The "Complete Waste of Time" Award
This honour goes to the game released in 2007 that causes me to think “That’s x hours that I’ll never have back.” Pretty easy to guess the winner this time.
Winner: Assassin’s Creed
I’m a spiteful man and evidently, rather self-loathing. See, I spent the last week playing this game that many of you felt was “oh so awesome” to solidify my opinions about its inherent crapness – and obviously, I want that time back. The game had the occasional moment of “that could have been cool if they did it differently”, but basically came across as a repetitive, straightforward, repetitive, non-sensical mess. Seriously, that whole last three hours of plot – if anyone refers to Metal Gear Solid 2 as being messed up again after this point, they should be kicked in the balls. Hard.
Runner Up: Valhalla Knights
The Japanese tried to do a Western style RPG here, and failed spectacularly. I never ever want to have to review an RPG again after this one.
The things you do to be right
The "WTF?!?" Award
This award goes to the person, place or event during the year that boggled the mind.
Winner: Assassin’s Creed’s story
Can you believe someone was paid to write this drivel?
Runner Up: EA’s acquisition of BioWare/Pandemic
Acquisitions are a fact of life, but the big WTF in this one was the price paid for the company. Last year, John Riccitiello, as a part of a venture capital firm, Elevation Partners, paid $US300 million for the joint company. Yet a year later, as CEO of Electronic Arts, Riccitiello sunk over $US800 million from the EA warchest to fund the acquisition. Two problems here; one, BioWare Pandemic had released nothing in the previous twelve months at this point (Mass Effect was 6 weeks away), so how their value jumped up half a billion from doing nothing is beyond me, and two, Riccitiello stands to make about $US100 million personally from the deal.
The George Broussard Award for Unfortunate Delays
Named after the boss of 3D Realms and director of the upcoming Duke Nukem Forever, which has quite literally taken forever, though development on the title has basically been started up and scrapped three or four times, so you can’t really say it’s been in development for ten years.
Winner: Grand Theft Auto IV
I don’t think there was a gamer alive who didn’t feel a moment of disappointment on that August day when Take Two announced this delay. I’m sure it’s for the best.
Runner Up: Metal Gear Solid 4: Guns of the Patriots
Every time I look at my dust coated PlayStation 3, I think of this game. Hopefully Kojima and his cronies deliver.
GTA IV will hopefully show publishers that they can have success outside of the holiday season
The "For the love of God, please stop" Award for Most Annoying Gaming Trend
Video games are like anything else in the consumer world; one person has success with a new thing, so everybody else rushes in to run it into the ground.
Winner: Excessive amounts of collectible orbs/flags/whatever
I’ve collected about 700 of Crackdown’s 800 orbs, and 415 of Assassin’s Creed’s 420 flags, and frankly, I’m sick of it. It’s Donkey Kong 64 all over again, but at least in that game there was some sort of reward for its rampant number of collectibles. Crackdown’s orbs do offer a stats boost, but by the time you’ve got half of them, you’re likely fully powered up anyway.
Runner Up: MMOs
Bloated, expensive projects that are generally destined for failure months before they come out. Money would be better spent researching technology or making multiple smaller projects.
Orbs, orbs, orbs
The Award for the Worst use of a Good Character
Sometimes, through no fault of their own, video game characters just end up in the wrong hands.
Winner: Crash Bandicoot
Isn’t Crash supposed to be deranged? So why does he talk like a baby? I have faith that Activision might be able to handle this character a little better.
Runner Up: Spyro
Just like Crash, when this character was taken away from the original developer, it’s just never been the same, and this year’s entry was no different.
The "I can’t believe you won’t shut up" Award for Most Persistently Annoying Industry Personality
The video game industry is full of PR mouthpieces – some are kind, honest and helpful, others spurt bullshit from every orifice. This award celebrates the latter.
Winner: Mark Rein (Epic)
Epic’s spokesman never knows when to be quiet. Moreover, he doesn’t seem to pay any attention to current events in the industry, consistently bagging out the market leader while hocking whatever hunk of overly normal mapped crap has been spewed out by UE3.0 this month.
Runner Up: Jeff Bell (Microsoft)
Jeff Bell’s E3 appearance now appears in the dictionary under “awkward”.
Zip it. Seriously.
The Poor PAL Gamer Award for the Best Game Released Everywhere Else but Here
It’s funny that the whole PAL delay/conversion issue is becoming seemingly irrelevant these days (well, except for you PAL Wii owners), but there’s still a few companies out there that like to dangle the carrot in front of us before snatching it away at the last second and giving it to us at Easter. This award goes to the game I wanted the most which was released elsewhere in the world for Christmas, but delayed in Australia.
Winner: Rock Band
It happened with the original Guitar Hero, and it’s happening again with Rock Band. We’ll see it here in March at a greatly increased premium price to due current Australian market conditions (i.e. grab the lube or the publishers are going in dry). It was probably lucky the game was delayed, given the whole faulty strat issue – we expect that this will be sorted, don’t we EA?
Runner Up: Beautiful Katamari
There seems to be a trend towards specific publishers who continue to delay their titles for PAL markets. The latest Katamari entry may not be as good, but I’d still like to play it anyway.
Hopefully it won't break the bank
The John Romero Award for Failed Hype
John Romero was one of the most celebrated game designers of the 1990s. In 1997, we were all meant to be “his bitch” according to one Daikatana ad, but three years later, it was John who became the industry’s bitch, and the butt of jokes for many years to come. Mechanical frogs @ you.
Winner: Halo 3
Halo 3 was not chosen as an attempt to be controversial, no, instead Halo 3’s hype was so bloody huge that it couldn’t possibly have lived up to it…unless you had no expectations and was expecting to be disappointed. I thought I was, but even I got suckered into buying a copy on September 25.
Runner Up: Fury
You have to admit that the people marketing Fury were a pretty talented bunch – the name was out there, ads were everywhere and everybody knew what Fury was. It’s just that nobody wanted to play it.
Way too much hype.
The Award for the Coolest Special Move
Awesome moves in video games are a fact of life, but some moves are more awesome than others. This award goes to the ability that impressed the most during the year.
Winner: Punching down a house in Crysis
I don’t think much of Crysis at this point in time, but I will admit that the super strength ability has its moments – particularly when it comes to demolition of enemy structures. Don’t know what happened to being able to flip cars and such with a single punch, though.
Runner Up: City Platforming in Crackdown
It’s almost what an open world Matrix game could have been, leaping from building to building with the greatest of ease, climbing up any structure (particularly Agency Tower). Crackdown was one of those open world games where the player could feel truly free – there just needed to be more to do in the city other than a bunch of races.
Physics for the win
The Award for the Worst Use of a Celebrity
We humans are celebrity obsessed – there’s no denying it. Sometimes, use of a celebrity helps a game, but much of the time the appearance or usage of a celebrity is awkward or lazy.
Winner: Guitar Hero III: Legends of Rock (Slash)
Sorry guys, the boss battles sucked. Try again next year.
Runner Up: Spider-Man 3 (Tobey Maguire)
Tobey Maguire couldn’t bring across the slightest bit of enthusiasm for this performance, though after playing the game, you’ll know why.
One of the greats
The "Walker told me I have AIDS" Award for the Most Unexpected Surprise of the Year
Conan O’Brien once had a skit on Late Night which involved him pulling a lever which would trigger a random clip of Walker, Texas Ranger, the long running Chuck Norris TV show. Many of the clips were absurdly funny, but this clip (starring a young Haley Joel Osment) takes the cake. This award is named in its honour.
Winner: Activision merges with Vivendi
It was about 2am on a Monday morning when I saw this announcement, and I had to do about half a dozen double takes. News is never announced on a Sunday afternoon, and who the heck expected these two to merge. Vivendi has it made with World of WarCraft, and Activision is the #1 publisher worldwide. A lot of good can come from this deal provided both sides play their cards right. Frankly, I’d like to see Activision find a better home for Crash and Spyro, and get Radical Entertainment working on all of their Marvel games (Incredible Hulk: Ultimate Destruction = win).
Runner Up: C-Net fires Jeff Gerstmann
Jeff Gerstmann was one of the most prolific and longest serving of GameSpot’s reviewers, and despite a couple of controversial ratings over the years, was generally well respected. It was a pretty big shock when he was fired from the site just over a month ago, particularly when the rumour spread that it was over the Kane & Lynch review, for which GameSpot was running much advertising.
Smooth operator
The Hindenburg Award for the Biggest Disaster of the Year
Oh, the humanity! Sometimes things in the industry just don’t go as planned – sometimes, companies handle it in a way that makes them out to be good, other times they trip over the hurdle and smash face first into the pavement.
Winner: Auran (Fury)
It was a recipe for disaster from its inception. A small budget for an MMO, a largely inexperienced development team led by a lead designer who’d never shipped a game, and a whole bunch of other issues you can read about elsewhere. I still fail to understand why Auran would opt to bet the farm on one large $15 million dollar game, rather than using mediums for which their smaller development style is more suited. Infinite Interactive has had amazing success with Puzzle Quest, so why Australian developers continue to expect everyone to hand them big budgets without proving themselves first is beyond me. And don’t say Dark Reign, because everybody who worked on that left for Pandemic a long time ago.
Runner Up: GameSpot (Gerstmann)
If anything emphasized the need for absolute separation between editorial and advertising departments, it’s this. I think everybody can learn something from the debacle, be they PR, marketing or writing staff.
The ramifications from Fury's failure could be big
And so it ends. I’d like to thank James Gay for providing a place for my ranting for the last 4 years, the #videogames IRC crew for their years of name calling, dicking around and support for Easy Mode, my family and girlfriend Charlene for their support during the transition from accounting to writing, and you, the reader for four years worth of support, criticism and taking the bait.
Views and opinions expressed in Easy Mode are those solely of the author and do not represent those of PALGN and its affiliates, advertisers and other interested parties. So if you've got a problem with the content, bitch at me and nobody else.
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