VGA's

Yup. It was that time of the year again. Time for the video game awards. Last night was a great awards show, and many thing were awesome, dissapointing, and surprising. Before I get into the nitty gritty, let me say that this year's was way better than the years before. Unfortunately, the presence of Snoop Dogg still kept it from being the best, but overall a great show. Anyway, let's get to it.

The Awards
A great set of awards were given out last night. It's nice to see that most games got an award somewhere, and that the truly great games were recognized for their greatness. All 5 of the game of the year nominees won awards, including Batman: Arkham Asylum, whose developers Rocksteady won best developer of the year. Modern Warfare 2 grabbed best multiplayer game and best shooter, as is well deserved. Assassin's Creed II beat out Brutal Legend and Uncharted 2 for best Action/Adventure game, an award that shows Ubisoft's true dedication to the genre. Left 4 Dead 2 also managed to grab best Xbox 360 game. And of course, Uncharted 2 was the winner of the night. Winning best graphics, best PS3 game, and game of the year, the night proved that Uncharted 2 is truly a media masterpiece, deserving of all it's recognition. Other games managed to get some great rewards too, with Super Mario Bros. Wii getting best Wii game, Brutal Legend voice actor and frontman Jack Black getting best voice actor, and many others. Overall, there were many winners of the night, and not many losers. I have no complaints about the winners, as they all pretty much deserve what they got, although I would have liked Borderlands to get an award. Game of the year was undoubtedly going to be Uncharted 2. The response and the high quality that Naughty Dog contributed to this game deserved it. Overall, a great show. But how about those announcements?

The announcements
This was definitely the highlights of the night. The new games announced here were, crediting my friend, a "mini-E3". The night most certainly started off with a bang, with the ominous voice of Mark Hamill "gassing" the audience. A new teaser appeared, showing what appeared to be an announcement of a sequel to Batman: Arkham Asylum. The teaser was one of the best parts of the show in my opinion. A sequel is much wanted, and well recieved. As I am sure conjecture of the teaser trailer will be a subject of a future blog, I won't go much into detail. But the teaser did seem to imply going into Gotham City, a job that can only be done correctly by the geniuses at Rocksteady. Activision would also show off the next-gen iteration of True Crime. The trailer showed the game taking place in Hong Kong, as an undercover detective with the Triad. It showed hand to hand combat with a dozen or so people, so it will be interesting to see where this goes. The sequel to The Force Unleashed was shown, and boy was it well recieved. As soon as the Apprentice's face showed up, the crowd erupted. A great announcement. The new Tron game was shown. This game could go either way, in my opinion. As long as it is treated as a seperate game, it could be cool. But connect it with the movie and you start having problems. Harmonix brought an early rumor to confirmation with the showing of Green Day: Rock Band. Keeping with the trend of The Beatles: Rock Band, Harmonix is going to make a fully featured band game of Green Day. If they keep with the truth and dedication that they did with The Beatles, this game should be good. With the added functionality of importing the songs into Rock Band (a major complaint people had with The Beatles: Rock Band), it should be good.
Modern warfare seems to be the new trend, as two games showed off last night. The next Medal of Honor shows the series going to Afghanistan. I don't know what to think about this. The trailer looked exactly like Call of Duty, which probably isn't a coincidence. It isn't that it didn't look good; the trailer showed a great variety of stuff. It just looked like a carbon copy, and Medal of Honor will only survive if it is different. Let's hope that the fact that DICE is making multiplayer pays off. 2K surprised everyone with the announcement of the revival of an old Playstation series, Spec Ops. The new game, Spec Ops: The Line, showed fighters in a post-apocalyptic Dubai. It showed cover as an important aspect of gameplay, and 2K stated that the player will be presented with gigantic choices which will affect hundreds of lives. It looked awesome, and being made by 2K, it should look that way. I can't wait to hear more.
Finally, the first footage of Halo: Reach was shown. First off, I was a bit dissapointed. The trailer didn't really show any gameplay, which is what I think everyone wanted. It wasn't bad, it just wasn't what I thought. Besides this, however, the trailer was pretty good. One thing of interest is the fact that the trailer was running in engine, and it looks like a nice upgrade in graphics from the Halo 3. The characters looked pretty awesome, and it looked and feeled exactly like Bungie. Which is a good thing.

That's all for now. Great announcements, and I am sure we will see most of them next E3. How much you wanna bet Green Day shows up at the Xbox 360 conference?