Sup bitches. Welcome to this year’s Scathing Accuracy Awards! The most prestigious videogame awards this side of the netterstreets…maybe. I’m your host, the man with no name! S.A. Renegade, at your service.
I’m sorry to inform you that we won’t be having any strippers as was originally planned. Stupid conditions of my parole. The motorcycle stunts and rappers are also out. But forget all that! What you do get, is the only videogame awards that matter: MINE! Ah, er, ahem… I mean, ours.
Well, I’m sure developers the world over are practically biting their nails off with anticipation, hoping to win one of our awards, so without further ado, I present to you the Scathing Accuracy Awards 2008!
Best Graphics Award
Winner: Who gives a quarter of a flying fuck!
Oh my, we’ve only just started and already we have a dark horse taking our award for best graphics of 2008! What is it with people giving awards for something like this? Oh my god, your game has the most amazing graphics, that’s so impressive. You know what’d impress me more? A game that’s actually good. Graphics have little to no effect on a game’s quality, and yet improving graphics takes up resources. A game with the best graphics will rarely if ever also win the best game award. But of course, game companies have to spend on these amazing graphics because the world is full of imbeciles who complain if a game doesn’t look “next gen” or whatever.
So you’re pushing the boundaries of computer graphics? Guess what, I don’t give a fuck. I’m playing games to be entertained, not to marvel at how far we’ve come to make graphics this realistic. God damn.
Best Soundtrack Award
Winner: Super Smash Bros. Brawl
If there’s one thing we can agree on here at our Scathing Accuracy secret mountain hideout, it’s that Brawl sure pulled out all the stops when it comes to music. I mean, even Yasunori Mitsuda had a hand in it. How is that not awesome? Unlike graphics, music does indeed have an important effect on how fun a game is, so with that in mind, we’re giving this award to the game we think most deserves it this year. And really, was there ever any other choice? If there was, too late!
Brawl had not only an amazing number of good songs coupled with an even more amazing roster of musicians, but, as Shepton so eloquently puts it: “That just has infinite music and the ability to remove the ones you hate and up the chances of hearing ones you like.”
Best Story Award
Winner: Everyone failed so hard at plot this year that we opted to give this award to Shepton’s dog instead.
Now, it’s no secret that I loathe dogs. But I think it’s safe to say that guy is a literary genius compared to what videogame writers put out this year. I mean come on, what is this shit. It’s like you guys didn’t even try. As an aside, Shepton’s dog came on record to say he’d take a free watermelon in lieu of the award and cash prize.
Honorable Mention: Metal Gear Solid 4
This game might’ve had a deep and well put together story, but can it compete against the might of Shepton’s dog?! I didn’t think so. Bitch.
Game That Sold More Copies Than The Bible But Is Actually Crap Award
Winner: Grand Theft Auto IV
Proving that you don’t have to bother making a good game as long as you have advertising, controversy, and the option to shoot hookers after being serviced, it’s GTA IV. How something this awful can sell so much is pretty mind boggling. I guess I’m to blame too, since I’m one of the people who actually bought it, but hey, I can’t make fun of it for being hilariously bad if I haven’t played it, now can I? Games selling a lot of copies when they don’t deserve it piss me off, but unlike fans of undeserving games such as Brain Training, casual gamers who think GTA is “the shit” have the gall to think themselves real gamers. Don’t make me laugh. If you’re a real gamer then I’m a professional football player.
Most Overhyped Piece of Shit Award
Winner: Spore
I’d laugh and insult this game, but since I never bothered playing it, I’ll just settle for laughing at it. Ahahaha! Uh, ahem. Here’s Shepton’s take, who actually, y’know, tried it:
Spore. Spore, Spore, Spore Spore Spore. Anybody would have thought this game was Jesus if they’d listened to the hype. As it turned out, the game was pretty fucking terrible. Even running at maximum settings, Spore looks awful, runs poorly, was clearly unfinished despite long delays in production, is surprisingly lacking in substance, and has some of the worst DRM the gaming world has ever been subjected to. It’s a real shame, it could have been pretty good.
A Decade Of Progress And Still Worse Than The Original Award
Winner: Fallout 3
Play Fallout 3. Then play Fallout 1. Exactly. That’s what I’m getting at with this award. I guess it’s not a big surprise that a sequel fails to be as good as its predecessors though. That happens all the fucking time these days. Here’s Shepton with a little quip:
I do think that if they’d gone at it like “Okay let’s make an entirely new game based in the world of fallout and make a new engine for it” it could have been better. But they went like, Man… Fallout was awesome. We should make a new one. And then the retarded guy pipes up OBLIVION WAS AWESOME TOO!! And they go OH SHIT HE’S RIGHT
Shyeah. The Oblivion engine and gameplay is a complete failure that should be scrapped completely. But of course they won’t do it. Not as long as there are dumbasses going “Oh my god, the world is so BIG!!” God damn I can’t believe people actually like that shit. If the global environment depended on people’s taste we’d have to go live in vaults. Hopefully I don’t get the one with a panther.
I Can’t Believe They Fucked This Up Award
Winner: Gears of War 2
I’m not much of an FPS guy. I barely played Gears 2 at all. Just beat it, played online a few times, then got distracted and played something else. So with that in mind, I give the mic to the resident FPS nut, Shepton, for this award. He already made a post complaining about Gears 2 multiplayer a while back, but let’s see if he has anything more to add.
Gears complaints: Remove the host advantage!
Epic: No.
Gears complaints: Give us dedicated servers
Epic: Nope.
Gears complaints: Fix the chainsaw vacuum!
Epic: Nah.
Yeah, they actually made it worse.
Yep. Good ol’ Epic. And not only make it worse, but throw in bullshit grenades too, and make the explosions indescribably huge, and decide what’s fair completely on the fly!
Seriously, last night my friend ran at a guy with his chainsaw revving and the other guy was revving too, so it should be a duel, right? Wrong. My friend dies instantly. I always used to make fun of people who bitched about games being out to get them but with gears 2 it’s actually true. Epic put in all this bullshit to make it “fair” so it seriously does just randomly decide who’s going to live or die.
Man, at first I had trouble believing chainsaw duel could start without you revving but then one guy came up to me with his chainsaw from behind me and then we went into a duel without me pressing shit. And then I cut him in half.
Yep. It pisses me off that sometimes you can just have your lancer out and welp, hey, you’re in a duel even though you weren’t revving! Like I said in my rant, I appreciate the second chance when I’m in the moment, but I also fucking hate how unfair on the other guy it is. If he came at me with a chainsaw and I was unprepared, I deserve to die.
Also I think your own smokes shouldn’t affect you. It’s not like it would be any kind of advantage, beause there’s gonna be a million smokes going off around you at the same time anyway. All they’ve done is taken gears 1 and made it a million times more frustrating. You can’t get good at it because it’s random and changes the rules all the time. And where’s the fun if you can’t get good at it? It defies common sense. And in my opinion that makes it unplayable. And by that I mean that if I tag somebody with an ink grenade, he has no chance of surviving. Except in gears 2 you tag someone with an ink and the worst that happens 90% of the time is that they go down. But if someone throws an ink at you and you touch it for more than a second you’re down and then die instantly. So what the fuck? If I’ve just SLAMMED an ink onto someone’s face, they WILL fucking DIE, so it makes no sense that they nearly always survive it.
But yeah it doesn’t matter how much you play. You simply cannot perfect anything in gears 2, because gears 2 decides who wins and dies, not your skill. Several times the game has, honest to god, rewound while I played. So I’ll start chainsawing someone, I’ll see the blood, see the animation, and then they’ll shotgun me and I’ll die. And the game’s like “What? No, you didn’t chainsaw anybody!” And I can’t count the amount of times when I’ve killed someone and then they’ve chainsawed me from the grave. Or the times when I’ll get stunned for no reason whatsoever. Nobody shooting me. No explosions. No melee. Just, whoop, it looks like you’re about to kill that guy! We can’t have that. But what I’d love to know is how people can instantly rev their chainsaw after I’ve stunned them with a melee, faster than I can shoot them. Because last time I checked it takes like a second to fully raise the bayonet. But they somehow pull it off mid-stun animation. And don’t get me started on this overpriced piece of shit map pack. I’m not buying it til they fix the game.
Woah, woah, ok, down, boy, down! So there you have it folks. Straight from the mouth of one Shepton guy who plays Gears a lot.
UGH Award
Winner: Banjo Kazooie Nuts & Bolts
AKA: This is how you completely and utterly destroy a good series. If there’s one game that made me question the good faith of its developers this year, it’s probably this one. There’s just no way this game isn’t an elaborate plan to piss me off. Or wait! I get it! Rare is clearly a saboteur employed by Nintendo with the express orders of making the shittiest games possible in an attempt to undermine the 360 as a platform! Now it all makes sense!
Technology Means Jack Shit Award
Winner: Mega Man 9
That’s right, ladies. Mega Man 9 uses 20 year old graphics, sound, and gameplay, and it’s still better than most of the fancy shit put out this year. What the fuck? You asshole developers out there should be ashamed of yourselves.
Shittiest Ending Award
Winner: Fallout 3
Fuck man, what is it with Fallout 3 taking home so many of our awards? Fuckin’ award hog. But hey, you can’t deny that they tried real damn hard to win this, and if there’s something I’ve always said, it’s that hard work pays off. Oh wait, no, that’s a lie. The best payoffs have always come from profiting off the work of others. But you all can keep on breaking your backs in the salt mines, suckas. I’ll be kickin’ back in my cabin in Tahoe.
But every once in a while hard work does pay off, and that proves true for Fallout 3’s developers, who pulled out all the stops to make the most unbelievably retarded ending within the realm of man’s ability. And for that they win this year’s Shittiest Ending Award. I already said it in my review, but fuck, you have to punch in some gay code in an irradiated chamber, and whoever does it will die. You can either sacrifice yourself or sacrifice some dumb woman. Except you have a motherfucking partner who’s fucking immune to radiation standing right fucking there. Or maybe even one who gets fucking HEALED by radiation. In any case, it’s clear that the only way to make an ending this bad is to actually be trying.
Dishonorable Mention: Fable II
Fable 1 was so awful that I didn’t even deign to buy Fable II. I had better things to do. Like play other games. So because of that, I give you Shepton:
First of all there’s some retarded “Ten years pass” bullshit. And then you get back and the world is exactly the same and nothing has changed. And if you have a wife, she’s just like “‘sup.” She doesn’t give a shit that you’ve been gone ten years. Then the final boss is a cutscene. You literally come out of the cutscene for a second, press A, and he dies. And then you get to have a wish.
You can wish for gold – but your wife, any children you might have, and your dog – will all stay dead. The dog is useful because it digs up treasure for you and helps you fight. Or you can save the lives of a bunch of NPCs in this area you can’t even get to any more (you never even meet them actually. Basically they built an evil tower for the bad guy. They’re basically mentioned in the story and that’s it, you only ever see a few of them and you never talk to them) Or you can save your dog and family.
So you can do something useless (gold), Something REALLY useless just to say you’re an angelic paladin and try to impress that girl who’s having sex with all your school bullies at once (saving dumb people who are useless to everybody and you can’t even see anyway), or you can do the smart thing. And save your family and dog. Almost on a par with Fallout 3, but I think fallout 3 was retarded in the extreme.
Yep, Fable II sucks, what’s new. That’s right, I’m insulting a game I never played! Cruise control for cool.
Innovation Can Go Eat A Bag Of Dicks Award
Winner: TIE – Devil May Cry 4 / Apollo Justice: Ace Attorney 4
In an age where the retarded masses are crying for this ethereal thing called innovation, and where a surprising amount of sequels get fucked up, I think games that boldly decide to be practically the same as their predecessors and manage to turn out great should be recognized. Yeah that’s right. You’ve got so many people giving awards for innovation. But me? I’m a renegade. So this award goes to the opposite. If you notice, the thing Devil May Cry 4 and Ace Attorney 4 have in common, other than them both being Capcom games and having a 4 in the title, is that they are both awesome. And I dunno about you dipshits, but I’d take an awesome game over an innovative one any day. In fact, it hasn’t even been a year and I’m already itching for DMC5 and AA5. So where are they, Capcom? Gimme the goods. DMC4 better not have been the last one or I’m gonna have to start busting some heads, ok?
Best Multiplayer Award
Winner: Left 4 Dead
I haven’t even played Left 4 Dead (yet), and it’s no secret that I’m not much of a people person, so best multiplayer awards aren’t something I particularly give a shit about. So I’m passing the proverbial baton over to my main nigger Shepton for this one. The guy plays multiplayer games like every fucking day. He racked up over 150 days played on the original Gears. I mean what is that shit? I wouldn’t play a game that long even if you payed me. So what do you have to say for yourself, little man? Oh wait, you’re not even here. Well, in lieu of that, here’s what he has to say about this particular award:
Left 4 Dead is one of the first multiplayer games to effectively make use of teamwork (which is probably why hardly anybody on the 360 is good at it). Valve have really pulled out all the stops and made L4D a really smooth and almost flawless multiplayer experience that’s always entertaining, varied, interesting, and above all, fun.
I really wanted to make Left 4 Dead our game of the year, but frankly, I don’t think a game that’s multiplayer only can really fill that gap quite well enough. It is a real shame that Left 4 Dead lacks a story, because the characters and locations have all been so very meticulously created and perfected.
Cheesiest Dialogue Award
Winner: Gears of War 2: “They’re sinking cities with a GIANT WORM!”
Bahaha. Oh man, if there’s something I love about Gears, it’s the dialogue. My fucking opening line in this awards post is from Gears. In fact, we weren’t sure whether to name this particular award Cheesiest Dialogue or Most Awesome Dialogue. Looks like Shepton wants to say something:
I love how he says the “GI” real loud then trails off for the “ant” all like JYYYYY’nt WAAAAOOORRRRMMM!!!
Chea, Gears is just one of those games where you play the campaign a few times and then you’re just spouting quotes from it in real life. Stuff like “Sup bitches” can be used during nearly every situation. Somebody asks you “What’s that?” you can be all like “Wha’ do I look like, a fuckin’ botanist?” “Man, I don’t know what to eat!” “You can eat shit and die for all I care.” One time at work somebody asked Shepton “Sup?” and he wanted to mix up his usual response of “Not much.” so he was all like “Oh it’s bullshit. Somebody figured out that Cole played Thrashball? Now it’s all “Oh Cole Train, tell us about that play again” and “Hey number eighty three sign my shirt””.
Game of the Year Award
Winner: Shin Megami Tensei Persona 4
As if there was ever any other choice. This year had more worthless shit and disappointment than good games, hell, with crap like GTA IV it’s a wonder we haven’t just given up on the industry completely. Thankfully we have games like Persona 4 to remind us that there are still some developers who don’t fail at everything and that there is still hope in the parade of mediocrity that is the modern gaming industry. Forget all the other lameass game of the year awards you might’ve seen, this is the only one that matters. In fact, I just beat P4 a few days ago and I already miss playing it.
So there you have it, folks. The definitive videogame awards of 2008, brought to you by me. Aaaand I guess also some guy called Shepton. But mostly me. If a game you like didn’t get a cool award, it’s either because I didn’t get around to playing it or because you’re a dipshit with horrible taste. Whaddya think I am, some kinda machine? I can only play so many games! Welp. I’ll see you around. This has been S.A. Renegade, saying get outta here, kid.