Nope. If you were stranded on a desert island for a year, starting in January and swam ashore in December and watched this show, you’d think that only about five games came out that were worth a shit.
Oh, and a quick word of warning – all the bullshit is back. After last year’s lack of host and a simple “award”-trailer-“award”-trailer setup, we’re back to a host who hates himself for hosting the show, bad jokes, and overall non-game-related bullshit. So fasten your seatbelts and let’s get this started.
As expected, the show begins with a viewer discretion warning for the M-Rated footage about to be shown. Or maybe the viewer discretion is for the opening number. The dark stage opens up to a lit-up staircase and a troupe of male Broadway dancers in white top hats and tuxedos. They’re dancing a simple number and belting out generic lyrics. What are you saying Captain Obvious? They’re going to have someone pretend to kill them onstage? Captain Obvious, that’s a terrible closed-minded, bloodthirsty stereotype of the common gamer. It’s also the lamest, unfunny way to end this skit.
The dancers climb the staircase and introduce the host of tonight’s presentation: Neil Patrick Harris. This guy can be in all the stoner movies and cornball sitcoms until the end of time, he’ll always be Doogie Howser to me. Anyway, you guessed it, this was a big riff on some over-the-top number Doogie did at the Tony Awards. Doogie pulls out two AK-47s and guns down the entire dance team. Captain Obvious says I owe him $20 now.
The intro plays and all the games with trailers being shown are listed off. All of these games were spoiled earlier in the week with the exception of the Thor movie tie-in and SSX. Really? SSX?! Also, don’t be fooled by thinking since Tony Hawk got top-billing in the list of presenters, he’s the only guy here. He’s just one of the only guys here tonight that’s halfway related to the damn games industry.
Neither the location, nor the arena is revealed and neither is the announcer. She’s just a non-descript Spike-style voiceover with a little echo added. The venue is basically an opening stage with two platforms about twenty feet from the stage. Surrounding these platforms is a sea of people. No, not a bunch of fake enthusiastic people in a mosh pit, like at most MTV award shows. These are people at round tables, like at the Daytime Emmys.
Who are these people? You’ll see in a minute, but they sure aren’t the guys in the industry. Come to think of it, they might not even be mostly real people. Because the crowd is Duh-ead tonight. Morituary Dead. Cemetary Dead. Dead as a Fucking Doornail Dead.
Getting back to the show, Doogie is in the middle of the set and he’s out to monologue. He starts by showing some love to the programmers and creators of the games we love. The cameraman focuses on industry giants Rick Fox and Eliza Dushku. And then he goes into the video game jokes. The fifth level of Hell is composed of stacks upon stacks of video game jokebooks.
After Doogie finishes his “LOL imagine a TSA inspector Kinect game” joke, I take my head out of the gas oven and walk back into the room. Doogie then goes on for about twenty minutes on how, at home, we’ll see an overlay of extra video projected on the stage, but the developers like Nathan Fillion in the audience will not. It’s ok, Doogie. Sporting events have been adding fake lines and arrows to the field for at least five years now.
Doogie announces that throughout the night they will be presenting the Game of the Year nominees, starting with Call of Duty Black Ops. We cut to a video of a woman reading numbers into a PA microphone (I’m guessing this happened in Black Ops. Didn’t play it.). After the video Doogie is still on stage, but now he’s rigged to an interrogation chair. I guess that was part of the Black Ops intro. Doogie then says the saddest thing I’ve heard in a long time – Black Ops sold more copies in its first week of sales than any other entertainment media ever ever EVER. As I pick myself up off the floor, a video plays, showcasing the game.
Maria Meh-whats-her-name from a couple of years back comes onscreen to announce that she’ll be backstage to waste time on this show. At no point in the evening does Maria contribute a single thing. No developers are interviewed. No secret projects are revealed. Just dumb questions for B-to-C level celebrities. She sends it back to the stage for an anticipated announcement.
Projected onto the two stage platforms are CGI villains from the Arkham Asylum sequel, Batman: Arkham City. One platform has the main villains like Joker, Harley, and Catwoman, while the other one shows two generic inmate thugs. They must not be done with the main villains yet, because while an announcement about the villains plays on the speakers, we’re stuck looking at a post-apocalyptic inmate version of Rufus from Street Fighter 4 for about five minutes before the trailer kicks in.
This trailer fills in the blanks of the teaser that was realized about a week before this award show. In case you didn’t see it, the teaser was of pre-rendered footage of Batman beating down a small police attack squad. In this video, the squad’s commander is being cruelly injected with syringes and interrogated by his boss. His boss is revealed as looong-time Batman villain Hugo Strange. I’m assuming if you don’t know who Hugo Strange is, use that as your barometer on what to expect from Arkham City.
G4 survivor Olivia Munn walks out to the stage to present Studio of the Year. Olivia’s in super-serious mode and almost seems like she’s scolding the crowd for not realizing real gamers appreciate the studios behind the games above all else. In a weird twist, the nominated studios are listed off, but not the games these companies made.
Winner: Bioware (Mass Effect 2)
Two well-dressed guys accept the award, which is still the bizarre Vector Monkey just translucent and blue. The first guy assures fans that more good stuff is coming. Before they’re dragged offstage, the second guy quickly and awkwardly thanks the developers’ families. Totally not suspicious of another EA Wives situation at Bioware.
A curse falls upon the crowd and Dane Cook walks out to the stage. He’ll be coming out throughout the show to present the nominees for the never-before-seen Character of the Year award. His shtick is that he knows these guys personally, like the Hollywood jetsetter he is. Keep in mind, the last Hollywood thing he did was a Kate Hudson chick flick almost three years ago that scored a 15% on Rotten Tomatoes.
Dane’s first buddy he’s nominating is “Easy” Ezio from Assassin’s Creed Brotherhood. Apparently he’s quite the love machine. You can almost hear the echo from every word falling flat against the audience. Dane sends it to a custom-made CGI video of Ezio accepting the nomination. He seriously points out that we should be vigilant against the oppressive Templars. At first, I thought they were heading for a shrewd WikiLeaks joke, but no, just Assassin’s Creed bullshit.
Commercials. By far the creepiest Burger King commercial I’ve seen in a while airs during this break. It’s the one where the guy and girl are dancing and the chicken sandwich guy behind the guy is making rape-eyes with the girl.
Fun fact: I got this image by typing “bk chicken sandwich rapist” into Youtube.
Back from the break, the stage is showing a snowy mountain range. Chanting hooded druids are flooding the stage. Actually, only about four of the druids are pretending to chant, if you watch their lips. The announcer calls out Todd Howard, whoever the hell that is. He explains that he’s from Bethesda and he thanks Spike TV for cashing their check and showing lots of love to Fallout 3 and Oblivion, which was even named GOTY a few years ago. Todd says now is the right time and unveils the teaser for their latest game. The teaser basically shows a pewter mosaic coming to life explaining that the Gates of Oblivion will unleash some dragon and one man will fight it. The game is announced as Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim. I think C4 just filled the cup.
Even though the crowd got hot during the trailer, cutting back to the stage, the audience just gives a polite golf clap and Doogie rolls his eyes and says “yeah, that looked cool.” Or maybe Doggie’s just mad because he has to tell terrible video-games-as-porn-titles jokes. After explaining David Carradine died of autoerotic asphyxiation and saying the dirtiest title is Tiger Woods 11, Doogie acknowledges that skit sucked and moves onto a video to clear up rumors about the new Mortal Kombat game. You mean the screenshots earlier this week of Kratos in the PS3 game? Well, this video dispels those rumors by showing a pre-rendered cutscene of Scorpion going to finish off Sub-Zero, but Kratos comes in and kills him instead. I’m saving my money for the Wii version with Link in it.
This segues to Dane Cook coming back onstage to nominate his buddy Kratos for Character of the Year. Did you know Kratos is a terrible wingman? Every word Dane says sucks more and more energy out of the audience. The audience succumbs just as a nice-looking CGI video plays of Kratos in Aphrodite’s Chamber surrounded by women, leading to him beating up the camera.
90210’s AnnaLynne McCord, who has nothing to do with video games, is activated and walks to the middle of the stage. She’s here to reveal a never-before-seen trailer. Strangely, Annalynne starts by reading the teleprompter like a sex phone operator and finishing like a whore working for the Home Shopping Network. But how can you sound like a whore when you’re plugging a tie-in movie based on a movie people are still pretty indifferent about: Thor: God of Thunder? In a surprise to no one, the game is a last-gen looking third-person action game that looks suspiciously like another “God of” game. The weird thing is, for a movie whose selling point so far is Ordinary Guy + Hammer = Thor, all the game locations seem to take place in Mount Olympus, Paradise, or Hell.
Thor himself, Chris Hemsworth, comes onstage and says how honored he is to be in a Marvel movie like Thor. Because, let’s face it, the worst-case-scenario is that they sucker the audience the first week, make #1 at the box office, and get an easy sequel out of it. That and this guy being guaranteed to be in the Avengers movie. Thor is out to present Best Action/Adventure Game. To everyone’s surprise, Spike actually acknowledged Super Mario Galaxy 2 as one of the nominees.
Winner: Assassin’s Creed Brotherhood
The Bullshit-o-meter goes off as AssCreedBro wins, beating Mario Galaxy, God of War, and Red Dead, despite coming out less than a month ago. A guy in a jacket and a guy in an Assassin’s Creed logo shirt come up to accept. The jacketed guy with a vaguely-foreign accent honestly thanks the development team and fans. I thought the guy in the Assassin’s Creed shirt was going to act goofy, like he’s pretending to be one of the future assassins in the game, but luckily I was wrong.
Now in the past there have always been hints of Armed Forces advertisements on this show. Well, never has it been more pronounced than this year. They had a poll on Spike TV’s website to have people vote for Strongest Hero in Video Games. Who won? I DON”T GIVE A GOOD GOD DAMN WHO WON, YOU PIECE OF SHIT! Sergeant Major Kickass appears onscreen to tell you these fake heroes are pussies compared to a real hero – the Army Ranger! Footage is shown of the 2010 Best Ranger Competition, which looks exciting if you’ve never seen listless, exhausted soldiers filing through an obstacle course, and occasionally falling on their head. The rest is on the Army’s website is you want to see the rest and watch your eyes glaze over from boredom.
Commercials. Hilariously, that “badass” segment is immediately followed by an ad where children make chocolate milk.
We return to see Denise Richards, about 15 years and two kids past whatever hotness you remember her having in Wild Things, approach the stage. She robotically presents the band My Chemical Romance who will perform “Planetary Go”, the Gran Turismo 5 intro song. Because people play Gran Turismo for the soundtrack. Actually the song is a catchy, upbeat pop-punk song, if maybe a little on the generic side. Thankfully a VGA tradition is upheld as the crowd is completely silent and motionless during this performance.
Maria is backstage with Comedy Central’s flavor-of-the-month Nick Swardson. Maria asks Nick about trash-talking in games. If he’s to be believed, Nick has had two Xbox Live accounts banned for TOS violations. His latest offence? Telling some guy he was going to cut off his mother’s head. No homophobic slurs. No racial slurs. No sexual slurs. Literally, cutting her head off. Maria just smiles and says that family members are off-limits in trash-talking. Nick puts on his hardass face and scowls “no.” Maria perkily says “yes,” and the camera awkwardly cuts away.
Jason Ritter from NBC’s terminally-ill show THE EV3NT arrives onstage, surrounded by video from Mass Effect 2. He quotes the game and gets absolutely no reaction from the crowd. Nevertheless, he enthusiastically sets up the story of the game and nominates Mass Effect 2 for GOTY as a blurry overlay hangs on the screen before the promo video airs.
After the promo video, a still excited Jason presents the trailer for Mass Effect 3, another game announcement that was spoiled either this week. The trailer shows an injured man inside the clock tower of Big Ben, picking off bad guys. He talks about millions dying from an invasion of Earth and he’s desperately waiting for Shephard to arrive. The camera pulls back to show Shephard onboard a ship in orbit. Looks as good as a pre-rendered trailer can, but isn’t Mass Effect all about the colorful team and their interactions? I’m holding out until I see the crew.
Commercials.
The entire cast of It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia, who have absolutely no reason to be on a video game awards show, walk onstage to present the Best Shooter Award. All five actors start reading the telepromter at once, stop and argue about it, and then all finish reading it together. Being the comic veteran he is, Danny Devito is able to say “fuck” twice without the censors catching it.
Winner: Call of Duty: Black Ops
A douchebag and his bald buddy accept the award. Trying to be cool like Devito, the douchebag tries and fails to get away with saying there are a “fuckton” of BLOPS fans. He finishes by promising to keep BLOPS “hot and in your box.” Stay classy, Treyarch.
The announcer reintroduces Doogie, but it’s actually Olivia Munn onstage. Doogie walks out from the back and the two do a skit about how Olivia thinks she’s much more fitting to host this show because she was putting up with nerd shit for the past five years on G4. Sadly, she never throws it up to Doogie that the only time he was ever on this show was to promote the Eat Lead/Matt Hazard game that’s currently collecting dust in the clearance bin. Olivia tells him he can keep the hosting job and walks off, but not before turning around to kiss his ass before she leaves. All this gets a mild audience reaction, proving nobody gives a shit about Olivia Munn.
Doogie says it’s time for another premiere. The stage is made up like a wasteland and Doogie sets up the “what if aliens invaded in the 50’s” story of the next game – Resistance 3. Sony, you’re still making those games? Anyway, the trailer is some crazy live-action/bad-game-footage you might remember from the days of the first couple of Mortal Kombats. Check this out: it starts with a live-action soldier sketching aliens in a diary. And then it changes to the typical “hand holding a gun” from every FPS ever and he’s shooting various sizes of generic robot-aliens, almost like the game is on rails. All this finishes with the live-action guy picking up a weightless fake sledgehammer and going into an arena to kill multiple SciFi-Movie-of-the-Week-CGI-quality aliens. Maybe Sony’s leaving these bad cutscenes in the game, hoping people will buy it just to check out the terrible and hilarious video clips. Kinda like that recent Command and Conquer game.
Dane Cook curses the stage yet again to nominate John Marston from Red Dead Redemption for Character of the Year. Dane goes on about how John once shot him at 10 paces. Now realizing nobody’s paying attention, Dane quickly goes from the story to the nomination reel. Thankfully, Rockstar shows they had better things to do than to supply Spike with a custom-made character trailer of Marston talking. Instead, a typical highlight reel plays about the game.
Before going to break, Spike mentions a giveaway on their website to win a BLOPS Jeep tricked out with every current console out there. Sadly, Xhibit isn’t shown to complete the “Yo dawg” meme.
Commercials.
We come back to Nick Swardson (the cut-off-the-mom’s-head guy) onstage to nominate God of War 3 for GOTY. Nick starts to bullshit about the game being based on real events. But his bullshit/storytelling/comic routine is a little bizarre. Let me give you an example. So, yeah, I caught Nick Swardson eating a giant turd. Shoved it right in his mouth. That was a true story. He was chewing it up. He was like, “Hey man, this..uh..this is great.” That was a true story. Then he shat it out and ate it again. Yeah. That was a true story.
The show then goes on to freak the shit out of all the stoners watching by having the stage fill up with CGI chains and floating souls, like this should be in 3-D. In the background, projected on the stage, are Kratos and Hades fighting (which you can’t see through the CGI crap). After this goes on for about 20 minutes, THEN they go on to show the promo video for the nomination.
Speaking of souls from Hell, Dane Cook is back to nominate one last buddy for Character of the Year – Sgt. Frank Woods. Who the fuck is Sgt. Frank Woods?! Nobody must know because Dane gets the worst reaction of the evening. It’s like he’s talk to an empty arena. The crowd doesn’t make a sound until the pre-rendered video plays, showing he was a character in Call of Duty: Black Ops.
Certified block of wood Rachel Bilson walks out to present the award for Best Performance by a Human Male. Jesus Christ, not this shit again. This is a bit of a spoiler, but neither sports award, no individual console awards, and neither downloadable content award are even mentioned tonight, while this award gets a presentation. Rachel finishes early line from the teleprompter by saying “that’s what she said.” This falls flat against the audience, while she keeps giggling like a madwoman. The nominees are named and – holy shit! – there are eight people nominated? Why?
Winner: Neil Patrick Harris for Spiderman: Shattered Dimensions
Now I get why they had eight nominees. So they can explain picking the bottom of the barrel, meaning Doogie, because no one else was available. Doogie comes back out, acting sarcastically surprised, and teasing Rachel for being so loopy she pronounced “heroes” as “herry-ohs.” Doogie thanks Spiderman himself by doing the old Conan skit of having a picture of the guy with someone’s lips talking in the picture. Spidey just keeping talking shit to Doogie. This goes on way too long, ending with the picture calling Doogie a “fruitloop.” After insulting his sexual preference, Doogie kills the feed, says a quick thanks, and walks off.
Annual fossil Tony Hawk is here to reveal a new trailer. He says the “young people” are always bitching about his games, saying you don’t have bazookas and you can’t throw cars in them. But you can in the new game – Prototype 2. No mention is made of Tony Hawk: Shred.
As for the trailer itself, let me first address the first Prototype game. I always looked at it and though it wasn’t Assassin’s Creed, it wasn’t Crackdown, and it wasn’t Infamous, but some weird bastardization of all three. Well, this time the bastard grows larger with some Resident Evil bio-stuff, some Spiderman symbiote shit, and some God of War chainplay thrown in.
Before the commercial, Verizon has to put its little stamp on the event. I will say one thing about Verizon: these ads are abrasive, but recently they’ve been quick and dirty. In case your wondering how Verizon is progressing with cellphone games, they show Pac-Man, racing, and football. In an iPhone app/Angry Birds world. Almost there, Verizon.
Commercials.
Returning from break, Doogie proposes something to the audience. He wants to play a live version of his new favorite game – Angry Birds. He walks a live rooster over to a giant slingshot and proceeds to aim it at a small house filled with green-painted live pigs. Director Haymich tells Doogie to shut it down for PETA’s sake. He keeps shouting at Doogie to shut it down until Doogie finally walks offstage. Ok.
Maria is backstage with Olivia Munn. They compare Spike-related jewelry and then Maria asks Olivia who she would get with, Ezio or John Marston. She picks Marston because he smells like horses. We’ve gone almost twenty minutes and the only trailer shown was to an unwanted sequel, and the only award has gone to the fucking host.
Going back to the stage, director Guillermo del Toro is ready to address the audience. He admits video games have always been portrayed as platforms for violence, and in the entertainment market, as an ancillary product. He continues that as a life-long gamer at heart, he is going to push the envelope with a crazy new game with stunning worlds and unforgettable characters. The trailer plays and it’s filled with black-and-white pictures of hair, teeth, hand prints and other creepy stuff. Apparently this will be a horror game made by THQ/Volition Studios. Most commonly known for groundbreaking games like the forgettable Red Faction series and the GTA-wannabe Saints Row. Guillermo’s game will is titled Insane and is set to come out…in 2013?! Three years from now?! Will del Toro, THQ, or Volition even be around/relevant in three years?
Guillermo remains onstage to present the award for Best Independent Game. It should be noted that this award is now longer “fueled by Dew.” I think it’s funny that all the ad companies have stayed the same since Day One, but Mountain Dew finally backed out to stop looking like a joke. Especially considering they sponsored another Halo game this fall.
Winner: Limbo
A guy looking like an insurance agent version of John Waters accepts the award. He proudly accepts the award and is serious about indy games. And then he looks down at the award and he realizes he doesn’t need to lay it on too thick with this show.
Stop everything! Breaking news has just come in. The Deadliest Warrior: The Game game is getting three new fighters, chosen by votes on the Spike TV website. These are three of the most famed, notorious warriors in history – the Shaolin Monk, the Zande, and the Rajput. Or, judging by the footage, monk with a knife, stereotypical African tribesman in a grass skirt, and a Hun warrior respectively.
Speaking of Deadliest Warrior, three of that show’s hosts walk onto the stage. It takes about five minutes for the announcer to get through the introduction and their names, so the guys just keep standing there, starting to crack up. Sadly, they didn’t come dressed as the three DLC warrior types.
These guys are here to present the award for Most Anticipated Game. As bullshit as this award is, it is nice to see them recognize it. If only to show new footage for the people anticipating the game. Getting back to the presenters, one promises that Season 3 of Deadliest Warrior will have a matchup people have been waiting for since the show began…”Jinghis Khan vs. Hannbal!” Well hell, why put generic warriors in that stupid game when you can use real people from history?
Winner: Portal 2
Accepting for the award is a video showing us extended footage of the orange-eyed and blue-eyed co-op robots being built and meeting each other. I’m hesitant about these two characters, almost as much as I am about co-op Portal. They just have too much of a Red and Yellow M&M vibe going on for my liking. But I’m sure some forced meme will come out of these two, just like the damn Companion Cube and the cake thing.
After the video, we see Doogie back onstage, this time sitting at a white piano. He starts playing Sarah McLaughlin’s “Angel”, in a parody of the In Memoriam segment they always do at the Academy Awards. It starts somewhat funny by mentioning pointless bosses and character’s family members, but then it says Q-Bert died three years ago as a manic depressive, and lists the death of Grunt #4017 (lived from 2484 – 2597AD) in Halo. By the time the skit ends you’re expecting the punchline to be a Halo character getting teabagged, complete with the epitaph: Your Bitch Ass (Bong O’Clock – Headshot Time).
Before the commercials start, it’s time for the Non-Award Awards. The announcer says these are innovative winners presented by Blahblah Gum, but let’s see who they picked.
And the winners are…
Best Driving Game: Need for Speed: Hot Pursuit
Best Adapted Video Game: Scott Pilgrim vs. the World
Most Anticipated Game: Portal 2
Best RPG: Mass Effect 2
Best Music Game: Rock Band 3
Best Soundtrack: DJ Hero 2
OK, let’s get one thing out of the way. As for “innovation,” all of these games were either sequels or a video game based on a movie based on a comic book, ripping off River City Ransom. Now let’s address the winners. Need for Speed and Mass Effect should have gotten more exposure, but I don’t think EA bothered to show up tonight and Mass Effect can’t win twice (remember last year’s “a game can only get an award once” rule?). As for Portal 2, WTF? You just presented that award. Pay attention, Spike. As for the music games, go away. Go away and stop making them fuck up all the aisles in Best Buy to showcase this dead genre.
Commercials. Blue Mountain State is still on? I’m guessing because it’s so edgy. What’s on the show this week? Based on the commercial, someone steals a badger and Boomer Esiason guest stars. I give up. I have no idea why this show is still on.
Michael Chiklis, star of Disney Presents Heroes, comes onstage to nominate Red Dead Redemption for GOTY. Mike really makes Red Dead sound simple but epic. And then he casually mentions that the game won two extra awards. Really? We just had a non-award segment where they had to re-mention award winners. Why weren’t these included?
Best Original Score: Red Dead Redemption
Best Original Game: Red Dead Redemption
But while he’s casually dropping awards, guess what has two thumbs and won for Best Song? That game.
Best Song: “Far Away” by Jose Gonzales for Red Dead Redemption
In a complete surprise, almost unfounded in the VGAs’ history, Jose is actually there to perform the winning song! Although it just sounds like Willie Nelson singing the theme to the show Firefly. And the game scenes playing in the background are echoing through Jose’s microphone.
After the set, a still giggly Maria asks Michael Chiklis to lift her up backstage. He does and Maria quickly grabs her crotch so her skirt won’t lift up. The two discuss this. This was neither about video games nor awards, yet it was on the Video Games Award show.
Dominic Monaghan, who has nothing to do with video game or TV now that Lost is over, takes the stage. The next part happens exactly like this:
Dominic says he wanted to do a big car stunt for the Spike awards, but he can’t because he “drives a Hybrid.”
Audience:
Dominic: Because I’m green.
Audience:
Dominic: Chicks dig it.
Audience:
Awkwardly, Dominic admits that was all untrue and he was just reading it. He quickly sends it to a video of the Top Gear guys to do the stunt instead. And, holy shit! I don’t watch Top Gear, but if these are the American Top Gear guys, mercy-kill the show before it even airs.
The alleged hosts, Joe Douchebag and Skinnier Kevin Smith, are sitting in a sports car. SKS is reading warnings about the car from the manual. Joe gets bored and starts driving the car like a maniac, jumping over things and doing donuts. When the car finally stops, SKS gets out and tries desperately to throw up on camera while Joe says this was all to present the trailer for For(t)za 4. And what a trailer it is. Live-action shots of race teams, mixed with dumb pictures like of rattlesnakes, and a single pre-rendered shot of a CGI car showing off its parts. Absolutely no gameplay footage is shown. Coming Fall 2011.
Commercials.
We return and we’re greeted by the new tradition of the Energizer Bunny moving across the screen, just like it used to about fifteen years ago during Fresh Prince episodes. Although we’re looking at the stage, the scene quickly changes to a clip of the TMZ crew talking about video game gossip. The gossip jokes are stupid and they miss the most obvious joke about TMZ, the retarded questions the camera guys shout at the celebrities to get a reaction. If you’ve ever seen the show before (I have the misfortune of always catching this before going to bed), you’ll know that TMZ has about twenty people on the show and all got paid for doing jokes about Pac-Man’s foul-mouthed voicemail (“wakka wakka bleep bleep wakka”).
Nathan Fillion, who actually has something to do with video games, is out to nominate his game, Halo Reach, for GOTY. He’s surrounded by overlay videos of the game and images of the Reach team. Halfway through, his microphone cuts out, but it doesn’t matter because he just kept spewing bullshit about the game. The camera then pans over to the other stage platform where a solo violinist is playing a variation of The Halo Song. This would have been better if Microsoft didn’t try to make Halo sound epic every damn year for the past 3-4 years on this show.
Maria’s still wasting time backstage and this time she’s with Jason Ritter. Did you know he’s a kickboxer? Yes, I know this is a video game show. Maria asks what attack move he would use on a zombie. Jason drops to the floor and start to feverishly scamper away from Maria like his crack has violently kicked in. Video game show. Keep telling yourself that.
Doogie starts rambling off more video game porn titles, but a stagehand says the show’s running over and tells him to drop it. Sorry, Doogie. You would’ve had time, but Maria had to aggravate a crackhead.
Two actors from True Blood that aren’t Anna Paquin or her old-ass boyfriend from the show come onstage with video of an ominous helicopter behind them. The female actress abruptly says she loves sex. The male actor corrects her – it’s SSX. Then he presents the trailer for “SSX: Deadly Ascent.” Now I remember SSX very fondly. In fact SSX Tricky was one of the games I bought a PS2 for. I loved the crazy tricks, over-the-top characters, and thrilling racing down some wild and beautiful environment. Well fuck all that. Now you’re getting tossed onto every major mountaintop in the world in the dead of night like a fucking Navy Seal. And bad guy Navy Seals are hot on your tail. The character, looking like an extra from Call of Duty, screams down a mountainside while being pursued. He suddenly falls off a cliff and pops his flying-squirrel wings. The game is actually titled SSX: Deadly Descents. And you can’t do it any more wrong than that.
Commercials. While I fast-forward, I notice the Asian guy from Community is in a crazy-ass Pepto commercial. You’ve been warned.
Dane Cook talks care of one last obligation before returning to his self-dug, culturally-forgotten tomb. He’s finally going to present the damn Character of the Year award.
Winner: Sgt. Woods from Call of Duty Black Ops
To accept the award is Sgt. Woods desperately trying to get out of playing Russian Roulette with a terrible 1950’s Asian stereotype.
Coming back, the stage is made up like a Mayan tomb and credited game developer Eliza Dushku walks out to address the “guys and kyles”(?) and sexily talk about the treasures searched for in the first two Uncharted games. This leads us to our final trailer: Uncharted 3: Drake’s Deception. The trailer shows Drake walking through a desert, away from a wrecked plane. It’s revealed the game comes out on 11-1-11. While I’ve only played the first and not the second so far, I’ll trust this third game will be quality. I’m just afraid they’re rushing these out a little too fast. Also, from what I saw, Uncharted is all about cover-shooting and wall-climbing. What the hell can he do in a desert?
Doogie comments that he’s dying to play that game and also ready to get this hosting gig over with. With that, he finally presents the Game of the Year award.
Winner: Red Dead Redemption
A handful of other awards Red Dead won are mentioned, but I believe they were already covered by Michael Chiklis. Alanis Morrisette, a slacker, and a pedophile come up to accept the award. Alanis gives props to the gamemakers crazy enough to make an original game, like a sequel to an underwhelming game with a GTA spin on it. She also thanks everyone involved, but her voice is so sleepy and sarcastic that it just sounds hollow and forced.
And that’s it. The show’s over. I should know because my DVR cut off at this point. But going back and watching one of the many replays on Spike that evening, I can say that Doogie said “good night” and the audience all staggered sluggishly to the doors. Also the CGI Ezio and Kratos won bogus awards so they could use the footage of those characters winning awards, in case the online Character of the Year poll would have picked them instead. Oh, and in a classy move, the production company’s logo flips you off as the final scene of the show.
So what thoughts do I have on this show? Well, I’ll stick to last year’s assessment, with a twist. Bad points: a game cannot be formally awarded more than once (GOTY is the exception), the focus is hardly on the video games being awarded, and the show is two hours long and they still can’t cover a whole fifteen-some awards. However, this year was also cursed with a guest host once again (and one that slowly started to regret being there) and some hot title reveals and secrets that were spoiled no less than a week before the show. Other than that, I could go into more detail on where improvements can be made, but fuck it. Spike guys, are you listening? I have a proposal for a show to replace the VGAs and make the most of your time. Here goes.
The new show is called The Annual Video Game Cocktease. I can tell you’re still paying attention, Spike -- I put “cock” in the title. Get Geoff Keighly, or Olivia Munn, or a fucking sock puppet to host the thing. Make it like the old MTV TRL show (Viacom, I know you still have that set somewhere). Fill the audience with the biggest bro and nerd stereotypes you can. The show is only a half-hour long. The entire show is the host teasing the audience about playing video games and then sticking the microphone up to their ass and farting. Every five minutes, a 30 second game trailer will play for a game coming out now sooner than two years from that point. At the end of the show, take off the sock puppet to reveal a giant middle finger pointed at the crowd. And then show them that these trailers have been on Youtube for the past week while they were stuck listening to farts for a half-hour. And then fart one more time into the mic for good measure. So will I cover this again next year? Yes. At this point, I’m just waiting for the host to fart too hard into the mic and die of a heart attack on live television. Happy gaming in 2011, y’all!
