It looks like Call of Duty 4 couldn’t quite beat out Valve’s brilliantly designed Portal at the 8th annual Game Developers Choice Awards. The first person puzzler took home top honors as Game of the Year, along with wins in Best Gamed Design and Innovation.

Right there with Portal was BioShock, which won three awards of its own. Best Audio, Best Visual Art and Best Writing. When you think about it, how would it be possible for things to turn out any other way? Not only was the audio – and sound effects – tremendous in BioShock, but it was used to perfection to tell the story. It was also nice to see games like Crackdown get some recognition.

Here is the list of winners from the 8th Annual Game Developers Choice Awards:

Best Game Design - Portal (Valve) Kim Swift, Realm Lovejoy, Paul Graham
Best Visual Art - BioShock (2K Boston/2K Australia / 2K Games) Scott Sinclair, Shawn Robertson, Andrew James
Best Technology - Crysis (Crytek/Electronic Arts) Cevat Yerli, Douglas Binks, Timur Davidenko, Martin Mittring
Best Writing - BioShock (2K Boston/2K Australia / 2K Games) Ken Levine, Emily Ridgway, Joe McDonagh, Susan O'Connor
Best Audio - BioShock (2K Boston/2K Australia / 2K Games) Eric Brosius, Pat Balthrop, Emily Ridgway, Justin Mullins
Best Debut - Crackdown (Real Time Worlds / Microsoft Game Studios) Ramon Gonzalez, Violetta Sanchez, Rafael Diaz, Jose Guerra
Innovation - Portal (Valve) Kim Swift, Erik Wolpaw
Best Handheld Game - The Legend of Zelda: Phantom Hourglass (Nintendo / Nintendo) Eiji Aonuma
Best Downloadable Game - fl0w (thatgamecompany / Sony Computer Entertainment) Kellee Santiago, Jenova Chen, Martin Middleton, Hao Cui, John Edwards, Nick Clark
Game of the Year - Portal (Valve) Kim Swift, Erik Wolpaw
Recipients for the evening's special awards were: Lifetime Achievement Award Sid Meier, Pioneer Award Ralph Baer, Ambassador Award Jason Della Rocca

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