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" The best show for a long time, this year&amp;#039;s E3 gaming expo had it all: plentiful hands-on opportunities, some genuine surprises during a day of conferences and a series of stunning next-gen titles from some of the world&amp;#039;s biggest studios. Going by their E3 2013 showings, we run down the best-looking current and next-generation titles, which games topped the dominant racing and shooting genres and the publishers that shone the brightest. &amp;gt; E3 2013: Vote for Digital Spy&amp;#039;s Best Platform, Game of the Show &amp;gt; E3 2013: All you need to know in pictures Best Shooter - Titanfall While Destiny is probably a game with more potential, we didn&amp;#039;t see enough outside of Sony&amp;#039;s conference to get a better grasp of what will make it special. Titanfall, meanwhile, already looks stunning. We loved seeing the blend of mech and traditional person-to-person combat, the additions of wall-jumps and battlefields crammed full of computer-controlled soldiers, and the way it cleverly folds story into multiplayer. Runners-up: Destiny, Call of Duty: Ghosts, Battlefield 4  Best Racer - The Crew The racing genre dominated the show this year, from next-gen launch titles Drive Club and Forza Motorsport 5 to Need for Speed Rivals&amp;#039;s well-implemented objective-based gameplay. But The Crew definitely had us the most interested. Part MMO and part open-world racer, the entirety of the United States is your playground. You can seamlessly hop from New York City to Route 66 or Colorado mountains, taking part in ad-hoc challenges against players or the clock, or simply enjoy the scenery at your own pace. Runners-up: Drive Club, Forza Motorsport 5, Need for Speed Rivals  Best Multiplayer - Watch Dogs While games like Assassin&amp;#039;s Creed in recent years introduced multiplayer as an additional mode, Watch Dogs very cleverly weaves it into its single player experience. You&amp;#039;re able to secretly step into someone else&amp;#039;s game and attempt to hack that player. The victim has to then quickly find the hacker - who is dressed and tries to act like a regular civilian - before a timer runs out, and if spotted, escalates into a chase sequence. It&amp;#039;s simple but wonderfully executed, and something we can&amp;#039;t wait to try for ourselves. Runners-up: Titanfall, Destiny, Forza Motorsport 5      Best Surprise - Final Fantasy XV / Kingdom Hearts 3 After hardly any jaw-dropping surprises from the last few E3 expos, four conferences came packed full of them this year. While Mirror&amp;#039;s Edge 2 could have stole it if it wasn&amp;#039;t for pre-show leaks, the revelation that the heavily delayed Final Fantasy Versus XIII would become a core Final Fantasy game was truly unexpected, and a similarly long-awaited confirmation of a third Kingdom Hearts game was the icing on the cake. Runners-up: Plants Vs Zombies: Garden Warfare, Tom Clancy&amp;#039;s The Division, Mirror&amp;#039;s Edge 2  Best New Game - Plants Vs Zombies: Garden Warfare We had heard that a class-based third-person action take on Plants Vs Zombies had been in development sometime before the show, and were initially uninterested in seeing the successful strategy title jump into shooter territory. However, seeing it in person at E3 changed our minds. We loved the tongue-in-cheek nod to Battlefield in the trailer, and it captured the franchise&amp;#039;s trademark humour and eclectic cast of plants and zombies perfectly. Most importantly, though, it looks a tremendous amount of fun to play. Definitely one to watch. Runners-up: Mario Kart 8, The Crew, Tom Clancy&amp;#039;s The Division      Best Current-Generation Title - Dark Souls 2 The buzz around this year&amp;#039;s E3 was for next-generation consoles, and the one game we&amp;#039;re gutted not to make the jump is Dark Souls 2. It&amp;#039;s as brutal as ever before, but with smart tweaks where they count; sharper movement speeds, fewer canned animations, gorgeous visuals and plenty of daunting new dungeons and inhabitants. It&amp;#039;s the perfect reason to hold onto your Xbox 360 or PS3. Runners-up: Beyond: Two Souls, Rain, Lightning Returns: Final Fantasy XIII   Best Next-Gen Launch Title - Forza Motorsport 5 A fair number of next-gen titles shown by publishers are releasing in a vague launch window or sometime in 2014, but Sony and Microsoft were able to nail a few of their own games as day-one releases. Easily the most polished and complete was Forza Motorsport 5. It looks stunning with its 60 frames-per-second and 1080p resolution, feels great with Xbox One&amp;#039;s vibrating triggers and promises to deliver enough cars and content to live up to its lofty predecessors. Runners-up: Dead Rising 3, DriveClub, Killzone: Shadow Fall  Best Playable Game - Mario Kart 8 As expected, Nintendo had a subdued show compared to other platform holders. But as before, they offered playable builds of freshly-announced games that makes them worth a visit. Even from a short three-track demo, we can tell that Mario Kart 8 will be fantastic. Blending high-speed jumps and hang gliding with new gravity-defying stages is mind-bending, and the series&amp;#039;s long-awaited move to HD makes it visually the best-looking Wii U title yet. It&amp;#039;s just a shame we have to wait until early 2014 for more. Runners-up: Dark Souls 2, Forza Motorsport 5, The Crew  Best Conference - Sony Sony&amp;#039;s press conference had it all - the best surprise reveal in Square Enix&amp;#039;s Final Fantasy XV, a strong promotion of innovative indie titles including the side-splitting Octodad and a closer look at the superb Watch Dogs. It wasn&amp;#039;t perfect - it lacked the sheer number of games that Microsoft had, and had a few technical hiccups - but the double blow of used game policies and a $100 price difference to Xbox One, combined with an overwhelming reaction from the audience, will have this down as an E3 classic for years to come. Runners-up: Ubisoft, EA, Microsoft       Best Publisher - Ubisoft We crowned Ubisoft as best publisher last year, and the French firm has gone from teasing its next-generation ambitions to fully showcasing them this year, showing why it has some of the must-play games of 2013 and beyond. Watch Dogs and Assassin&amp;#039;s Creed 4: Black Flag gatecrashed Sony&amp;#039;s conference and continue to amaze, while The Division and The Crew embrace online connectivity like few other games have. All four also have tablet apps that appear to smartly make use of the recent popular second-screen trend. Oh, and they&amp;#039;re also publishing South Park. Runners-up: EA, Square Enix, Bethesda       What did you think to E3 2013? Agree with our choices? Be sure to also vote for Digital Spy&amp;#039;s Platform and Game of the Show. "^^<http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#string>
<http://www.digitalspy.com/gaming/e3/news/a490433/e3-2013-digital-spys-best-of-e3-awards/>