Startselect E3 2017 Digital Choice Awards Winners

It’s now a week since the E3 happened. The world is once again a quiet and peaceful place. Our representatives have returned from LA, and we’ve had enough time to process the gazillion trailers, reveals, demo’s and presentations. Time to evaluate and decide the best games we saw at E3!

We handed out a total of 12 awards. 8 of them are serious categories, and 4 of them are a bit… different. 11 of them are listed in this article, the overall winner we will announce tomorrow in a separate article. Let’s go!

Most Impressive trailer

A big part of E3 are the endless stream of teasers, trailers and reveals. This category is reserved for games that were able to excite us by delivering the best trailer of the show. Games that we became excited about by just watching a short video. Remember the Dead Island trailer that was completely reversed in slow-motion? Exactly, the world was hyped for that, even though the game largely failed to live up to it.

This year was a very tough choice, but in the end provided us with a very clear winner. Liesel! Bad Girl!

Winner: Wolfenstein II: The New Colossus (Bethesda)

This trailer is just pure awesomeness right from the start. The robot dog, the German gameshow, the weird cat, all the way to the gameplay, a lighter tone, and the acid trip cartoon lizard at the end. Hands down the best trailer we have seen this year, and Bethesda deserves massive props for coming up with this idea. We can’t wait!

Best Tech/Hardware

To be honest, this category needed some very big surprises to not go to the Xbox One X. The rumoured PS5, or the rumoured Atari console, some new VR tech or the Hololens could have blown this category wide open. However, no-one dared to go up against the 4K powerhouse from Microsoft. The solid presentation, along with the tech demo of Forza 7, hands this category clearly to Microsoft and their new console, the Xbox One X.

Winner: Xbox One X (Microsoft)

Most Anticipated Game

This category is meant for games that are slated to release this year, and has shown gameplay. Games that we have already seen, and are very excited to get our hands on. After careful consideration, we decided to go with the sequel to the 500 million budget multiplayer shooter that attempted to progress the genre to new heights. While their first attempt was a modest success, the second instalment promises to fix everything that went wrong in the first game, as well as add the PC as a platform to join the community. Well done Bungie!

Winner: Destiny 2 (Bungie)

Best Indie Game

This category was a tricky one. Despite very exciting teasers for games like The Last Night and Dauntless, or the continuous gameplay trailers of Bloodstained: Ritual of the Night, we chose a game much closer to release. We actually know how this game will turn out and play, and it sounds really cool. Slated for an early 2018 release, the winner comes from Warhorse studios.

Winner: Kingdom Come: Deliverance (Warhorse Studios)

Best Floor Presence

Our team on the LA show floor decided this one on their own (Thanks Team KeKo!) but to be fair, as soon as we saw the first photographs and pictures appear online, we knew what we were in for. The rendition of Mario Odyssey’s New Donk City was absolutely mind-blowing, and was so far ahead of any other booth, there was no competition.

Winner: Nintendo (New Donk City, Mario Odyssey)

Best Press Briefing

Beforehand, this generally becomes a battle of Xbox vs PlayStation, with the occasional upset. Rarely however, a publisher like Ubisoft manages to be named at the top of these lists. While we still missed Aisha Tyler, they made up for it with a slew of great titles and fresh announcements. From Mario + Rabbids: Kingdom Battle and Far Cry 5 to Assassin’s Creed Origins and Beyond Good & Evil 2, Ubisoft’s Press Briefing was to the point, and deserves our award 100%. Oh, and Miyamoto was there too!

Winner: Ubisoft

Best DLC

There was no shortage of DLC announcements this year. Given the endless stream of top titles that came out early in the year, most of them were up for their first DLC content, as well as some modern classics that got their share. XCOM 2, Dishonored 2 and Horizon: Zero Dawn saw new DLC on the way, but the one we were most excited for was the addition of female and Russian soldiers for the best multiplayer shooter of 2016: Battlefield 1. We can’t wait to dive back into the first World War with these new additions.

Winner: Battlefield 1 In the name of the Tsar (EA)

Best Game to Play on the toilet

On the side of the less serious awards, we come to the category that seems it was made for the Nintendo Switch. And despite that proving to be true in the end, the title that actually wins it came completely out of the blue. Mario + Rabbids: Kingdom Battle surprised everyone in LA this year. The mix of Mario, Rabbids and XCOM looked fantastic, played fantastic, and is bound to waste precious hours of our time in the smallest room in the house. Bring it on!

Winner: Mario + Rabbids: Kingdom Battle (UIbisoft)

The cosplay potential award

Cosplay is tied to gaming like hooligans to football. There isn’t a single character or game that hasn’t seen its fair share of costumes and fans. Every game has a potential to become a favourite for costume designers across the globe. The Assassin’s Creed series has always had a passionate following among cosplayers. Mix the traditional AC cosplay designs and add a sprinkle of Ancient Egypt to it, and you have the potential for some mind-blowing designs! We can’t wait to see what comes of the marriage of two very different concepts.

Winner: Assassin’s Creed Origins (Ubisoft)

The speedrun potential award

We didn’t expect to change the winner of this category when the Sony conference started, or even halfway through that presentation really. However, at the very end they showed us some gameplay that promises to become a speedrunners wet dream. Spiderman is fast, requires plenty of skill and looks beautiful . While traditionally platformers have solid speedrun communities, we can see this becoming the next speedrun phenomenon, and we can’t wait to see gamers across the globe break this beautiful game.

Winner: Spiderman (Sony)

Best in-game animal award

This was quite the gamble, since we had no idea we’d even see animals, let alone have any games in mind that could potentially win this. Surprise guaranteed! The winner of this category was known 2 seconds after this delightful dog companion made its appearance in the Far Cry 5 gameplay trailer. Boomer, the badass dog that helps you take out cultists in rural America. A match made in heaven! Who’s a good boy? Boomer, that’s who is!

Winner: Boomer (Far Cry 5, Ubisoft)

CHECK BACK TOMORROW TO SEE OUR WINNER OF THE "BEST OF SHOW" CATEGORY