Angry Gaming 12.18.06: The 2006 Hate Club Hall of Shame Awards
Posted by Damian Sarcuni on 12.18.2006
With a special performance by Ok Go on treadmills.
Welcome to Angry Gaming, the home of Samus Aran worn space suit fetishists on the net. I am your hate master, Damian Sarcuni, and 411mania is my anti-drug. Hit me!
The 2006 Hate Club Hall of Shame Awards
Hello everyone and welcome to the first annual Hate Club Hall of Shame Awards. You know, despite the rather anal nature and perfectionist attitude of some of us, gamers are generally upbeat people. We are quick to depart from the known formulas and tested elements of games that we know will give us a positive experience, all in the name of trying something new. (This is how Guitar Hero makes its money.) Yet on top of that, gamers are also quite loyal to their individual preferences and brands (which is how Nintendo makes its money). Overall, gamers feed the industry without so much as a second thought and their purchases and patronage is its own reward.
Then a year like 2006 comes along, and all that rainbow sunshine crap gets blown to hell. With the Xbox 360 already out on the market and the imminent approach of the Wii and PS3, the game industry focused heavily on next generation development and left the gamer fan base pretty much out in the cold this year. Sure, there were plenty of previews and hype to look forward to throughout the gaming media, but damn all if you wanted a decent game to play in July. The positive nature of gamers allows them to mostly forgive and forget (which is how Killzone makes its money) as you will see evidenced by the upcoming 411mania best of 2006 awards.
We at Angry Gaming, however, don't get the luxury of looking off to the horizon every time something goes wrong. Before the game industry gets to take home its nice shiny 411 awards, we have a little shit to shovel into the end-of-year furnace. The industry has to deal with us first and earn their spoils. Consider this awards ceremony to be a sort of cleansing, purification ritual; a penance, if you will. When the dust has cleared, we can all gladly move on to the next year in hopes of something far better on our brand new next gen consoles we paid exorbitant prices to own before Christmas. Besides, there will probably a whole slew of crap to make fun of at the end of next year anyway.
So get your tomatoes and eggs ready, load up the slingshots, and boo like UFC fans at a Jiu Jitsu match. Welcome to the show!
And The Award Goes To…
1) Hardcore Nerd Achievement of the Year: Completing All Reward Cards in Need for Speed Carbon (PC)
There's a fine line between being a true game fanatic and just being an out and out obsessive freak. This year, Electronic Arts required fans of the long awaited Need for Speed Carbon to cross that line repeatedly in order to unlock all their favorite cars, mods, and body kits. The game requires you to earn both 1,000,000 dollars in career mode (winning a race is worth 500 dollars after career mode is completed) AND to win 20 random defensive races (defensive races stop completely after career mode is completed) in addition to several other impossible challenges. One reward card asks that players beat an EA moderator in a race online, though no one has ever actually SEEN an EA moderator online at all.
The game has several hidden cars and parts which players can either pay EA for or in the case of the PC version of the game, download a 3rd party cheating program (trainer) to unlock everything quickly and easily. Hmm, spend the rest of the year doing race after race to unlock a fraction of a potential reward, or get the damn trainer and move on with life? The choice is clear, and when a game requires anyone but the most obsessive of geeks to cheat in order to win, it earns its spot in the Hall of Shame
2) 2006 Character Who Most Needs to be Disemboweled: Roxas, Kingdom Hearts 2 (PS2)
I don't want another preeetty face; I don't want just anyone to hold. I don't want my love to go to waste; I want you and your beautiful sooooul. Yep! In the English version of Kingdom Hearts 2, Roxas is voiced by none other than Jesse McCartney, the only baby face with enough fruit running through his blood to cut a sissy album, star in a Disney video game, AND appear on long running TV soap opera All My Children. If McCartney didn't butcher this character enough with his career alone, Roxas' convoluted back story finishes the job. At some point in the original Kingdom Hearts, the red haired wuss boy spawns this blonde haired wuss boy, and the two have a destiny that's inevitably linked. Blonde wuss must battle red wuss and eventually absorb back into red wuss' loins from whence he came. Rather than let your imaginations run wild on Jesse McCartney having relations with Sora, I'll remind you all that this is a Disney game, one that successfully managed to add even more laughable, poorly written kids characters into a stain on the RPG genre.
3) 2006 Game Most Offensive to Women: The Sopranos (PS2)
License, shmicense. I haven't seen a bigger excuse for polygonal breast shots since the first Tomb Raider, and that's saying something. Throughout the Sopranos game, players interact with both virtual strippers and prostitutes that serve as naught but digital fodder to be enjoyed between manly gangster missions. While this may or may not say something about the writers' attitudes towards women, it still mocks the gender in general. Not a single woman in the entire game has anything of value to say or has any impact on the plot, and there are more breast shots on the game than in an actual episode of the TV series. There is nothing quite like HBO to remind you that your entire sex is altogether useless when it comes to impacting a dramatic scenario, especially in a video game.
4) Worst of the Next Generation Consoles: Samurai Warriors 2 (Xbox 360)
411's own Chris McCarver took up the cross of reviewing this god awful piece of work, which boasted graphics that resembled a PS2 launch title and some of the most boring button mashing gameplay ever to grace the 360. The Dynasty Warriors series, as well as its many spin-offs, has been on a serious decline lately and rather than even attempt to do something decent with this port, Omega-Force let loose a game filled with useless play modes, lackluster story, horrible graphics, and overall repetitive action. Samurai Warriors 2 was intended to placate the fans of the Dynasty Warriors series that have moved onto the next gen of consoles already, but all it did was make the dying series even that much more terminal.
5) Most Shameful Gamer News Story of the Year: Man Kills Daughter Over Lost Xbox Save
Tyrone Spellman was playing Ghost Recon for the Xbox on September 7th, 2006, when his 17 month old daughter, Alayiah Turman, tripped over the power cord. The console toppled over and Tyrone thought it was broken. Spellman beat his daughter to death, then picked her up and threw her in a chair. Alayiah was pronounced dead at 12:37pm that day. Spellman's household had already been under watch by the department of human services due to an incident one month prior.
Many of us have gotten angry enough at a frustrating game or situation; sometimes enough to throw a controller or even break some other possession. What Tyrone Spellman did, however, crossed the line between human and animal; To think that video games even played a part in that, shames the entire gamer populous. While none of us are directly responsible for this girl's death, it's amazing to think that it could even be possible and even more amazing when we see the gaming community's reaction. There were a few half hearted jokes and head shakes at this news story, but no one actually stood up to make a statement about how wrong it is and how we as a community must never be associated with the likes of this murderer. It's a scary thought, and Alayiah Turman's murder was easily the worst moment for gamers in all of 2006.
6) 2006 Most Likely Developer to be Bought Out By Microsoft: Sega
It was a lackluster year for the legendary Sega, as nearly every new release of their flagship Sonic series was met with poor to mediocre ratings from the gaming public. With only Super Monkey Ball and the dated Phantasy Star Universe as their other major entries into the game world, Sega definitely took a hit in the software profits department this year. With rumors of their return to the hardware field as well, Sega is prime rib for Microsoft's carnivorous appetite. Having Sonic as well as the House of the Dead series under the Microsoft flag certainly has a nice ring to it, and if the Bill Gates' personal Kohr-Ah death march continues, Sega is next in line for assimilation.
Intermission
What awards show would be complete without a musical performance? I now present to you a band which, if you haven't seen already, has hit a g-spot for entertaining live performances. Ladies and gentlemen, I present to you the band Ok Go…on treadmills.
That amuses me endlessly.
7) Most Overused Cliché 2006: Little Girl Ghost with Hair in Front of Her Face, F.E.A.R., Fatal Frame 3
For our Most Overused Cliché award, we turn our sights towards the Far East, where ghost stories have become the biggest export since rice bushels. The Asian continent is just full of horror movies lately, most of them featuring female ghosts who, for a shocking effect, hang long black hair down in front of their faces. This scare style, made popular by films such as Ringu and The Eye, has made its way over to both U.S. films AND the international gaming industry.
In 2006, it was hard to find a horror based game that didn't have some Asian based horror element to it. This is especially true of Fatal Frame, a series which has always had its roots firmly planted in the Asian horror genre. However, F.E.A.R., which is of an entirely unrelated genre, has also picked it up along with several other titles. The thing is girls with hair in front of their faces aren't all that scary. I laughed through most of The Ring and sat idly by while my friends played through F.E.A.R. only to listen of my repeated droning of "Are you up to the scary part yet?" Fad games are fine, but fad plots are awful, and I still wonder what exactly a girl with a crappy hairdo can do to harm me besides creeping forward veeerrry sloooowly. Hopefully in 2007, we'll find out and then move on with our lives.
8) Worst of the Old Generation Consoles 2006: Final Fantasy VII: Dirge of Cerebrus (PS2)
There was a lot of crap in 2006, but Dirge of Cerebrus for the PS2 sinks below the competition simply due to its notoriety. Released right around the same time as the FFVII movie Advent Children, fans begging for a sequel jumped on this game in a collective effort to find out the truth behind the often misunderstood fate of Midgar. What they got instead was an FPS with an awful targeting system and had the multiplayer feature ripped right out of it. True enough that there were far worse games released in 2006, but Dirge of Cerebrus was easily the biggest let down for both new and old fans, thus stealing its place in the hall of shame.
9) Most Useless Piece of Crap: Game Console Intercoolers
Is your game console having problems with overheating and performance? Are you too lazy to ship it back to the factory from whence it came to get a working product? Do you want to rice out your console the same way you riced out your Honda Civic, even beyond changing the faceplate? Friends, look no further, as 2006 has you covered with the game console intercooler, the most useless piece of hardware ever spawned on a next gen system. Not only do these cheap props fail to cool your console down, the very idea of adding them as a visual mod is pathetic. When Nintendo releases an ultra rare Barbie pink colored Game Boy skin, that's one thing. But what's the purpose of a visual mod that remains stagnant in your bedroom or living room? What's next, game console spinner rims?
10) 2006 Game You Are Most Likely To Wipe Your Ass With: Spy Hunter: Nowhere to Run (PS2)
We all know game licenses can get bad, but far worse is when a game is released on a license that hasn't even seen its own release yet. Spy Hunter: Nowhere to Run was set to be the video game counterpart to the blockbuster film of the same title, but production on the film was halted last August. Yet the game still saw its release a month later, and was revealed to be just as uninspired as the production company behind the film.
The game's most prominent feature is the motion capture likeness and vocal talent of WWE wrestler turned actor Dwayne "The Rock" Johnson. Yet the graphics in viewing that likeness were absolutely awful, and the gameplay featured some of the most horrible enemy AI ever seen on the PS2. The game was just full of bugs and only worth a single play through if it was even worth that much. The game was full of "gotcha" moments that had players reloading the same save over and over again, either to eventually succeed or to give up and restart an entire level over. Bad components plus bad license makes this title the worst of 2006, and if the movie does see its release in the coming year, we will say a silent prayer that not nearly as much damage is done to the Spy Hunter legacy.
The Anger
And so 2006 is in the history books. It's time to put those old consoles to rest and look to a somewhat bright and promising future with our new consoles loaded with brand spanking new features and innovations. Looking back on it, 2006 was the death of a video game generation and the birth of another, and as your mothers can all tell you, death and birth are two very, very painful processes.
More importantly though, 2006 was also the rebirth of the 411games section, and we are really grateful to everyone who helped make it possible. We hope you enjoyed our first banner year and continue to check us out for all your gaming coverage in the '07 as well. Until we see you there, embrace the hatred.
