We saw quite a few new trailers at the Spike Video Game Awards, and here they are.
The Spike VGAs are partly an embarrassing frat-house party that affirms all of gaming’s worst stereotypes to the outside world, and partly a giant press conference in which publishers tease new games to a captive audience. That said, for all the negatives, we at least get some really cool new trailers out of the whole thing.
In case you missed it (and we don’t blame you), here are all the new trailers we saw Saturday night.
The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim: Said to be running on an entirely new engine, TES5 takes players north to the land of Skyrim, where – judging from the trailer – they will fight evil dragons made out of stone. That’s twice as bad as regular evil dragons.
Mass Effect 3: After a good month’s worth of teasing, it’s official – BioWare’s mystery game is the one that we all knew was coming. The Reapers have made their way to Earth, devastating humanity’s defenses, and only Commander Shepard can set things right.
Insane: We don’t have any idea what director Guillermo del Toro’s game will be about, only that he’s making it in conjunction with THQ and that it looks like it’ll be pretty darn freaky. Oh, and that we won’t see it until after the apocalypse in 2013.
Batman: Arkham City: The follow-up to one of the best games of 2009 has Batman facing off against the villainous Hugo Strange, an evil genius psychologist who deduces the identity of the man behind the mask. The trailer features lots of people getting punched in the face. That’s all I want, really.
Uncharted 3: Drake’s Deception: The third installment of “Nathan Drake shoots people and wisecracks” will see our intrepid explorer/tomb raider searching for the “Atlantis of the Desert” with old pal Sully and getting himself stranded in the middle of the desert amidst the burning wreckage of a cargo plane. It was probably his fault that the plane crashed, though. He has terrible luck with that sort of thing.
Portal 2: This Portal 2 trailer doesn’t show us any of the mind-breaking gameplay, but it does show us that the game’s co-op bots are really, really cute together.
Resistance 3: Series protagonist Nathan Hale is out, and new guy Joseph Capelli is in. Earth is still screwed, and boat rides aren’t nearly as fun here as they are in the presence of T-Pain.
Prototype 2: In the first game, Alex Mercer killed lots of people. He also injected Sgt. James Heller with the same virus that mutated him. Now, James Heller is out for revenge on the hero of the first game, before Alex’s superior popularity makes him the protagonist again three-quarters of the way into the story. No wait, I’m thinking of Gundam SEED Destiny.
SSX: Deadly Descents: A bunch of extreme-sports yahoos take the definition of “extreme sports” a bit too far. Snowboarders leap out of helicopters on the most dangerous peaks in the world, and the entire thing looks like someone was playing slightly too much Call of Duty while working on the trailer premise.
And now, the ones we hadn’t previously covered:
Forza Motorsport 4: Even if Microsoft can’t use the long delays of Gran Turismo 5 to its advantage anymore, Forza 4 looks very pretty.
Thor: God of Thunder: Not to be confused with the recent movie trailer, of course. It’s a tie-in game, and it looks like one, but people do get hit in the face with lightning-imbued hammers.
Mortal Kombat: Yeah, it looks like Mortal Kombat. No surprises here, unless you count God of War‘s Kratos showing up. I guess that’s kind of a surprise.
Which are you most excited about? Why not answer that question in our Daily Poll?
