Spike Game Awards

Well, caught the end of the 2011 VGA on Spike… while I can’t claim it’s been a great year personally for gaming, others disagree.  But they gathered hundreds of movie stars that wouldn’t know Mario from Zelda and paid a bunch of musicians I never knew to play music half of the stars and producers hate.  Throw in some awkward obsession with pressing male genitalia on speakers (‘teabagging’) and some other creepy moments and you have a great hollywood attempt at caring about gaming!

Anyhow, jokes aside I thought I’d chime in on some decisions:

Game of The Year: Skyrim
Seen this coming actually.  Everyone I know playing it is crazy over it.  About every reviewer (even Japan reviewers) gave it perfect scores.  I’m more and more considering diving into it.  Whats sad however is my only reason I havn’t gotten it yet is because of the insanely crappy bug it had where lag would kill the game on PS3. Then the fix lowered the textures… Pretty buggy for a “GOTY”. On a side rant, do they not test games anymore? Anyways, my rant aside, the game does look amazing and technically put next to (my opinion) a lackluster year, it’s solid.

Best Shooter: Call of Duty MW3
While I personally only really cover half the shooter genre as my experiences are usually in 3rd Person shooters and not 1st Person; I can say this is disappointing. It just shoes the industry supporting lack of innovation by jumping on a yearly release of junk. I guess I’ll have to get with my 1st person shooter fan buddy and see if we can come up with something better. My favorite coming from my experience with 3rd person titles would be Gears of War 3.

Game God: Blizzard
While.. I don’t care much for the name of this award, the target is definitely earned. Blizzards standard for gaming has always been top notch. While some argue that the recent choices in WoW expansions are questionable, the fact that they are the best at what they do is clear.

Hall of Fame: Legend of Zelda
Who would dispute this? When you think of a title that has withstood the test of time and still rains best seller every time, you think Mario. NO!~ Zelda! Weither it’s the oddball sidescroller Link, time traveling ocarina player, guiding a statue through obstacles, teaming up with 3 other Links, or now jumping into clouds with a big red bird; Zelda rules. I’ll proceed with the clapping now. *clap*

Best of Exclusive Trailers:
Wasn’t much here we’ve already seen, except for one. The Last Of Us from Naughty Dog. Wow, just when Uncharted was getting old, they bring in something to hook ya right back in with them. This game excites me. The amazing production quality of Naughty Dog ringing in what looks like a post apocolyptic survival horror game. Looks great.

Here’s the rest of the winners:
Studio: Bethesda
Xbox360: Batman Arkham City
PS3: Uncharted 3
Wii: Zelda Skyward Sword
PC: Portal 2
Handheld: Mario 3D Land
Action Adventure: Batman AC
RPG: Skyrim
Multiplayer: Portal 2
Sports: Fight Night Champion
Team Sports: NBA 2K12
Driving: Forza Motorsport 4
Fighting: Mortal Kombat
Motion: Zelda Skyward Sword
Indy Game: Minecraft
Adapted Game: Batman AC
Song: Bastion (Zia’s Theme)
Original Score: Bastion
Graphics: Uncharted 3
Male Performance: Stephen Merchant (Wheatley Portal 2)
Female Performance: Ellen Mclain (Glados Portal 2)
Downloaded Game: Bastion
DLC: Portal 2

Looks like they REALLY liked Skyrim, Portal 2, and Batman Arkham City.  It was quite apparent with the over abondance of clips and inserted Augmented Reality.  Oh well, this whole thing has done one good thing for me.  I’m inspired to make a list of my top favorite games I played this year.  They don’t even have to be made this year.  Look forward to it!