It may have landed on a few “Best Games of 2014” lists, and probably an equal number of “Worst Games of 2014” lists, but now Destiny has earned itself its highest honor yet. It’s been named the “Best Game of the Year” at the UK’s BAFTA Games Awards.

As the US searches for our Oscars-equivalent video game award show, at least in terms of the awards themselves, I think the BAFTA Game Awards might be my favorite show worldwide right now. Not because they awarded Destiny the big win (we’ll get to that in a second), but because of the sheer breadth and diversity of their award categories, and what they choose to honor. Games are a very different medium than film or TV, and I think the BAFTAs do the best job of reflecting that with their awards. To see what I mean, check out their full awards list below from this year’s show (assembled viaPolygon).

• Best Game: Destiny (Bungie)
• Games Fellowship: David Braben
• Artistic Achievement: Lumino City (State of Play Games)
• Game Innovation: The Vanishing of Ethan Carter (The Astronauts)
• Audio Achievement: Alien: Isolation (Creative Assembly)
• Mobile & Handheld: Monument Valley (Ustwo)
• Multiplayer: Hearthstone: Heroes of Warcraft (Blizzard)
• Music: Far Cry 4 (Ubisoft Montreal – Cliff Martinez, Tony Gronick, Jerome Angelot)
• Original IP: Valiant Hearts (Ubisoft Montpellier – Yoan Fanise, Paul Tumelaire, Simon Choquet)
• Performer: Ashley Johnson (Ellie, The Last of Us: Left Behind)
• Game Design: Middle-earth: Shadow of Mordor (Monolith Productions)
• Story: The Last of Us: Left Behind (Naughty Dog – Neil Druckmann)
• Family: Minecraft Console Editions (Mojang)
• Sport: OlliOlli (Roll7 – John Ribbins, Simon Bennett, Tom Hegarty)
• Persistent Game: League of Legends (Riot Games)
• Debut Game: Never Alone (Upper One Games)
• British Game: Monument Valley (Ustwo)
• Ones to Watch: Chambara (Overly Kinetic)

It may be slightly confusing, given the wide range of categories featured, but I really think judging a hugely different set of games on a multitude of criteria allows the show to accurately reflect the huge amount of diversity and achievement in the industry. Ethan Carter won a well deserved innovation award, while League of Legends is honored for consistently maintaining a great game experience even if the game is years old at this point. There’s only one acting award, and it rightly went to Ashley Johnson from The Last of Us, and Monument Valley easily took the mobile category. So many different facets of games and game design are in this list, and it’s very cool to see.

But of course the main story here is Destiny, which walks away with a GOTY award, something we haven’t really seen for it from most other award shows or gaming publication top ten lists. If there was one “definitive” game of the year, it was probably Dragon Age: Inquisition, which was named as such by IGN, Game Informer, Polygon, EGM, The Escapist, and the USA’s major game awards show, The Game Awards. Yet it lands nowhere, in any category, on the BAFTA list.

Obviously debating why a game is or isn’t recognized as one of the best games of the year gets into subjective territory, and I have my own biases. You can read through my thoughts on Dragon Age sweeping most major GOTY awards in this piece, where I compare it (unfavorably) to Crash winning the Best Picture Oscar. It hits all the right notes to seem like it should be award winning, yet lacks actual substance, in my eyes.

And conversely, for as much time as I’ve spent complaining about all the things Destiny has gotten wrong over the past six months, in my (unpublished) top ten of 2014 list, I listed Destiny as #2 behind Hearthstone, so a GOTY win doesn’t seem like that much of a stretch from my perspective.

I’ve easily sunk 200+ hours into Destiny across six characters in both the Xbox One and PS4 versions of the game. Even if that makes me sound like some kind of a fanatic, I’m really not even that hardcore of a player. I have no characters at max level, and because of my busy schedule that doesn’t allow me to coordinate Raids effectively, I’ve only done them a few times each. That said, I’ve spent enough time with the game to all its ins, outs and endless number of controversies.

Often the listed problems of Destiny are about not only what is, but what could have been. Destiny promised us the stars, and gave us a handful of roped-off areas on a few planets. Destiny promised we’d have a story for each piece of loot, and instead we grind for in-game currency and pray to God that a weekly vendor sells the thing we want.

But past all its faults, I still view Destiny as a remarkable achievement. If a game can have this much so clearly wrong with it, and still keep me engaged and playing for dozens, if not hundreds of hours, it’s doing something right. Mechanically, visually and conceptually, it’s one of the best shooters on the market, and I understand why it continues to be an enduring fascinating topic of conversation. Call of Duty may have sold its usual eleventy billion copies this year, but what game are we still talking about today? Destiny, and as the series involves, I don’t expect that to change.

Follow me on Twitter, like my page on Facebook, and pick up a copy of my sci-fi novel, The Last Exodus, and its sequel, The Exiled Earthborn, along with my new Forbes book, Fanboy Wars.

Watch below to see when Call of Duty may return to World War II:

 

As Destiny players sit and wait patiently for any hint of information regarding the upcoming House of Wolves DLC, Bungie is hard at work fixing all the existing problems with the game.

One long-running issue is that one class of weapon has been utterly useless for much of the game, the shotgun. Though a staple in PvP multiplayer, the shotgun has served practically no purpose in PvE, a much larger section of the game.

Part of that is design of the game as a whole, as Destiny encourages you to stay far, far away from most enemies. Get too close and anything from a Minotaur to a Thrall will bash or tear you to pieces, and many of the “big bosses” in Destiny come with a handy AOE insta-kill move that activate if you get anywhere near them. So while snipers are key in PvE and fusion rifles are viable because of their range, shotguns have never, ever been worth the risk.

Now, in a recent update, Bungie has doubled the damage of shotguns to “all non-Guardian enemies.” They remain an important part of PvP, but now they’re actually useful in PvE as well. Though enemy encounters remain the same, shotguns now simply deal so much damage that they can be worth using. I’ve seen a lot of great videos of people going through every Strike and Raid using only shotguns, and it’s finally unlocked the gun’s potential in the wider game.

So what’s the problem, other than it took so long to get a fix? To me, the shotgun issue represents the manifestation of something that has bothered me about Destiny since its inception, the gimping of weapon and armor abilities to make PvP even remotely balanceable.