Mojang
Runner-up:
Limbo, Playdead
Best Shooter
Call of Duty: Black Ops, Activision/Treyarch
Runner-up:
Halo: Reach, Microsoft/Bungie
One to Watch
The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim, Bethesda
Runner-up:
Battlefield 3, EA/DICE
Innovation of the Year
Nintendo 3DS
Outstanding Contribution
Sonic The Hedgehog
Ultimate Game of the Year
Portal 2, Valve Corporation
Runner-up:
Starcraft II: Wings of Liberty, Activision Blizzard/Blizzard Entertainment
