Rezzed: Our, And Your, Game Of The Show

Rezzed the other week was lovely, wasn't it? I know you think so, because I've seen the audience exit polls and almost everyone was happy. And the tiny few who weren't are habitual miseries who will soon slump into an endless coma of gloom anyway, so let's not worry about them.

Who cares about people, though? Let's talk games. RPS has a Game Of The Show, and so does Rezzed's audience. They are not one and the same, but you can find out what both were below.

In fact, let's do the audience's top 10 most favouritest games of Rezzed, according to a survey of attendees. In reverse order, because that's the most  confusing:

10. Far Cry 3
9. ShootMania
8. Strike Suit Zero
7. Gunpoint
6. Hotline Miami
5. Day Z
4. Aliens: Colonial Marines
3. Natural Selection 2
2. Prison Architect

1. Borderlands 2

So a big well done and Official Audience Game Of The Show medal to Gearbox for Borderlands 2, but a mighty proud honourable mention to Introversion's Prison Architect for trumping so many of the big boys.

As for our personal game of the show, it turned out to be pretty clear cut. A game we hadn't so much as heard of until days before it turned up in playable form at Rezzed, from a developer who previously had seemed to have the attention span of a highly creative gnat and thus unlikely to release something of such great substance.

It's Jonatan 'Cactus' Soderstrom, teaming up with Dennis Wedin as Dennaton to make the incredible, brutal, incredibly brutal Hotline Miami. The unofficial videogame adaptation of Drive, this steely-eyed, hyper-speed, entirely unforgiving, GTA-as-puzzle/Hitman-as-suicidal-psychopath work of bloody art stood out a mile even at a show already full of wonders. Congratulations Dennaton, and thank you. You win this piece of truly appalling Photoshoppery to do with as you please. Probably seek to delete from the internet, I imagine.

I'm going to try to tell you why it impressed us so much very soon. I am genuinely concerned there is no way way to capture its masochistic majesty in words alone, but I shall try.