The Game Audio Network Guild has announced its final nominees for the 9th annual awards, to be held this upcoming March 3 in San Francisco, CA. Reach is up for a total of four awards: Best Soundtrack, Best Interactive Score, Best Vocal - Choral (for "Hymn") and Best Use of Multi-Channel Surround.

mrsmiley sends word that the Happy Halodays grand winner has been announced.

Hawty McBloggy has put up the nominations for the 2008 Best of Halo awards, divided into ten categories, over at HawtyMcBloggy.com and Rampancy's been nominated, in the best resource website category. Up against the 800lb. gorilla that is HBO one can't expect to do more than score a point here or there, but the real honor is being nominated.

The Game Audio Network Guild is holding its sixth annual awards ceremony for the best audio in games during the Game Developers Conference on February 21, 2008.

Halo 3 is nominated in several categories, including Audio of the Year, Music of the Year, Best Original Soundtrack Album, Best Cinematic Audio, Best Dialogue, Best Original Vocal-Choral (for "Luck") and Best Use of Multi-Channel Surround In A Game.

Check the GANG website for details.

Second Foundation, home of the Halo community podcast The Riot, is holding its 2007 community awards. Voting will be open until midnight GMT on January 13.

In the interest of full disclosure, yours truly was nominated under "Biggest Community Contributor (Individual)" but I'm up against Louis Wu so if I don't win, no hard feelings. Then again, if you want to vote for me, don't let me stand in your way.

First GameSpy, now TeamXbox shun Halo 3 when it comes to top honors in its year-end awards roundup. Crackdown-- the game that at first people thought might only be bought by people who wanted into the Halo 3 Public Beta, but then turned out to be good in its own right-- was dubbed best action game.

Mass Effect took the overall Game of the Year award.

GameSpy wants you to know they love Halo 3. They really do. It's just that 2007 was just too good a year for the console, and well... a game that executes really well on a known formula while tinkering with details and adding some new features just isn't quite enough to make the top half of a top ten list this year.

1Up.com obviously didn't get enough Bungie in their "three weeks of Halo 3" coverage, because now the company is getting a mention again-- this time for Marathon.

Unfortunately, it's not a flattering mention. Marathon 2 is featured in their Best Worst Ads 3 feature, on page six, which shows their ad from 1996 that compares video games to a skinner box.

We may have neglected it to mention it before, but Wideload Games was nominated for the New Studio award at the Game Developer Choice Awards. The competition certainly seems stiff; ArenaNet is up for Guild Wars, DoubleFine Productions up for Psychonauts, and TellTale Games up for Bone: Out From Boneville. The last nominee in the category is New Crayon Games up for Bonnie's Bookstore.

Another pre-release award segment, this one for Best Male Performance, is up at the Rockets On Prisoner 2005 website, hosted by That Weasel TV. Thanks to Spartan 777 who pointed it out in the HBO forum.

At Rampancy we've been quite remiss in reporting on the Rockets on Prisoner 2005 awards for fan-made films. The RoP site still says that the awards ceremony has been delayed, but instead, they've been releasing videos with the nominees and winners in individual categories over the past few weeks.

So far, videos for the following awards have been posted on the RoP site:

The top 117 entries in the 117 Words contest have been announced by Jillybean and Stuntmutt. Your editor was tickled pink to have managed a third-place tie with Tum-Tut Mantis' entry The Arbiter's Sentence. And it's mine! All mine! It's my birthday pressssent!