In recent years Spike TV’s Video game award show has come under flak for being inaccurate and borderline rigged. After looking at the list for this year’s nominees, it might only confirm that again this year. After looking over the entire list of categories, the biggest thing that jumps out is the lack of Wii games, besides the best Wii game section. In the entire list, I only saw 2 Wii games make any kind of nomination. Now I know the Wii isn’t the most popular gaming machine, but it has had its fair share of games to come out this year, and they have been unfairly overshadowed by the big franchises that have been released on or about the same time.
I’ve also noticed a lot of games are in lists that they really don’t belong to. The biggest stand out is Mario in the Best Action-Adventure list. Mario has not and never will be an Action game, never. Mario is a platformer, always has been. And to see Mario get in that list and something like Castlevania: Lords of Shadow not make it in; yeah it’s not even listed, sets off a few red flags. I also saw Fable 3 in the RPG list. The Fable series are Adventure, not RPG. That series doesn’t come anywhere close to meeting RPG standards. Speaking of RPG’s that don’t belong, Final Fantasy 13 is also on the list. Now RPG’s are my favorite series, I can’t get enough of them, and FF 13 doesn’t belong on the “Best RPG” list in any way. I’d review it, but I’d have to force myself to play it in order to finish it.
Moving on to another list, in Best Graphics; ugh, I hate this list; the red flag is Kirby’s Epic Yarn. Really? Ok, I’ve been reading that Sonic Colors has been claimed to be the best looking Wii game this year, some have even said to date, or even a game like Monster Hunter Tri isn’t listed. And yet Epic Yarn gets on the list? Who picked this list, its yarn and it doesn’t belong on a best graphic list. I’ll get more into my thoughts on Games and Graphics in another post, so look forward to that one.
Now here’s a set of lists that need to be compressed into one big list. Best Music Game and Best Soundtrack. I say this because both lists are full of rhythm games. Things like Guitar Hero, DJ hero, Rock Band. The lists are so similar I don’t see the point in splitting it up like this. Chances are whoever wins one will win the other.
I couldn’t help but notice that this year one list is missing. Where is Best Fighter? There have been plenty of fighters released this year: Street Fighter 4, Tatsunoko vs. Capcom just to name two. Why is this list not even mentioned?
Let’s move on to the list that is currently dominating the market: Best Shooter. The Red Flag in this list is BioShock 2. I haven’t played it, but from my understanding, that’s anything but a shooter. The multiplayer might be a shooter, but not the single player. If that’s the reason, then a whole new list needs to be made for that. Split up the Single player shooters and the multiplayer shooters.
I also have to address the best Wii game list. How is Donkey Kong Country Returns on the list? The game hasn’t been out 48 hours at the time of this posting. Less than 24 at the time the lists went up. How can a game get nominated when it’s not even out yet? And yet again, Sonic Colors which is getting great reviews isn’t even mentioned.
Speaking of best games on console, the list for the Best on PS3 is flawed. Best game on a console needs to be exclusives, not multiplatform and Red Dead Redemption had the best PS3 list. How can it do that when it’s also on the Xbox 360?
That’s my thoughts on the individual lists, but there is still the voting method. To my knowledge, voting is completely up to an online poll. This leads to seriously flawed votes. With open polls like that, you get fanboys voting for nothing but their favorites and people voting for the current “Hot Trending” game and not something that might actually deserve the title of “Best of”.
If this award show intends to take itself as a serious award show for games, then the people behind it need to seriously rethink some of its policies. And I’m not the only one who believes this. The current biggest voice in this debate is AngryJoe and his online show AngryJoeShow. He goes into a lot more detail then I have, check him out he’s really good. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SmsUk9nmIuc
I’ll see you guys on the next posting of GameFawx.
No comments:
Post a Comment