There were no great surprises to be had at last night's BAFTA games awards - with the winners standing out both as great games, and as a testament to the ever-expanding appeal of the medium.

It's tough to imagine a more disparate pair of games than the recipients of the two most coveted awards. The judges chose Nintendo's colourful, family-friendly Super Mario Galaxy as their game of the year, while the public opted for gritty, realistic war game Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare.

Each game is an amazing milestone in its own right. Super Mario Galaxy, for its part, cements the position of Nintendo as one of the world's finest creators of family entertainment. Standing comfortably shoulder to shoulder with Pixar, the Japanese firm crafts beautiful, accessible games which provide as much exhilaration and joy to adults as to children.

Super Mario Galaxy is Nintendo at the absolute peak of its creative prowess. Combining a whimsical sense of fun and exploration with a perfectly balanced and polished gaming experience, it radiates charm, innocence and humour. Videogames could ask for no finer example of how magical this medium can be to young and old alike.

In contrast, Call of Duty 4 seems an unlikely candidate for public adulation. The shelves of game stores are not short of war games, after all - but Call of Duty 4 does for war games what movies like Spielberg's Saving Private Ryan or Scott's Black Hawk Down did for war movies. Bringing together a tense, driven narrative about a terrorist nuclear threat, the game leads players through an experience which isn't afraid to explore political motivations and the harsh realities of war theatres, rather than simply providing a thrill-ride down the barrel of a gun.

The game pulls no punches; at one point, you experience the world through the eyes of the president of a fictional Middle Eastern country as he is led to be executed following an extremist coup d'etat. Making the player powerless in a medium whose primary goal has always been empowerment turns out to be a truly powerful - and genuinely gut-wrenching - narrative technique.

Such was the quality of the shortlists for BAFTA's awards that some exceptionally fine games may legitimately feel hard done by - but few will argue with the strength of the games which have come through as this year's winners. The quality bar continues to rise each year, which means that videogame players can only wait with bated breath to see what next year's awards bring.

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