Video Game Awards?

For some reason unknown to me, Spike TV hosts some annual farce called the Video Game Awards. Why they think they're qualified enough to host it, we'll probably never know. In any case, Spike TV's VGAs are nothing but the breeding grounds for bringing stupidity to the gaming industry. On second thought, they bring more stupidity. Half of the awards are for rewarding "good work" to members of the Screen Actors Guild - the group that bitched and whined for more undeserved money for their half-assed performances in our video games.

I'd like all the publishers in the industry to know that I hate 99% of the English voice acting in video games. They suck. A user's experience can be single-handedly ruined by the crappy performances they give due to their lack of understanding the emotion of the moment in the game. Yes, some games have wonderful English voice acting, most notably the Metal Gear Solid series. But other games, Final Fantasy X comes to mind for its horrible "laughing scene", just don't seem like anyone gave a rat's ass. What I'd really like in all of our games is the option to use the originating language instead of English. While I wouldn't have any idea what the hell they characters are saying, at least I'd get the correct emotion from the speech (assumingly) to go along with the text on screen.

But I'm off topic...

There's another thing I hate about awards or top ten lists. There are a lot of categories that seem to exist only to justify giving a popular game an award. In other cases, it seems like Xbox related material has to be mentioned at least once whether the point was valid or not. Most notably, in this IGN article stating the Top Ten Controller Innovations and 1up.com's Top Ten reasons why the Xbox 360 won't be the next Dreamcast.

IGN's article is riddled with errors. The error that pisses me off the most is that reason #8 fails to mention that the Sega Saturn 3D-pad had trigger buttons before the Dreamcast. My real problem with that top ten list is #7. Breakaway cords are just stupid and they have no effect on the way the user interacts with the game.

For 1up.com's article, #7 makes it obvious that a fanboy made the list. The Dreamcast has a lot of awesome games, but it sucked because it doesn't have Halo 3. But Xbox 360 owners are lucky, cause they're gonna have the awesome Halo 3! Oh by the way, if you didn't know, Halo sucks major ass.

Halo is one of those games where people think it's the best thing ever - when it's initially released. Given enough time, people will realize that it didn't age well. A perfect example of this is Donkey Kong Country, made by Rare who was owned by Nintendo at the time. When DKC first came out everyone thought it kicked ass. Nearly ten years later, we're seeing it being re-released on the GBA. Let me tell you, time was not kind to this "gem" at all. I cannot believe I actualy found this game fun.

Games like Halo and DKC are remembered not for their gameplay nor for their story, they're remembered for their graphics. People always misunderstand me when I say that graphics don't matter (and I say this all the time). Yes, graphics are the first thing the consumer sees and usually what sells the game. But pretty graphics are just that - a selling point. Games can be played and enjoyed no matter how good the graphics are. If the developer makes their game enjoyable enough, the user will be happy with whatever graphics are used. Can you honestly say that your #1 favorite game is because of its graphics? If so, then you're not a gamer at all.