Yeah, anyone else remember how bad these things are? Lets just go through 2004 and see how bad these were. I’m gonna skim through the awards for the following years, but this one I want to tear apart. This one I want to go in depth. Why? Because the boss nailed me to a chair and made me watch the stupid stuff. This is worse than Dr. Quinn Medicine woman, trust me, it is BAD.
The awards were hyped in an Ad campaign by famed SNL Alumni David Spade, who said award shows suck and he didn’t want to MC it. Then they said that it was just awards and no bullstuff.
Hey wait, couldn’t they have done it on Spike.com then? What’s the point of an award show if there aren’t any speeches or funny segments? I thought that’s why we watched the Academy Awards? Just seeing a list was boring and we could pick it up in the paper the next day.
Alright, well instead of something like those funny Billy Crystal segments from the Oscars (come on, they were funny), the show starts up with…Jenna Jameson? The porn star? I’m not watching the Cocktum of Solace am I? Wel there was a “secret camera” showing her dressing up or some sh*t like that. Then they cut to the guys who do MXC, you know that Japanese show dubbed over and made funny for five minutes? Actually, to be fair, MXC was pretty damn cool it’s first two seasons, then it actually did get old. Right at this point though, it was entertaining. Then we get treated to Steve-O and Chris Pontius throwing Barrells and going Donkey Kong on each other.
Ooooookay. Well, during this mess of montages and acting, they take us to Jameson out in the audience talking to guys and somehow leading to her saying “I’m just going to take my clothes off”
Hey can we just go back to the original format of the Oscars? This really isn’t working. So far they’ve made gamers out to be 13 year old horn-dogs who watch god-awful shows like wild boys and once in awhile watch somewhat cool shows like MXC.
See, gamers at this point were 18-26 year olds who probably have lost their virginity at this point, seen Jameson naked enough in the porn brothers bought for them that her claims of stripping didn’t really get us excited at all, and watched Wild Boys for all of two episodes because it wasn’t Jackass.
All this is going on for a half hour. This crap would have been better suited for a Super Bowl halftime show than for a pre-ceremony to the VGAs. But I digress, when the real show started, this was golden globe nominated material in comparison.
The show started and Madden 2004 won game of the year followed by a——
*looks back at what he wrote…rewinds the tape and watches it again*
Wait a F**kin second! Madden won game of the year? At the beginning of the show? I guess Spike couldn’t secure advertisements or something because that’s enough to kill anticipation for whatever else was coming. That’s like saying the Super Bowl was the most watched drama! What the hell?
What the hell were they smoking to do game of the year FIRST? Yeah, I guess everyone had stuff to do, lets just get the big stuff out of the way quick so we can go back to homework.
Anyways, after they basically told us they’ve never played a video game OR seen an award show before. We were treated to some band immediately after the award singing some collegate bullcrap that the jocks listened to while they beat me up.
Then we got to see David Spade, for a cool like 3 minutes in the total show. He didn’t’ even introduce anyone, he came on, did a comedy routine, left, came back, told a joke, left-whatever.
I don’t need to spell out for you what I think of the VGAs by now, they were THAT bad. So bad that no one ever watches them every…single…year. Nobody even wants to be close to them, the first year was so screwed up, that we never tuned our TVs again. It did ok in the ratings department because people who DON’T play videogames liked them.
Crap like this is what gives gamers a bad name. Crap like this.
Alright, that’s the FIRST VGA. Lets run down the awards shall we?
Best Game
What Won: Madden 2004
What Should have Won: Soul Calibur 2, Zelda: The Wind Waker, Prince of Persia. Hell, anything but this!
Producers Reasoning: I don’t think there is any way they can defend themselves here. I thank them for doing this at the beginning. If I had to wait two hours to see Madden win the whole thing, I would have thrown my shoe at the TV so hard that it caused a fire destroying my dormatory, catching me in the blast while the face of Christ shows up amongst the flames declaring everyone to repent. The dead would rise, I would be tortured in the flames, while electricity from the dorm surged through every artery giving me pain for eternity.
Since it happened at the very beginning, I just threw my shoe at the TV
Best Animation:
What Won:DOA Volleyball (yeah, anyone remember this one? I don’t)
What Should have won: Legend of Zelda: The Wind Waker
Producers Reasoning: Despite the fact that just about every publication gave praise to the cel shaded cartoon presentation of ZWW, despite that we were wowed how pretty the game was, despite everything that said LOGIC, these guys saw the previews for ZWW back when everyone thought it was going to tank and figured “Yeah it sucks”.
One look at the girls in Dead or Alive though, and all they could think was “Wow, theiboobs bounce.” I still stand by the fact that male GAMERS are not pigs.
Best Performance by a Human:
What Won: Ray Liotta in GTA: Vice City
What Should Have Won: Ray Liotta in GTA: Vice City
Producers Reasoning: The game that killed video games as I know it also had the best voice acting that year. It’s hard for me to argue with this one. This was the game that if the jocks got caught playing, it was fine, but if one of the nerds got caught playing it, those hypocrites beat the hell outta us cuz playing games wasn’t cool. After Guitar Hero sealed the deal, those same jocks called themselves gamers and said that all of us who played games and risked being laughed at for it, knew nothing about the video game industry and were posers-go figure.
Best Game Based off a Movie:
What Won:Enter the Matrix
What should have Won: Oh man, you’re trying to make me suggest a movie game that could win an award? That’s like trying to suggest whose shit is going to taste best. I’ll go with Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic. It’s technically based on a movie, well just like Enter the Matrix is.
Producers Reasoning: A good idea, but the problem is ETM is notorius for sloppy programming and bad beta testing. Those of you game testers, this is what happens when you don’t do your job. ETM was considered one of the WORST games ever made for that year, and I still remember when every publication was hyping it. I actually wrote a Wrath on this saying: “This looks like crap,” and I was right. This is why no publication does “Best Movie Games” because it’s like trying to find the best dog turd out of several stinky dog turds buried in petrified horse crap.
Most Addictive:
What Won: Soul Calibur II
What Should have won: Final Fantasy XI
Producers Reasoning: Soul Calibur II was an awesome game, but I’m pretty sure most people who picked up FFXI were struck in for a good 6 months until they realised it wasn’t just an FF game, but it was also a bad game. Still, for those 6 months you could waste away in the MMO world while school grades went ker-plunk. The producers probably were like “FF? You mean like Final Fantasy with swords and sorcery? Who plays that crap? What posers play Final Fantasy Games, people play GTA and uh, GTA.”
Best Action:
What Won:True Crime: Streets of L.A.
What Should Have Won: I’m gonna go out on a limb here and say Prince of Persia: Sands of Time
Producers Reasoning: They had to show us they were gamers. Saying GTA was going to win everything was a bad-idea. So if people played GTA, they liked the rip-off True Crime…right? Actually TC was a pretty decent game, but it wasn’t as good as Prince, I didn’t play either of them and I know that. They probably didn’t either.
Best Driving AKA Pontiac/GTO Driving Award( gotta love that name plug):
What Won:NASCAR Thunder 2004
What Should Have Won: Didn’t Project Gotham Racing 2 come out that year? Wasn’t that universally praised?
Producers Reasoning: I’m not too sure if PGR 2 was out the time of the awards.I think any game here though is better than Nascar. Why? Because all games with the Nascar license suck.
Best Fantasy:
What Won:Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic
What Should have Won: Star Wars Knights of the Old Republic or Zelda The Wind Waker
Producers Reasoning: I’m glad they have two games right here in the sea of crap that is the rest of the winners. KOTR was an awesome game, but it really didn’t go up against anything so I guess that isn’t saying much. Why is Zelda nothing? Because you aren’t a gamer if you play Zelda. This is the award show for gamers remember?
Best Sports:
What Won:Tony Hawk UnderGround
What Should have won: Uh, didn’t Madden 04 win game of the year?
Producers Reasoning: I think I should change that to Producers Logic, because this confuses me. How does Madden beat out Hawk, yet lose in the sports slot? Hawk was better IMOP but I know nothing about sports games, so I can’t really vouch here. I think the producers just said “Screw it,” at this point.
Best Online:
What Won:Final Fantasy XI
What Should have won: FFXI or Battlefeild 1942, I think Battlefeild had a much better audience of gamers and non gamers alike.
Producers Reasoning: During the time of the awards, the producers looked at a young intern. This intern, named Mickey, wanted to have input on everything. He saw what was happening as he was a dedicated gamer himself. Then they said: “Here, name the best online game, and we’ll give you a full time job, a buncha money, and input on how to screw up Joe Schmo next year” The intern did his duty.
Best FPS:
What Won:Call of Duty
What Should Have Won: Halo
Producers Reasoning: Both are pretty damn good games, and I am not about to start a war. But if these guys are supposed to be gamers, wouldn’t they pick Halo? Wasn’t that like the coolest thing next to GTA that year? Or the year before that? Wait…Halo came out a few years ago for the X-box, my timings off.
Best PC:
What won:Halo
What Should Have Won: Again, if COD wins best FPS, how does Halo win best PC?
Producers Reasoning: I take back what I said, Halo, being the overated bad game that it is should have won here. But then it should be better than COD? This is more difficult than Calculus.
Best Handheld:
What Won:Splinter Cell (I read some people think this may be the N-gage version…yes that store bought piece of crap that lasted shorter than a new Fox Sitcom)
What Should Have Won: Hell, anything but this. I’ll go with Final Fantasy Tactics Advance. Castlevania wasn’t too bad either. I guess any good game will do-which compared to N-Gage is the entire library of GBA games.
Producers Reasoning: By this point in the show, it was obvious we knew these guys knew nothing about video games. I think after everyone was gone, including the nominees they were like “We have free TV time, heh heh heh, lets have Splinter Cell win best handheld”
I hate those producers.
Best Fighter:
What Won:WWE Smackdown: Here Comes the Pain (note: I spat my beer out onto my monitor when I watched this in disbelief)
What Should have Won: Soul Calibur 2
Producers Reasoning: You have a copy of Braveheart in one hand, and Waterworld in the other. You want to pick the greatest movie in the world, what do you do? Hell, Waterworld has a cooler title, I’ll go with that.
That’s exactly how this award went down.
VGA Hall of Fame Inductee:
What Won: The Dot from Pong
What Should Have Won: [OC]modshop’s very own shock collumnist El Pato
Producers Reasoing: If you think I am an idiot for nominating myself in the video game hall of fame, think of what they were huffing when they made WWE Smackdown the best fighting game. At least I would make the award show slightly more credible and save it by accepting my award, then promptly pulling down my pants and having crazy bondage sex with Jenna Jameson…on stage. WHOHOO! We just got our ratings back up!
Most Anticipated Game for 2004:
What Won: Halo 2
What Should Have Won: Metal Gear Solid 3 was a decent contender, but Halo 2 was pretty big, I’ll go with it.
Producers Reasoning: They showed the nominations for this and it was the only category to do so. I am thinking they thought they were losing time and at this point were like “Oh we gotta extend a few more minutes. I guess they had to hype something.”
Best Music:
What Won: Def Jam Vendetta
What Should Have Won: Something that actually had decent orchestra or midi.
Producers Reasoning: Forget it, I don’t know what they were smoking to think of this. This was like a bad joke.
That was the show. Don’t think I’m done yet, I’m gonna keep this up in my collumns for the next few weeks. For now, I’m out. By the way, don’t forget to drop me a line and tell me what you thought of the awards.
El Pato Outo