TSA At The BAFTAs

The next award to be delivered is the annual Call Of Duty Award, aka the GAME award, voted by the public.  Dance Central, Black Ops, Heavy Rain, Mass Effect 2, Super Mario Galaxy 2, Need For Speed Hot Pursuit ,Halo: Reach and FIFA 11 are the Goliaths with Limbo guest starring as a very tiny David. The surprise winner is Call of Duty: Black Ops.

Original Music is next and it’s being presented by someone who looks like Kevin Bacon but isn’t. I have no idea who he is, sorry. Alan Wake makes its first appearance in the noms, as does Fable III and another nomination for Heavy Rain, the only game for which I own the soundtrack and, huzzah, Heavy Rain has won! Composer Normand Corbeil picks up his award and he’s looking a bit teary as he walks past me, well done old chap.

The BAFTA for Strategy game is next, pitting Plants vs. Zombies against Civilisation 5 and Fallout 3, the most eclectic category in this years awards. Civilization 5 takes the award.

The Artistic BAFTA is up next, a second outing for Limbo and, er, Black Ops. Heavy Rain gets another nom but the winner is that well known fan of the arts, Kratos, as God Of War 3 picks up the award. Lots of surprised faces in the crowd as everyone seemed to think Heavy Rain was walking this catergory.

Next up is the ‘One To Watch’ category and That Game Studio take the award for ‘Twang’, a title that heading towards Xbox Live shortly. Confusion reigns amongst the journos until someone helpful points out the winners are That Game Studio and not ThatGameCompany, the team behind PSN hit Flower. Quickly following is the Gameplay award which has gone to deserved winner, Super Mario Galaxy 2.

Someone famous is back to present the next award, it’s Strictly Come Dancing failure Joe Calzaghe. Codemasters F1 2010 makes its one and only appearance this evening and… Dear lord,  T4 presenter Jameela Jamil has the longest legs in history and she’s standing right next to me. It’s almost enough to make me want to swap teams… and in another surprising moment F1 2010 has won the Sports game BAFTA.

The time has just flown by, its ten o’clock, the end is nigh. Eurovision popsters Blue are on stage to present the multiplayer award and I could make a really, really good joke here about Blue and multiplayer but as Gordon Smart from The Sun won’t even print the scandalous news it relates to, I doubt Peter will let me make the joke. Just assume I did, and it was very dirty and very funny [it is, I’ve heard the joke – ed]. Winning the award, another surprise, is Need For Speed: Hot Pursuit and it appears the entire Criterion development team have gone on stage to collect the award.

Presenting the next award, the BAFTA for Story, it’s the annoying tech bloke from Assassins Creed, a.k.a. Danny Wallace. Joe Calagzhe has just walked past and is teeny, who knew?! I shall pause here to nip to the bar just to stand next to him and make him feel inferior…

OK, back now and just in time as Heavy Rain picks up its third award of the evening, the most excellent David Cage is on stage to accept the award.

I’ve just discovered that the beer label that I mentioned earlier has been printed as a one off – each beer seems to get it’s own, unique label. Why did mine have men pissing?

Blue are now being interviewed and are – guess what – tiny. Jason Bradbury is on stage presenting the award for something, but I’ve missed what is was as Duncan from Blue is very distracting close up. Mass Effect 2 won whatever it was… oh it was Best Game, curses, the most important award of the evening and Duncan from Blue is bewitching me. Well done Bioware, and well done Duncan, very tasty.

Sir Ben Kingsley is on stage bringing some gravitas to the proceedings so that can only mean one thing: it’s time for his doppleganger, Peter Molyneux, to accept his BAFTA fellowship award.

A cheery goodbye from Dara wraps up what has been a most enjoyable awards ceremony. There have been some suprises during the night, most notably God Of War 3 beating Heavy Rain and Black Ops not winning anything apart the public voted GAME award…

Congratulations to David Cage and Quantic Dreams for picking up three well deserved BAFTAs and to Sony for getting one more for God Of War 3, Team PlayStaton will no doubt be cracking open the champagne.

One last thing before I go: There’s been a lot of chatter on Twitter as to the lack of nominations for Red Dead Redemption and other games. BAFTA can only vote on games that are submitted for the awards, Red Dead was not submitted so could not be voted on.

That wraps up the evening, now I have just got to get out of the Park Lane Hilton without Ellis-Bextor spotting me, wish me luck.