Golden Joystick Winners – Call of Duty 4 does rather well

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Games about war. Love them or hate them, they tend to be phenomenally successful, despite the fact there’s so darn many of them. The biggest and best of this past year, however, has definitely been Call of Duty 4 – a version of the WW2 first-person-shooter based in the present day. That was recognised at the Golden Joystick awards on Friday, where the game grabbed awards for “Ultimate Game of the Year”, “Online Game of the Year” and “PC Game of the Year”.

Aside from the fact that it definitely wasn’t the “PC Game of the Year” (that honour goes to Audiosurf, in my humble opinion), the game does deserve a decent amount of recognition – it was fantastic and looked incredible. Other winners at the Golden Joysticks included GTA IV, Activision Blizzard, Legend of Zelda: Phantom Hourglass, and Guitar Hero III. A full list of winners is over the jump…

Grand Theft Auto IV blamed for Thai killing – game pulled from shelves

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This isn’t your usual tabloid shock story, where there was a robbery and one of the items taken just so happened to be a PlayStation. This is FOR REAL.

A Thai teenager has confessed to robbing and killing a taxi driver – then allegedly told police he was trying to recreate a scene from Grand Theft Auto. There’s no denying the facts or fudging the issue here – he was copying the game. It’s a 100% confirmed copycat crime. There’s going to be trouble over this. Big trouble.

“He said he wanted to find out if it was as easy in real life to rob a taxi as it was in the game,” chief police investigator…

GTA IV's Niko Bellic by Pixeloo

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Now there’s the face of a tortured soul who’s thrown thousands of innocent bystanders from their cars, stomped more brains into the roadside than it’s had hot dinners and drunk deep from rivers of the criminal underworld so many, many times. This is GTA IV anti-hero Niko Bellic…