On staged VGAs and missing websites

By BatRastered — December 15, 2009
Tags: spike vga wildrant

A wildrant on what happened at the VGAs on spike.

We sat down and watched Spike TV's video game awards for 2009 last week. I have to say, most of what I saw didn't make much sense.

The show started off with an exclusive announcement trailer for the sequel to Batman: Arkham Asylum. They made this sound like news, but anyone who knows anything about the video game industry knew a sequel was coming given the finacial and critical success of the game. Still, it was nice to have it officially confirmed even if the teaser trailer didn't really show anything. The big problem was the website they plugged at the end of the trailer. arkhamhasmoved.com. It didn't work. It just showed an error message. I checked again later that night before I went to bed and while the site was no longer down, it simply linked to gametrailers.com (which didn't have the trailer up yet). WTF? Did you not know this was going to air today? You couldn't have had the site ready before the show. Dumb. Strangely this wasn't the only time this would happen during the night. (The site is now up and functioning, but it only shows the trailer and a register for updates form.)

Next was the award for best voice in a video game. There were some good nominees, including my choice, Mark Hamil for his work as the Joker in Arkham Asylum. Unfortunately Jack Black won for Brutal Legend. I'm not saying he wasn't good, but the whole event was staged. I seriously suspect spike of giving him the award just so it could have him on stage to do his little performance. (He obviously knew ahead of time that he was winning as the whole staff was in on his "joke" speech.) Fucking lame. Worse, it wasn't funny.

There were a couple more trailers, not even worth mentioning really, followed by the best "Action/Adventure game" award. Uncharted 2 and Batman: Arkahm Asylum were both nominated, so I was interested in seeing who would win this award, as it had (or should have had) implications for GOTY later. Nope... Fucking Assasin's Creed 2 won. WTF? Really? Does this mean an upset for GOTY? Because it'd be hard to be game of the year without being the best game in your genre... wouldn't it? (Ah, here I was assuming that Spike's awards would make sense, silly me.)

Then there was a trailer for Star Wars: The Force Unleashed 2. It looked great and I'm excited for this game as I loved the first one, but here we go again with the websites. It revealed a URL: unleashed2010.com. I checked it out and was redirected to the Force Unleashed website at lucasarts.com. Yes, the website for the first game. Fuck. Seriously... you too Lucas Arts? Is anyone paying attention? Put your fucking website up before the trailer airs dumb shits! (Again, this website is now up, but it was a full day later). Fuckin' amateurs!

Best Individual sports game: UFC 2009, you knew that was a given on Spike... No, not fixed at all...

A Green Day Rock Band game was announced. Do we need another Rock Band game Jimmy? No. No we do not. I'm sick of 200 different versions of GH/RB whatever. Can't they just make DLC instead of selling new games for this shit.

Another announce trailer, this time for.... Another Medal of Honor game? WTF? Why? Oh... I see... They've gone all modern warfare too. (Get it? Modern Warfare 2, too... Eh, tough crowd.)

Ok, here comes the Halo: Reach trailer. Looks good, typical Halo style, mood, music, lighting, etc. Looks to be an in-game rendered cut-scene they are showing us. No gameplay revealed. Not much of anything new revealed really. We knew going in there'd be more Spartans as Reach is their home base. Having not seen any gameplay we can only speculate how this will affect it, squad based? Who knows? Release date... still just 2010, I assume around fall time like most Halo games.

Now it's time for Game of the Year. It's... Uncharted 2: Among Thieves. A great game and totaly deserving of this award. I still liked the Batman better, but I have no argument with this other than how the fuck is it game of the year if it's not even the best "Action/Adventure game" according to Spike. But whatever.

Oooh... an encore "musical" performance by The Bravery. FML.

Stay tuned this week for the nominees for the Jimmy Gems awards, right here on Gouki.com.

Don't be a Jimmy!

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On staged VGAs and missing websites

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