Oddball Update

The Grammy awards are coming up. And as Jimmy Kimmel said last night, “it looks like white people are out this year!” Not that I really much care, since pretty much all big name music acts of today are deplorable crap. And juding an artist based on their skin color would be an activity best left to smacktards. Still, I have trouble understanding how the woman responsible for the head-splittingly awful rendition of “Blah bl-blah blah blah crazy RIGHT now ba-blah blahblblah blah crazy RIGHT now” could possibly be nominated for six awards. Whee, another Grammy awards I won’t be watching. Can’t say I’ve ever cared about them.

The subject of today’s entry, however, is something that strikes a little closer to home. Last night, Spike TV—formerly TNN—aired the first annual Video Game Awards. They should have called them the “Console Game Awards.” To be fair, “video game” tends to exclude PC games anyway, or at least has historically—but while PC games were included in the nominations for each category, no PC-exclusive games won. Not even in the “Best PC Game” category. (The closest thing to wholesale was Call of Duty, but even that game has a sister title on your favorite consoles.)

I didn’t watch the awards show on TV, but I voted for my favorite game in each category on Spike TV’s website several weeks ago. The winners leave me, as primarily a PC gamer, feeling pretty disgusted and disappointed. But not as disgusted and disappointed as I was made by the things I’ve heard about (and clips I’ve seen of) the awards show itself. The entire exercise was a wildly over-commercialized, pop-culture-poisoned, wrestling-infused tardfest.

First of all, before I go any further, the winners of this year’s Video Game Awards:

Best Animation: Dead or Alive Xtreme Beach Volleyball (Tecmo)
Best Performance By A Human: Ray Liotta in Grand Theft Auto: Vice City (Rockstar)
Best Game Based on a Movie: Enter the Matrix (Atari)
Most Addictive: Soul Calibur II (Namco)
Best Action Game: True Crime: Streets of LA (Activision)
Pontiac/GTO Driving Award: Nascar Thunder 2004 (EA Sports)
Best Fantasy Game: Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic (LucasArts)
Best Sports Game: Tony Hawk’s Underground (Activision)
Best Fighting Game: WWE Smackdown! Here Comes the Pain (THQ)
Most Anticipated Game: Halo 2 (Microsoft)
Best Handheld Game: Tom Clancy’s Splinter Cell (Ubi Soft)
Best Online Game: Final Fantasy XI (Square Enix)
Best 1st Person Action: Call of Duty (Activision)
Best PC Game: Halo: Combat Evolved (Microsoft)
Game of the Year: Madden NFL 2004 (EA Sports)
Best Music: Def Jam Vendetta (EA Big)

Read ‘em and weep. Seriously. And now, because I know you love it when I bitch, let’s analyze each winner.

Best Animation: Dead or Alive Xtreme Beach Volleyball (Tecmo)

I think they meant to say “Breast Animation”, don’t you? Seriously, though, the game did have good animation. The problem is that there just wasn’t much of it. It wasn’t inventive. The best part about DOAXBV’s animation was that it was realistic and detailed. But it was simple—bouncing bosoms, girls jumping and walking around a pool. THAT’S IT.

Best Performance By A Human: Ray Liotta in Grand Theft Auto: Vice City (Rockstar)

This I cannot argue—Ray did a great job as Tommy. For me, it would be a toss-up between him and James McCaffrey (voice of Max Payne).

Best Game Based on a Movie: Enter the Matrix (Atari)

Are you fricking kidding me? This game was an utter abomination. A dismally designed, visually vomitous piece of work released cleverly in tandem with The Matrix Reloaded to capitalize on the hype and garner more sales. It worked, I’m sad to say—I bought the Xbox version. After 45 minutes of play, I traded it in for something else. The ‘68 Firebird 400 had SQUARE WHEELS. That should tell you all you need to know about the game’s graphics. How much did Atari pay for this award?

Most Addictive: Soul Calibur II (Namco)

Soul Calibur II is great, and I love the series, so I’ll accept this. For me, though, the very last word I would use to describe this game is addictive. It’s the newest console game in my arsenal, and I haven’t played it in weeks.

Best Action Game: True Crime: Streets of LA (Activision)

Can’t speak to this. But what’s funny is that this game just came out barely two weeks ago. And I’ve heard a lot of negative opinion about it. I find that many times, a true indicator of a game’s quality is its staying power. Almost any game will be hyped up big-time right upon release, but if any and all mention of it disappears after a month, it probably sucked. I’ve been wanting to try this game, but it better be the best thing since sliced bread if it took this award over all the other great action games that have come out this year.

Pontiac/GTO Driving Award: Nascar Thunder 2004 (EA Sports)

You’d bet I’d love this category, right? Apparently Pontiac Motor Division sponsored this entire award, and debuted a pretty swee/fa GTO teaser commercial during the awards show. (I downloaded a copy of the ad.) The winner of this category is ironic, however. Not because Nascar Thunder 2004 received only slightly above average reviews, but because Pontiac is pulling out of NASCAR! Oh well—I guess it would have looked better for a domestic auto manufacturer to sponsor a NASCAR game than something full of imports like Need For Speed: Underground, right? (Seriously, I can’t recall if NFSU was even nominated.)

Best Fantasy Game: Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic (LucasArts)

“Fantasy” seems like a total mis-classification for this game, but the fact is that this is the one award I’m 100% happy with. KOTOR rocks.

Best Sports Game: Tony Hawk’s Underground (Activision)

Bah. Skateboarding.

Best Fighting Game: WWE Smackdown! Here Comes the Pain (THQ)

It’s Spike TV! They show wrestling constantly! They had wrestling chicks in underwear during the awards show! Of course this game won!

Most Anticipated Game: Halo 2 (Microsoft)

I’ll admit that I’m excited about Halo 2, but what do you see people talking more about—Halo 2 or the ill-fated Half-Life 2? The fact that this game won is the biggest indicator that this was a console-fanboy-oriented awards show.

Best Handheld Game: Tom Clancy’s Splinter Cell (Ubi Soft)

Don’t own a handheld, can’t speak to this. (But I hated Splinter Cell on the Xbox.)

Best Online Game: Final Fantasy XI (Square Enix)

What? This came out of nowhere. Console awards, I say! Even then, didn’t SOCOM for PS2 generate more of a fervor? Do you know anybody playing FFXI online?

Best 1st Person Action: Call of Duty (Activision)

Call of Duty definitely rocks. I’m not sure I could give it best 1st person action though…but, given how underwhelming most of the FPS’ I’ve played lately have been, perhaps I could.

Best PC Game: Halo: Combat Evolved (Microsoft)

This made me want to laugh so damn hard. Halo is not a PC game. It’s a two-year-old console game which was ported to PC a couple months ago, and runs so horribly on it that it’s hard to forgive. They even took the co-op multiplayer mode away, as I understand it, which was the most fun multiplayer you could have with Halo. Could we have had a real PC game win this award, maybe?

Game of the Year: Madden NFL 2004 (EA Sports)

But…Tony Hawk won best sports game! How can Madden walk away with Game of the Year? Seriously, I don’t know how this game could possibly have won this award anyhow. How many people could possibly be playing it? I never hear anything about it. Is it because “it’s football” and Spike TV “is guys?” I mean, when THIS game wins out over GTA: Vice City, you know something is wrong.

Best Music: Def Jam Vendetta (EA Big)

Commercialistic, money-sponsored, demographic-appeasing award here. No need to say anything else.

So there you have it! Aren’t you proud to be a gamer? </sarcasm>

The awards show itself, as I mentioned, catered more to the big jocks who used to beat up on many of your stereotypical Nintendo players back in elementary school. It featured all of Spike TV’s finest: Big behemoths from the WWE, chicks in underwear, none other than Jenna Jameson hosting the show (WTF?), and Andrew WK in a wheelchair roaring “I’M IN A WHEELCHAIR, I GOT A BROKEN FOOT, LET’S WWWRRRROOOOCCCCKKKK!”

Everywhere I go, all the message boards are full of fellow gamers saying the same thing. Why couldn’t the developers of each winning game—or at least somebody affiliated with the game’s production—have accepted the awards? Why couldn’t they have peppered the show with featurettes about online gaming’s popularity, cool music videos put together with game footage, sneak peeks of upcoming games (perhaps during the “Most Anticipated” category?)…stuff that would be truly appropriate to the whole concept of the VGAs? Instead, we get wrestlers, strippers and Jenna Jameson—all people who would not be caught dead within six yards of someone calling themselves a gamer above any other title. Why not something more appropriate, more accurate?

One gamer responded, “Because this is cable.”

Perhaps he meant, “Because this is TV.”

Categorized as Games/Console, Games, Games/PC