NLreaderawards2014

As 2014 comes to its end there's the inevitable tradition to enjoy — annual awards. As is becoming our norm we'll have staff awards, votes of which will be counted shortly, while also giving you the chance to contribute to the Reader Awards. If you gaze upon the eventual staff awards results and believe that they represent a travesty against mankind, you can — as a community — right those wrongs.

We're going to follow the same approach as last year, with a series of polls that'll allow you to easily vote for your winner in each category. You can vote below — results will be hidden until voting is closed — and have your say in the comfort and knowledge that a clever computer is gathering the data. There are a number of categories, and the great thing is that if your game of choice isn't in its respective list — though we've tried to cover the main bases — you can simply click "Other" and type in your choice; we will then manually add up any of these miscellaneous submissions and add them to the overall results.

Voting closes at 5pm UK / 6pm CET / noon Eastern / 9am Pacific on 23rd December, so get your votes in before then. You have all of the same categories as the staff, and a few important details are below:

  • Bayonetta is included in the eShop category, simply due to the fact that it's available separately on the download store but only as part of a bundle in stores.
  • There are inevitable release disparities of games available in one region but not worldwide — a notable current example is Captain Toad: Treasure Tracker. Unfortunately these games will likely struggle as a result, but that's a reality we must deal with.
  • With such a discrepancy across regions and the sizeable number of high-quality new download games, we've left Virtual Console out this year.
  • As before we have restricted this year to Wii U and 3DS; the Wii and DS eras are now long gone.
  • The 'Overall Game of the Year' award includes all retail and download games for Wii U and 3DS.
  • To emphasize a point above, the automated options in these polls represent what we feel are the most likely contenders. If your game isn't there then select Other and type in your entry — these votes will be given the same weight as automated choices.

Without further ado, let's get to the voting!

Voting has now closed, keep your eyes peeled for the results soon, and thanks for taking part.