Academy of Interactive Arts & Sciences Game Award Nominees Announced

The Academy of Interactive Arts & Sciences (AIAS) has today revealed the nominees for the 14th Annual Interactive Achievement Awards.
If you fancy reading the full line-up in categories as wide-ranging as ‘Outstanding Achievement In Game Play Engineering,’ the complete selection of nominees can be read in a pdf file to be found here.
The usual suspects lead the way in terms of multiple nominations: Red Dead Redemption (nine nominations,) Enslaved: Odyssey to the West (six,) God of War III (six,) Call of Duty: Black Ops (five,) Mass Effect 2 (five,) Assassin’s Creed: Brotherhood (five,) and Heavy Rain (also five.)
Several of those titles appear in the AIAS ‘Game of the Year’ category. Red Dead Redemption will be up against Mass Effect 2, Call of Duty: Black Ops, Angry Birds HD and God of War III.
Woah, wait … Angry Birds? That came out in 2009, it just wasn’t popular then. Using the HD version to sneak it into these awards is a little suspect. Then again, it probably has just as much right to go for a ‘Game of the Year’ award on merit as CodBlops.