Accolades and anguish at the Baftas

Heavy Rain was a critical success at last night's British Academy of Film and Television Videogames Awards, scooping three gongs amid the roar of much applause.

The PlayStation exclusive won the Bafta for Technical Innovation, Story and Original Music at the ceremony held last night at London's Park Lane Hilton and presented by an on-form Dara O'Briain.

Raining champion

Other big winners included Mass Effect 2, which took the Best Game award and Assassin's Creed: Brotherhood, which came top in the Action department after nominations in several categories.

Super Mario Galaxy 2 snagged the Gameplay gong, and F1 2010 pipped Gran Turismo and obvious footie titles in the race for best sports title.

Despite a handful of nominations and the Acadamy's seemingly diplomatic spread of the wins, Limbo failed to pick up an award, but was heavily cheered each time one of its many nominations was announced. Social network category aside, Limbo appeared the only indie game to get much of a look-in and I was disappointed that my personal favourite Super Meat Boy, failed to even get a mention.

Left in Limbo

Voted top game in the Reg Hardware Reader Awards, Call of Duty: Black Ops also won the publicly voted Game Award of 2010. Predictable, perhaps, when it set records for best selling videogame of all time this month.

Yet there weren't many cheers when the title's name came up in other categories. Hmm, I wonder why...

Last, but not least, a tearful Peter Molyneux was handed his Bafta fellowship by Sir Ben Kingsley, but we already knew that was on the cards. ®