1.2 million gamers cast their votes for the 27th annual Golden Joystick Awards, and named Fallout 3 as the ultimate game of 2009, whilst awarding a hat-trick of accolades to the Call of Duty series of games. The winners were announced yesterday in London and organizers announced a 47% increase in the number of voters from last year, setting a new record for gamer input into handing out these awards.

In 2008 Call of Duty 4 took out four separate awards, and this year the Activision Blizzard series went on another winning streak, picking up “Multiplayer Game of the Year” and “Nintendo Game of the Year” for Call of Duty: World at War and the “One to Watch” award for the forthcoming Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2. 

Activision Blizzard also picked up the “Soundtrack of the Year” award for Guitar Hero: World Tour, as well as the “Publisher of the Year” award, which seems fitting for a company with so much success in the other award areas.

There was strong showing for UK-developed titles, as “Family Game of the Year” was taken by Guildford-based Media Molecule for LittleBigPlanet on PlayStation 3 - an innovative platform game voiced by Stephen Fry. “Handheld Game of the Year” was won by Rockstar Leeds' Grand Theft Auto: Chinatown Wars for Nintendo DS. The “UK Developer of the Year” category saw Cambridge company Jagex smash all-comers as the makers of Runescape – the biggest free massively multiplayer online role-playing game in the world - outflanked rivals in the category by an overwhelming margin.

The full list of winners in the 2009 Golden Joystick Awards is;

• Family Game of the Year: LittleBigPlanet
• Bliss Handheld Game of the Year: Grand Theft Auto: Chinatown Wars
• Retailer of the Year: GAME
• Mobile Game of the Year: Metal Gear Solid Touch
• Nintendo Game of the Year: Call of Duty: World at War
• MSN Multiplayer Game of the Year: Call of Duty: World at War
• The Rampage Soundtrack of the Year: Guitar Hero: World Tour
• Xbox Game of the Year: Gears of War 2
• PC Game of the Year: Fallout 3
• Amiqus Games UK Developer of the Year: Jagex
• PlayStation Game of the Year: Killzone 2
• Publisher of the Year: Activision Blizzard
• Online Game of the Year: Left4Dead
• ShortList One to Watch: Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2
• Ultimate Game of the Year, together with Zavvi.co.uk: Fallout 3

Rounding off the afternoon in style, the Golden Joystick Awards themselves were officially recognised by Guinness World Records as the “World’s Most Popular Video Game Awards.” The Golden Joysticks polled 1,223,646 votes in its 27th year.

Tags: Console Games, PC Games