Sunday 12 December 2010

VGA

Last night the L.A Convention Centre played host to the 2010 Spike Video Games Awards (VGAs). As you can imagine the industry’s biggest and brightest were there enforce to celebrate their accomplishments over the past year and announce the games we can look forward to in the year ahead.


The show was hosted by the Legen....wait for it.......dary Neil Patrick Harris, who himself won an award for Best Male Voice acting in the game Spider-man Shattered Dimensions.


The big winners this year were Rockstar for their game Red Dead Redemption. They walked away with 4 awards including Game of the Year and Best Original Score. An honourable mention also goes to Bioware for picking up Studio of the Year and Best RPG for their work on Mass Effect 2.


This is all well and good celebrating what has come and gone, however as always with our industry it’s about the future and what we have to look forward to......and oh boy do we have a lot to look forward to.
There were many game announcements last night including the hotly anticipated Mass Effect 3 and Batman: Arkham City.


I am extremely intrigued by the fact that Mass Effect 3 is coming back to Earth, I cannot wait to see what Bioware is cooking up for their vision of our planet in the distant future. As you can see from the trailer certain landmarks still exist, although a bit worse for wear. 

Batman is as always doing what he does best, taking down what seems to be the personal army of Dr Hugo Strange. So does this mean that the Joker has taken a side step in the proceedings or will he rear his ugly head later on? We will just have to wait to find out.


Along with these it is nice to see a welcome return for one of my favourite PS2 franchises, SSX Snowboarding. Although the trailer shows a more dark and rugged style of game play I’m not sure if this sits well with me as of yet. SSX was always a game that was bright and colourful filled with over the top stunts and tricks, whereas this reboot of the game seems to be taking a more serious tone.


I will keep my eye on this one.

Guillermo Del Toro the renowned movie director has also announced his move into game development and displayed a teaser for his new horror game ‘Insane’. He will be developing this with the Volition team, who were the people behind Saint’s Row. If you are familiar with Del Toro’s work then you will be more than aware he has a brilliant eye for visual flare and creating fantastical worlds and creates.

Naughty Dog also brought their heavy guns and released a teaser trailer for Uncharted 3: Drakes Deception. The video depicts Nathan stranded in a vast desert after seemingly crash landing a plane nose first. The entire video was apparently running in game and just shows off the amazing technical skill of the guys and girls at Naughty Dog. To say this game looks incredible is an understatement....its looks insanalicious (Insane and delicious crammed together to make a new epic word).


....and finally the pièce de résistance..... Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim!!


I am a big fan of the Elder Scrolls series and lost hundreds of hours playing Elder Scrolls Oblivion. So to finally see a date and a teaser trailer for the next instalment is pant wettingly exciting. Looks like Dan Bull finally got through to Bethesda...

That’s your lot for this week. A nice quick update on what’s been going on in the world of gaming. Look out next week for my review of the Unreal engine powered iPhone game Infinity Blade.

Have a great week people.