Top 5 Disappointments Coming Out of VGA 2010

Last night a bunch of us sat through a terrible awards show for the simple fact that we wanted to see as many trailer reveals as possible. How could you blame us? With games like Uncharted 3, Resistance 3 and rumored Mass Effect 3 to be shown during the event, it almost felt as though we were obligated to watch. Unfortunately, the assumption that the Spike TV Awards would be disappointing and a let down were pretty much spot on.

It’s no doubt that the decisions behind bringing in Dane Cook, Rachel Bilson (seriously?) and a few others were questionable, but despite the bad performances that each of the guest presenters gave — nothing hit home more than underwhelming reveals of games we were excited for.

Though I’m sure fanboys are raging with love over reveals of titles they’ve been eagerly awaiting, a lot of what was shown left us disappointed on a large scale. Of course, not everything was bad, but out of the things that were, these were easily the worst.

Teleprompter

I wanted to start this off with something everyone can agree on — including the host of the show — Neil Patrick Harris. Throughout the entire night, we watched B-list stars come on stage and read off this terrible script that was neither funny nor compelling enough to keep anyone’s attention. Sadly, I’d like to give Dane Cook the benefit of the doubt and blame the teleprompter for his performance, but chances are, his dialogue was all improved by himself and ended up just as bad as his stand up routine.

Regardless of how you look at it, the script writing was awful. The fact they had reject actors reading out those lines only made it worse. If Spike TV ever plans on having people feel that their award show is anywhere near legit, they’re going to have to hire some people who can make the show actually worth watching with a decent script to read from.

It wouldn’t surprise me if next year a slew of potential hosts turn down the network due to the terrible performance of this year’s show. I’m sure the ratings were fantastic, but even NPH felt the show sucked and he gave that vibe off clearly before it went off the air.

Forza 4

That’s right — We’re including Forza 4 in here and listing it as a complete disappointing when it comes to a high-profile reveal. The majority of this reveal stood hiding behind real life drivers driving around a track and then Turn10 decided to randomly throw in the same lousy Kinect cut that they showed months ago. How this factored in to being labeled as a ‘World Premiere” trailer, I’ll never figure it out. Someone needs to figure out that it doesn’t qualify as a world premiere when everyone has already seen the majority of the trailer.

Furthermore, apparently the game is less than a year away, right? So why the need to show pretty much nothing from the actual game itself? As someone who put in over 75+ hours easily on Forza 2 and probably 35+ hours into Forza 3, I couldn’t have been any more let down from a Forza 4 reveal than I was last night.

I’m starting to think that Forza 4 wasn’t supposed to be revealed last night, but instead, due to Microsoft pulling the Gears of War 3 trailer, they needed something to take its place. Thus, they edited together some footage of real life racers and threw in some of the Kinect Forza 4 from E3 2010 and called it a night. I honestly don’t believe that this was the type of reveal Turn10 or Microsoft would produce for one of its larger exclusive franchises. Forza 4 deserved more than this and so did fans of the series.

Resistance 3

I bet after reading about Forza 4, a lot of you guys were like “These Ps3 fanboys are just asshurt,” right? Not so. Just like how Microsoft dropped the ball on a major reveal, I believe Sony and Insomniac Games dropped the ball as well. Resistance 3 isn’t just a Sony exclusive that is anticipated and loved by PlayStation 3 owners. Insomniac Games isn’t developing a game coming off of a Game of the Year performance like Naughty Dog is with Uncharted 3. No — IG is having to prove themselves capable of creating something outside of the world of Ratchet & Clank that has actual staying power and deliverance to fans at a higher level.

Readers Comments (48)

  1. victorgodamnsullivan December 12, 2010 @ 16:39

    Kinda harsh on Resistance 3 considering that they are one of two who actually showed gameplay (UC3 FTW!), but I agree that the awards show was just for the reveals and a complete joke otherwise.

  2. Another complete dissappointment in the history of Spike’s VGA. Completely agree with Character of the year thing. After Portal 2 got most anticipated game (although probably a great game) and then conveniently got it’s “World Premiere” trailer I was thinking “maybe voting didn’t count for anything” but when Woods won character of the year and had that horrible acceptance animation I was convinced. While watching the live activity feed on Spike’s website during the show there is no way those two won the votes. The whole damn thing was scripted. Just another EPIC Fail in the history of Spike’s VGA’s. I can only hope that I won’t want to watch next year, but there will probably be some trailers I’ll want to see that suck me back in like Batman AC and R3 did this year. Boo-urns.

  3. lulz at thinking Kratos should even be considered character of the year.

    • Why shouldn’t he? He has a strong personality and left a long lasting impression on anyone that played the game, which turned out to be one of the best games of this year. SGT. Woods however, definitely did not. It was a gigantic fail to have him as the winner.

  4. How can you judge The Elder Scrolls V? You’re just assuming all of these things. I for one was excited by Skyrim’s reveal trailer. Todd Howard had already stated that all of Oblivion’s problems would be improved. In regards to the graphics, Howard said that it would look like you were playing a brand new console.

    Me personally, I was able to look over all of the flaws in Oblivion, F3, and NV and love all of those games.

  5. Well, its been announced that Bethesda has been building a new engine tailored specifically for “open world” games. I suspect that ES:V will be using this engine. Even if it’s just a 100 hour expansion, I will be in line at Gaemestop at 6pm 11-10-11 to pick up my copy.

  6. In an interview with IGN Todd Howard said the new engine would be used on their next game.

  7. Well you had me all the way until the end, I never bought oblivion(not my cup of tea) but i did buy and enjoy fallout 3, and you claiming that those games sell simply because of brand name, well thats just wrong bro. Its no secret both those games are bug ridden and by all accounts tes 5 is probably gonna be bug ridden too, the reason why gamers let this all go is because of just how vast bethesdas games tend to be, I have been playing fallout 3 since early 09 and im still discovering new things.

    If you don’t like the games then thats your opinion, I cant change that, but don’t insult the obvious hard work bethesda but into the games by claiming they are only successful of brand name. Outside of that though, nice article, and i pretty much agree with everything except the last point. This is probably gonna be the last awards show i watch, its far to painful.

  8. Surely you should have realised that pretty much everything you saw in the VGAs was rigged? The host won Best Male Performance, Portal 2 conveniently won Most Anticipated Game before flaunting a new Trailer. Red Dead Redemption won Best Song and Best Original Score as they had conveniently booked Far Away to be played over an elaborate montage of Red Dead Redemption which conveniently also turned out to be Game of the Year.

    We didn’t vote on Best Character at all, that’s BS, they had a pre-prepared video of Woods “accepting” the award which they played.

    Rigged, rigged, rigged.

  9. You are one bitter assface.

  10. I think you should do a little reading on bethesda. While New Vegas was developed by another studio but published by bethesda the Oblivion crew (fallout 3 devs) where working on a brand new engine for the new Elder Scrolls. I think it’s going to be great. Ofc that CG trailer was disappointing but my heart skipped a beat when I heard “Elder scrolls” The voice acting have been improved after Oblivion IV and these guys learn from their mistakes. Also your opinion on resistance 3 was abit harsh. Otherwise, good reading. =]

  11. It already has been confirmed ESV will use a brand new engine.

  12. Ok, I’m seeing high levels of retardation in this article

    First: How the hell can you judge a game that isn’t even out yet and claim it will be filled with bugs when even they said they are developing a new engine.

    Second: Fallout new vegas wasn’t made by bethesda, hurr durr.

    Third: (this is directed to a fellow commenter named GB) The show could be rigged, indeed, but the “proof” you are giving is just… hollow. Those videos they shown for each winner were made earlier, indeed, but each game had its own video. Hell, just 1 minute after the show “ended” they shown God of War’s and Assasins creed “reward accepting” videos just to make clear everyone was expecting to win.

    RDR soundtrack was played on stage, and RDR won best song. Now, changing the order of this sentence you could thing it was rigged, but I could easily think the only reason the RDR guy went on-stage is BECAUSE it won best song.

    The show was ok for me… a few stupid things like this stereotypical xbox live player announcing some God of War III stuff… hell, not only he wasn’t excited about it, he said “now presenting the two male protagonists of broke back mountain: Hades and Kratis”.

    The host was ok too, he is a funny guy. And honestly, this is a VideoGame awars, do you seriously expect Chris Rock or some other superstar to go there and talk about some shit he doesn’t have any idea about?

    And then we have this chemical romance performance… wich was the most random and gratuituous thing…

  13. Yeah, you’re wrong on Skyrim. Instead of jumping the gun you posted nothing but amateur predictions, when they announced today the game is using a brand new engine. So fail on your part.

  14. I bet you made this article so you could rally people to agree with your opinion in the comment section, but it seems to have done the exact opposite. I gotta agree with Awesomejizz, haha, but seriously way to be bitter as all hell, the overall feel for this years show was a lot better than in years past, was it perfect? no but there were significant improvements over last years. Niel was way more chill and with it than the other vga hosts, i laughed a few times even (sometimes at really bad stuff, like the teleprompter girl announcing my chemical romance haha). and what they did for the set was pretty impressive actually. as for resistance, i think you are being too harsh on the game because of some poor video editing. cutting between scenes sporadically didnt do the game any justice, however i think that what was shown gave glimpses of a really good game. and then the skyrim announcement, first off let me say… how dare you. disappointment implies that you would have had to have some interest in the first place, but it was a surprise announcement and you sound like you have nothing but contempt for it anyways. Literally nothing has been shown of the gameplay and you are already discrediting it, way to be profesional. Never coming to this website again

    • Actually — I wrote the article to create discussion and to get other people’s opinions on it all and what they thought of the VGAs. If I expected everyone to rally around my opinion in the comment section, I’d be bored out of my mind. It’s more likely to have more comments take place in an article with differing opinions than in an article where everyone agrees. With that in mind — why would I want everyone to rally?

  15. because you were pissed off about the show and you get off to people agreeing with you, a more accurate title for this article would be “things that pissed me off about the vgas”. You sat through the entire award ceremony just to see the select few things that you were waiting for like the uncharted trailer, as many did. along the way you had to endure some things that rubbed you the wrong way. Maybe i was quick to say you were trying to get people to rally behind you, but that wasnt the most important thing i was saying anyways. more importantly you were attacking Skyrim, a game a lot of people are looking forward to, for no reason. Sure fallout and oblivion had their issues but saying skyrim will suffer those exact same issues is something you would hear from a 10 year old on his first trip to the forums. its like saying uncharted 3 will suck because it will have another poorly done boss fight at the end. and lets not forget the condescending tone used when trying to make up for your “disappointment” of the announcement saying “For those of you over-the-moon about Skyrim, I’m happy for you and glad that you’re getting a game you’ve been waiting for” but then you go right around calling bethesda’s work bug riddled filth, and putting down everyone who enjoys those games. Quite frankly that is insulting and THAT is the reason why im done coming to your site

    • If you were done coming to my site after the first time, how did you make it back here to reply? I’m confused by your actions, Sir.

      • i was a regular and what i meant by it, is that im no longer going to be one. I also like how you were avoiding my confrontation about skyrim, anyways if you are so interested in me leaving then ill be more than happy to and you wont hear from me any longer.

        • Let me just say…how dare you come back and reply again! Get over it. It’s a difference of opinion. Do you have stock in Skyrim or something?

          • Please be try and be civil as possible. No need to attack one another on in such a hateful manner.

    • Sheesh chill out, I don’t agree on what he said about skyrim (although I understand), but no reason to have a tantrum. If you disagree with it then state in a civil manner why you think he is wrong and discuss like an adult.

  16. dude these are some horrible reasons to talk down on these games.

  17. Also why are you calling gamers “retarded”, thats just not cool maybe stupid or idiotic, like u

  18. Seriously, after wasting my time reading this bullshit i realized you have no idea what you are talking about.

  19. LOL at the idea of Master Chief being a contender for Best Character. He is a one – dimensional character rendered with such bad graphics he looks like he belongs on the GBC. Kratos owned that category and every real gamer knows it.

    • Uh he wasn’t a contender, in fact no one in halo was. Funny on how untrue you graphics quip was though.

      and compared to someone like John Marston and Ezio, Kratos seems very third rate for reasons I have specified.

  20. You’re very smart….ignore the other losers. You were spot on. The VGAs are nothing but bad actors, over-sized drama, SPOILERS (wow THEY RUINED RED DEAD REDEMPTION AND MASS EFFECT 2 endings for people..what the fuck was that?), and finally just plain terrible award selection. Some clearly had logic. GOTY, big shocker. RDR not winning would have solidified their stupidity, but in Spike TV VGA history since 2003, all they are known for is stupidity, this 1 time of non-stupidity barely helped opaquely. Another thing…NPH as VOICE ACTOR lead? Wow…um….spiderman shattered dimensions sucked HARD. HOW did he beat NATHAN from HALO: REACH IS BEYOND ME.

    It seems a lot of SpikeTV fanatics will disagree with you..but you’re smart enough to see that already.

  21. Didn’t like this article.

  22. Thats a bit of a pessimistic, unfounded assumption on Skyrim being a graphical clone of New Vegas and Oblivion. It’s been in development for 2 years and it’s on a completely new engine.

  23. Fallout New Vegas was developed by Obsidian Entertainment, not Bethesda.

  24. Bethesda are using a new engine for Skyrim, do your research instead of basement pessimistic ranting.

  25. Skyrim = new engine
    New Vegas/Oblivion/Fallout 3 = old engine
    By the way Krait, don’t blame Obsidian for all the glitches in New Vegas. The games engine (which was developed internally by Bethesda) is old as now and if you ever played the ps3 goty version of fallout 3 developed by Bethesda, you would know that New Vegas runs like a dream compared to that broken piece of shit. Dont get me wrong i love Bethesda but their attention to “fixing” bugs is terrible. Hopefully the new engine is alot better on that field.

  26. Kartos for character of the year? Is this supposed to be a joke?
    Kratos in GOW3 is basically a parody of himself in the first two GOW games. You can sum his character in one word “Angry” and it’s as shallow as a character can be. It fits perfectly in that sort of game, but it’s not really award worthy.

    But it’s weak material for a good character. It’s like awarding Chuck Norris in delta force for the Oscars. The fact that everyone loves GOW and it’s one of the hotest games this year still doesn’t make a good character. After all, everyone loves Mario and Galaxy is also one of the hottest games of the year – it still doesn’t make it a good character (and with Mario we actually have a proof that people won’t care as much if his brother been the main character?)

  27. I actually thought the jokes were the only bad thing about the VGA’s.

  28. You were dissapointed by Resistance 3? I’ll admit, Resistance 2 dissappointed me a bit, but the little bit shown of 3 is already an improvement. Especially graphically. The first thing I noticed was how much more fluid the animation of the chimera was. Oh well. Can’t win everyone over.

  29. What an idiot, Resistance 3 is gonna rock like the first Resistance, that fool doesn’t know whats coming

    • lol I sure hopes its not like R1. One of the most bland games I have played this gen.

      R3 seems like it has some more potential, but it didn’t blow me away or anything.

  30. Everyone else said it already, but I’ll chime in my disapproval for this article and the author’s lack of research. Skyrim is going to run on an entirely new engine, so it in all likelihood won’t look anything like Oblivion or either Fallout game. I just hope that the new engine they’re writing will have many fewer bugs than in previous engines, their last two game engines have been terribly glitchy and I hope they take the extra time beta testing the hell out of their lengthy games.

  31. Im sorry sir but this is a shit article.

    A few of these are right, like the jokes falling flat (actually everything was falling flat) but all the games that where announced there brung tears to my eyes.

    I would get it if Thor the Videogame or something else like Insane with its insane release date.

    But Forza 4 is great news! Resistance 3 is killer news and the gameplay bits looked insane! Im not going to call you a fanboy.

    But A Fool.

  32. I agree wholeheartedly with this article, i think there is just alot of fanboys of those series crying because they are offended by this post, but its very true, and lets be honest, that uncharted 3 trailer at the end pretty much stole the show…

  33. You make a lot of good points, but the only one I disagree with is your Resistance part. It’s pretty established as a series and proves they can do more than R&C. Maybe you’re just expecting too much.

    I expected the jokes to be lame and for it to be full of b-list stars(just like last year)and the entire thing to be pretty much ignored if it weren’t for the reveals. Funny that even NPH ragged on it.

    Despite the angry basement dwellers in your comment section on TES V, I agree. However, not on the same point.

    I’ve been playing TES games from Morrowind on and the gameplay simply has not changed, adding a block button in Oblivion does not make it new. Adding VATS(the only way you can reliably shoot) isn’t fixing it.

    I’m all for the id5 tech being used in TES V, but if they don’t revamp the gameplay I’m done with the series. Oblivion wasn’t really amazing with its story and to be honest fell short of Morrowind in locale, things to do, characters and even modes of transportation(you actually had to go to a boat or silt strider to quick travel).

    So yeah, a video not showing a single bit of the game isn’t going to excite me.

  34. Resistance 3 didn’t look like an upgrade to you? Really? That’s surprising, because to me it looked (visually) incredible compared to the second one.

  35. let me write the article for you because you seem incapable of doing it:

    1) no gameplay on the Batman AC trailer, instead another CGI trailer like the one from a year ago

    2) no new Sony reveal, the rumors were for a new game besides Uncharted 3 that we all knew was coming but they were false

    3) no new Bioware game, we’ve know since the first Mass Effect that it was a triloy for this gen so it’s hardly an announcement, and again no gameplay

    4) almost no gameplay on the Uncharted 3 trailer

    5) the game for 2013 turned out to be completely irrelevant, with that date we expected to be something huge like GTA or Half Life

    6) all the awards, RDR is good but mass effect 2 is better, need 4 speed is good but GT5 is better, I played the Black ops campaign twice and I didn’t know there was a charater called Woods, but John Marston is unforgettable

    and by the way, Resistance 2 is considered by everyone who played it a great game, the dissapointment comes from the game not being as good as the first one, not because of its quality, the first resistance still has the best and longest single player campign for any FPS this geneneration, and the Skyrim thing was by far the best of the VGA

    you see how it’s done? the most incredible thing is that probably you got paid to write this ridiculous article

  36. The new Elder Scrolls has a new engine!! They know New Vegas sucks technically. They’re going to improve it. They have time, and have had time. A new elder scrolls would be the perfect time to unleash a new engine.

  37. WHATEVER SYCOPHANTS August 22, 2011 @ 14:29

    i could never undertsand how game makers could release such unfinished glitchy crap and expect it to sell but reading all the asskissing posts here explains it “game of the year awards”?, huh just shows how full of shit that whole set up is and how little the game compainies respect their cutomers. Still reading these post just proves in the majority of cases they are right not to! these bellends really will buy anything.So i guess they’ll get the games they deserve new engine or not for TES it wont change the lack of work done on the rest of the game. In fact anyone trying to play these games on anything but a pc using the console commands to clean up the mess of a game as you go is in for a treat

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