Hair of the Dog - Week of Jan 10, 2010

We’ve got just the thing to cure your weekly gaming hangover… every Saturday morning, Hair of the Dog compiles a round-up of interesting Naughty Dog and UNCHARTED 2 links from around the web.

WGA opts for vidgame sequels - Variety
Friday morning, Variety posted the first report I could find of the Writers Guild of America awards for videogame writing. We’re glad to see UNCHARTED 2 and our own Amy Hennig, make the list this year. You would recognize the other nominees as some of the bigger titles that came out this year—Assassin’s Creed II, Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2, Wet and X-Men Origins: Wolverine. The WGA will announce the winner on February 20, 2009 during their awards ceremonies. Congratulations, Amy!

GeekTown’s Top 5 Games of the Year 2009 - GeekTown
GeekTown counts down their best games of 2009—while it has a slightly few different entries in the top 5 than we’ve seen so far, UNCHARTED 2 makes the number 2 slot.

Dear Game, It’s Over: Uncharted 2 - Negative Gamer
Peter “SurplusGamer” writes a breakup letter to Uncharted 2. “It’s complicated.”

Review: Uncharted 2: Among Thieves - This is My Joystick
Bryony writes her review of Uncharted 2 for This is My Joystick, gaining the site’s “Buy It” rating.

The Acegamez Awards 2009—Winners - Acegamez
Acegamez lists out their 2009 in a variety of categories. Nice as always to see Uncharted 2 pick up a few awards, namely four for PlayStation Game of the Year, Best Action/Adventure Game, Best Visuals and Best Story.

The Games of 2009 - Part Two (Xbox 360 / PS3) - 4 color rebellion
The 4 color rebellion staff covers their favorite games of 2009. Uncharted 2 nabs Gregory Gay’s game of the year, proving him wrong for disliking “short” ten hour games.

Best of 2009 Awards - IGN
IGN also clocks in with their Best of 2009 awards. I can’t say we’re disappointed at all to find out that Uncharted 2 won 10 awards from IGN, including Overall AND PS3 nods for Best Action Game, Award for Visual Excellence, Award for Excellence in Sound. Our game also picked up PS3 Best Multiplayer game, PS3 Game of the Year and Overall Best Story—we lost out to the as deserving inFAMOUS for the PS3 Best Story, congrats Sucker Punch! And if you haven’t seen it yet, the Overall Game of the Year, um, video, is er, very interesting.

NPD: Nintendo, Microsoft, Sony Spin the Numbers - Wired Game|Life
Wired’s Game|Life blog recaps the official December 2009 NPD results statements by all three console manufacturers and publishers. In the statement from SCEA, it’s revealed the Uncharted 2 has surpassed 1 million units in North America, in just a few months. We hope all million (and more, covering worldwide) of you have and are enjoying our game!

Holiday Cards - NaughtyDog.com
By request, we posted a nice high-resolution image of our holiday card to share with everyone. We also posted but 3 of the many holiday cards we received from friends, other studios and partners recently.

“Ranked” playlist skill reset upcoming - NaughtyDog.com
We gave early warning that the skill levels in the “Ranked” playlist were going to be reset this week in an attempt to address an issue. We try extremely hard to make sure any solutions don’t impact our players and our community, but sometimes there’s no other way to make a necessary change that will ensure our game is fun (and worthwhile) to play for months and years to come.